[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 54 (Monday, April 26, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S4342]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FISCAL POLICY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, while this week we will take up the 
Internet tax issue, which is complicated and, in some ways, 
controversial--and I expect it will take some time--I wanted to mention 
something about fiscal policy for a moment and hope that perhaps this 
week, or in the intervening weeks, we may take up a couple of these 
issues.
  As you know, we have a Federal budget deficit that will be in this 
fiscal year the largest in the history of this country, by far. They 
say now there will be over a $530 billion Federal budget deficit in 
this fiscal year. I think everyone understands that saddling our 
children and their children with debt they must pay because this 
President and this Congress has decided we will spend money we don't 
have--we will borrow it and saddle someone else with the responsibility 
to pay it--is wrongheaded fiscal policy. It is bad for this country; it 
doesn't represent a value system that we should embrace, and, second, 
in the long-term it retards economic growth and crushes opportunity in 
the future for our children and those who follow them.
  My hope is we will begin to address this issue of fiscal policy. We 
cannot spend more for defense--nearly $100 billion more for defense and 
say, by the way, we don't have to pay for it. We cannot spend more for 
homeland security and say it doesn't count, we don't have to pay for 
that. We cannot cut taxes as we spend more for defense and homeland 
security and, as we spend more for health care, which costs more each 
year, say we will just charge all that. That is not a responsible thing 
to do.
  But we have a Federal budget that is sent to us, which comes from the 
President, and then the Congress works on this budget plan that says a 
couple of things. We know we are going to have increases in health care 
spending. We know that because both Medicare and Medicaid represent 
entitlement programs, we know the cost of health care spending is 
increasing. We know the President is recommending very substantial 
increases in costs for defense. We know the President is recommending 
substantial increases in spending for homeland security. We also know 
the President is recommending making permanent tax cuts, which at this 
point are temporary.
  The point is that this doesn't add up. It is a fiscal policy that 
doesn't add up. So how could we begin to make some sense of this? There 
are a couple of things that have happened in recent weeks which I think 
we need to address. This past weekend there was a story in the 
Washington Post about the issue of the $145 billion mistake that was 
made in the estimate of the cost of the prescription drug plan for 
Medicare.
  We are told now from press reports that the chief actuary who works 
on the Medicare Program knew long before the Congress voted on a 
prescription drug plan in the Medicare Program that this would not cost 
$400 billion, as was provided for in the budget, but, in fact, would 
cost over $140 billion more than that during the 10-year period. But he 
was told he would be fired if he informed Congress of this information. 
So the Congress acted without having information that was available in 
the executive branch because the chief actuary, who is not partisan--he 
is not part of the political system, he has been a career public 
servant and, by all accounts, an excellent one--was told he would lose 
his job if he informed the Congress of what this would cost.
  I think there needs to be an investigation into who threatened this 
person's job, who had this information and refused to turn it over to 
Congress, who indicated it was inappropriate for the Congress to know 
this information before it voted on this legislation. I believe this 
Congress owes it to the American people to investigate that because how 
can we legislate in the future on issues of this type without having 
adequate information or without being able to trust the information 
that is coming from, in this case it was Health and Human Services and 
from the chief actuary of the Medicare Program?
  I believe one way or another in the coming weeks, we ought to find a 
way to investigate that circumstance. I believe we owe that to the 
American people.

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