[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 86 (Monday, June 21, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H4619-H4620]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAST FACTS ON THE SPENDING ISSUE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker and Members, I rise tonight to talk about
our budget, the Federal budget and enforcing that budget. Now, I came
here with Mr. Jones and others with a fairly large class back in 1995
we were elected to Congress. And I will never forget one of the first
meetings we were invited to was held by some of the top economics folks
here in Washington and folks from the Congressional Budget Office. And
they told us at that meeting that if we did not get serious about
balancing the budget, we forget now that back throughout most of the
1980s, we were running deficits exceeding $200
[[Page H4620]]
billion, in fact, by today's accounting standards it would have
probably approached $300 billion, but, nonetheless, we had this meeting
and at the meeting they told us that if we in Congress did not get
serious about balancing the Federal books, that by the time my children
got to be my age, they could be facing a tax rate at the Federal level
of over 80 percent just to pay the interest on the national debt.
Well, the good news is we got serious about balancing the Federal
budget. We limited the growth in Federal spending. We allowed the
Federal budget to grow at a slower rate than the average family budget.
And the net result is we went from $275 billion deficits to $250
billion surpluses. And that happened largely because we controlled
Federal spending. From 1995 until 2000, total Federal spending only
grew at an average rate of about 3.2 percent.
Now, since 2001, I have to say, Federal spending has grown at more
than double that rate, at an average rate of 6.4 percent. You can see
that from this chart. In fact, this chart and the 6.4 percent growth in
Federal spending assumes that we will actually abide by and live with
the very tough budget that this House has passed.
Now, unfortunately, the other body has not passed a budget this year
and so we will have to negotiate with some of the folks over there and
so the 6.4 percent assumes that we will wind up with the House's very
tight numbers in which we freeze large chunks of the Federal budget.
Let me give for the benefit of some of the members and others who may
be tuning in, some of the other numbers about the budget. Since 2001,
according to the House Committee on the Budget, discretionary spending,
that is a way of saying things beyond the entitlements, has gone up an
average of 9.7 percent per year. So it is not just about 9/11 and it is
not just about the war, it is about a lot of other things we have been
spending money on.
Mandatory spending has now increased to a point where mandatory
spending, and these are the things which we sometimes call
entitlements, Medicare, Social Security, welfare-type benefits, there
are a lot of benefits inside the Federal Government that if you qualify
for them, you automatically receive them. Mandatory spending or
entitlement spending today represents 55 percent of the Federal budget.
And this does not include the new entitlement that was created this
year under Medicare for prescription drugs which, according to one
study, will add over $16\1/2\ trillion of unfunded liabilities to the
Federal budget long term.
Finally, let me say and that I think this is important in recognizing
how big the budget has become. For the first time since World War II,
total Federal spending has reached more than $20,000 per household in
the United States.
Well, what can we do about all of this? Well, what we need to do is
get back to basics. What we did for most of the 1990s we had here in
Washington the House and Senate had agreed to what are call spending
caps and PAYGO rules. And we need to bring them back. I am not the only
one who believes that. Later this week the house is going to vote on
some spending caps and PAYGO provisions that I think are long overdue.
Mr. Speaker, I am not the only one who feels that. Let me read what
Chairman Alan Greenspan said about PAYGO and spending caps and house
Committee on the Budget in July of 2003. I will quote, ``I would like
to see the restoration of PAYGO and discretionary caps, which
essentially will restrain the expansion of the deficit and indeed
ultimately contain it.'' He went on to say, ``It did that back in the
early 1990s. I thought it was quite surprisingly successful in
restraining what had been a budget which had gotten out of kilter. I
would like to see those restraints reimposed and, by their very nature,
they will bring fiscal responsibility back.''
Let me just read what he also said in a Committee on the Budget in
2002 about spending caps and PAYGO. ``Restoring fiscal discipline must
be a high priority. The progress in the 1990s in reducing budget
deficits might have been elusive were it not for the budget rules that
had worked far better than many skeptics, myself included,'' and this
is Mr. Greenspan speaking, ``myself included had expected.''
``Now is not the time to abandon the discipline of the structure that
worked so well for so long.
{time} 1945
The framework enacted in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 must be
preserved.
Well, we allowed those spending caps to expire a few years ago; and
it is no coincidence that when we allowed the spending caps to expire,
Federal spending began to go up at double the rate it went up for most
of the 1990s. We will have an opportunity on Thursday to deal with
this. Hopefully, we will have a vote on this thing; and we need to
return to some form of spending caps and PAYGO.
We have got a tough budget here in the House. We have got to make
certain that it gets enforced. I am not the only one who believes that.
Dr. Alan Greenspan was saying this a couple of years ago.
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