[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 87 (Tuesday, June 22, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H4731-H4732]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT BALANCING THE FEDERAL BUDGET

  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, first I would like to submit a statement 
for the Record concerning a tremendous accomplishment announced today 
by the Department of Agriculture. For the first time now in 20 years, 
all paper food stamps are being replaced with electronic benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, today, I joined Secretary Veneman at a ceremony to 
announce the completion of a decades-old project. Thanks to the 
commitment of Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and 
Nutrition Service, financial institutions, retail outlets, and State 
and local agencies, our Nation's Food

[[Page H4732]]

Stamp Program now issues benefits completely electronically. Through 
Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), the program moves into the 21st 
century, allowing over 20 million food stamp recipients to shop at over 
145,000 businesses more efficiently than ever.
  The Food Stamp Program now runs completely on an electronic-based 
system. Using the same technology as most debit card systems, 
recipients carry a plastic card secured with a Personal Identification 
Number. Service is improved for clients and accountability for 
purchases is ensured. In addition, it reduces administrative costs 
allowing more funds to be channeled into food purchases rather than 
printing, shipping, counting, endorsing, and destroying coupons.
  EBT began as a demonstration project in 1984 in Reading, PA. However, 
it wasn't until the early 90s that the project expanded into Maryland, 
Ohio, New Mexico, and my home State of Minnesota. Due to high demand by 
the States, an EBT Task Force was established in 1993 and published an 
article in 1994 demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of the program 
modification. This article proved pivotal, and in 1996 Congress passed 
the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which 
mandated that all States implement EBT by October of 2002.
  This month marks a tremendous achievement. As of June 15, every State 
in the Nation has finally implemented EBT. It took the work of 
thousands of Federal, State, and local staff along with numerous 
contractors, financial institutions, retailers, and the advocacy 
community.
  Thanks to the new electronic system, the Food Stamp Program error 
rate is the lowest in the history of the program. It has already helped 
to eliminate much of the theft, fraud and abuse related to paper 
coupons. EBT brings the program into the 21st century with new 
mainstream technology. Now, eligible recipients can readily patronize 
authorized stores for nutritional purposes.
  None of this could have been done without teamwork and the genuine 
care of so many individual and organizations. Today our Nation's hungry 
can more efficiently receive the nutrition assistance. I am proud to 
recognize and congratulate not only the USDA and Food and Nutrition 
Service, but all of the people, agencies, and businesses as well that 
have brought the Food Stamp Program into a new era.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the Federal budget and what 
has happened over the last several years in terms of Federal spending.
  I know that there are others of my colleagues that are here tonight 
that came in the election of 1994. When we first came here, we were 
told by the Congressional Budget Office and others that if we did not 
get serious about balancing this Federal budget that by the time my 
children got to be my age, my children could be facing a Federal tax 
rate of over 80 percent just to pay the interest on the national debt.
  I am happy to report that during the first 5 years of the Republican-
led Congress, we dramatically reduced the rate of growth of spending 
here in Washington. From 1995 until the year 2000, overall spending 
here at the Federal level increased at an average rate of only 3.2 
percent. That is at a time when the average family budget was going up 
about 3.5 percent. So the good news is we literally controlled the 
Federal budget so it was growing at a slower rate than the average 
family budget. The net result is we went from roughly $250 billion 
deficits to $250 billion surpluses.
  That is the good news. Starting in about the year 2000, and certainly 
accelerating in 2001, for a whole lot of reasons, and I will talk about 
those in a minute, Federal spending began to explode. We started to 
return to some of the old bad habits. I think in some respects it 
happened in part because we had the surpluses.
  It is much easier to say ``no'' to new spending when you have a 
deficit. When you have extra money in the bank, everybody comes in and 
says, now we can finally afford to pay for this program or to fully 
fund that program. So spending began to increase.
  As I mentioned, from 1995 until 2000, Federal spending grew at a rate 
of about 3.2 percent. Since 2001, as you can see in this chart, things 
began to accelerate. Assuming that we can live with the budget numbers 
that we have passed here in the House with our blueprint, Federal 
spending between 2001 and today will grow at a rate of 6.4 percent: 3.2 
percent, 6.4 percent.
  I do not want to bore people with statistics; but in simple terms, we 
have allowed Federal spending to grow at double the rate it grew 
through much of the 1990s, and it really is time for us to get serious; 
to get back on a plan not only to balance the budget, but ultimately to 
pay down additional parts of that huge Federal debt.
  Back in the Midwest, we know that, generally speaking, there is 
almost an ethic among farmers that you pay off the mortgage and you 
leave the kids the farm. Well, unfortunately, we are back to the 
business of selling the farm and leaving our kids the mortgage.

                              {time}  1815

  One of the answers is to go back to what we did back in the 1990s, 
and that is something we call PAYGO and spending caps. A lot of people 
were skeptical in terms of whether they would work. Even Chairman Alan 
Greenspan was skeptical in terms of whether or not long-term spending 
caps and PAYGO would work. But I would like to read some quotes from 
Chairman Greenspan, the first of which was from the House Committee on 
the Budget testimony, September of 2002. He said, ``Restoring fiscal 
discipline must be a high priority. The progress of the 1990s in 
reducing budget deficits might have been elusive were it not for the 
budget rules that worked far better than many skeptics, myself 
included, had expected.
  ``Now is not the time to abandon the discipline and the structure 
that worked so well for so long. The framework enacted in the Budget 
Enforcement Act of 1990 must be preserved.''
  Those are pretty strong words for Chairman Greenspan.
  He went on to say even more. In fact, in response to a question that 
I made in the House Committee on the Budget about spending caps and 
PAYGO, he said, specifically in July of 2003, ``I would like to see the 
restoration of PAYGO and the discretionary caps which essentially will 
restrain the expansion of the deficit and, indeed, ultimately contain 
it. It did that back in the early 1990s, and 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 back fiscal balance.''
  Mr. Speaker, it is time that we bring back fiscal balance. Chairman 
Greenspan is exactly right. We thought that we could allow spending 
caps and PAYGO to expire, and it would have no consequence. We were 
wrong.
  We will get a chance later this week to vote on spending caps and 
PAYGO. I hope all Members on both sides of the aisle will join me in 
supporting that measure.

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