[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H1206]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      DEMOCRATS PROPOSE INCREASED TAXES AND MORE WASTEFUL SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to 
seeing the proposal that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) just 
mentioned because so far, the only proposals that have been put forward 
by the Democrats in committee have been billions and billions and 
billions of additional spending and billions of tax increases. So I am 
looking forward to seeing if, in fact, his proposal will be different.
  Mr. Speaker, last week in the Committee on the Budget, by the way, 
the Democrats proposed raising taxes three times and increase spending 
by over $13 billion in their first five amendments to the budget 
resolution. Mr. Speaker, they had only just begun.
  Tonight, in the Committee on the Budget that we finished a little 
while ago, they presented numerous more amendments increasing spending 
by billions more and increasing taxes on the hard-working American 
people by billions more. The final tally: stay tuned, because we will 
be bringing that to our colleagues in the next few days.
  Now, why do Democrats want to raise, insist on raising, the American 
people's taxes to pay for more waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington? I 
say that because let me read my colleagues some examples. A recent GAO 
report found that bureaucrats at the Department of Agriculture were 
using taxpayer-funded purchase cards for premium satellite and cable TV 
packages, including charges for pornographic movies, thousands of 
dollars charged to the taxpayers. By the way, this one I could not 
understand: fish costumes, web of life costumes, and a hand-switched 
salmon tent, $12,000 that the taxpayers paid for those. Very expensive, 
it must have been a really nice aquarium for $3,000, a billiard table; 
and yet the Democrats insist on trying to raise the taxes of the hard-
working American people in this country. And that is the difference. 
They insist on trying to raise taxes, and their proposals show that.
  Mr. Speaker, Republicans are trying to solve this problem alone. 
During the last year's budget resolution, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman 
from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) tried to eliminate just 1 percent of waste, 
fraud, and abuse by cutting spending by 1 percent. The esteemed 
minority whip said of that proposal that that was senseless and 
irresponsible to try to cut just 1 percent of waste, fraud, and abuse. 
What they proposed was not agreed to, but they proposed billions of 
dollars of tax increases and billions of dollars of more government 
expenditures.
  President Bush is working on implementing the President's management 
agenda, a performance-based system that seeks to reduce waste, fraud, 
and abuse and has got nothing, nothing but opposition from the members 
of the minority party. This year, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Iowa 
(Chairman Nussle) once again is providing an avenue in the budget to 
eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. Democrats will likely, 
unfortunately, oppose those efforts as well, and likely, once again, as 
they have done tonight and as they did last week, will propose billions 
of dollars in more spending and billions of dollars of tax increases on 
the hard-working Americans in this country.
  While Republicans are making great strides in cleaning up wasteful 
spending, Mr. Speaker, Democrats continue aggressively with this love 
affair of trying to raise the taxes on the hard-working American 
taxpayer.

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