[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 100 (Monday, July 19, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5955-H5956]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    SEARCHING FOR A BALANCED BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hensarling). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be here today to join my Blue 
Dog colleagues who have preceded me, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Stenholm), the gentleman from Indiana

[[Page H5956]]

(Mr. Hill), the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner), the gentleman 
from Arkansas (Mr. Berry), and also the gentlewoman from South Dakota 
(Ms. Herseth) who will follow.
  We have worked together on this fiscal responsibility and budget 
issues. Mr. Speaker, I listened to what the gentleman from Arkansas 
(Mr. Berry) said, and I just have the thought that most American 
families when they sit down to look at their finances and they consider 
that they have got a food bill and rent or a house payment, utilities, 
car payments, they have got to send their kids to school, they know 
that at the end of the day, at the end of the month, at the end of the 
year, they have to have had enough revenue come in to meet those 
expenses. This is a very simple principle. You have to have enough 
revenue coming in to meet your expenses.
  I like to look at the history of this whole deficit situation, and 
let us just go back about 12 years. Mr. Speaker, in 1992 this Congress, 
this government was spending $290 billion more than it took in. In 
other words, there was an annual deficit of $290 billion. That was the 
largest at that time in the history of the Nation. It was stagnating 
the economy. The interest rates were higher than they should have been. 
The American people understood this because it was affecting them on a 
daily basis, and they spoke through the ballot box in 1992.
  Starting in 1993 and for the next 5 years, the deficit went down 
every year. In 1998, for the first time since 1969, the Federal 
Government had a surplus. In 1998, for the first time in almost 30 
years, the Federal Government had a surplus. Two years later, our 
Federal Government, for the first time since the 1950s, did not have to 
borrow from the Social Security fund to cover its yearly operating 
expenses. That was only 4 short years ago in fiscal year 2000. Since 
then, Mr. Speaker, this government has borrowed $1.7 trillion to pay 
its bills. We have put that into the economy.
  We hear rhetoric every day about how the economy is improving. Mr. 
Speaker, if you cannot improve this economy by borrowing, the 
government borrowing $1.7 trillion and pumping it into the economy, I 
feel for you; $670 billion was borrowed during that same 3-year period 
from the trust funds, like Social Security. And as we heard the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) say, we borrowed over a trillion 
dollars from the public, mostly, about 70 percent of it coming from 
foreign countries like China and Japan.
  Mr. Speaker, our government with respect to our budget and fiscal 
responsibility is headed in the wrong direction under the current 
leadership.

                              {time}  2015

  Let me say that again. The government and the budget, with regard to 
fiscal responsibility, is heading in the wrong direction under the 
current leadership.
  This Congress and this administration have no discipline when it 
comes to fiscal responsibility. We are spending at record levels. It is 
absolutely running out of control, while there is no thought given to 
how we responsibly pay for that spending, and we are simply sending the 
bill to the children and the grandchildren. We will pay for it in our 
lifetime, and we will pay for it soon as we see those bills come due.
  Mr. Speaker, the group that I work with, the Blue Dogs, have worked 
hard to return some sanity to the budgeting process. Just like any 
responsible American family that has to balance their own family budget 
or business budget, we believe that it is time for the Federal 
Government, the Congress, to dust off the deficit reduction tools that 
we used in the 1990s to get the budget under control.
  We have heard them talk about this here tonight. We heard the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) talk about them. Strong PAYGO 
rules, that means pay-as-you-go. When you find yourselves in a hole, 
that is what you do.
  Enforceable spending caps, that was an important component of the 
1997 Balanced Budget Act. We put caps in place for spending and we 
lived by it.
  Most important of all and a simple step that this Congress and 
administration ought to be able to do is to enact a budget resolution 
that the House and Senate can use as a blueprint to establish its 
priorities and identify the resources to pay for those priorities.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that pretty soon the American people will 
realize that annual deficit spending to the tune of a half a trillion 
dollars a year will come back to haunt us.

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