[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 33 (Thursday, March 17, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H1682]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE NATIONAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk 
about the Republicans' budget that was just passed in this House a 
little while ago, H. Con. Res. 95. Principally I think it fails to 
address the crucial and central issue which this Congress should 
address, and that is fixing our national budget.
  Somebody in my area the other day asked me the question, what keeps 
me awake at night? And my answer was pretty simple. Being an investment 
banker by profession before I came to this House, I said our deficit 
and our debt.
  We have a serious problem, Mr. Speaker, our Treasury is over $7 
trillion in debt.

                              {time}  1715

  We continue to borrow every year under this administration at 
something over $500 billion a year. And how does this Congress react? 
We signed up for another credit card. Interest rates are low. We can 
afford it. And when we max out our new credit card, we will just go and 
get another credit card. Free money. That is what this Congress is 
doing.
  But even if the money is cheap, it is not free. And while it may be 
cheap now, at some point what went down must come up. Interest rates 
will rise. That is the history when you look at the markets. They 
always do.
  I wonder if the American public fully appreciates that this Congress 
and this President continue to borrow on their credit cards the way we 
do. Do they know, for example, that our deficits are being financed by 
the Chinese? As of last year, $1.9 trillion of our debt, or 40 percent 
of it, was owned by foreign investors. The Chinese own about $217 
billion of that, the Japanese cover about $668 billion, the oil-rich 
OPEC countries own about $48 billion, and the list goes on and on.
  So we keep cutting our taxes so we are not sending that money to 
Washington, D.C., but we keep spending as if we had that revenue, as 
long as our friends the Chinese and the Japanese and other foreign 
investors continue to prop up our debt. How long will that last?
  We need to protect our financial security. Carrying around this much 
debt is making us incredibly vulnerable. We are essentially being held 
hostage by our own financial obligations. As long as we continue down 
this road, we weaken our position as a world leader because our 
financial stability is in the hands of other nations.
  This is not just a national security problem. Running a big deficit 
and debt is also a problem for the economic health of this country. As 
a Nation, personal savings has dropped from almost 11 percent in 1984 
to about 1 percent in 2004. We are not saving.
  We are also weak in investment, despite historically low interest 
rates. In fact, if you look at this budget, you will see that we are 
spending about $1.5 billion a week in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
$1.5 billion a week. But we are cutting education, and we are cutting 
the health care system. We are cutting our national parks budget; we 
are cutting transportation. We are not investing and reinvesting in our 
water and sewage systems. All the investment that we need to be a 
productive country, we are not investing.
  Do you think the Chinese are investing $1.5 billion a week in Iraq in 
a war? No. They are building their water systems, they are educating 
their people, they are building their transportation systems, their 
telecommunications systems. They are investing. We are just spending.
  It is poor fiscal judgment; and this Congress, led by this side, is 
guilty of putting that on a credit card that all Americans will end up 
paying.
  My background is in finance. I used to do that. I used to finance for 
companies, for people. I used to tell them how to do things. I have 
never seen this kind of disregard, this structural problem that we are 
creating.
  So I hope, Mr. Speaker, that this Congress begins to make the tough 
choices, and that is the reason I opposed H. Con. Res. 95 today.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Price of Georgia). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts addressed the House. His remarks will 
appear hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.)

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