[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 24, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1451-H1466]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
        CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Pursuant to the order of the 
House of Tuesday, March 23, 2004, and rule XVIII, the Chair declares 
the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union 
for the further consideration of the concurrent resolution, H. Con. 
Res. 393.

                              {time}  1915


                     In the Committee of the Whole

  Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the 
Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of 
the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 393) establishing the 
congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 
2005 and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 
2004 and 2006 through 2009, with Mr. Simpson in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
  The CHAIRMAN. When the Committee of the Whole rose earlier today, the 
following time remained for general debate confined to the 
congressional budget:
  The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) has 37\1/2\ minutes remaining, 
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has 37 minutes 
remaining, and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) has 5\3/4\ 
minutes remaining.
  Mr. KIND. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Just a quick response to my good friend from Iowa. Just to be clear, 
the Democratic substitute is offering close to 10 billion more in 
additional funds over the next 5 years to fund No Child Left Behind and 
special education; over the next 10 years, $50 billion more than the 
President's baseline budget that he submitted in regards to education 
programs. Yet we still achieve balance, a balanced budget within 8 
years, given the limitations that we face with these historically large 
budget deficits that we have the majority party to thank for.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman 
from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), from the Committee on the Budget.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from 
Wisconsin for yielding me this time, and I applaud his leadership on 
this issue.
  I do not know about anybody else, but I grew up in a family where if 
we gave our word, we kept our word. We did not break our promise. And 
this budget is full of broken promises.
  I want to talk about just one of those today. There are many, 
including for veterans, No Child Left Behind, IDEA; but one of the 
things we do is we fill niches in education, and education is the one 
piece that gives everybody equal opportunity in this country. Education 
is incredibly important. Twenty-nine years ago, this Congress pledged 
it would fully fund IDEA, which is Individuals with Disabilities 
Education Act. We would fully fund it at 40 percent of the excess cost. 
And for 29 years Congress has failed to keep that promise, leaving 
States to shoulder the brunt of this unfunded mandate. Many of us have 
voted here. We said we will not have any unfunded mandates; yet this 
has been going on for 29 years.
  This budget continues to fail our students, our schools. It costs on 
average twice as much to educate children with disabilities than a 
nondisabled child. With the Federal Government failing to live up to 
its end of the bargain, the State and local school districts are forced 
to divert already-meager resources from other students in order to 
ensure that special needs students also receive instruction.
  This year, the appropriations for IDEA was $10.1 billion, or at 18.65 
percent of excess cost, leaving States and local districts with an 
unfunded Federal mandate of $12 billion. That is 12 billion that our 
States and our school districts could be spending to alleviate the 
school crisis, reduce class size, modernize our schools. The failure to 
adequately fund IDEA is affecting every student in every classroom 
across America.
  Last year I was very pleased. The Republicans and Democrats got 
together and said we are going to get to fully funding by the year 
2010. I said hooray, at least we know where we are going. But this 
budget in front of us in the year 2005 increases special education by

[[Page H1452]]

half a percent. At this rate we will never reach our obligation of 40 
percent funding. In fact, we will continue to fall further behind. In 
committee, I offered an amendment to increase funding for IDEA, and 
this amendment was voted down on a straight party-line vote. I thought 
we were willing to work together to all get there.
  The Democratic substitute, which we will consider tomorrow, is better 
than the Republican budget on IDEA in every single year, putting us on 
a path to full funding by 2012, finally keeping our promise.
  States across this Nation are dealing with an economic crisis facing 
large State budget deficits and making deep cuts to services. In my 
home State of Oregon, school districts are facing tough decisions, 
including shutting down early. In Oregon, fully funding IDEA would mean 
another $60 million. That is really important, another $60 million that 
our Federal Government is obligated to pay for. This would make a huge 
difference to our schools in Oregon.
  I encourage my colleagues to vote for our students, our schools, and 
vote against the Republican resolution.
  Mr. KIND. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Chairman, what we have been doing here all day, and what we will 
resume doing tomorrow, is talking about the priorities of our Nation, 
the values that we hold dear; and that is the essence of budgeting, 
making tough decisions with the allocation of the limited resources 
that we do have available. And it is true that during times of budget 
deficits, those who typically suffer the most are those who are most in 
need and especially our children; and we are seeing that now with the 
Republican budget proposal before us where they are shortchanging 
crucial education programs, even though I would think that if we sit 
down and work through this in a bipartisan fashion, we could reach some 
common ground in regards to the priority of investing in the future, in 
education, in job-training programs.
  It is the only chance we really have to hold out the opportunity and 
the hope to the next generation that there will be a place for them in 
the 21st-century economy. But when they pass Federal mandates requiring 
certain things of local schools, it is fundamental fairness to require 
that they be given the tools and the resources to do it, and they are 
not. We are shortchanging No Child Left Behind. We are shortchanging 
special education. And that financial burden falls back on local 
property tax rolls. It affects the local school boards and the ability 
for them to be able to allocate the resources that they need to make 
sure that the children are succeeding in their classrooms. And I think 
it is a disservice that we are doing to the wonderful school districts 
that we have throughout the Nation, but especially to our children.
  If the majority wants to come and talk about fiscal responsibility, 
there would be wide bipartisan support on this side to embrace new 
budget tools that worked well in the 1990s, the pay-as-you-go rules 
that basically said that if we propose an increase in spending in one 
area or tax cuts, we have to find offsets to pay for it. They worked 
remarkably well in the 1990s: four consecutive years of deficit 
reduction, 4 years of budget surpluses. But they do not want to go 
there for obvious reasons, and unfortunately it is the next generation 
that will be paying a very high price due to the fiscal management of 
this Nation.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), a member of the committee.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I rise to join in the 
discussion on a matter of grave concern I think to every American 
taxpayer, every American worker, every American that relies on a 
Federal program that is essential to them, to every American that 
relies on the Federal Government for our safety and security, and that 
is the issue of fiscal responsibility by our Federal Government, an 
issue that is really long overdue as we look back. And I stand here and 
I commend the efforts of the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) for 
the work he has done on this committee to bring us a budget that is now 
responsible.
  Right now we are spending $521 billion in deficit spending. That, 
very simply put, means we are spending every year $521 billion more 
than we are taking in on the other side. I may be relatively new to 
Washington, being a freshman as I am, but I can tell the Members back 
in my State of New Jersey, there is not one business that could operate 
that way. There is not a State government that could operate that way. 
As a matter of fact, most States have to have a balanced budget at the 
end of the year.
  And yet when I come here to the House, it seems that Members on the 
other side of the aisle just barely take notice to the problem. And I 
say that because I serve on the committee, and it was just a week ago 
when we were in that committee discussing these very same issues and 
amendment after amendment after amendment was proposed by the other 
side of the aisle. A total of $28 billion was proposed in additional 
spending. I do not know whether those amendments, when they were doing 
that, whether they were simply playing politics at the time or whether 
they simply do not care about all this excessive deficit spending. 
Either way it is not a good example for this House to be setting for 
the American public. At the end of the day, what all that means is that 
we are adding to the fiscal drag on the American family budget. We are 
already looking at some $20,000 per household, $20,000 that the average 
household would say that they would love to be able to spend as they 
see fit, whether it is on their kids' education, on their kids' health 
care, or other such priorities as they deem fit instead of Congress 
deciding how they are going to be spending their money.
  We are stuck under their proposal of spending additional funds even 
though in the past we have been spending more in Washington at a rate 
greater than inflation. Opponents on the other side of the aisle agree, 
I would assume, that deficits are caused by spending more than we are 
taking in. But they will argue that it is not because we are spending 
too much money; it is because we are taking in too little revenues. So 
their answer to the problem, as it has been all day and repeatedly 
during the committee as well, is that we do not cut spending, we 
increase taxes.
  Mr. Chairman, I strongly disagree. I believe that the American public 
is already taxed far too much. We are just learning now that there is a 
correlation between cutting taxes and job growth and an expansion of 
the economy. Now would be the absolute wrong time to go in the opposite 
direction and raise taxes. When more people are working because we have 
cut taxes over this past year in the budget this committee put out last 
year, when more people are working, when there is more job creation, 
when consumer confidence is increased, when there is more consumer 
spending, there is more economic growth. That relates and that causes 
more revenue to come in. And that also causes people to be less 
dependent on the Federal Government, which means on the other side of 
the ledger, we can spend less, all those good things.
  But however we look at the issue of making the economy grow, I think 
that one thing we can agree on is we are in the midst right now of a 
war on terrorism. We have potential daily threats on every side of us. 
We have deficit spending in the past years that we have to reconcile. 
Now is not the time, as the other side of the aisle suggests, that we 
should be raising taxes. Now is the time that we should move forward 
with a fiscally responsible budget, as has been proposed by our 
chairman, to put this House back in order.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds.
  I say to the gentleman a fiscally responsible budget is our budget 
because every year, if that is the measure, our budget accumulates, 
generates a smaller deficit. Over 10 years, our budget accumulates $1.2 
trillion less debt than the Republicans' and ours goes to balance in 
2012, a claim they cannot make.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. 
Majette).
  Ms. MAJETTE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time and for his strong leadership on this very complex issue.
  Mr. Chairman, I grew up understanding that it is more blessed to give

[[Page H1453]]

than to receive and that to whom much is given of whom much is 
required.
  But this 2005 Republican budget hurts unemployed people, hurts job 
creation, and it hurts small business owners. This is deeply troubling. 
In fact, I find it unacceptable.
  The Democratic alternative, on the other hand, will restore cuts to 
the Small Business Administration and the Manufacturing Extension 
Partnership, and it will fund adult training and dislocated worker 
programs to retrain those who have lost their jobs. And, finally, it 
will extend Federal unemployment compensation through June. And that is 
a necessary change for the more than 750,000 workers who have exhausted 
their regular benefits.
  The President's policies, despite his promises, simply have not 
created enough jobs for those workers. In fact, it has not even 
replenished the over 2\1/2\ million jobs that have been lost.
  Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They create three 
out of every four jobs. Many small businesses need loans to begin or to 
continue their operations. But this Republican budget eliminates 
funding for business loan programs. And that means no money to open a 
business, no money to expand a business, and no money to put more 
people back to work.
  The Democratic alternative, on the other hand, is $150 million higher 
than the President's budget, and it includes restoring funding to the 
SBA's signature 7(a) loan program, with $100 million for SBA loans, $30 
million for small business assistance, and for microloan direct loans.

                              {time}  1930

  Amazingly, the Bush budget did not give the 7(a) program one dime. 
Instead, the administration would hike fees to pay for the program. 
This flies in the face of the assertion of no tax increases. A fee hike 
is the same as a tax hike to a small business owner. So the tax cut is 
no more than a flim-flam, a sham.
  This body still refuses to acknowledge the mistake that it made in 
squandering the surpluses that once existed for tax cuts for the 
wealthy, and the party that prides itself on fiscal responsibility has 
produced a budget that manages to increase our deficit, leave our 
children with a crippling debt and still does not fund a critical need, 
support for small businesses. This budget does not fund a critical 
need, support for small businesses.
  So I urge my colleagues to vote against the budget and to support the 
Democratic alternative, which really does meet the needs of our small 
business community and unemployed workers across America.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 8 minutes to the distinguished 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), a member of our 
committee.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman 
for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, when I could go home on the weekends and get away from 
Washington, D.C., where the lobbyists have all the Gucci loafers and 
the couple of thousand-dollar suits and get home with the real people, 
what the people back home are saying is, ``Ginny, work on cutting the 
deficit, protect our homeland, and be sure that our military, our brave 
young men and women who are fighting the war against terrorism, are 
adequately funded.'' And then they add a p.s, and the p.s. says, ``And 
don't forget to adequately fund veterans' health care.''
  In Florida, we have a huge number of veterans. I have a great debate 
going whether I have the second or third largest number of veterans in 
my district. But I can just tell you that it is a huge number of 
veterans, approaching about 300,000. Taking care of the veterans and 
veterans' health care while meeting all of the other needs that the 
constituents tell me back home are important to them is something that 
we were able to accomplish in this budget.
  I actually think that the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) 
deserves like nine stars up there, or ten stars. He and the Committee 
on the Budget have done a great job. We have increased funding for the 
Department of Defense, we have increased funding for homeland security, 
and in the committee we actually increased veterans' health care 
funding. The chairman raised his mark by $1 billion, and I added in 
another $200 million, which meets the amount that the Secretary says 
that he needs.
  When I was in the Florida senate, we cut department budgets left and 
right. We told them, go back and cut your request. We are adequately 
meeting the needs of veterans, according to Secretary Principi.
  When we had a vote on the budget that increased veterans' health care 
funding by the amount that the Secretary said he needed, because I 
grilled him in a previous committee, when we had that vote, guess what? 
The other side voted against the budget.
  I was not here when Congress increased eligibility for veterans' 
health care. As a result, as this chart shows, the number of veterans 
using VA medical care has increased from 2.5 million in 1995 to 4.7 
million today, and is certainly growing.
  The next chart shows that also since 1995, total spending on 
veterans' medical care has increased from $16.2 billion to $28.3 
billion.
  Mr. Chairman, let me remind you that this has been since the 
Republicans have been in control. You can see the large increases as 
shown in the yellow bars. This is a 75.2 percent increase, where the 
Republicans have made sure that veterans' health care and the mandatory 
programs are adequately funded.
  This chart just shows the veterans' medical care increases. When the 
Secretary took over, he had long waiting lines in many of the 
community-based outpatient clinics. He worked to whittle them down. He 
worked to reduce the amount of time that it takes for a VA disability 
claim. He made that a priority. They put additional people on. There is 
still a waiting list, but we funded them to the point where they have 
reduced the waiting list by more than 50 percent, and we are continuing 
to work very, very hard to make sure that veterans funding is there for 
the VA.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, has the gentlewoman heard, and I have been 
hearing some confusion over our numbers, the Senate numbers, the 
Principi numbers, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and I commend the 
gentlewoman for her work in offering that amendment to increase my 
committee mark so that we go to a level that the Secretary had 
requested. But has the gentlewoman heard the same confusion over the 
numbers that the Senate finally passed off the floor in their budget?
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, 
absolutely. When you look at the Senate budget and you look at the 
potential that they have there for an offset, an unknown offset, I do 
not know what that is. I cannot go home and tell my veterans that in 
the Senate budget that offset would not increase fees, because I do not 
know, when that is a budgetary process that they have in the other body 
which makes it appear, I believe, as if they have more funding. We do 
not have that required offset in our budget in the House; and I commend 
the gentleman for the transparency of the budget.
  In both the Senate and the House budget, we removed the President's 
proposal to establish a $250 user fee for Priority levels 7 and 8 
veterans, or to increase prescription drug plans. That language is 
included in there, and that is a commitment we made.
  I have, as we used to say in New York, now I am from Florida, 
``agada'' over the unknown. I wanted to make sure that the figures that 
are being portrayed in the Senate as being higher is not a process 
where they could actually be perhaps in the future including some fees 
in there, which would be totally unacceptable to us.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman would yield further, 
this would make their number, a net number, actually lower than what we 
are considering here today by about $550 million. They put in this plug 
that says unspecified fees or unspecified receipts or offsets, which, 
as the gentlewoman said, could be from fees, it could be from 
copayments, it could be from means testing.
  So our net number in this budget, in the House of Representatives, is 
higher

[[Page H1454]]

than the Senate budget by about $550 million. I think we not only 
should be proud of that, but I think we should work with the Senate in 
order to make sure that as we work through this process, that we work 
together with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to come to a common 
number.
  I would hope they would consider the number, because it is so much 
higher in the House, to be this $1.2 billion over what the President 
requested, that we work to get to the higher number rather than the 
lower Senate number.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, 
obviously Secretary Principi has in a Committee on the Budget hearing 
that I questioned him extensively on, said this is what he needs to 
meet the needs of every veteran seeking services, and this should be 
the number that we honor. Ours is a clear $1.2 billion, without some 
offsets, which I am still trying to pursue, definitions of ``those 
offsets.''
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will yield further, I 
commend the gentlewoman for her work on this issue and appreciate her 
work and service on our committee.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Baird), and ask unanimous consent that he have the 
right to allocate the time allotted to him.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
South Carolina?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, would the gentlewoman from Florida be so kind as to 
join us for just one moment for a colloquy?
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I cannot at this 
moment.
  Mr. BAIRD. I appreciate that. What I just wanted to clarify was, we 
both participated in the same budget hearing, and my recollection in 
that budget hearing was that in the outyears, the veterans budget 
increases at a mere 0.5 percent per year. So while it is a fine thing 
to speak about what we are doing for our veterans, no one seriously 
believes that 0.5 percent per year in the outyears will keep up with 
inflation, let alone medical inflation, and, further, let alone the 
inflation in medical costs of the young men and women who are returning 
from Iraq.
  Mr. Chairman, that illustrates I think one of the fundamental 
problems with the budget we are considering today. I believe it makes 
false promises.
  Now we are going to shift the topic to the environment and we are 
going to discuss not only the environment, but the false promises that 
underlay the President's promises and the majority promises on the 
environment.
  My colleagues from the other side often say people know how to spend 
their money better than the government. There is some truth to that. 
But I will tell you this, people want to protect their environment, 
people want to invest in their national parks, people want clean air 
and clean water and are they willing to invest in that.
  Unfortunately, President Bush has a string of unending, almost, 
broken promises on the environment. Under the President's budget, 
discretionary spending on environmental programs is slated for a $1.9 
billion reduction, 6 percent below fiscal year 2004, falling $30.3 
billion to $28.4 billion.
  But the cuts do not stop there. The environment takes another whack 
in the President's long-term budget plan, dropping another $500 million 
in fiscal year 2006, with significant cuts falling on the land and 
water conservation efforts. Funding for the EPA would shrink by more 
than $600 million.
  The administration has broken their pledge to fully fund the Land and 
Water Conservation Fund. Large cuts have been made in water quality 
infrastructure funding for reducing sources of pollution. This includes 
a broad range of activities, including sewage plants, water 
purification facilities and targeted pollution prevention 
interventions.
  And I would say, by the way, that many of our local and especially 
our rural communities depend on this funding to follow Federal mandates 
to clean up their water. And with that cut, we are going to shift that 
cost onto our local communities, onto our grandchildren and onto the 
environment.
  In his budget projection, the President includes $2.4 billion in 
revenues not yet achieved that would only be realized if we drill in 
the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  The Superfund program is funded under the President, but the funds no 
longer come from the polluters, they come from the general public in 
this case.
  Finally, and I think most egregiously, this President promised the 
American public in his campaign that he would fund the backlog in our 
national parks. My friends, people love their national parks, and this 
President has broken yet another promise.
  If you listened to reports that there were memos from the 
administration suggesting that Park Service employees deceive the 
public about whether or not they had real cuts and mislead them about 
the impacts of these budgetary cuts, it is very disheartening. Yet 
again we are seeing the administration telling well-meaning and honest 
people, do not tell the public the truth. We have seen it time and time 
again. Now we are seeing it on the environment.
  I have a number of distinguished colleagues here who have been 
waiting to talk about this issue because they know well of its 
importance.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California 
(Mrs. Capps).
  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, the Republican budget does ignore critical 
environmental and public health needs. For example, the budget for the 
Environmental Protection Agency would reduce actual spending by 
hundreds of millions of dollars from the fiscal year 2004 enacted 
level.
  For one thing, this means less money will be available for ensuring 
safe drinking water. EPA has documented a huge unmet need for 
improvements to our Nation's water infrastructure. As our population 
grows, our existing water infrastructure will reach the end of its 
lifespan, and each year we fall further behind. The response to these 
documented huge unmet needs is to cut funding by $822 million.
  The Republican budget also fails to reinstate the expired Superfund 
tax levied on corporations. As a result, the polluter-pays principle is 
abandoned and the corporate polluters will not be held accountable for 
their actions, leaving taxpayers to foot the entire bill for the 
cleanup of many hazardous waste sites. It sounds like a tax levy to me.

                              {time}  1945

  The Republican budget also leaves thousands of communities on the 
hook to clean up leaking underground storage tanks. Never mind that the 
leaking underground storage tank program, the LUST fund, is paid for at 
the pump by all of us. It has $2.4 billion in it, yet this budget asks 
for only $73 million to clean up leaking tanks, even though there are 
136,000 confirmed releases where leaking tanks and MTBE are 
contaminating the ground water and drinking supplies. It is a pathetic 
response.
  Finally, the budget calls for fewer brownfields grants than 
authorized by the new law signed 2 years ago. Contamination is 
hampering redevelopment efforts in thousands of our communities. And 
while States have begun addressing the brownfields problem, the 
Republican budget fails to provide Federal assistance to jump-start 
these efforts.
  We can no longer shortchange the American people when it comes to 
protecting our health and environment. So the Democratic budget fully 
funds the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, restores funding for 
cleanup of leaking tanks and brownfields, and we make polluters pay for 
cleaning up toxic sites, not the taxpayer.
  Mr. Chairman, good environmental policy is also good for the economy. 
The Democratic budget recognizes that the public has a right to clean 
air, safe drinking water, and a well-preserved environment. So I urge a 
``no'' vote on the Republican budget and a ``yes'' vote on the 
Democratic budget.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from California for 
her insightful words.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oregon 
(Mr.

[[Page H1455]]

Blumenauer), my dear friend who is a leader in the Nation on liveable 
communities and environmental issues.
  (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy 
in permitting me to speak on this.
  Mr. Chairman, the budget is an important statement of our values, and 
I am proud to support the Democratic budget crafted by the gentleman 
from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) because our values are a lower 
deficit, more direct services to Americans, more Americans put to work 
in jobs that will not be outsourced; and Democrats maintain the Federal 
commitment to clean air, clean water, and our Nation's natural places.
  How are we able to do so much better a job than our Republican 
counterparts? Well, the Republicans have placed the highest priority in 
their budget on meeting the needs of a few Americans, less than 1 
percent. They will receive more benefit under the Republican budget 
than all of the funding that will be spent on our veterans and, 
bringing it down to the conversation on the environment, their tax cuts 
for the people who have been already well taken care of, those tax cuts 
will be over the next 10 years and will be 1\1/2\ times all the 
spending on the environment combined.
  Now, I was proud to support the compromise that came forward in 2001. 
I see our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), 
here with then-chairman, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), to 
bring together dedicated funding for conservation funding. We passed 
overwhelmingly on this floor CARA, and there was a delicate compromise 
worked out with our friends on the Committee on Appropriations to do a 
better job of dealing with the land and water conservation fund. Every 
year since then, sadly, our Republican friends have turned their back 
on that commitment.
  I am proud that the Democratic alternative budget would provide the 
entire $2.2 billion authorized for conservation, preservation, and 
recreation programs. It keeps faith with this body; and most important, 
it keeps faith with the Americans who expect us to do so.
  The Republican budget cuts and undermines the Conservation Trust 
Fund's ability to promote smart growth in livable communities, 
something near and dear to my heart. These funds are for open space 
programs to assist people who are trying to cope with the forces of 
growth and change. These programs curb sprawl by protecting lands 
outside the borders of a city and making efficient and attractive use 
of open space within it. The Republican budget turns their back on it.
  The Land and Water Conservation Fund is one of the most important 
programs within the Conservation Trust Fund. Historical funding of less 
than one-third of the LWCF's authorized level of $900 million has left 
us with a backlog of $10 billion of unmet needs. This program has been 
underfunded again by my Republican colleagues; but under the Democratic 
alternative, that is not the case. I could go into greater detail, and 
I invite people to look at my Web site or the Congressional Record, all 
inserted.
  But the point is that we have worked very hard to keep the faith with 
the American voters to provide the funding for these critical areas 
that will enrich people in every congressional district in the country, 
vital funding for a better community, more jobs to help promote it, and 
a cleaner environment. I would strongly encourage a vote for the Spratt 
alternative to keep faith with each other and with the environment.
  These cuts will undermine the CTF's ability to encourage and promote 
healthy lifestyles--which was ignored in the ``No Child Left Behind 
Act.'' Five chronic diseases--heart disease, cancers, stroke, chronic 
obstructive pulmonary diseases, and diabetes--account for more than 
two-thirds of all deaths and three-fourths of the $1 trillion spent on 
health care annually. Research is clear that aggressive health 
promotion, especially with regard to daily physical activity, can 
substantially reduce these chronic diseases. The CTF provides Americans 
with outdoor places to hike, bike, swim, fish, and camp.
  These cuts will also undermine the Conservation Trust Fund's ability 
to provide critical resources to America's kids through places for 
recreation and education. Again, the Republicans' budget zeroes out the 
Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Program (UPARR). Last year I worked 
with over 110 members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats to 
encourage the Committee to include funding for this program that's 
important for so many districts around the country.
  The Republican budget represents missed opportunities and misdirected 
priorities for the environment. That alone is reason enough to reject 
it.
  The Spratt alternative keeps faith with each other and the people who 
rely on us. It will result in a cleaner environment, stronger 
communities, and will keep our families safe, healthy, and economically 
secure.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask my dear friend a 
question, if I may. Does the gentleman from Oregon consider the actions 
of this administration a breach of a promise when it comes to the Land 
and Water Conservation Fund?
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, there is 
no question about it. We came to the floor of this Chamber when we had 
the Presidential election in 2000, and we were very, very concerned, 
because we had seen in the State of Texas when it was then-Governor 
Bush sounding positive and not following up when it came time to put 
money on the table and meet those commitments.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, if I may ask another question related to 
that. Our friends all day have been saying the Democrats want to raise 
our taxes, presuming that everyone over there must be a millionaire, 
because the only tax increase we have talked about are on people who 
make $1 million a year or more. But this Land and Water Conservation 
Fund, is that an income tax? I do not believe it is. That is funding 
coming from oil and gas revenues from offshore drilling, is it not?
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will again yield to 
me, the gentleman from Washington is 200 percent correct, if I may use 
Republican mathematics in this budget context. This is money that is 
owed to the American public. It is in a trust fund. It is available 
today. It will not affect any taxes, other than the royalties that have 
already been paid. This is not going to require a change in taxation, 
other than the fact that my friends on the other side of the aisle want 
to add over $1 trillion of additional tax benefits to Americans who 
need it the least.
  Mr. BAIRD. Yet another broken promise; yet another trust fund 
raiding.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I could not have said it better myself.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to 
just close with this. We have talked a lot about, I think, deception 
and broken promises. Let me read to my colleagues the comments of a 
memo from the Park Service administration to Park Service employees. 
They were talking, trying to prepare the employees in case someone 
asks, has our budget been cut, and here is what they said in their 
memo:
  ``If you think that some of your plans could cause public or 
political controversy, we need to know which ones are likely to end up 
in the media or result in a congressional inquiry.''
  They then suggested to the administrators of the parks, the local 
parks, that ``you state what the park's plans are and not directly 
indicate that this is a cut in comparison to last year's operation. If 
you are personally pressed by the media in interview, use the 
terminology of `service level adjustments due to fiscal constraints' as 
a means of describing what actions we are taking.''
  Mr. Chairman, the American people want us to support our parks. The 
American people want clean air. They want clean water. This budget 
fails to meet those goals. It fails to live up to the promises made by 
the administration and our colleagues on the other side. We need to 
reject this budget and put the priorities where the American people 
want them, and I guarantee that one of those priorities is 
environmental conservation and protection of our national parks.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time to the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt).
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, at this time I yield 4 minutes to the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr.

[[Page H1456]]

Brown), a distinguished member of our committee).
  (Mr. BROWN of South Carolina asked and was given permission to revise 
and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BROWN of South Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for 
allowing me this second opportunity to address this body.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Benefits of the Committee on 
Veterans' Affairs, serving under our esteemed chairman, the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), I want to assure my colleagues that 
veterans and their benefits has been our number one priority. I want to 
share some facts to support that.
  In fact, just today, we had a press conference with the chamber, a 
roundtable, and a lot of the star corporate citizens around this 
Nation, encouraging them to hire veterans, and they all came up with 
outstanding results of what has been happening recently to hire the 
veterans who are coming back. But the goal that I want to speak on 
tonight is to help prepare those veterans when they do return under the 
Montgomery GI Bill.
  Mr. Chairman, since Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, we 
have fought to increase funding for the educational benefits veterans 
have earned through their service to this Nation.
  We have this chart before us. Since 1995, total spending on veterans 
has increased from $38 billion to $60 billion. That is a 58 percent 
increase, compared with a 36 percent increase during the previous 10 
years. Payments for veterans has risen by some 79 percent.
  Our next chart. One way that these increases have been utilized is as 
an investment to veterans educational benefits. Since 1995, educational 
benefit payment levels under the Montgomery GI Bill increased from $405 
to $985, an increase of 143 percent. This compares with only a 35 
percent increase under the previous administration. This year, a 
veteran who served on active duty for 3 years or more will receive $985 
a month for 36 months.
  These educational benefits can be used for, number one, courses at 
colleges and universities leading to associate, bachelor, or graduate 
degrees; number two, courses leading to certificates or diplomas from 
business, technical, or vocational schools; number three, 
apprenticeships; number four, correspondence courses; and, number five, 
flight training and other training.
  This budget provides for the October 1, 2004, scheduled COLA increase 
in veterans education benefits.
  With this budget, Mr. Chairman, we have continued our commitment to 
ensuring that those who have served their country with pride, valor, 
and dignity receive the best of America's appreciation; and we are 
grateful for the veterans.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
California (Mrs. Capps).
  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding me 
this time.
  Mr. Chairman, the budget before us does not reflect the values of 
this country, particularly in the area of health care. More than 40 
million Americans are uninsured, according to Kaiser. Children, 
including unborn children, and pregnant mothers are particularly hard 
hit by this crisis.
  But instead of trying to do something to help hard-working people, 
instead of acting to shore up what little health care low-income, 
working Americans have, this budget wastes resources and cuts important 
funding.
  We can all agree that when budget deficits are soaring, we cannot 
afford to throw money down the drain on inefficient proposals, but this 
President's proposal to offer $70 billion in tax credits to working 
poor people is a waste of taxpayer dollars. According to experts, it is 
going to help only 5 percent of the uninsured.
  We could spend this money more efficiently to help far more of the 
uninsured. Instead of squandering the taxpayers' money on an 
inefficient tax credit, we should direct Federal resources to expanding 
already existing public programs that have proven effective.
  The Republican budget, however, cuts $2.2 billion from just such a 
program: Medicaid. Medicaid currently provides health care to 52 
million Americans, including 39 million low-income children and their 
parents. This is nearly one in four children in this country. It is a 
critical source of acute and long-term care for 13 million elderly and 
disabled. Without Medicaid, the ranks of the uninsured would be almost 
double what they are today.
  Now, with the economy on life support and the ranks of the uninsured 
growing, sustaining Medicaid makes even more sense. Last year we 
provided, in a bipartisan fashion, an extra $10 billion to States 
facing fiscal crises to preserve Medicaid coverage. And today, States 
are still in financial crisis. The National Conference of State 
Legislatures projects that States are going to face a $35 billion 
shortfall as they face 2005. Many have already made severe cuts in 
Medicaid, and many others are preparing to do so.
  But instead of acting to shore up Medicaid and protect health care 
for a quarter of our Nation's children, this budget cuts billions from 
those efforts. These cuts are opposed by the bipartisan National 
Governors Association, the American Hospital Association, American 
Medical Association, Nurses Association, Cancer Society and many other 
groups and organizations. In fact, AARP's letter to Congress says, 
``AARP has serious concerns about proposals to reduce Federal Medicaid 
funding. Arbitrary reductions in Medicaid would be particularly harmful 
at this time, as those who rely on this program are already losing 
access to care just as States continue to wrestle with budget 
shortfalls and adjust to the loss of temporary assistance provided last 
year.''
  Twenty-nine of our colleagues from the other side of the aisle wrote 
to the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) on March 9 asking that 
these cuts be removed, but they were not. We cannot afford to cut 
Medicaid now. Such cuts would hurt low-income children, parents, 
pregnant women, the elderly, and disabled.

                              {time}  2000

  What do we stand for in this place? The budget of the Democratic 
Party is superior by comparison. Instead of cutting $2 billion for 
Medicaid, our budget would provide $8 billion over 10 years to expand 
Medicaid and to fund the bipartisan Family Opportunity Act, allowing 
families with disabled children to buy into Medicaid to get critical 
health coverage.
  I urge our colleagues to show their support for health care for 
hardworking Americans. Vote against this resolution and support the 
Democratic alternative.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Maine (Mr. Allen).
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  The history of the Bush administration when it is written will be a 
story of three grand obsessions: Iraq, missile defense, and tax cuts 
for the wealthy. Those who are obsessed with the cause often cannot 
absorb enough information or focus on new emerging challenges.
  This Republican budget is the price inflicted on the American people 
by the Republican obsession with tax cuts for the wealthy. One enormous 
emerging challenge is the bleeding of the American manufacturing jobs 
overseas. This administration has no plan to save American jobs. We 
have lost 3 million private sector jobs in 3 years. Business investment 
is down. Long-term unemployment is up.
  So how do the Republicans respond to this emerging crisis of job loss 
in this country? This budget will follow President Bush's proposed cuts 
in job training, the President's proposed cuts in vocational education, 
the President's proposed cuts in SBA programs, including a microloan 
program that has been very important and effective in my State.
  We will force a 60 percent reduction in the Manufacturing Extension 
Partnership which is there to try to help manufacturers, start-up 
manufacturers, get a foothold in this economy. And this Republican 
budget at a time of economic crisis in this country will pull the rug 
out from under small businesses who are trying once again to start up 
and compete globally in manufacturing. All of this to protect tax cuts 
for people in this country who earn $1 million a year. It is 
unbelievable and outrageous that they would do this.

[[Page H1457]]

  Back in my home State of Maine, my State legislature, my governor are 
struggling with the impact of Medicaid. Medicaid is very tough to 
maintain, and this Republican budget will lead to Medicaid reductions. 
This Republican budget will make the economic plight of our State much 
worse than it is today. And why are we going down this path? Because we 
cannot possibly even consider, according to the Republican majority, a 
refusal to continue these tax cuts for the wealthiest people in 
America.
  This is the most distorted sense of priorities that I can imagine. 
And as I said before, this is the price inflicted on the American 
people by the failure of this Congress to be honest with the numbers 
that were proposed and put forward in its tax cut last year. This 
Republican budget will do no good for the American people.
  By contrast, the Democratic budget will restore investments in 
manufacturing, health care, and the environment and be a better deal 
for the American people.
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
  Mr. Chairman, first, let me speak to Medicaid since the subject has 
come up a couple of different times.
  Since 1995, let us be very clear about this, since 1995 Medicaid 
spending has grown 95 percent, a 95 percent increase. The average 
increase was 7.7 percent per year. Federal Medicaid outlays increased 
from $108 billion in 1999, as an example, to $173 billion this year, an 
average of 10 percent a year just since 1999 alone.
  Federal SCHIP, that is the program for kids that has been mentioned 
here, spending grew from $1.4 billion in 1999 to an estimated $4.8 
billion this year, an average annual increase, listen to this now 
because we are hearing from the other side that Medicaid is being cut, 
and I want you to listen to this number for kids, an average annual 
increase of 27 percent, 27 percent.
  It is mind-boggling to me how we can be talking about cuts at a time 
when we are increasing at 27 percent for SCHIP and 95 percent over the 
last 10 years for Medicaid.
  Let me also bring up another subject that we just had a colloquy on 
on the floor with regard to veterans spending, and I want to be clear 
because I know that there are many colleagues out there that are 
listening to this debate, particularly with regards to veterans' health 
care.
  In our committee, we increased veterans spending to meet the request 
that Secretary Principi put forth in our committee in a hearing that he 
said, when he made his request to the Office of Management and Budget, 
his request was $1.2 billion higher than the President finally 
acquiesced and gave his department. Included in that were fees and were 
copayments, things such as that.
  We decided to do something in our committee in order to achieve not 
only a $1.2 billion increase, but to do so without any offsetting 
receipts. The Senate did something similar on their floor. They 
increased veterans spending as well, but when they did it, they offset 
some of that spending, so that while the gross number does look higher, 
they have offsetting receipts there that could be accomplished either 
through mandating copayments or mandating a means test of some sort.
  So when you look at the House versus the Senate budget on veterans 
spending, the House is higher in the net effect of spending for 
veterans than the Senate. We will work out the differences in 
conference, and we will arrive at a number, I believe, that will be 
$1.2 billion over the President's budget, the budget that the Secretary 
of Veterans Affairs requested in the first place, and that is an 
agreement I believe we can achieve.
  But just so we are clear for those Members that have been listening, 
that have been hearing from some veterans that the Senate number is 
higher, it is wrong. Be careful. They have hidden costs, hidden fees, 
the possibilities of means testing in their budget. We do not have 
that. Our number is higher and we ought to stick with that number.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller).
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman 
for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, I wanted to take a moment to talk about this budget. 
What we really have seen here now, as the Republicans have taken over 
the House, is a complete and total loss of any sense of fiscal 
discipline. What they have done, and certainly since they have been 
joined with the Bush administration, its takeover of the White House, 
is they have simply done nothing more than add trillions of dollars to 
the debt of this country and run annual deficits of about $500 billion 
a year over and over and over again.
  Why is that so? Because they could not stand to have to engage in any 
kind of fiscal discipline. They want to blame it on President Clinton. 
They want to blame it on the economic cycles. They want to blame it on 
war. They want to blame it on terrorism. They want to blame it on the 
vernal equinox. But the fact of the matter is, the problem resides at 
home. It resides within the Republican philosophy of government. And 
that is simply to run deficits. It is what they did all during the 
1980s when they were in control.
  Back 22 years ago I came to this Congress and I asked that the 
Congress adopt pay-as-you-go rules. The Congress argued about it for a 
decade. The Republicans did not like it because they said they could 
not do tax cuts. And the Democrats did not like it because they could 
not spend on some of their programs. The conservatives were nervous and 
the liberals were nervous.
  But a decade later, George Bush, Sr., signed pay-as-you-go into law, 
and that became the means by which we engaged in fiscal discipline. 
After a decade of arguing, we adopted it and what happened? The deficit 
shrank, the economy soared, the budget, dare we speak, was balanced for 
the first time in 40 years, because people had to make choices and 
choose priorities, something you do not have to do any longer in 
Congress.
  You can just charge it to the deficit. You can just run crazy. You 
can just romp through the halls of government, run across the country 
and charge it all to the deficit.
  You want to engage in a war? You do not have to ask anybody to 
sacrifice. You can have a tax cut. You can do whatever you want. But 
when you do that, you end up where we are today, with trillions of 
dollars in Republican-created debt. Trillions of dollars will be sent 
to the next generation. We all know the arguments.
  But why did that happen?
  I remember when I lost one of the votes on pay-as-you-go by one vote. 
Senator Gramm, at that time a Democrat, would not vote for it. He said 
it was too weak. Just before he left the Senate, he asked for its 
repeal because it was too strong. He could not live within the fiscal 
discipline any longer. I guess he could not stand the surpluses that we 
were running, the money we were sending back to Social Security, the 
paying down of the deficit, Alan Greenspan talking about that we would 
not have 30-year bonds anymore. The government had no debt to sell.
  We could not stand those halcyon days of fiscal responsibility, of 
balanced budgets and a roaring economy. So the Republicans jumped in 
the car. They got their good friend George Bush with them and they 
drove right over the cliff. Not a bad idea if it is just Republicans in 
the car; it is kind of like that joke about lawyers.
  But they took the Nation with them. They took the Nation with them 
into trillions of dollars of debt that was not here before.
  I do not think we need any lectures from the Republicans about fiscal 
responsibility, because when you took over the government, we handed 
you a surplus. We handed you a healthy economy. Gentlemen, you have run 
it into the ground. A little pay-as-you-go, but you could not do it. 
You just could not bring yourselves to do it in this budget.
  The Senate did it. I am sure you can negotiate it away from them so 
you can keep spending your money and you can keep having your tax cuts 
and you can have your war on credit and you can hide the costs of 
veterans.
  I appreciate your tortured discussion of veterans. If it is so good, 
how come the Disabled American Veterans are asking people to vote 
against it? Maybe on the Beltway it sounds good. It is bigger. It is 
more. It is larger. But it just will not supply enough health care to 
the veterans who need it. That is what the disabled vets say.

[[Page H1458]]

  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Mexico (Mr. Pearce).
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me 
time.
  When I go to the district, I get the very reasoned question, why 
would we give tax cuts in a time of deficit? I think there are 
important reasons to understand.
  First of all, the governor of New Mexico said it best, tax cuts 
create jobs. He said that to the Democrat legislature last year just 
before they passed the tax cuts in New Mexico that had been sought for 
over 8 years under the Republican governor. They passed those tax cuts. 
We passed the tax cuts here nationally and jobs began to create. In 
July, New Mexico was number two in the Nation in job growth because tax 
cuts do create jobs.
  One of the ways they do it is small business. The tax cuts we gave, 
the small business expensing created tremendous jobs in our local 
district.
  Good friends of mine at Watson Truck & Supply reported to me just 
before we gave the tax cuts that they were out of back orders. There 
were no more units to be built. They have a manufacturing facility that 
builds equipment for the oil fields. They were out of back orders, no 
more orders for their equipment.
  The day after we passed the tax cuts, they got more orders than they 
had had in their entire history. They have 2 years of back orders now. 
People were hired, jobs were created, and for each new piece of 
equipment they put out, four to five new jobs were created 
additionally.
  The accelerated depreciation as one of the most dramatic things that 
we did for small business in the tax cuts last year. Small businesses 
began to buy equipment.
  My wife is the chairman of our board. She called me the day we passed 
the tax cuts, especially the one with accelerated depreciation and 
said, we should buy new equipment. So we ordered a large new pump that 
we had been waiting on to order. That is the way that tax cuts create 
jobs.
  If we want to stop the outflow of jobs in America, we will continue 
to cut the taxes for American business, but also, Mr. Chairman, we will 
have a continued action on the part of the other house to pass the tort 
reform that we passed out of this House.

                              {time}  2015

  Frivolous lawsuits will drive all major corporations out of America 
if we do not do something about them.
  We have heard a lot about what we should do as far as the deficits. 
My friend from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) said it best, we do not have a 
problem with the amount of money that Washington collects from its 
people. We tax enough. The problem that we have is that we spend too 
much.
  Much has been made out of the deficits that we are facing right now, 
but very little response is made that actually tells the beginning of 
those deficits. If we think back to the end of 1999 and 2000, in the 
last years of President Clinton's term, we remember that the dot-com 
industry collapsed. We were seeing tremendous capital gains from that 
industry where stocks escalated to a tremendous height without any 
product, without any revenue, without any net profit. Those stocks were 
emotionally driven to a high rate. They were not driven by 
practicality.
  It was a necessity that the dot-com boom would collapse to a certain 
extent, and when it did, it took all of the capital gains and thrust 
that surplus that extended as far as the eye could see into a 
nonsurplus. It was an imaginary ramp up in the economy that could not 
and would not be sustained.
  That was the beginning of a recession that was followed on by 9/11, 
shocking the economy into a deeper recession and followed still by 
Global Crossing, Enron, WorldCom and others who drove investor 
confidence to new lows.
  Our economy has had several deep shocks to it. We felt that the tax 
cuts would create a rate of growth that should create new tax revenues 
from a higher economy. Those expectations were met in the third quarter 
of last year with an 8.2 percent rate of growth and 4 percent in the 
fourth quarter. That is exactly what the tax cuts were intended to do, 
and I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has 
11\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) has 
15\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, let me put a few things about this debate in 
perspective. There has been a lot of talk on the floor today about tax 
increases, tax cuts and spending increases. Let me try to put the tax 
cuts, in particular, in perspective.
  In 2001, with what seemed to be a substantial surplus, there was a 
case to be made for tax reduction. I disagreed with the distribution 
that was proposed and particularly with the size, and I said right here 
in the well of the House, if my colleagues pass a tax cut of this size 
and if the surplus does not pan out and it could disappear in the blink 
of an economist's eye, I said, we are going to find the budget right 
back in the red again, borrowing and spending the Social Security trust 
fund. And, unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened.
  So a person could have made a case in 2001, but today, that case no 
longer applies because there is no surplus today. It is gone. It 
vanished. We only have deficits as far out as the forecasters project 
their forecast.
  CBO, in their analysis of the President's budget, projects the 
deficits over the next 10 years. If we adopt this resolution and 
effectively implement the President's budget request, and by their 
calculation, not mine, their reckoning, that will cause us to 
accumulate $5.132 trillion in additional debt over the next 10 years, 
$5.132 trillion of additional debt added to the existing debt of nearly 
$4 trillion, we will bequeath to our children, the next generation, a 
debt of nearly $10 trillion in addition to Social Security, which is 
underfunded, and Medicare, which is underfunded. That is some legacy to 
leave our children.
  Debt service, as I pointed out earlier, under that same projection 
will increase from $153 billion this year to $374 billion 10 years from 
now in 2014.
  So what happens? I get a tax cut, and I like a tax cut as much as 
anybody. On the other hand, my grandchildren, Lily and Jack, pick up 
the tab. They have to pay the debt tax. That is not my idea of the kind 
of legacy I want to leave my children and my grandchildren, but that is 
exactly what my colleagues are doing if they vote for this budget today 
which does not diminish the deficit over time and does not give us a 
way out of these unending deficits that lead to debt stacked on debt 
stacked on debt. That is what will happen.
  Now, what my colleagues are doing, therefore, if they vote for this 
resolution and vote to implement the President's budget, they are 
effectively saying, let us add dollar for dollar every additional tax 
cut proposed here into the deficit because there is nothing to offset 
it. There is no surplus to absorb part of it. There are no spending 
cuts that will offset it. This will go straight to the bottom line and 
add to the deficit and the accumulation of debt that has already been 
reckoned, calculated by the CBO, as I said, it was $5.132 trillion over 
the next 10 years.
  So my colleagues are making a deliberate policy choice that these 
additional tax cuts are making permanent, the 2001, 2002 and 2003 tax 
cuts, is more important than deficit reduction.
  There is another aspect of this, also. In making this choice for 
additional tax cuts, my colleagues are effectively saying tax cuts 
trump Social Security, tax cuts are more important than putting money 
away to make Social Security, our most important safety net program, 
and Medicare solvent over the next 75 years. I have a chart right here 
which is very simple. Anybody can understand it. It is very graphic.
  It shows the present value of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 
extended over 75 years, the amount of tax revenues forgone or forgiven 
are not claimed or captured if these tax cuts become a permanent part 
of the code for 75 years. That is the red bar, $14 trillion.
  On this side, we see what it would cost, in blue, to make Social 
Security solvent in present-value terms over the next 75 years. It is 
$3.75 trillion and the amount to make Medicare solvent $8.2 trillion. 
Those two sums add up to less

[[Page H1459]]

than the present value of the tax cuts that will be made permanent if 
my colleagues vote for this resolution and implement the President's 
budget as he sent it up here.
  So vote for this resolution and my colleagues are saying these tax 
cuts, which we enacted back in 2001 and 2002, when we thought we had a 
huge surplus and, therefore, we could afford them, these tax cuts are 
much more important than saving Social Security and Medicare. My 
colleagues are making a choice, a deliberate policy choice. There is an 
opportunity cost here. There is no way around here.
  There has also been talk on the floor about big spending, about the 
rate at which spending has been increasing in the Federal budget over 
the last several years, and we have noted the irony of it. Because I am 
a Democrat, we do not control this place. We do not control the 
spending that is passed here. We do not control the White House or the 
Senate or the House. Nevertheless, our colleagues are saying spending, 
in this institution they control, is just growing at too rapid a rate. 
Well, let me show my colleagues where the spending increases have 
actually come.
  If we look at the budget, where the spending increases have actually 
occurred, and look at the current services which just maintain things 
at an existing rate, and then look at the things that spike up way 
above the current services level in terms of spending increases, we 
will find that for the last 4 fiscal years, 90 and 95 percent of all 
the spending and increases over and above current services have 
occurred in order to pay for national defense, in order to pay for 
homeland defense in a category that did not even exist in the budget a 
few years ago, and in order to pay for the post-9/11 bailout of New 
York City and the airlines. That is where 90 to 95 percent of the 
spending has come, if my colleagues look at the budget carefully.
  Now, why is that important? Because the President says we have got to 
rein in spending, but he is not reining in this spending. He does not 
propose to rein in spending in these categories, and indeed, it is 
going to be very difficult to do.

  The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) set out to decrease defense 
spending by just a bit, one-half of 1 percent off the 7 percent that 
the President was requesting as an increase. Thirty-four members of his 
party told him they would not vote for the resolution if he did it. Mr. 
Nickles took a nick out of defense in the Senate. It was reversed by a 
vote of 96 to 4. So the likelihood that Democrats and Republicans are 
going to vote for big decreases here, given the world situation we find 
ourselves in, at least in the near term, is not very great at all.
  Instead, what we have is concentration on this sector here, this blue 
sector called domestic nonhomeland discretionary. In other words, this 
is domestic discretionary spending, the money that we appropriate every 
year in 13 different appropriations bills, excluding homeland security 
because it is growing at a pretty fast clip for good reason.
  There is that wedge, 15 percent of the budget, and that is basically 
where all the pressure is being borne. The President's budget would cut 
discretionary spending in this category by $303 billion below current 
services over the next 10 years, but there is only so much blood we can 
squeeze out of such a small turnip, and so when we do not get the 
budget to balance in 10 years, we are actually going off into the 
stratosphere because of the renewal and extension of the big tax cuts 
in 2001 and 2002 and 2003. They will be renewed and extended in 2011, 
and therefore, the budget deficit gets bigger and bigger. This will not 
do. This is not enough.
  So what is happening here is, ironically, everyone is decrying this 
enormous increase in spending, and yet they are not doing anything or 
proposing anything to do about the categories of discretionary spending 
where the increases are really occurring, and where they are applying 
pressure is on a wedge of the budget that is not that large, not that 
fast growing and not sufficient, not sufficient by any means to wipe 
out the deficit.
  Alan Greenspan was before our committee, and he was a big advocate of 
using spending cuts predominantly in order to subdue the deficit. So I 
asked him, Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Chairman, tell me, if we wiped out all of 
the domestic discretionary spending, we would still have a deficit of 
$100-odd billion. Obviously we cannot wipe out the FBI, we cannot wipe 
out the Federal court system, we cannot wipe out the Federal 
penitentiary system. These are essential functions of the government. 
Where are you going?
  Then he said, you have got to go to Social Security, you have got to 
cut Social Security, effectively acknowledging that that is right, that 
wedge is too small, particularly if you insist upon not doing anything 
on the revenue side.
  What we have brought to the floor is a budget that will have a lower 
deficit than the Republican main bill. Our alternative will have a 
lower deficit every year for 10 straight years, lower than the 
President's bill, lower than the Republican's main bill. In fact, over 
a period of 10 years, we will accumulate in debt additional to the 
national debt today $1.240 trillion less than the Republicans, and we 
will move our budget to balance in the year 2012.
  Less deficits, balanced budget in 2012 and less debt accumulation, 
that is what the choice is tonight and tomorrow, a budget that is 
responsible, that makes some bold decisions, in a measured way moves us 
towards a balanced budget, protects priorities that are important to 
the American people, that moves us back into the black, as opposed to a 
budget that effectively makes a choice to trump the salvation and 
solvency of Social Security with the primacy of tax reduction.
  That is the choice before us today. It is that simple. It is that 
basic. That is what is at stake, and basically the moral issue at 
stake, which in my opinion overarches everything, is more important 
than the fiscal implications, more important than the accounting 
aspects is, are we going to take this enormous debt, these huge 
deficits that are accumulating, about which we are doing next to 
nothing if we adopt the Republican bill, and shift them off on our 
children and our grandchildren? Not on my watch, not on my preference.
  I would vote for this resolution. I think every responsible Member 
should.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  First, I would like to thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. 
Spratt) for the tone of the debate. I think it has been a good debate, 
a healthy debate, and a discussion, as I said to begin with, about the 
blueprint for fiscal responsibility as we move into the future and 
exactly what the priorities would be. I suggested that it is probably 
very similar to the conversation that a couple might have with their 
architect as they go in and try and design a new home.
  Certainly there are going to be things that they agree on, and there 
are going to be a few arguments as they come up with that final design. 
But the long and short of it is we need a blueprint in order to move 
forward, and I commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) 
for putting together a budget. We disagree with the plan that he has 
put forth; we have our own plan that we hope passes. It is one that 
builds on the principles of strength, growth, opportunity, and fiscal 
responsibility; and we believe it is the right blueprint at this time 
to manage the needs as well as manage the economic concerns of our 
country at this important juncture.
  We have heard a lot tonight about the fact that tax cuts caused every 
problem in the world, that somehow everything would be better without 
tax cuts, and we wring our hands all day long about the fact that we 
have such a big deficit, and what we forget is at this exact same 
moment there are people sitting around kitchen tables across America 
with their checkbooks and bills in front of them, probably as well as 
their tax return they just got back from their accountant or their tax 
preparer, or maybe they actually tried to scratch one out on their own, 
and it is becoming more and more complicated every year to do that; and 
it is becoming more and more difficult to pay bills and make ends meet, 
particularly with the kind of economic challenges that people face.

[[Page H1460]]

  So at this particular point in time, we believe it is not in order to 
raise taxes on those people who are having that discussion around their 
table. What they would say to us if they had the opportunity is the 
exact same thing they would say to each other, and that is, Can we do 
with just a little bit less, honey? Can we figure a way to turn the 
lights off maybe a little more often? Can we buy maybe a cheaper pair 
of gym shoes than the expensive pair of sneakers Johnnie wants. We 
still love Johnnie, of course, but maybe we can make ends meet by 
asking him to do with maybe a little less than the big powerful set of 
gym shoes that they sell at some stores.
  They look at all of their bills and say, Can we do a little bit less? 
It is not because they do not love each other or they do not care 
enough about their own situation; but they know, as we know, that at 
all times we should look for ways to save money and tighten our belt, 
particularly when times are tough.
  But one thing they do not say is let us do with a little bit less 
when it comes to income. That is one thing we are mindful of in this 
budget. We want to respect the income of Americans, we want them to be 
able to spend it, we believe they spend it more wisely; and that is the 
reason we continue the tax relief within this budget which has been a 
hallmark of our economic development plans.
  Let me be even more specific. When we talk about tax cuts, tax cuts 
did not cause the deficit. There has been a lot of discussion here 
tonight that somehow tax cuts are causing all of the problems in our 
country. Let me show Members the chart, because what we have done is we 
made that same chart which has been discussed here tonight, and we put 
it all in there.
  The white area here are the tax cuts. The green area here is that new 
discretionary spending that was just referred to by the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). The red area is what we call new 
mandatory. Most of that is the Medicare bill. But the blue area that 
Members see here is the economic gut-punch that we have gotten as a 
result of a number of things, the dot-com bubble bursting, corporate 
scandals, 9/11, and the ongoing challenges as a result of a number of 
issues within our economy, some natural, some not, within that business 
cycle.
  If we look at this, the tax cuts do not dive us into a deficit; the 
spending, the economy is what has driven us into deficits. In case 
Members believe we are just putting the tax cuts on top because it does 
not work, let us put them on the bottom and see how that works. Let us 
put the economy on top. The economy alone drives us to a deficit. The 
economic changes that our economy has had since September 11, in 
particular, have driven us down into a small deficit; but the new 
spending for the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, the war with 
Afghanistan, homeland security, protecting our country and a lot of 
other additional spending for education, for veterans, has driven us 
even further.
  So before we blame the tax cuts, be careful how this is looked at. If 
you put the tax cuts on top, they do not get us to a deficit. If we put 
the tax cuts on the bottom, they do not even take us out of the 
deficit. In fact, the proposals that are put here today are just 
wishful thinking if you believe you can take away tax relief from 
Americans, tax relief away from small businesses and assume they are 
going to continue to be able to drive the economy and make sure we have 
the kind of economic changes that create jobs far into the future.
  One other point with regard to this which is important, the tax 
relief package is working. It is working. All Members have to do is 
look at the real gross domestic product over the last number of years 
and you can see exactly what happened. Here is the recession. That was 
that recession that President Bush inherited. That is the reason why 
back in this particular time here we said let us reduce taxes slightly 
in order to get that economy back on its feet. Then 9/11 hit, and we 
decided to boost the economy even more; and we not only had a 
bipartisan tax relief package, we decided to make those tax cuts 
permanent. What has happened?
  As Members can see, the last 2 years now we have seen staggering 
economic growing. The last 6 months alone have been the fastest growing 
period for our economy in 20 years. As every single economist will tell 
you on both sides of the political spectrum, the lagging indicator that 
always is the last to develop is jobs, and that is because people are 
tight with their money. They are not going to make an investment 
decision until they know the coast is clear. And the coast is clear. We 
are going to continue to make sure that these tax relief packages 
within this budget are not only extended but are made permanent. We do 
not want there to be an automatic tax increase, and that is the reason 
our budget adopts that.
  Last but not least, let me talk about spending. We have heard today 
all sorts of things with regard to spending. We have heard that 
Republicans have been spending too much, and we have heard that 
Republicans are not spending enough. In fact, we have even heard that 
we are not spending enough on volleyball teams. That was even part of 
the debate here today.
  Regardless of that debate, here are the facts. This is the total 
budget for the last 10 years. This is a chart that many of my 
Republican colleagues do not want me to show, and I can understand why 
because it shows that during our period of time we have increased 
spending; but, there are two parts to this ledger that I want Members 
to understand. First and foremost, I think it rebuts very clearly the 
arguments that have been made that somehow we are being Draconian in 
our cuts, that we are cutting too far, cutting too deep, that it is 
going to throw people out on the street and seniors are not going to 
get the resources they need, and veterans are not going to get the 
resources they need. That is simply not the case.
  Our increase in spending growth has averaged 5 percent each year 
since our first budget. Now, some of those changes have not been all 
that positive. Unfortunately, within all this spending there is some 
waste. There is more waste than we care to admit, and that is the 
reason within our instructions this year the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) was suggesting that we only are looking at a very 
small portion of the budget. We are looking at that portion of the 
budget, but we have expended the view of the budget. We believe there 
are weeds within the entire garden of the Federal budget, and we need 
to look in every corner of that garden to pull weeds.
  That is the reason we are going to continue the effort to look for 
wasteful Washington spending, not only on the discretionary side of the 
ledger, but also on the mandatory spending.
  We know that the Democrats have not been in control during that 
period of time, and it would be easy to blame the Republicans for some 
of the spending that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) 
talked about with regard to homeland security and the war in Iraq; and 
it is true that with regard to that area I was showing Members on the 
chart where increases in discretionary spending have been large, 
Democrats voted for it, too. Yes, we were in charge, but most of it was 
done in a bipartisan way, and I think Democrats are proud of that. I 
think Democrats are proud of the fact they voted to increase spending 
for homeland security, I think Democrats are proud of the fact they 
voted to increase spending for defense, I think they are proud they 
voted for increases for special education and for a number of those 
programs that you have come to the floor here today and suggested that 
you want even more increases. Most of those increases in discretionary 
spending, in particular, have been bipartisan.
  Last, let me say with regard to other spending, yes, there were many 
amendments in our committee to increase spending far beyond what our 
budget calls for, but there have been examples of this throughout our 
history. For example, the Medicare account, there has been a lot of 
complaints within the media that for some reason we are not taking into 
consideration the full amount of the costs of Medicare.
  First and foremost, the Democratic substitute last year would have 
spent about $1 trillion, more than double the amount we had for 
Medicare. Secondly, if you notice the alternative presented by the 
Democrats, they adopt the CBO baseline for Medicare spending, meaning 
they do not believe the actuaries from OMB or from HHS any more than

[[Page H1461]]

we do. Nobody is quite clear exactly where Medicare spending is going 
to go. It is our job here in Congress to control it. Right now the 
Congressional Budget Office is controlling with regard to that 
spending, and we both put it into our baseline as the Medicare line 
item. If they would adopt their rhetoric as part of their budget, they 
would not balance anytime in the near future.
  Let me say in closing that when we come up with a budget like this, 
or a blueprint like this, there are going to be a lot of people who 
have to give. There are many people within our conference who wanted to 
increase spending in some areas; they wanted to go further 
with decreases in spending in others. What we have tried to come up 
with is a common-sense solution to a problem that is going to take a 
number of years to resolve. All of the budgets that Members will see on 
the floor today, none of those budgets balance it this year or even 
next year or even within the next 5 years. All of them recognize that 
we need a path to get back to responsible budgets and balanced budgets.

  And so which path are Members going to choose? Are Members going to 
choose one that respects the family budget and does not increase taxes? 
Are Members going to choose one that holds the line where we can hold 
the line on spending? Are you going to choose one that allows us to 
begin to weed the garden of mandatory spending where we can find waste, 
fraud and abuse; and are you going to choose one that does what I 
believe is so important, and that is to make sure that our country is 
protected first and foremost so our freedom is protected?
  I believe that budget provides that strength for our country, that 
growth for our economy, and that opportunity for our constituents' 
future; and it does it in a fiscally responsible way. I believe our 
budget is the kind of budget that can help get us back on the track 
that we need in order to get back towards fiscal responsibility, and I 
ask for Members' support and vote on the budget resolution for 2005.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) will now 
control 30 minutes and the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), 
the designee of the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), will control 
20 minutes on the subject of economic goals and policies.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton).
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, much has been said here today with regard to the 
subject of our budget and fiscal policy and its effect on economic 
growth.
  I would like to show as clearly as I can as the vice chairman of the 
Joint Economic Committee, which of course is made up of Members of the 
House and Members of the Senate, the actual effect of budgetary policy 
over the last few years, monetary policy as carried out by the Fed, and 
tax policy implemented at the request of the administration and carried 
out by this House and the Senate.

                              {time}  2045

  Actually we have found that there are some very positive effects that 
have accumulated over the past several years in terms of a variety of 
good economic trends.
  For example, lower inflation that has resulted from various policies 
actually has improved economic growth through the appearance of lower 
interest rates directly as a result of lower inflation which can be 
primarily attributed to the policy of the Federal Reserve. It reduces 
unnecessary uncertainty and volatility in financial markets, it causes 
the price system to work better, it acts like a tax cut to have lower 
interest rates, especially for those portions of the Tax Code that are 
not indexed for inflation. The Fed's policy of inflation targeting has 
worked.
  I can remember many years ago when the Fed's policies of today were 
not in place, when we felt good when inflation was at 6 percent or at 5 
percent. Today, inflation is at historic lows, probably today under 2 
percent. As a result of that, these lower interest rates have worked, 
as I said before, as tax cuts to help rally economic growth.
  Lower marginal tax rates as well as lower interest rates remain in 
place today, and we are reaping the long-run effects of lower tax rates 
despite two increases, one in 1990 and one in 1993. Marginal tax rates 
remain lower today than they were in the 1950s or the 1960s or the 
1970s. This is very important.
  It is also important not to revise the tax rates that are already in 
place. We have seen the results of these as demonstrated on this chart, 
for example. Here, in 2001, when the tax rates were put into place, we 
see that real economic growth, of course, was bad during the three 
quarters of 2001, but then the economy started to grow. Real gross 
domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2001 began to grow, and we 
had seven straight quarters of economic growth, culminating, as the 
chairman of the Committee on the Budget said, in the last two quarters 
that we have just experienced where we saw 8.2 percent economic growth 
in one quarter and 4.1 percent in the next quarter.
  There has been good reason for optimism and, of course, the stock 
market has rebounded during this period of time, but there have been 
other factors that have been holding the economy back.
  National security and homeland security are two general areas that 
are essential for securing our peace and security and stable, sustained 
economic growth. This economic growth is not possible without both 
security from foreign adversaries and security from adversaries who 
threaten the homeland. And so spending on our national security and on 
homeland security is absolutely essential. Investment spending will not 
occur without stable property rights or security for investment and 
investors as well as lenders.
  While national security and domestic security are essential, they 
also depend on what weapons the adversaries employ. In a sense, they 
depend on the adversary and not entirely on some absolute standard of 
security.
  Investment, on the other hand, is essential to fostering economic 
growth. Increases in investment improve both supply and demand so it 
fosters growth without causing inflation. Investment is needed to 
improve productivity, raise real wages and increase living standards. 
Productivity-enhancing investment increases economic growth without 
inflation.
  Let me just turn to the next chart we have here which shows fixed 
private nonresidential investment. Again, beginning in the third and 
fourth quarter of the year 2000, which coincidentally was before 
President Bush took office, we see that fixed private nonresidential 
investments fell sharply. And then as the recession ensued in 2001 and 
through the first two quarters of 2002, fixed private nonresidential 
investment was actually in the negative.
  But then as the effect of the tax cuts kicked in and as the effects 
of low interest rates brought about by the control of inflation kicked 
in, we see that fixed private nonresidential investment begins to 
improve. This was a very positive thing for the economy.
  The U.S. economy currently is expanding at a healthy clip. A wide 
spectrum of sectors of the economy are contributing to this advance. 
Consumption, housing, investment, and production among others have all 
made notable contributions. Fourth-quarter real GDP was up by a brisk 
4.1 percent and, as I said before, the third quarter of last year was 
up 8.2 percent, which certainly again is demonstrated here on the chart 
that we have.
  For the future, the consensus view of economists is that the economy 
will continue to expand at a robust pace over the next several 
quarters. Specifically, the consensus is for better than 4 percent 
growth in the near term. This current and prospective performance of 
the U.S. economy is superior to most other world economies, including 
both Europe and Japan.
  Business investment, as well, has been a leading sector fueling these 
healthy economic gains. Real business investment has been up sharply in 
the last three quarters. A key reason for this strength was the 
progrowth tax policies adopted by this Congress and by the 
administration.
  Further, gains in profits, the stock market as well as capital goods 
orders all point to additional advances in investment. Although the 
stock market has had its ups and downs, particularly as measured by the 
Dow Industrials,

[[Page H1462]]

the stock market has regained much of the ground it lost in recent 
years. The stock market gains not only encourage investment activity, 
but because of widespread ownership in stocks, mutual funds, IRAs and 
other savings vehicles, we have fostered household wealth gains as 
well. The latest figures indicate that about 50 percent of American 
households own stock shares in some form, and stock market 
capitalization was up significantly last year. The tax cuts and 
expectations of continued economic advance have propelled stock prices 
to continue to rise until just a couple of weeks ago.
  Manufacturing activity, as well, as measured by the Institute for 
Supply Management, ISM, the ISM index, is also making significant 
gains. The index shows that manufacturing gains have been quite 
widespread. Manufacturing production as measured by the Federal 
Reserve's Industrial Product Index is up sharply as well. We have 
another chart here which shows that the ISM index fell during the 
recession, and it shows how we have grown today to the point where 61.4 
percent of our businesses are actually expanding.

  Employment is one area, however, that has lagged behind output 
growth. It is quite clear that manufacturing employment softness began 
in July of 2000. The impacts of investment and stock market weakness 
were concentrated in manufacturing. Nonetheless, recent payroll 
employment is up 364,000 jobs since August and payrolls have advanced 
the last 6 months in a row. During a comparable time period, household 
employment was up 604,000 jobs.
  Let me turn to the unemployment rate which we hear so much about in 
regard to our economy. The unemployment rate has fallen from a high 
this year of 6.3 percent to 5.6 percent in recent months. The 5.6 
percent rate is lower than the average rate in the 1970s, lower than 
the average rate in the 1980s, and lower than the average rate in the 
robust 1990s. It has not been characterized as such, however.
  Further, the recent peak in the unemployment rate is considerably 
lower than the peaks of earlier business cycles. Let me show my 
colleagues what I mean. In the 1970s during a recession, the 
unemployment rate peaked at around 9 percent. In the 1980s during a 
deeper recession, the unemployment rate peaked at just under 11 
percent. In the 1990s during a recession, the last quarter of 1990 and 
the first quarter of 1991, we had an 8-month recession, and the 
unemployment rate peaked at just under 8 percent. In this recession, 
the unemployment rate peaked at 6.3 percent and is now at 5.6 percent, 
as I said, lower than the average rates of unemployment in the 1970s, 
the 1980s or the 1990s.
  Inflation has also remained low during this period. As can be seen on 
this chart, core CPI inflation has continued to trend down for the past 
several years. This is good news for all income earners and all 
consumers. This is the result of the Fed's persistent anti-inflation 
policy. Currently there are few, if any, signs of inflationary 
expectations re-emerging in any significant way. This line speaks for 
itself. Inflation is historically low today as a result of Fed policy.
  Likewise, the Misery Index, we all remember the Misery Index that we 
got so accustomed to hearing about in the 1970s, the Misery Index 
measures the sum of the unemployment rate and the core CPI inflation 
rate. It is premised on the notion that both a higher rate of 
unemployment and a worsening of inflation create economic costs for a 
country. The index is used unofficially to assess a nation's economic 
health.
  Currently the Misery Index is relatively low, lower than it has been 
for most of the past 35 years. Once again, the red line here speaks for 
itself, the Misery Index is very low today.
  Long-term interest rates have continued to trend down as well and 
remain at near 40-year lows. What is particularly relevant is that 
long-term rates remain low or even declined in the face of increases in 
the budget deficit. These low long-term rates are more importantly 
determined by the rate of inflation than by budget deficits. Again, we 
have a chart here that has a line on it that shows the 10-year Treasury 
bond yield at consistent maturity, and once again we see that we have 
historically low interest rates.
  In sum, the economy is currently advancing at a healthy pace. Most 
key sectors of the economy have contributed to this healthy growth. The 
consensus of economic forecasters project continued healthy economic 
growth for the foreseeable future. The policies that have supported 
this growth, namely, tax relief and accommodative monetary policy as 
carried out by the Fed, appear to have been quite appropriate. 
Accordingly, so long as inflation remains subdued, a continuation of 
these policies and making certain that tax cuts are permanent seems 
quite appropriate.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Chairman, the purpose of a budget resolution is to make the tough 
choices that will put the budget and the economy on the right track for 
the future. We do not need budget choices that create tough times for 
the economy, that are tough for working families, tough for people who 
cannot find jobs and tough for our children's future.

                              {time}  2100

  Once again, the President and his Republican colleagues in the House 
have presented a budget that is fiscally irresponsible and wrong for 
the economy. When President Bush took office, the Congressional Budget 
Office was projecting a $400 billion surplus for this fiscal year 2004. 
Now they are projecting a deficit of nearly $500 billion, a swing of 
$900 billion for just this one year. We can see from this chart how 
projected surpluses have turned into actual deficits so far in this 
administration.
  And the future does not look any better. Three years ago, President 
Bush told us we were in danger of paying off the national debt too 
fast. Well, the President and the Republican Congress have certainly 
taken care of that problem. In 2001, the President said that even if we 
enacted his tax cuts, we could pay the debt down to $1.2 trillion by 
2008. But now they say the debt will rise to $5.6 trillion, a swing of 
$4.4 trillion as depicted in this chart, 4.4 trillion more debt in 
2008.
  Mr. Chairman, what has changed in 3 years to cause such a hemorrhage 
in the budget and such an explosion in the national debt? The 
administration and its supporters have been quick to blame events 
beyond their control like 9-11 and the bursting of a high-tech bubble. 
They have even tried to overrule the experts at the National Bureau of 
Economic Research about when the recession began. But what they will 
not admit is that their relentless drive to cut taxes has also played 
an important role.
  We made the same mistakes once before in the 1980s, but at least then 
we had time to correct our mistakes. We had time to restore the fiscal 
discipline needed to prepare for the tremendous budget pressures we 
would face with the retirement of the baby boom generation, but now it 
may be too late. The retirement of the baby boom generation is upon us, 
but demographically blind budget policies have left us unprepared for 
the consequences.
  Mr. Chairman, the President keeps telling us that his policies are 
working to improve the economy; but in the area that matters most to 
American families, jobs, the facts tell us otherwise. As this chart 
shows, President Bush is on track to be the first President since 
Herbert Hoover to lose jobs over the course of his time in office, the 
only administration in 70 years with a decline in private sector jobs. 
Three million private sector jobs have been lost on President Bush's 
watch. When we include public sector jobs, it is a total of 2.2 million 
jobs lost since President Bush took office.
  And what is it that we have to show for 3 years of Bush policies? 
Just 21,000 jobs were created last month, when we know that we need at 
least 125,000 jobs created a month just to keep up with the expanding 
workforce entering the job market. Overall there are 8.2 million 
unemployed Americans and about 4.6 million additional workers who want 
a job but are not counted among the unemployed. An additional 4.4 
million people work part time because of the weak economy. What is 
more, this

[[Page H1463]]

chart shows that a large portion of people who have become unemployed 
remain unemployed for over 26 weeks, almost triple the number when this 
administration took office.
  Each week, 80,000 people's unemployment benefits expire, leaving them 
with no income and no job prospects. Many of them drop out of the labor 
force and are not counted in the official unemployment rates.
  Once again tonight the other side is making optimistic projections 
about the future. Tonight the majority says their budget will cut the 
deficit and create jobs. Unfortunately, we know the record of the last 
3 years, and that is a record of rosy projections that never come true. 
As an example, a year ago the administration predicted that its 
policies would contribute to the creation of almost 2 million new jobs 
in the second half of 2003. As the chart shows, they fell short by 1.8 
million jobs below their forecast. Meanwhile, as this additional chart 
shows, the typical worker's earnings are barely keeping up with 
inflation in sharp contrast to the strong growth from 1996 through 
2000.
  This administration has presided over the greatest average annual 
decline in household income since the government began keeping those 
statistics in the 1960s, doubling his father's bad record. The income 
of the typical household has fallen by about $1,400 during this Bush 
administration. Also, 3.8 million Americans lost health insurance under 
this administration, as this final chart illustrates.
  Mr. Chairman, this budget is short on solutions, but long on 
preserving a failed policy that has led to a loss of 2.2 million jobs 
and a $500 billion deficit, the largest deficit in history. This is a 
policy we cannot afford. Vote ``no'' on the Republican budget.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I am not surprised, but I am somewhat troubled that the 
previous speaker did not recognize that the economic downturn was well 
under way well before President Bush took office. The administration's 
critics blame President Bush for his policies for the loss of about 2 
million jobs since January of 2001. However, all of this employment 
decline is accounted for by falling manufacturing employment, and 
manufacturing employment started declining well before President Bush 
or his policies were in place. Manufacturing employment has been 
falling since March of 1998. From this point through January of 2001, 
over half a million manufacturing jobs had already been lost. It is 
hard to blame that on President Bush. Thus the trend was well under way 
before the President ever took office. And it was the policies that 
were in place during the 1990s that caused that decline.
  Manufacturing employment has been falling steadily, well before 
President Bush took office. The respected Institute for Supply 
Management employment index plunged in 2000. By January of 2001 most 
firms surveyed indicated that manufacturing jobs were falling or 
stagnating, according to these indices. That was the year President 
Bush took office. So according to your theories, President Bush's 
policies that had not even gone into effect yet caused all that 
unemployment. It is just not true. It cannot be true. President Bush 
was not here.
  After the bursting of the stock market in the first quarter of 2000, 
there was a sharp fall-off in investment. Because much of this 
investment is comprised of machinery and equipment produced in the 
manufacturing sector, manufacturing employment began declining every 
month since July of 2000.
  We know President Bush was not the President before July of 2000 when 
the policies of the previous administration caused these declines.
  In the last month of the previous administration, manufacturing 
employment declined by 82,000 jobs. That was President Clinton, not 
President Bush. However, with a strong rebound in investment in the 
last half of 2003, manufacturing output is growing today at a healthy 
pace, and monthly manufacturing employment declines have been slowed 
dramatically because since President Bush took office, he has made it a 
priority to institute policies that provide for economic growth.
  Since last August, payroll employment has gained 364,000 jobs, not 
declined. We all want to see more job growth, but strong productivity 
gains have made this harder. Strong productivity growth is good for the 
majority of the workers who have jobs because it enhances their job 
security and earnings potential. However, in the short run, it does 
slow job growth. We had a technological advance during the 1980s and 
1990s that was good. It made our workers more productive. The use of 
computer technology, the use of communications technology, and many 
other increases in technology across the board made our workforce the 
most productive workforce in the history of our country. But it had a 
negative side as well because when the recession hit and the decline 
started, while President Clinton was President, when the decline 
started and people lost their jobs, the inclusion of more technology 
continued to go forward. And when the economy began to grow and people 
went back to seek their jobs, they had been replaced by technology, 
adding to the productive nature of our workforce.
  The upward productivity trend started in the second half of the 1990s 
and has been under way for at least 8 years. By the second half of the 
1990s, investments in new technology and equipment changed the economy 
and its relationship to employment. The cumulative effect of these 
investments was that the economy could grow quite quickly without 
greatly increased employment. Productivity growth, not outsourcing, is 
the primary cause of slow employment growth in the short run. With 
healthy economic growth now under way, most economists expect 
employment growth to continue in the future.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  The gentleman referred to the Clinton administration. Under the 
Clinton-Gore administration, this country created 22 million new jobs. 
Under the Clinton administration, the deficit was eliminated; and he 
left office with a substantial surplus and a projected surplus that 
would continue to grow. And under the Bush policies, this country has 
lost 2.2 million jobs. We would have to create 200,000 new jobs each 
month for the next 10 months just to bring this country back to the 
place it was when President Bush walked into office.
  And President Bush has given this country a $500 billion deficit, a 
burden for our children and our grandchildren.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott).

                              {time}  2115

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me 
time.
  Mr. Chairman, it is really wonderful. This is the time of year when 
we have the big tent put up out in front of the Capitol and we invite 
the county fair in from Iowa. We always have the county fair come.
  I am sure as you look around this hall tonight, there are three of us 
left, so that means 421 people have gone home. They figure, ``It is all 
baloney, so I am not staying around to hear this.'' But I know that the 
people in the Speaker's district and my district are just sitting down 
to dinner out there on the West Coast, and I think maybe they might be 
interested in what some of our colleagues do not want to really deal 
with on this budget.
  Now, if I was going to do this the right way, I would put on a top 
hat and I would tell you about the shell game that we find at the 
county fair. It is a wonderful game. You know, the guy has a box out 
there, and he puts one walnut on it, and then he puts another walnut on 
it, and then he puts a third walnut on it, and then he puts a pea under 
one of them and then moves them around.
  The job of the American people is to figure out, well, where is the 
pea? I mean, that is what the game is out at the county fair.
  That is the same job you have here. You hear numbers, you see charts. 
I brought a couple just for fun. But you see them moving these around 
and moving them around, and they say, well, we do not have enough money 
for Social Security; well, we are taking care of Social Security and 
Medicare.

[[Page H1464]]

  You lift up the walnut. Oh, no pea there. Wonder where the money is? 
Oh, dear. Well, the money must be somewhere here.
  Education. That is right. Oh, there is no money for education. They 
are going to have to call this ``Some Children Left Behind'' by the 
time we get to the election. The President has been telling us, ``We 
are not going to leave any child behind.'' But he does not put any 
money under the pea for education for kids. He underfunds what he says 
is the amount he has to put there.
  How about veterans? Oh, the veterans. You know, they are over bravely 
serving us in Iraq: Dying; being wounded; coming back here with 
amputations; coming back, as recently we read in the newspaper, coming 
back and finding that the job they had when they were in the Reserves 
is not there.
  So the veterans who are out defending us and doing all of this for 
us, they say, well, but Uncle Sam promised us. So we will look under 
here. Oh, they are cutting the veterans benefits too? They are going to 
ask us to pay more at the veterans hospital?
  Oh, well, there must be something wrong. I mean, health care. Health 
care in this country is a problem. We have 44 million people without 
health care. Is there anything in this budget for health care? Nothing.
  But the President said, ``We are going to guarantee universal health 
care for the people in Iraq.'' In Iraq. Not in Tennessee, not in North 
Dakota, not in New York State, not in Washington State, not in 
California. Iraq. That is what the President said.
  Then, his secretary went on to say, ``Well, in this country everybody 
gets taken care of some way, do they not? So that is universal care.''
  But you do not get preventive care. We will take care of you when the 
catastrophe strikes, but there is no money in here for prevention, 
there is no money making it so we take care of all the kids, that we 
take care of all of the problems up front, because, well, I do not 
know. I just cannot seem to find the money.
  Now, let us see. Oh, yes, the tax cuts. Ha, that is where the money 
went. You do not have to be a rocket scientist or have a Ph.D. in 
economics or have gone to MIT.
  A Senator from my State used to say that he wished that we had a one-
armed economist. Every time he listened to an economist, he said, ``On 
the one hand this, and, on the other hand, that.'' You have heard a lot 
of that, ``On the one hand this, on the other hand that'' tonight.
  But the fact is that if you have money in the tax accounts and you 
give it back to the people, now, that means you do not have money to 
put under the shells. That is why there is no money for Social 
Security, that is why there is no money for veterans.
  Oh, we have wonderful things to spend it on. Homeland security. I 
look out here under every seat in the House of Representatives, and I 
meant to grab one, and I will grab it for you. Every Member of the 
House of Representatives is sitting on a gas mask.
  Now, all that protection they are putting out there for us, all those 
policemen and all of what is going on in all the buildings and 
everything else, and they give us a gas mask. How many people in 
America have got a gas mask? How many of you think that the American 
Congress is going to be gassed in the House of Representatives? If you 
do, then you have got to ask yourself, what is the President doing 
about that?
  I mean, Osama Bin Laden. You remember that guy? How much money did he 
waste on that whole business? Why is there no money out here for 
health, education, Medicare, a real pharmaceutical benefit? Well, 
because we have to spend $150 billion in Iraq, a war that we did not 
have to go to, that we went to under fraudulent circumstances. The 
President did not tell us the truth. He scared us into, ``Oh, we got to 
go get Osama Bin Laden.''
  Well, they are over there looking for the weapons of mass destruction 
under the same shells. They say we are going to find it over here; no, 
we are going to find it over there. Just give me some more money, he 
says.
  Folks, you are sitting there eating dinner. Mr. Chairman, from my 
point of view, the American public must be just scratching their head 
and saying, what are these people talking about? A budget is the 
priorities you set.
  Now, in a family you take care of the necessities, food, health care, 
housing. Our housing situation in this country is awful. In Seattle you 
cannot find a starter house for under $250,000. Somebody who takes a 
job at six or seven or eight dollars an hour cannot buy a house in 
Seattle, and I know that that is not the only place. Oh, you can do it, 
if you want to go out 40 miles into the countryside, and then there is 
no rapid transit to bring you in to get to work. I mean, you are caught 
coming and going. That is where the average American is in this 
country.
  Now, we have two realities that we have to deal with in this budget, 
and the President of the United States has failed on both of them. One 
of them is to provide jobs, and the other is fairness in taxation.
  Nobody likes to pay taxes. I do not like to pay them. I am right now 
in the middle figuring out my income tax, like everybody else in this 
country. I do not want to pay taxes, but I know that I have to pay some 
so we can have a civil society, and it ought to be done as fairly as 
possible.
  Let us take the jobs issue. I put this up here just so you 
understand. Since it is Iowa night at the state fair, you all remember 
a guy named Herbert Hoover? He was from Iowa. He was a great guy from 
Iowa. He is the last guy that did to our economy what George Bush is 
doing.
  He sat up there and said, ``Well, you know, the rich people, the 
stock market should just go up and up and up.'' And it was going up and 
up and up in 1928 and 1929. When it crashed, everybody said, ``Oh, my 
God. I do not have anything.'' We had no Social Security, we had no 
unemployment insurance, we had no construction projects, we had 
nothing.
  Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in, and you know the first thing he 
said when he became the President of the United States? Was it, ``The 
problem with this country is our taxes are too high. We have to reduce 
taxes in this country. We have to give back all the money we have, and 
in some magical way it will get better.''
  Do you think that is what happened? Do you think that is where the 
WPA came from, and unemployment and Social Security and all these other 
things, by the President of the United States saying, ``My answer is 
cut the taxes. Give the money back to the people. It is their money. 
Let them spend it any old way they want.''
  Of course not. The whole country knows. Everybody in this country 
over the age of 50 knows that the proposals made by the President of 
the United States are absolute and total nonsense. He said, ``Well, you 
know, I got that terrible problem from that Bill Clinton. Golly, he was 
just such an awful guy, created those 22 million jobs, and then he left 
me a mess, left me a mess when I came in here.''

  So he said, ``Cut taxes.'' He came out here and said to the Members, 
stood right here in this well and said, ``If you cut taxes, why, 
everything will be better.''
  Well, folks, this is zero jobs created. If it was up here it would 
mean there was something going good. But in fact it has been going 
down. We have lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs since George Bush has 
been here.
  Now, you can blame maybe how much you want to blame on Bill Clinton. 
Do you want to blame two-thirds? Or three-quarters? Would you not think 
after 3\1/2\ years he would have figured out some way to get it turned 
around? Franklin Delano Roosevelt did. He put us to building bridges 
and highways and buildings and all kinds of things, and, lo and behold, 
if you spend the money you have, not giving it back to the rich, but 
spend it on things investing in the country, you create jobs. That is 
what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did.
  The private non-farm payroll in this country has gone down by 3 
million people, and in the non-farm payroll employment, that is only by 
2.2 million. Now, that is in addition to these two.
  Do you know what I heard from my colleague just a few minutes ago? 
``Things are really getting better.'' Do you know how many jobs were 
created in February? 21,000. Now, let us see, 50 into that, that would 
be 400 jobs per state. That is really pretty good. I mean, I bet they 
will have a lottery for

[[Page H1465]]

those jobs. And they were all government jobs. There was not a single 
private sector job created.
  That is why we ought to vote no on this budget.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Chairman, the facts bear out that the economy is growing. Like 
the previous speaker, I wish that jobs were growing faster, and I 
believe they will. But the previous speaker's examples were not exactly 
examples that I would have used.
  For example, to compare this recession to the Great Depression I 
find, I guess I would say amusing to a certain extent, because while we 
know that the unemployment rate today is at 5.6 percent and topped out 
at 6.3 percent in this recession, the unemployment rate during the 
Great Depression was 25 percent. So I think that is a rather poor 
example, and I think goes to show the extent and the lengths to which 
the minority will try to bend things to make their story look like the 
one that they would like the American people to believe.
  A lot has been said about tax rates. One of the charges that has been 
made about our tax policy and our tax cut, and the last speaker 
repeated it again for the last of many times today, is that when we 
reduced taxes for the American people, when we did away with the 
marriage tax penalty, when we created the child tax credit, when we 
passed the other tax cuts that provided for economic growth, we created 
the deficit.
  Well, I would like to show one final chart which demonstrates that 
that is not true either. This chart to my left shows, and the 
Congressional Budget Office, which works on a bipartisan basis, came up 
with these numbers, it shows that the projected surplus in 2001 was 
$281 billion, and shows in the first year that the tax cuts went into 
effect the static cost. ``Static'' is a word we use around here to mean 
as exactly as we can the amount of money that will not flow into the 
Treasury if you assume no economic growth at the same time because of 
the tax cuts.

                              {time}  2130

  We assume that there is a static loss of revenue to the Federal 
Government, and it is shown here in blue. This is what the tax cut 
cost. Out of the $281 billion surplus that was projected to exist, only 
$70.2 billion went for tax cuts, and we actually would have had a 
surplus of $210 billion, after the tax cuts. The actual surplus turned 
out to be $127 billion because, as I pointed out before, during the 
last year of Bill Clinton's administration, the economy began to 
decline. So less growth in the economy, less people working, less 
people paying taxes, less revenue.
  And then, if I move on to the next year, the projected CBO surplus 
was $313 billion, and the actual cost of the tax cuts that year, $73.7 
billion; and for the first time in 4 years, we went into a deficit 
situation of $158 billion. We had a $158 billion deficit. So if we go 
from a $313 billion projected surplus to a $158 billion deficit, it is 
a swing of $471 billion, from surplus to deficit. The cost of tax cuts: 
$73.7 billion.
  I will not bore everybody with the third year, but the same trend 
continues: the cost of the tax cut, $172 billion out of a $359 billion 
projected surplus, and we ended up with a deficit of $375 billion, a 
big swing from a $359 billion surplus to a $375 billion deficit.
  The fourth year is the most dramatic. We went from a projected 
surplus of $397 billion to a deficit of $477 billion, a swing of $874 
billion, and the actual cost of the tax cuts: $264.8 billion, which 
would have left us with a surplus of $132 billion if it were the fault 
of the tax cuts. Other factors mitigated to have that tremendous swing. 
The war was taking place, the economy fell, and other factors played 
into it, such as the loss in the stock market.
  So as is evident from this chart and the CBO numbers, and the numbers 
from the Joint Tax Committee, all of which are bipartisan, the tax cut 
did not cause the deficits at all, unlike what our minority opponents 
would like America to believe.
  One of the most important accomplishments of our budget policy, and 
this budget reflects this, in this year, in the past few years, is the 
enactment of this tax package for families all along the income 
spectrum. The budget before us today continues and preserves the key 
elements of this tax relief, allowing families to keep more of their 
hard-earned money.
  Over the 4-year period, from 2002 to 2004, just three key tax 
reductions out of the dozens enacted have produced savings for American 
taxpayers. These three provisions are a new 10 percent tax bracket. 
Previously, low-income people paid 15 percent in the bottom tax 
bracket. Pursuant to these tax cuts, that 15 percent dropped to 10 
percent. We enacted a child tax credit worth $1,000 in 2003 and $1,000 
in 2004; and we enacted a marriage penalty relief through an increased 
standard deduction for couples filing joint returns. For married 
couples with two children and who use the standard deduction, the 
savings from these tax reductions total approximately $5,500 over these 
4 years, according to the Joint Economic Committee report that was 
published recently.
  If one is interested in that report, click on our Web page. It is 
there for everyone to see.
  Consider these figures for 2004 from the JEC report. First, the child 
tax credit, now $1,000 per child, double what it was back in 2000. For 
a two-child household, the increases translate to $1,000 in tax 
savings. Second, thanks to the 2001 and 2003 tax relief cuts, there is 
now a new 10 percent tax bracket, which applies to the first $14,300 of 
income this year for joint tax returns. Without this new bracket, that 
income would otherwise be taxed at 15 percent. These are for the lowest 
wage-earners. This tax cut is for the lowest wage-earners. In 2004, 
this 10 percent tax bracket will save taxpayers $715.
  Third, married couples have finally received some tax relief on the 
marriage tax penalty. A quirk in the law required married couples to 
pay more taxes than the same individuals paid if they were single. Tax 
legislation enacted in 2001 now provides new tax relief such as a 
standard deduction for married couples that is double the standard 
deduction for single couples. Families taking advantage of this 
increased standard deduction will save $233 this year. Total tax 
savings from these three provisions alone amount to $1,948 in 2004. 
Over the 4-year period, 2001 to 2004, combined savings total $5,480 for 
low-income and middle-income American families.
  Mr. Chairman, these tax cuts are not for the rich. These tax 
reductions benefit everyone who pays income taxes. In fact, the 
threshold to receive all the dollar savings described here is just 
$36,400 for a married couple with two children claiming a standard 
deduction.
  Mr. Chairman, this budget, while all of us would have written it 
differently, is a budget that deserves to pass; and the tax cuts and 
the economic growth provisions provided by this budget are important 
for the future of America's families and for America's economy.
  Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support 
of an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Resolution, offered by 
my colleague from Virginia, Virgil Goode. His amendment was offered in 
the Rules Committee today, but unfortunately, the Rules Committee did 
not allow it to be offered on the floor of the House.
  Nonetheless, I want to clear my support for his amendment, had it 
been offered. The Goode Amendment would cut foreign aid funds by $8 
billion, and use that money to pay down the deficit and take care of 
our veterans. From the $8 billion cut from foreign aid spending, $5 
billion would be put towards the deficit and $3 billion would be put 
towards veterans' health care. I would have voted for this amendment, 
with the clarification that the $8 billion cut from foreign aid 
spending would not be taken from U.S. aid for Israel. Israel is our 
most-valued ally, and we need to do everything we can to support her.
  Mr. Chairman, this amendment is commensense. It takes away money from 
foreign aid, and gives it back to the hard-working Americans who earned 
the money in the first place.
  $5 billion would be used to put down the deficit, something we have 
got to start doing more. We cannot spend taxpayer dollars recklessly 
without thinking about our national debt, which is now up to $7.1 
trillion. We owe it to our future generations to spend taxpayer money 
wisely so that the important programs our government provides are still 
around for our children and grandchildren.
  Also, $3 billion would be used towards veterans' health care. Mr. 
Chairman, since I was elected to Congress, I have done everything I

[[Page H1466]]

possibly could for our Nation's veterans. They have done more for our 
country than most people will ever be asked to do, and it is important 
to make sure they have adequate health care. This additional $3 billion 
for veterans' health care funding is a step in the right direction.
  Again, I commend Mr. Goode for offering this worthy amendment, and I 
wish it could have been offered on the House floor.
  Mr. ENGLISH. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to express my support for the 
fiscal year 2005 budget resolution, which I believe strikes an 
appropriate balance between funding our national priorities and cutting 
the budget deficit in half over the next four years.
  America stands at a pivotal point in history where we are leading a 
global war against the scourge of terrorism and driving the world's 
economic growth. We have already laid the groundwork for economic 
growth through the President's tax program. As a result, growth 
averaged 6.1 percent in the second half of 2003, the fastest growth in 
consecutive quarters since 1984.
  The Budget Committee has presented to us a framework which allows us 
to build upon this foundation. This resolution allows us to make 
permanent the expiring tax relief while upholding our commitment to 
national priorities at home and abroad. The House Republican budget 
proposal offers a very different blueprint than what would have been 
offered by our colleagues from the other side of the aisle. It 
solidifies a pro-growth policy while assuring there will be no tax 
increase over the next five years. It takes into account the needs of 
our troops as well as the veterans who have already fought for our 
country.
  I'd also like to call attention to the fact that we've included an 
increase in total veterans spending of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2005 
and removed some of the fees that the President's budget had included 
for veterans services--fees which veterans communities have opposed.
  This is a strong budget that reflects strong priorities and moves us 
in the direction of fiscal balance.
  Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I stand here once again watching my 
Republican colleagues add billions of dollars to the deficit and public 
debt. I watch them take money out of the pockets of working families so 
that they may line the pockets of their fat cat friends. This budget is 
a betrayal to working families across America, to seniors, veterans and 
especially to our children and grandchildren, who will be left to clean 
up this Administration's fiscal disaster. I am amazed that my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle have managed to turn record 
surpluses into record deficits in a mere three years. This budget does 
nothing to remedy the situation and continues further down the same 
road.
  By using a 5-year budget instead of a traditional 10-year budget, my 
Republican colleagues are attempting to hid the real costs of their 
outrageous plan. After five years, the cost of making the tax giveaways 
permanent will grow drastically. Over the next ten years, the tax 
giveaways in this plan will cost $1.2 trillion. My Republican 
colleagues will not even apply the ``pay-as-you-go'' method to their 
tax giveaways because they know we cannot afford them. These budget 
gimmicks and rascality cannot be tolerated. The American people deserve 
to know the outrageous credit card bills the Bush Administration is 
racking up in their name and with their credit.
  In addition, this budget does nothing to protect the Social Security 
trust fund, five years from when the first of the baby boomer 
generation reach retirement age. These Republicans' fiscal 
mismanagement will squander the entire $1 trillion Social Security 
surplus, adding to the ballooning deficit and throwing the long term 
economic security of millions of Americans into doubt.

  The Republican budget doesn't provide any money this year to protect 
Medicaid--in fact it cuts the program. As a result, States are going to 
be forced to cut benefits and coverage for the more than 50 million of 
our most vulnerable seniors, children, pregnant women, working families 
and disabled Americans who rely on Medicaid for vital healthcare 
services. More than 3.7 million have already lost coverage under Bush's 
watch. We should be shoring up the programs that provide health 
insurance coverage--not cutting them.
  On the Medicare side, Republicans offer no proposals to improve the 
inadequate and disingenuous Medicare drug benefit enacted last year. 
Just yesterday, a new stud concluded that the Medicare hospital fund 
will be bankrupt in 2019, seven years sooner than predicted a year ago, 
partly due to the new benefit which funnels money into private health 
plans. Also absent from this budget are other proposals that could 
improve the Medicare program, such as funding for increase nursing home 
staffing and quality improvement or fixing the flawed payment system 
for doctors. Nor are there any proposals to protect the Medicare 
program from being overcharged and defrauded by private insurance 
companies and Health Maintenance Organizations. And of course, there is 
the similarly outrageous effort of this White House to hide from both 
Democratic and Republicans the true cost of their Medicare 
privatization bill, which truly makes me wonder whether any of their 
budget numbers can be trusted.
  In education, No Child Left Behind is already dramatically 
underfunded and this budget will continue this indignity. We cannot 
leave the States to pick up the tab for this federally mandated 
program. Special education, after school programs, teacher training, 
Pell grants, Perkins loans, and vocational education are all either 
frozen or cut under this dreadful budget. I wonder if my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle are trying to ensure that public schools 
fail so they can privatize the entire system?

  This budget continues the Republican war on the environment. The 
President and Republicans will try to sound like they are 
environmentalists, but the truth is in this budget which contains 
drastic cuts to major environmental protection programs. Budget cuts 
will be felt in a variety of areas including enforcement inspections; 
less money available than needed for safe drinking water; inadequate 
funding for cleanups of Superfund sites and leaking underground storage 
tanks; and fewer brownfields grants than authorized by the new law 
signed two years ago. My colleagues would rather give tax cuts to their 
buddies than invest in clean air, clean water and cleaning up toxic 
waste sites. For the next five years, the Republican budget provides 
10.5 percent less than what is needed just to maintain services at the 
current level. More noteworthy, their funding levels in 2009 will still 
be $901 million below the 2004 enacted level. My Republican colleagues 
obviously fail to keep our Nation's commitment to a healthy 
environment.
  Our troops and veterans are also betrayed by this draconian budget. 
Mr. Chairman, we made a promise to our service men and women: Serve 
your country and we will take care of you. This budget is yet another 
promise broken by this Administration and Republican Congress. These 
men and women are willing to risk their lives for this country and this 
Congress and President will not even guarantee basic benefits for 
healthcare and housing. We cannot treat our men and women in uniform 
with such disregard and disrespect. Particularly during this time of 
war, we must treat our veterans and soldiers with the utmost honor and 
dignity. Thirty thousand veterans are waiting six months or longer for 
an appointment at a VA hospital. This is a total outrage, and this 
budget does nothing to help. In fact, this budget raises healthcare 
costs for up to 1 million veterans. In addition, my Republican 
colleagues refuse to eliminate the disabled veteran's tax, which forces 
disabled military retirees to give up one dollar of their pension for 
every dollar of disability pay they receive. The Republican budget 
continues to require nearly 400,000 military retirees with service-
connected disabilities to continue to pay the disabled veterans' tax.

  Mr. Chairman, I strongly support the Democratic budget and urge my 
colleagues to do the same because it will keep the promise we made to 
the American people--unlike the budget being served up by our 
Republican colleagues. The Democratic alternative will cut the deficit 
in half by 2007 and balance the budget by 2012. The Democratic 
alternative matches the Administration request for defense spending and 
adds funding for homeland security. We need to get back to fiscal 
responsibility and get the Nation's economy back on track. We need to 
take care of our veterans, and our children and our environment. We 
need to make sure our citizens have healthcare and education 
opportunities. the Democratic budget is responsible and sensible and I 
urge my colleagues, regardless of party, to support it. The Republican 
budget is not worthy of support by any responsible American.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the order of the House of Tuesday, March 
23, 2004, all time for general debate has expired.
  Under that order, the Committee rises.
  Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. 
Burgess) having assumed the chair, Mr. Simpson, Chairman of the 
Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that 
that Committee, having had under consideration the concurrent 
resolution (H. Con. Res. 393) establishing the congressional budget for 
the United States Government for fiscal year 2005 and setting forth 
appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2004 and 2006 through 
2009, had come to no resolution thereon.




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