[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 8, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H391-H398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a privilege to stand 
here tonight and to talk with my colleagues

[[Page H392]]

and discuss what we have going on with the President's budget that has 
been submitted, and also with the desire of the President and of our 
leadership to begin to get their hands around the spending issue and to 
address the spending issue.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the things I hear regularly from my constituents 
in Tennessee is it is time to stop spending so much of the taxpayers' 
money. And one of the things that people in my district constantly 
remind me of, and a message they want me to bring to Washington is: it 
is not the government's money. The government is not creating a 
product; the government is not selling a product. It is the taxpayers' 
money, and they want accountability with that money.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, this morning I think that the taxpayers 
across this country woke to the kickoff of a national scare campaign, 
and it is aimed squarely at the President's budget and at this 
Congress' efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in government. 
Listen to some of these headlines that we found in the newspapers out 
there.
  This one from Illinois: ``Bush Budget Includes Steep Cuts.'' In 
Tennessee a paper said: ``Bush Budget Axes Scores of Programs.'' In 
Oregon, news sources said: ``Domestic Programs Sacrificed in the 
Budget.'' And in California, newspapers declared: ``The President's 
Budget Proposal Cuts Vital Funds For Safety Net.''
  Now, all of this is coming about, Mr. Speaker, because finally, 
finally this Congress and this President are answering a need and a 
desire the American people have, and that is to reform government, to 
reduce the amount of money that we are spending, and for us to come up 
with a 21st-century delivery of government services that is more 
effective and more efficient, that is going to meet the needs of 
government, that is going to avail itself of new technologies, and that 
is going to be fair to the taxpayer.
  That is what they want. They want to be certain that we, the Members 
of the U.S. House, are going to be good stewards of the tax dollars 
that they send here. Because they want to see a system that is more 
fair to the taxpayers, to the working men and women that every single 
day get up and leave their homes and go to work; and who, with every 
single paycheck, look at that paycheck and look at the amount of money 
that is withheld from that paycheck to do, what? To fund government 
services.

                              {time}  2100

  Mr. Speaker, since when did eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in 
government become a bad thing? And to listen to some of my colleagues 
here on the floor this evening, one would begin to think that trying to 
eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government is a bad 
thing. But my constituents and millions of Americans think this is the 
right thing to do and now is the right time to do it.
  Listening to my colleagues speak tonight, one would begin to think 
that demanding results, demanding positive outcomes of government 
programs is a negative. But I hear from constituents and Tennesseans 
every single day that say let us demand results. Let us be certain that 
programs are producing the right outcomes that we expect from them. 
That is a positive, not a negative; and the American people are ready 
to see that kind of accountability. Why, Mr. Speaker? Because it is 
their money. It is their money that they have earned that is coming 
into the government coffers and is being spent on programs that are to 
benefit the American people.
  I would like for every American to know that President Bush and this 
Republican Congress are not content to sit idly by while even a penny 
of taxpayer dollars is wasted, and let me tell Members there is 
significantly more than a penny of waste that we can target in this 
budget.
  I am proud of the leadership of this House, the Senate, and the 
President and his team for saying we are going to roll the spending 
back. I agree with them. We can save America one dollar at a time, and 
that is what we are going to do. We are going to take these first steps 
and put it on the road, saving America one dollar at a time.
  What those headlines should be saying is this: President Bush and the 
Republican Congress believe taxpayer dollars ought to be spent wisely 
or not spent at all. Sounds like something ours grandmothers probably 
told us. If you are going to do it, do it right. If you are going to do 
it, do it right the first time. If you are going to make some money, 
save it. If you are going to spend it, spend it wisely or do not spend 
it. In Tennessee we call that good old common sense. It makes sense, 
but I guess that is why a lot of the liberals do not like it, because 
it is good old common sense.
  That is what this is all about. It is about our firm belief that the 
American people work far too hard and far too long to have half their 
earnings taken in taxes and then squandered by the government. Taxes, 
that is the single largest part of a family budget. They spend more on 
taxes than they do for food, for education, or for transportation. 
Taxes, and it is an imperative that we be good stewards of that money, 
that we be accountable for that money, and that we look for every 
single possible opportunity to save and manage wisely those taxpayer 
dollars.
  Mr. Speaker, according to the Congressional Research Service, there 
are approximately 1,200 Federal Government programs, and I hope Members 
heard me say approximately because that is exactly what I meant to say. 
There are so many programs out there, we do not even know how many 
programs we have. We know we have approximately 1,200 programs.
  So what our President is saying is, all right, folks, let us look at 
150 of these, the really egregious examples of waste, and let us find 
some savings. Let us start to whittle away and find what works and what 
does not work. Let us look at the programs that have outlived their 
purpose, their usefulness, let us find the things that are duplicative, 
let us find the things that have turned out to be failures and are not 
producing the outcomes that we want and have not yielded an acceptable 
return for the investment of taxpayer dollars that have gone into those 
programs.
  There is not a single thing radical here. As I said earlier, it is 
common sense, it is fiscal responsibility and the Republicans are 
committed to it. Why should an agency have its budget automatically 
increased year after year? Most people do not get automatic increases 
every year. Ask a lot of the folks working in my district. It is not a 
given that they are going to get a raise every single year, so why 
should an underperforming Federal Department get a budget boost every 
12 months?
  For too long in Washington, a Federal spending increase has been a 
certain thing. It has been as certain as the sun rises and that it is 
going to set in the evening. It is time to reform that process.
  Here are some great examples of things that we need to get behind: 
the Forest Service. They could not figure out for what purpose it spent 
$215 million out of its $3.4 billion operating budget in fiscal year 
1995. They could not figure it out. They did not know what they spent 
$215 million on.
  Has anyone mentioned that since 1992 the Rural Utility Services 
Electricity Loan Program has canceled $4.9 billion in debt? That 
essentially means it loaned $4.9 billion of taxpayer money and then 
said do not worry about paying us back. CEOs go to prison for things 
like that.
  Did Members know that the State Children's Health Insurance Program, 
the SCHIP program, is currently insuring childless adults in two States 
at a cost to taxpayers of at least $330 million? The program, a good 
program, was created to provide health insurance to uninsured children, 
not uninsured adults.
  This is not an isolated problem. We have other examples, and it is 
not a rare thing that programs waste taxpayer money. In fact, the 
Committee on Government Reform where I served last Congress found that 
the Office of Personnel and Management's Inspector General recovers $12 
in fraudulent spending for every $1 spent by its office. That is just 
the tip of the iceberg.
  The Veterans Administration, we know there are $3 billion in 
outstanding loans and that processing errors and program fraud account 
for $125 million annually in VA pension overpayments. These 
overpayments comprise about 4 percent of the $2.9 billion

[[Page H393]]

in total pension benefits that the VA paid out in fiscal year 2001.
  Mr. Speaker, given this information, how can we not work to reduce 
spending and insert accountability? How can we not say to these 
agencies no more funding increases until you prove you can handle what 
you have already got?

  Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have an expert on some of these issues 
join us this evening here on the floor. The gentleman from Mississippi 
(Mr. Wicker) is out of Mississippi's first district and he is a part of 
the Republican leadership here in Congress. He does a wonderful job for 
the people of Mississippi and does a wonderful job for our leadership. 
He is a deputy majority whip, a member of the Committee on 
Appropriations; and he knows a lot about our budget and what we can do 
to work on being more accountable in our government budget system.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. 
Blackburn) for that kind word of introduction.
  I have to observe what a refreshing contrast we have seen tonight 
between the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and those who 
occupied the previous hour of Special Orders on this floor tonight 
because of the great difference in the philosophy of government 
evidenced by all of the speakers tonight.
  The gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) has outlined a 
conservative philosophy of efficiency with the taxpayer dollars, not 
taking the first answer at face value but looking for savings wherever 
we can find them because that is what the taxpayers expect us to do.
  What we witnessed in the previous hour was an example of what we hear 
from our liberal Democrat friends year after year. I had to think as I 
was listening to them that these are the same arguments that we hear 
over and over again from the other side of the aisle. They say we are 
not spending enough. Regardless of the fact that Federal spending 
almost always increases, it is never high enough for our friends on the 
Democrat side of the aisle. They always, always want to spend even 
more.
  Whatever tax level the President and the Republicans propose, the 
Democrats always want to tax more. They want to raise taxes on the 
American people. However high taxes might be, we can always count on 
our friends to make the argument year in and year out that they want 
tax rates to be higher. They may shed crocodile tears about deficits, 
but their solution to deficits is always higher taxes, always higher 
taxation, and their solution to deficits is never ever to find a way to 
make savings for the American people.
  Their arguments are always the same, and I must admit more often than 
not their predictions are off the mark too, Mr. Speaker, their 
predictions about how the President's budget will affect the poor, the 
disadvantaged, the unemployed, the economy as a whole. We heard those 
predictions, those same dire predictions last year, and what has 
happened? As a matter of fact, what has happened is exactly what we on 
the Republican side of the aisle predicted: healthy growth in our 
economy, the gross domestic product of a sustained rate of now 4 
percent continuing on now for several months, and the unemployment rate 
falling. Job creation is at a record high in the United States of 
America, and I am proud of that. It has come in spite of the dire 
warnings we had from our friends on the left who predicted last year 
when we tried to hold the line on budgeting that we would have all 
sorts of dire consequences for the American people.
  One argument that was made previously that cannot go unchallenged is 
this argument about the term ``withering on the vine.'' I think some 
people in this town believe if you say something often enough, it will 
take on truth. As a matter of fact, no Representative on this side of 
the aisle has ever advocated Social Security withering on the vine. It 
is just factually inaccurate to say such a thing. We were actually 
accused of saying that not with regard to Social Security but with 
regard to Medicare, and it was not true about Medicare.
  What a Speaker of the House at one time said should wither on the 
vine is this HCFA program which we have now renamed CMA that could 
command and control a health care system where government tries to 
manage each and every aspect of it. That is what he said should wither 
on the vine so Americans could have more choices about the way they get 
their health care.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to challenge every time I can this allegation 
that Republicans wanted either Social Security or Medicare to wither on 
the vine; it did not.
  I want to applaud the President and my colleagues for saying tonight 
that we believe government can do better. We know there is waste and 
fraud and abuse in government spending.

                              {time}  2115

  And every single penny that is wasted, every single penny that is 
subject to fraud is money that could go to programs that actually do 
benefit Americans. And it is money that could go to tax reduction. It 
is money that could go to deficit reduction.
  So central to the President's budget that he submitted to us this 
week is the fact that the President and Republicans in Congress are 
dedicated to providing stronger financial management and oversight for 
Federal programs. This should not be controversial. It ought to be a 
common-sense, bipartisan approach to Federal spending, and we invite 
all Americans to help us.
  I hope that Americans will be contacting Members of this Special 
Order after tonight's Special Order, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that the 
phones will be ringing off the walls in congressional offices with 
Americans giving us examples of the way they know we can save money. My 
constituents instinctively know that this Federal Government is so big, 
so large, so unmanageable that there have got to be ways that we can 
effect savings.
  So I look forward to this Special Order tonight. We have got, I 
guess, around 40 or 45 more minutes. I intend to stick around, Mr. 
Speaker, and if the gentlewoman from Tennessee will recognize me again, 
we might be able to cite some very specific examples that I think she 
might find interesting about ways in which we believe that we can begin 
to look for additional savings for the American people.
  I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the 
gentleman's comments so very much, and I appreciate his insights and 
his wisdom that he brings to the discussion.
  And he is exactly right. Government can do better, and it is our 
responsibility to challenge government to do better, to challenge our 
systems of accounting, to challenge our systems that we are using to 
track the agencies and the outcomes that are there. Everything is 
funded by the taxpayer's dollar, and we do want to invite the American 
people and our constituents to join us and be a part of this team as we 
look for ways to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in our system. We 
want to be certain that for future generations, for my children, for my 
grandchildren, that this is a healthy, vibrant nation where hope and 
opportunity continue to live and continue to be realized by every 
American man, woman, and child who seeks to find that American Dream.
  And I agree with the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) that all 
too often some of the liberal elites, those that are government 
elitists, their answer to everything is, just give us a little more 
money and we can make it right. And we know that does not work. Higher 
taxes do not yield greater outcomes. What yields greater outcomes is 
finding ways to do things better, constantly challenging ourselves to 
do things better, constantly working to find ways to root out that 
waste, fraud, and abuse that have become so rampant in our governmental 
entities.
  Mr. Speaker, we are joined tonight by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Hensarling), who joined me in our freshman class in the 108th Congress, 
and he has been a leader in the effort to target waste, fraud, and 
abuse in the Federal system. He has done a tremendous amount of work on 
this issue. He has made it his cause and his challenge. He is a member 
of the Committee on the Budget and lends to that committee much of his 
expertise on how we can go about creating a better budget process and 
strengthening our government and strengthening our freedom for future 
generations.

[[Page H394]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) for 
his thoughts.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to 
me. And I certainly want to recognize her for her great leadership in 
the United States Congress in helping root out waste and fraud and 
abuse. Her work on the Committee on Government Reform is known 
throughout the United States Congress. She has been a champion to make 
sure that there is accountability for taxpayer dollars so that we do 
something in this institution to protect the family budget from the 
Federal budget, and I appreciate her leadership.
  And I also appreciate the leadership of the gentleman from 
Mississippi, who spoke earlier. I had the pleasure to serve on the 
Committee on the Budget with him, and he has been a champion of less 
government and more freedom on that particular committee.
  Mr. Speaker, I especially tonight want to thank our President. There 
is no doubt in my mind why our President was reelected. He is a man of 
vision and a man of bold leadership. It is under his leadership that we 
are going to be able to not only strengthen Social Security for my 
parents, who are in their 70s, but save it for my children who are both 
in diapers and know a whole lot more about Big Bird and Barney than 
they do about Social Security.
  And I appreciate the President's leadership on this budget because 
the only way that we are going to be able to save Social Security for 
future generations is to do something to rein in the growth of the 
Federal Government, to root out that waste and that fraud and that 
abuse and duplication that we know permeates every single nook and 
cranny of the Federal Government.
  For years and years, decades and decades, Washington has squandered 
money out of the Social Security trust fund. It is time for Washington 
to put it back. And the way that Washington puts it back is to rein in 
the growth of government.
  I have listened to part of the debate earlier this evening, and I 
think it is very important, Mr. Speaker, that we first agree on what 
the facts are. We heard a lot this evening about cuts here and cuts 
there and cuts here and cuts there. What I find interesting is in the 
budget that the President is proposing, government is still going to 
grow. It is going to grow 3.6 percent more in the next budget than it 
did over this budget. What the President is doing, though, and 
something that it is absolutely novel in this town, is, it is not going 
to grow quite as fast as it has in the past.
  Most people would be very interested to know, if they just look in 
their rear-view mirror for a decade, government has grown on average 
4.5 percent a year. That is over twice the rate of inflation. In other 
words, if we are happy with the government we had 10 years ago, its 
level of spending, if we just wanted to keep that same government, we 
would have grown at the rate of inflation. Instead, we have done almost 
twice that.
  And perhaps more importantly, Mr. Speaker, the government budget has 
grown almost three times faster than the family budget over this same 
time period as measured by median worker income.
  I have a hard time believing and my constituents in the Fifth 
District of Texas have a hard time believing, why, with the exception 
of a national emergency, does the Federal Government budget have to 
grow so much faster than the family budget? And guess what? They are 
related.
  That money is coming from somewhere. It is coming out of the family 
budget, and it is going into the Federal budget.
  What we call mandatory spending now amounts to 11 percent of our 
economy for the first time in the history of America. What we call 
discretionary spending in this body is now approximately 7 percent of 
our economy for the first time in a decade. We are spending over 
$20,000 for American households for only the fourth time in the entire 
history of the United States of America and for the first time since 
World War II.
  It would be wonderful, Mr. Speaker, if all of this money that we were 
spending somehow magically turned into love and happiness and kindness. 
Unfortunately, all too often it does not. We have thousands and 
thousands and thousands of Federal programs spread across hundreds and 
hundreds of agencies. I defy anybody in this town to be able to tell 
me, what do they all do? And the examples we have of the waste and the 
fraud and the abuse and duplication are just profound. We read about it 
in our local newspaper every day.
  It was not that long ago that we picked up our newspaper to find out 
that our Federal Government with our money spent $800,000 for an 
outhouse in one public park and the toilet did not even flush. The only 
thing it flushed was hard-earned taxpayer money down the drain, 
$800,000. And then we read about the millions and millions that were 
recently spent for an indoor rain forest in Iowa. And this does not 
even talk about a number of the questionable studies that we end up 
funding with taxpayer dollars.
  I am not sure who thought up the use of taxpayer funding to figure 
out how and why college students decorate their dorm rooms. I am not 
sure exactly what vital Federal interest was being served by that. I 
think a number of my constituents would be surprised to learn that we 
spent over $2 million of their money to study the sexual habits of 
older men. Mr. Speaker, I do not particularly care to know what is in 
that study, and I feel fairly confident that my taxpayers in the Fifth 
Congressional District do not really care to pay for it.
  And, Mr. Speaker, let me talk a little bit about duplication. We have 
over 342 different Federal economic development programs, 342 at last 
count. That is probably 342 different executive directors and deputy 
directors. How many different Federal economic development programs do 
we need? And, by the way, a very good question that needs to be asked 
is, what does the Federal Government know about economic development 
anyway?
  The Federal Government, at last count, administers 50 different 
programs to aid the homeless, 50 different programs spread across eight 
different Federal agencies. Four agencies administer 23 programs 
offering housing. Six agencies administer 26 programs offering food and 
nutrition. Three agencies and ten programs attempt to protect 
homelessness. Three different agencies, 17 different programs provide 
mental health treatment. And, Mr. Speaker, this is a very important 
cause. We need to make sure that something is done about the homeless 
in our society. But how many different programs do we need trying to do 
the same, exact thing? It just speaks out for some kind of 
consolidation.
  Drug control, we have more than 50 Federal agencies responsible for 
waging the war on drugs. Early childhood development, we have more than 
90 different programs spread across 11 different agencies. Job 
training, seven agencies and 40 different programs. Mr. Speaker, the 
list goes on and on and on, and that is just talking about duplication.
  Some of the fraud that goes on that I believe our constituents would 
be shocked to find out, in the last year of the Clinton administration, 
the Department of Housing and Urban Development just lost 10 percent of 
their budget, roughly $3 billion lost in improper payments. I mean, can 
one imagine for $3 billion how many Americans could have paid the down 
payment on their first home? Instead, government just squandered the 
money.
  Why does this happen? It happens because government does not do 
anything as well as we the people. As one of my colleagues said, it is 
intoxicating to spend other people's money, and unfortunately, there 
are a number of Members of this body that are quite intoxicated with 
that power to go out and spend other people's money. And it is always 
easy to do it.
  And speaking of other news articles that I have seen recently, I saw 
where a government official paid a taxidermy service with taxpayer 
funds to prepare a shoulder mount of a mule deer head, and according to 
the General Accounting Office, the deer was road kill and found by the 
official on the side of the road. And there are Members in this body 
who want to raise people's taxes to pay for more of that. It is example 
after example.
  Recently, the Republicans in this House finally cracked down on one 
abuse, and that is, for years and years

[[Page H395]]

and years, the Medicare program paid almost four times as much for a 
wheelchair as the Veterans' Administration did. Mr. Speaker, how could 
that happen? We scratch the surface and what we discover is that one 
agency would competitively bid and the other would not. I wonder how 
many small businesses across Texas and Kansas and Oregon and Vermont 
would be able to stay in business if they did not competitively bid 
their supplies? Fortunately, we managed to discover that one and do 
something about it.
  I could go on and on all evening, Mr. Speaker, but the point is that 
these are just a handful of examples. If we cannot find 1 or 2 or 3 
percent of waste in a government budget, Mr. Speaker, we are simply not 
looking.

                              {time}  2130

  We are just not looking. And if we are going to save Social Security 
for future generations, we have to moderate the growth of the Federal 
budget.
  Now, again, liberals in this body are going to say the President is 
cutting here and he is cutting there. But you need to listen to the 
language of Washington, because it is not the language of the American 
people. When people in Washington say ``cut,'' what they mean is it is 
not growing as much as they would like to see it growing.
  It is kind of like if your son comes up to you and says, Gee, Dad, 
you are giving me a $5 a week allowance, and I really need $10. You sit 
there and you think about it a while and you say, Well, Son, you make a 
good case. I have listened to what your expenses are. I am not going to 
give you $10 a week, but I will raise you to $7 a week. He says, Gee, 
Dad, that is a $3 cut. Don't you know I wanted $10? That is the 
language of Washington.
  So I hope as the American people listen to the debate over this 
budget, that they listen very, very carefully, because what liberals 
call cuts really tend to be a moderation in the growth of government.
  Again, if we are going to save Social Security for our children, we 
are going to have to moderate the growth of government. As my esteemed 
colleague from Tennessee was saying earlier, where is it chiseled in 
stone that we have to spend more money next year on a program than we 
spent last year? I have not read it in the Constitution, I did not read 
it in the Declaration of Independence, I have not read it in the Budget 
Act. But there are people here that say that if you care about farmers, 
or if you care about veterans, or if you care about school children, 
the only way you can show it is to spend more money next year than you 
did last year, regardless of what the results are, regardless of 
whether any kind of standards of accountability are being met.
  So, again, Mr. Speaker, as people are telling us that all these 
budgets have been cut, they may be interested to know, for example, 
that over the last 10 years, education spending has increased 128 
percent. It does not sounds like a cut to me. Agricultural spending has 
increased 42 percent over the last 10 years. It does not sound like a 
cut to me. Health and Human Services has grown by 80 percent. It does 
not sound like a cut to me. The Energy Department has grown by 56 
percent. It does not sound like a cut to me. Agency after agency after 
agency has seen large increases in their budget for the last decade.
  What we really have to be asking ourselves are two different things: 
What is the essential role of government in the free society, and how 
can government most efficiently meet those goals?
  It is time, again, Mr. Speaker, that we do what the President wants 
us to do, and that is to moderate the growth of the Federal Government, 
so we can start to root out all the examples of waste, fraud, and abuse 
and be accountable to the people who work hard back in our districts 
and send this money to Washington.
  Again, there is so much of this throughout the entirety of the 
budget; and if we only start to moderate the growth of Washington, then 
we can start to root some of this out. And we must do this. Our deficit 
is too high; our debt is too high. We need to save Social Security.
  Yet Democrats who will talk about the deficit and decry the deficit, 
all they want to do is increase more spending, more taxes. They tell us 
that tax relief is the reason that we have a deficit. Well, I would 
invite them to go talk to the people at the IRS, talk to the people at 
Treasury. What you will discover is that tax revenues are up. We cut 
tax rates and tax revenues came up because we promoted economic growth. 
Tax revenues are up almost 10 percent over last year, because more 
people are saving and they are working and they are investing. Tax 
relief is part of the deficit solution, not part of the deficit 
problem.
  Besides that, it is the deficit which is a symptom. Spending is the 
disease. By any measure whatsoever, Mr. Speaker, spending is absolutely 
out of control in Washington D.C.
  In some respects, this is not a debate about spending. What it really 
is is a debate about who is going to do the spending. All my colleagues 
would like to see more money spent on education, housing, and health 
care; but we are not indifferent as to who does the spending. 
Bureaucrats and liberals want Washington to do the spending. We want 
American families to do the spending. We know who has our children's 
best interest for the future in mind, and it is not Washington. It is 
our constituents back home.
  We must remember what Ronald Reagan once said, and that is the 
closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a Federal program. We need to 
change that, Mr. Speaker, for the sake of our children, for the sake of 
Social Security, and for the sake of the Republic. I appreciate again 
the opportunity to speak out about the budget and to speak about ways 
we can protect the family budget from the Federal budget. I appreciate 
the gentlewoman from Tennessee for yielding, and I appreciate her great 
leadership on this issue.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Hensarling) for being here to talk with us this evening and reminding 
us of some points that are so very important. I hear from my 
constituents, as he does, about that language of Washington and 
understanding when something is actually a reduction and when something 
is just slowed growth when some of the spending has been moderated. The 
gentleman is so exactly right.
  What we would like to do, what the American people would like for us 
to do, is root out that waste, that fraud, that abuse of the system; 
get rid of the duplication of programs; eliminate the bureaucracy here 
that soaks up the money and allow that money to go to the local 
programs where the rubber meets the road and be certain that the 
dollars are spent wisely. As I said earlier, spend them wisely, or not 
at all; make sure we are making good decisions and being good stewards.
  The gentleman mentioned a little bit about economic development and 
tax relief. As the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) said 
earlier, it is the reduction in taxes that has helped to spur economic 
growth, which is such a vitally important part of working on waste, 
fraud and abuse; the fact that we have a growing economy.
  The other part, that we reduce spending; that we take a good solid 
commonsense approach to this; that we create the right environment for 
business to be successful; and that we continue to reduce programs that 
are not helpful to that, that add to the cost of free enterprise, that 
slow down the process of delivering government services. These are 
good, commonsense approaches.
  I do applaud our President and our leadership for taking a stand and 
moving us in this direction.
  Mr. Speaker, we are joined also tonight by a new Member of this body, 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), and we are so pleased to have 
him here with us. He is out of Texas' Eleventh District. I particularly 
like the fact that he has brought a lot of common sense to Congress 
with him. He is a good old Texas Aggie from Texas A&M, spent some time 
in the U.S. military, has appreciation for freedom, for protecting 
freedom, and understands the importance of protecting 
individual freedom and free enterprise.

  At this time I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).
  Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee and 
also want to compliment the two previous speakers on the excellent job 
they did in setting out some of the things that we all want to talk 
about.

[[Page H396]]

  In the interest of fair disclosure, though, I do need to correct one 
thing. I went to Texas A&M at Commerce, Texas, which is actually the 
second largest institution in the A&M system. We were the Lions, not 
the Aggies. In fair disclosure, I need to set the record straight on 
that.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand tonight in support of our efforts to 
aggressively eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our Federal spending. 
I am a CPA by profession. I have over 30 years of practice in helping 
clients and others deal with this issue in the world outside of 
government, and it is incredibly important in that arena, as it is in 
Federal Government.
  I once spent 5 years working with President George W. Bush as his 
business partner in Midland, Texas, the chief financial officer of the 
oil and gas exploration company that we co-owned, and it was an 
exercise in meeting payrolls and providing jobs for people of west 
Texas, but doing so in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
  We were getting other people's money to spend in the oil business to 
drill with, and it was incumbent upon us to spend those dollars as if 
we were spending our own money, wisely and with an understanding of how 
scarce they were, because folks trusted us with that money.
  We in Congress have much the same role in that regard. We take money 
away from people at the point of a gun, for the most part; but that 
should not relieve us of our obligations to spend that money as wisely 
as we possibly can.
  I believe that is important that we in Congress aggressively approach 
the issue of balancing the Federal budget from a business perspective. 
President Bush and this Republican Congress, of which I am very proud 
to be a part, are committed to spending the American taxpayers' hard-
earned money as wisely as we can.
  We seem to hear a lot about opposition in Congress these days, not 
only opposition in Congress to cutting waste out of our budgets and out 
of our organizations, but we also see debates on Social Security 
reform, abusive lawsuit reform, funding our troops and much, much more. 
The opposition we face in these critical issues has become almost par 
for the course, and I find it quite personally disappointing that we 
are unable to reach any kind of common ground as we search for 
solutions to the issues and problems that face our Nation.
  Now to the issue of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Surely this 
is one area that both sides of the aisle can find common ground on, an 
area we can agree that every single tax dollar that we, as I mention, 
take away from the citizens of this country, the working citizens of 
this country, should be spent in a manner and on programs that we in 
Congress authorize and provide for. We should all agree on the 
importance of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse from Federal spending.
  But, Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that every Member of Congress take 
this issue seriously. We are a little better than 2\1/2\ years past the 
passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which looked at fraud in the public 
arena, publicly traded companies. There are men and women today who are 
on trial for committing fraud within that arena, and they are going to 
go to jail. They are going to do felony time for that. Those were 
serious issues, where they defrauded the investing public. We ought to 
be just as serious about that happening in Federal spending programs as 
we are in the public arena.
  Here are some examples of waste, fraud, and abuse that hopefully 
everyone who listens would find offensive. Fraudulent tax returns. As I 
mentioned, I am a CPA and I have spent 30 years practicing, preparing 
tax returns for folks, helping them comply with the income Tax Code.
  According to some recent data, more than a quarter of the tax returns 
claiming the earned income tax credit were prepared erroneously, 
accounting for up to 32 percent of the total claims for over a decade. 
The estimated errors and erroneous payments, should they have been 
eliminated, would have freed up $8.1 billion of tax dollars that we 
took away from the taxpayers of this country.
  Another area is in the General Services Administration. Improper 
payments and duplicate payments for GSA credit cards occur primarily 
because cards are typically used without preauthorization for 
purchases, and controls to reconcile these purchases are inadequate. We 
have got a recent example of a GSA employee who spent over $32,000 
during a 15-month period on her government credit card for personal 
expenses. We just simply cannot abide by that kind of conduct.
  We have also got waste in the tax collection system. There is an 
overall problem with the way we collect taxes to fund the Federal 
Government. The problem lies in the complex Tax Code that we have built 
over some approaching 90 years, a little better than 90 years, I guess.
  With a simpler and fairer Tax Code, we could take the tax industry 
that is kept in business by the need to comply with the Tax Code; we 
could take that industry on that is kept in business because of the 
needs of complying with this complex Tax Code.
  The costs of complying with the Federal tax laws and regulations is 
roughly $250 billion a year. I would argue while much of this money 
goes to my CPA brethren and me to help our clients, it does not help 
businesses do a better job, whatever business they are in. It does not 
help them provide better surfaces. Drilling contractors in my districts 
do not drill for energy better because of this. This is simply a burden 
that they have to pay, year after year, to allow us to collect taxes.
  We ought to be able to come up with a tax collection scheme that is 
simple and straightforward and fair and eliminates much of these 
compliance costs, which not only is a compliance cost, but generates a 
great deal of tax fraud in its compliance.
  Waste, fraud, and abuse not only costs taxpayers unnecessarily; but 
there are two hidden costs I would like to speak of. The first cost is 
to legitimate participants in programs who may not get the services 
that they need because resources that would have otherwise gone to 
provide those services have been stolen or diverted by cheaters within 
the system.
  As an example, in my hometown we have recently convicted a physician 
of fraudulently collecting fees from Medicare and Medicaid. This money, 
money that this person stole from the taxpayers of this country, should 
have gone to the providers in our area for treating patients, not for 
cheating.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentleman would yield on 
that point, because I appreciate him making that very good point.
  There are programs which are designed to help those people that 
cannot help themselves or that are at a disadvantage for whatever 
reason. The gentleman makes an excellent point that when someone cheats 
on a program like that, they are not only cheating the government and 
the taxpayers, but they are cheating the neediest Americans, the most 
disadvantaged Americans.
  I wonder if I could go back to another point the gentleman from Texas 
made. Did the gentleman say that there is a 25 percent error rate in 
the earned income tax credit?
  Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, no, I think I said there was a 32 percent.
  Mr. WICKER. Oh, my goodness. Okay, it is even worse than I heard. So 
32 percent of the earned income tax credit is claimed erroneously or 
fraudulently, one or the other; is that what you are saying?
  Mr. CONAWAY. Either by intention or by accident.
  Mr. WICKER. The gentleman is an expert, and I am sure he can explain 
better than I can the purpose of the earned income tax credit, which is 
a worthy purpose.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Well, that is right. The earned income tax credit was an 
attempt by this Congress to credit folks at the lower end of the 
earning scale for taxes that they would have otherwise owed to the 
Federal Government. It is a credit that is targeted directly to those 
who make the least amount of money in our system, or in our economy, 
and phases out as folks' income goes up.
  Mr. WICKER. And it is designed for parents of children and for 
working poor parents to help give them an extra opportunity. So when 
almost a third of the earned income tax credit money goes to people who 
are not entitled to it, certainly it hurts the people who

[[Page H397]]

would be entitled to it. Perhaps we could give a more generous benefit 
to the EITC families. Perhaps we could give a tax cut to other working 
families, or pay down the debt.
  So I just appreciate the gentleman mentioning that very good point. 
And when he said it, I had to go back to the earned income tax credit, 
a program we are not proposing to cut in any way, but would it not be 
wonderful if we could find that one-third that is going to people who 
are not entitled under the law?
  Mr. CONAWAY. Well, the good news is, we found a third of them, and 
there should be processes in place within the Internal Revenue Service 
to get that money back so that it does, in fact, go either to pay off 
the debt or to fund other government services.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I probably interrupted the gentleman's train 
of thought, but I just had to jump in on that very excellent point he 
was making.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, while we are there, let me mention one 
other area of cost that waste, fraud, and abuse causes. Every single 
time we have an incident of waste or fraud, the regulatory agencies in 
charge put on layer upon layer of additional regulatory burdens to try 
to prevent it. I am not criticizing them for that, but that is just the 
way the system works. They try to figure out, how did this person cheat 
us, how can we put some additional regulations in place so that we do 
not let that happen again.
  Every time that happens, legitimate providers of services for 
Medicare, as an example, or health care have to continue to comply with 
this increasing burden of regulations that we have put in place. This 
costs them money.
  In a business, when you have to comply with a regulation of some 
sort, you either have to hire somebody to help you with that, a direct 
cost, or you have to allocate some resource within your organization 
who was previously working to help you make money and help you provide 
services to clients to comply with that. So either one of those costs 
those providers within the system money, and it is a direct result of 
cheaters in our system.
  Now, I am not advocating that we do not go find the cheaters; let us 
go find them and point them out. But let us also help all of us 
understand that as people cheat, that increases government regulation; 
and all of us, particularly on this side of the aisle, campaign often 
on reducing government regulations, so there is a second cost that the 
cheaters put into the system.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I could interject one other 
thing at this point. We are about to run out of time, and I do not know 
if we have complimented the leader of this Special Order quite enough. 
She has been very generous in her remarks about us.
  Actually, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) has been 
quite a champion in the area, particularly, of credit card fraud within 
the Federal Government. I understand this amounts to almost $100 
million a year in lost taxpayers' money. The gentlewoman, I think, has 
introduced, along with the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), 
legislation to address this problem; is that not correct?
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Yes, that is correct. I thank the gentleman from 
Mississippi for bringing that point up, because we were concerned about 
the use of credit cards, primarily looking at what was taking place in 
DOD, and knowing that there was an opportunity there to rein that 
spending in.
  Last year, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson) and I 
worked with Senator Grassley, and we did introduce a piece of 
legislation that would bring that into line, because we feel like there 
is an opportunity to save about $100 million annually by putting some 
proper controls and working to be certain that there is not waste and 
that there is not fraud in the use of government credit cards by 
employees. That is just one of the many ways, just one of the small 
ways.
  As I said earlier, we can go about this one dollar at a time, because 
those dollars mount up to hundreds, to thousands, to millions, to 
billions of dollars. And over a period of 5 years or 10 years, which is 
really not that long a period of time, it is substantial savings for 
the American taxpayer as they are working to fund government.
  It is so important, I say to the gentleman, as he has pointed out, 
that government can do better and that we realize that and that we 
challenge our constituents to work with us on this.
  It is also important that we participate by being certain that we 
stop funding things that do not work. If it is not working, if it is a 
program that is not working or has outlived its usefulness or is 
duplicated in other ways, then we need to look for ways to be certain 
that we are not funding things that are not working.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I know also, I would say to the gentlewoman, 
that she finds as refreshing as I do the remarks of our new Member who 
came to us from a business background and who is determined to work 
with us on this type legislation, someone who knows of what he speaks 
when he says he has taken other people's money and had to invest it 
wisely and make sure that it was used efficiently.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a 
quick point, it is so refreshing to see members of the freshman class 
come in and join us on this issue. My freshman class made waste, fraud, 
and abuse its class project.
  The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), who was just here, was one 
of the founders of a group that we call the Washington Waste Watchers 
to draw attention to this subject. So we are so pleased, after having 
put a tremendous amount of work over the past couple of years on this.
  Also, the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Davis), who chairs the 
Committee on Government Reform, has put an incredible amount of time 
over the past 2 years with that committee, holding hearings and having 
reports, getting things on paper so that we are beginning to find out 
what is and is not working; who is and is not accountable for their 
money, what agencies are producing results, what agencies are not 
producing results. We can go back and look at the Treasury books from 
the year 2001 to see that the Federal Government cannot account for 
$17.3 billion. Now, to my constituents and for all of us, that is not 
acceptable.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield on that 
point, the Federal Government could not account for $17.3 billion, with 
a ``b''. That means that $17.3 billion is just gone and the Federal 
Government cannot say what happened to it. Can we imagine? But this 
comes not from some story in some newspaper of doubtful authenticity, 
this comes from a report of the Department of the Treasury, the 2001 
financial report of the United States Government.
  Mr. Speaker, $17.3 billion with a ``b'', and we do not know where it 
went.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, that is right. The Office of Management 
and Budget in their budget of the United States Government, fiscal year 
2003, people can go to page 48 in that report and they will see how the 
OMB shows us that 21 of 26 departments and major agencies received the 
lowest possible rating for their financial management, meaning that the 
auditors cannot even express an opinion on their financial statements. 
Our colleague from Texas, who is a CPA, understands exactly what that 
means. We had 21 of 26 departments and major agencies that got the 
lowest possible rating.
  Now, what we are saying, as the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. 
Wicker) said, government can do better, we can do better. The American 
people, as taxpayers, expect us to do better. It is our responsibility, 
being a good steward of those dollars, that we do a better job, that we 
require government to do a better job. That is the purpose that we are 
setting forth.
  I agree and I join each of the gentlemen who has spoken tonight in 
commending our President and our leadership in saying, the time has 
come to address this. We have to rein the spending in because we need 
to know what we are spending, where it is going, and what the American 
taxpayers' dollars are being used for.
  Mr. WICKER. Well, let me just say, and these will be my final remarks 
and then I will yield back to the two of my colleagues for whatever 
they might want to say; I just look forward to working with my three 
fellow Representatives who have spoken on this Special Order tonight, 
and with the President, to say that we can be more diligent in the way 
that we spend the taxpayers' money, we can be more efficient, and we 
can continue in our effort

[[Page H398]]

to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi 
for joining us tonight.
  I yield to my colleague from Texas for any final remarks that he may 
have.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the Congress should 
approach Federal budgeting in a more businesslike manner. I, too, do 
not understand how underperforming Federal agencies or programs can 
continue to receive funding year after year without being held to 
account. In the real world, a business owner who manages his or her own 
business this way would soon find themselves out of business. Instead, 
Washington seems to reward that behavior.
  Mr. Speaker, our President has proposed a budget that will serve as a 
good starting point for Members of this Congress as we begin to craft a 
budget that respects and honors the wishes of the hard-working American 
taxpayer. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in 
crafting solutions, and not just blind opposition, to wasteful programs 
that hamper our Federal Government.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for 
joining us this evening.
  Mr. Speaker, before I came to Congress, I had the opportunity to 
represent Tennessee's 23rd State senate district. While I was in that 
body, I had worked on government reform issues and came up with a plan 
that would have called for across-the-board spending cuts. I certainly 
believed that State agencies could get in there and find waste, fraud, 
and abuse within their operations, and they could cut it and better 
serve the taxpayers of my State.
  Of course, at the time that I came up with my plan, the 5 Percent 
Solution, it was criticized by so many as being too harsh. The word 
was, well, people will not accept that kind of accountability. A few 
years later, many of those reductions were actually put in place. And 
do my colleagues know what? Things started working a little bit better 
in Tennessee.
  Today, we see some of that same press in Tennessee calling the 
taxpayers and the President's plan, Congress' plan far too harsh. I 
read some of those headlines earlier. But I do not think that some of 
the media, the liberal media has been paying attention to what has been 
taking place in some of our States.
  According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, in 
fiscal year 2002, 26 States implemented across-the-board spending cuts, 
15 States downsized State government employment, and 13 States 
streamlined government programs. We hear all the time that our State 
governments are great laboratories for new programs and new projects 
and creative government solutions, and this should be a lesson to us 
here at the Federal level, because it is not impossible to root out 
waste, fraud, and abuse. It is our responsibility to do so.

                              {time}  2200

  Here are some of the headlines that we have found of what is going on 
in some of the States. In Alaska where Governor McCaskey proposed 
cutting 21 State programs and 200 jobs; in Colorado where the 
legislature passed an $809 million budget-balancing package which 
eliminated some 200 State employees.
  We are looking forward, Mr. Speaker, to working with the leadership 
in rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.

                          ____________________