[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 163 (Saturday, December 17, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H12159-H12165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BLUE DOG COALITION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dent). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening as a member 
of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 37 fiscally 
conservative Democrats that are concerned about our Nation and its 
future due to the rising cost of our debt, our deficit. We believe it 
is time to restore some common sense in fiscal discipline to our 
Nation's government.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand here today on the floor of the United States 
House of Representatives as a voice for the people of Arkansas' Fourth 
Congressional District.
  It is one thing for all of us to have the title U.S. Representative, 
but it is another thing to be one, and I believe it is important that 
we go back to our respective districts; I go home every weekend to 
places like Hot Springs and Texarkana and Pine Bluff and El Dorado and 
Mena and Hope and Arkandelphia, and throughout the 29 counties and 150 
towns that I so proudly represent, and listen to the people. And then I 
do my best to bring their voice back here to the floor of the United 
States House of Representatives.
  The people are telling me that it is time that our Nation get its 
fiscal house in order and stop this reckless spending that has resulted 
in the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history for a fifth year in 
a row and has resulted in a debt that totals $8.137 trillion. That is 
$8 trillion, 137 billion and some change.
  In fact, for every man, woman, and child in this country, if we all 
had to get our checkbooks out tonight and retire this debt, everybody, 
including the children, the babies being born today, would have to 
write a check for some $27,000.
  You hear a lot of talk these days about this being a Democratic idea 
or this being a Republican idea. And, Mr. Speaker, I am here to tell 
you that I believe the people in this country like me are sick and 
tired of all the partisan bickering that goes on at our Nation's 
Capital.
  It should not matter if it is a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. 
In fact, the American people are concerned not about petty partisan 
politics, but they are concerned about paying for the high cost of 
their children's college education, the skyrocketing cost of health 
care and how to pay for prescription drugs. They are concerned about 
their retirement security, about privatizing Social Security, Medicare 
and Medicaid, skyrocketing natural gas and energy prices, the war in 
Iraq and thousands of Katrina victims who nearly 4 months after the 
devastating hurricane still today remain homeless.
  Let me tell you about my America. My congressional district back home 
in Arkansas ranks 415 out of 435 among congressional districts 
throughout the country in average income per household. Half the 
children in Arkansas are on Medicaid. Eight out of ten seniors in 
nursing homes are on Medicaid. One in five people in my home State of 
Arkansas are on Medicaid. Yet, around 1 o'clock in the morning on 
November 18, Congress nearly passed the so-called Deficit Reduction Act 
that would directly and adversely impact the poor, the disabled, the 
elderly. This bill mandates nearly $50 billion in spending cuts, 
including $11.4 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the only health insurance 
plan for the poor, the disabled, the elderly; $14.3 billion in cuts to 
Federal student aid programs; over $3 billion in cuts to our farm 
families; and over $700 million in cuts to food stamps. Then the 
Republican leadership turns around and passes $56 billion worth of tax 
cuts, $50 billion in spending cuts, $56 billion in tax cuts. Only in 
Washington do you add $6 billion to the Nation's debt and call it the 
Deficit Reduction Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I will never stop fighting for the conservative 
smalltown values that I was raised on and still believe in, and I 
cannot help but reflect on one of the memory verses that I learned 
growing up at Midway United Methodist Church just outside Prescott, 
Arkansas. It is from Matthew 25:40, and it goes like this: I tell you 
the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of 
mine, you did for me.
  Mr. Speaker, the idea of cutting programs that would negatively 
impact the poorest among us does not resonate with the principles on 
which this country was founded. These budget cuts are indicative of 
misguided priorities and do not reflect the values I learned growing up 
in places like Emmet, Prescott and Hope, Arkansas.
  As members of the Blue Dog Coalition, we believe we have the answer 
to this massive debt, this ongoing deficit, and we believe we can get 
it under control without harming and cutting programs for the poorest 
among us. It is called the Blue Dog 12-Point Plan. It is 12 simple 
points, quite frankly, that, if implemented, would truly restore some 
fiscal discipline and common sense to our Nation's government. This 
evening, Mr. Speaker, we plan to spend the remaining part of this hour 
going over these 12 points. So many people criticize what is going on, 
but they do not offer up a solution, and what we are trying to do as 
members of the Blue Dog Coalition is offer up an alternative, offer up 
a solution to this massive debt and deficit, this budget problem our 
Nation has today.
  With me to help do that I am real proud to have John Tanner, one of 
the founding members of the Blue Dog Coalition from the State of 
Tennessee; Dennis Cardoza, one of the co-chairs of the Blue Dog 
Coalition from California; and Allen Boyd from Florida, one of the 
founding members, long-time members, former chairman of the Blue Dog 
Coalition. So we come to you this evening from all across America, from 
Arkansas and Tennessee and California and Florida, to offer up what we 
believe are commonsense ideas to truly try to get this Nation's fiscal 
house back in order. As 37 members of Congress, we have come together, 
and we have written this 12-point reform, and we are encouraging 
Democrats and Republicans to join us as we try to get this Nation back 
on track.

                              {time}  2200

  And the reason this is so important and why this should matter to 
everybody across our land, $8.137 trillion in debt. That is very 
important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is our Nation 
today. The first $500 million we collect every day in taxes from 
taxpayers does not go to better roads, better education, better health 
care. It simply goes to pay interest, to pay interest on the national 
debt.
  It is not getting any better. In fact, our Nation is borrowing 
another $907 million every 24 hours. As Members of the Blue Dog 
Coalition, we want to fix this, and we can do it with our 12-point 
plan.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlemen from Florida (Mr. Boyd).
  Mr. BOYD. Madam speaker, I want to thank my friend from Arkansas for 
organizing this hour to give the Blue Dogs a chance to talk to the 
Nation about our 12-point plan. I came here 9 years ago and have been a 
part of the Blue Dog Coalition since that time and am real proud of the 
work that they do in trying to bring a message to this Congress and to 
the country that fiscal responsibility and fiscal discipline does 
matter.
  Now, as our friend from Arkansas, Congressman Ross, said earlier, he 
grew up in a small town in Arkansas. I

[[Page H12160]]

grew up in a small rural community in North Florida just right on the 
Georgia border, a little community, 3,000 people or so, grew up on a 
farm. My wife and I still live today on that farm.
  I spent all of my adult life as a business person, and, Madam 
Speaker, one of the things that I learned a long time ago was the 
lesson that all of our business people out there understand, our 
government leaders and even those who are not running a business, but 
are running households, that fiscal responsibility does matter.
  We always have to be conscious of our fiscal condition no matter what 
kind of operation we are running. And indeed, this U.S. Congress and 
the administration are running the largest business, almost a $2.5 
trillion business. That is about the budget, about the average annual 
U.S. Government budget now. And we are running about a $350 billion 
annual deficit.
  Now, Madam Speaker, I got into politics back about 17 years ago, and 
one of the reasons that I chose to run for public office was because I 
was concerned about some of our governments, State and particularly 
Federal governments, spending more money as a matter of practice than 
they took in on an annual basis. And so I got into the State 
legislature, and I watched the Federal Government build annual spending 
deficits of almost $300 billion.
  I think the number in 1992 was about $290 billion, at which point the 
American people finally said this is not right, we ought to do 
something about this. Pursuant to that 1992 Presidential election, the 
United States Government, under a Democratic President and a 
Republican-run Congress, later on House and Senate after 1994, worked 
really hard on eliminating that Federal annual deficit. And it went 
from $290 billion. It was not easy. A lot of sacrifice. A lot of pain. 
A lot of programs cut, and it was necessary, led by, at that time, 
President Clinton.
  We moved from in 1992 a $290 billion annual deficit, and in a short 8 
years later, we actually had an annual surplus. $290 billion annual 
deficit in 1992. In 2000 we had an annual surplus; our U.S. Government 
budget was right.
  What has happened since then? We have gone from an annual surplus and 
a $5.6 trillion debt in 2001, when we had the last one, this 
administration came into office, to today where we have about a $350 
billion annual deficit.
  As you see there on the chart, a debt amassed at over $8.1 trillion 
dollars, $27,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. You 
know, ladies and gentlemen, Madam Speaker, we know what we have to do 
to eliminate this deficit and start reducing this debt.
  We cannot do it all at once. It takes a lot of hard work. We want to 
use the model that President Clinton and the Republican-led Congress in 
1997 put together.
  And that is what the Blue Dogs are trying to convince the leaders of 
the Congress and the administration today, is that it has to come 
together in a bipartisan way. We have to work together. We cannot 
continue to try to move policies strictly on a polarized and partisan 
basis.
  I am real honored to be here tonight. Again, I thank the gentleman 
from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) for putting this together. But I believe that 
the most important thing we can do in that 12-step plan is to put a 
provision in our Constitution that requires us to balance our budget.
  Otherwise, sometimes maybe the Congress, the administration, do not 
have the will to do it. So that is one of the points that we should be 
talking about tonight, and that is a constitutional requirement for a 
balanced budget. We had many votes on that prior to 2001, prior to the 
current administration coming in to office. We had many votes on the 
House floor to put in the Constitution a balanced budget.
  But I do not think we have had any since 2001. So I look forward to 
the discussion tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
  Mr. ROSS. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Boyd), and I would encourage the gentleman to stay with us for the 
remainder of this hour. You helped write these 12 points. You have got 
a lot of expertise on ways that our Nation can once again return to a 
balanced budget.
  And I hope you will be able to stay with us as we go through the 12 
points. It is hard to believe now that from 1998 through 2001 this 
Nation had a balanced budget, because for the fifth year in a row, we 
have got the largest budget deficit ever, ever in our Nation's history. 
Again, our debt is $8.137 trillion.
  And that is why, as Members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog 
Coalition, we are here to address this issue that is critical to our 
Nation, to our children, to our grandchildren, and certainly to their 
future.
  At this time, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from California, 
the cochair of the Blue Dog Coalition, Mr. Cardoza.
  Mr. CARDOZA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. 
Ross) for organizing this on behalf of the Blue Dog Coalition. It is 
truly an honor to be one of the cochairs of the Blue Dogs and to serve 
on that illustrious body with you.
  I want to start off tonight talking about not our priorities, but 
what I heard one of our respected colleagues talk about just before we 
went on. Mr. Paul talked about how he thinks that we are going in the 
wrong direction in the country.
  I did not hear his whole presentation, but I thought it was an 
interesting indictment of his own side of the aisle, because he felt 
that we had not done the right thing by balancing the budget and going 
along. He does not like the direction of where we are going. I thought 
he spoke a lot of truth tonight. I just wanted to highlight that and 
say, as Mr. Boyd did previously, that we really are about trying to 
figure out bipartisan solutions to making a new direction for our 
country and a better direction, where we pay as we go, where we do 
not build up these huge debts, and do not leave a huge legacy of debt 
to our children.

  Two weeks ago on this floor, you and I had a colloquy with regard to 
the debt and the priorities of our country. Two weeks ago we talked 
about a reconciliation bill that actually, instead of reducing the 
national debt, increased the national debt by $20 billion; but that is 
not even necessarily the worst part of this.
  The worst part of it is when we are making the debt worse by what the 
Republican leadership is proposing, and we do not have the right 
priorities, the right family values, the right values for our Nation in 
the reconciliation package.
  In fact, the Republican reconciliation package cuts out $600 million 
for foster children, orphans, and abused children. They are taken out 
of their families and put in homes, cuts of $600 million. We never have 
had more abused and orphaned children in this entire country. There are 
over half a million children in our country that are not living with 
their parents. They have been taken out of their parents' home either 
because their parents have gotten into trouble, cannot take care of 
them any longer, or have abused them. And they are living with someone 
else.
  We are cutting the funds to provide programs for those children when 
we are giving tax cuts, or we are proposing tax cuts, we are not doing 
it, it is the other side of the aisle, tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 
percent of Americans, people who make over $1 million a year.
  Now, I do not believe in class warfare. I believe in a society in 
America where we can raise everyone's ship, and I hope those orphans 
some day make $1 million a year. But we are not going to do it without 
education, without good homes for these children, without providing a 
way and a path for them to do better.
  And as you said last time we spoke about this, Mr. Ross, I know a 
little bit about this, because I have two wonderful children, Joey and 
Elaina, who my wife and I adopted out of foster care. They are 
wonderful children. They have done very well in our home. But it is 
because we gave them a chance. And the reality is too many children in 
America are not going to get a chance if the Republican priorities of 
reconciliation are left to stand.
  And I have got to ask a simple question tonight. Out of a $2 trillion 
budget, is it not possible for the Republicans to find a better place 
to cut than orphans and abused children right before Christmas? I have 
to ask the question: Is it not possible to find a place better to cut?
  When I told my children that I adopted, my wife and I adopted, about 
these cuts, they said, Daddy, go back up

[[Page H12161]]

there and tell them not to do that. That is not the right thing. And if 
my children, who are 11 and 8, 12 and 8, I will get in trouble if I do 
not correct that because they are watching tonight, if they know at 
that age that there is a better place to cut, then certainly the adults 
in this Chamber should know there is a better place to cut than those 
folks.
  I just have to say in this Christmas season, I certainly hope the 
ghost of Christmas past does not come and visit those Members who vote 
for this reconciliation package with that particular cut in it. You 
know, we can do better. We can have a new vision for America where we 
build up our educational system, where we take care of those who are 
most in need amongst us, and where we balance the Federal budget.
  It is called the Blue Dog 12-step plan. I am just so proud to have 
been here with you tonight, my colleagues here, Mr. Ross from Arkansas, 
Mr. Tanner from Tennessee, and Mr. Boyd from Florida. They are really 
the backbone of our organization. Mr. Boyd and Mr. Tanner have been 
leading this charge for a number of years.
  I am just so proud to be in their company. I think if we get the 
chance, we will provide a better and more direct path for America. 
Thank you, Mr. Ross, once again for leading this effort tonight. I am 
proud to be with you.
  I have one last thing to say. There was a fellow from your district 
who became President, a man from Hope, Arkansas. When he left office, 
it was projected that we were going to have a $5.4 trillion surplus. 
And, instead, the current leadership has giving us an $8 trillion 
deficit.
  That is a far cry from having a surplus and being on good financial 
footing. I just hope that you can help us lead the Nation, Mr. Ross, 
from your little community of Hope, Arkansas, into a better path. Thank 
you for doing this tonight.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from California 
for his comments.
  Can the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza) verify this for me 
now? We talked about the cuts to Medicaid, $11.4 billion; the cuts to 
Federal student aid, $14.3 billion; $3 billion in cuts to our farm 
families, commodities, conservation, many other agriculture programs; 
$700 million in cuts to food stamps.
  But you are saying there are also cuts to orphans and foster care?
  Mr. CARDOZA. That is exactly right.
  Mr. ROSS. How much were these cuts?
  Mr. CARDOZA. $600 million.
  Mr. ROSS. Now, these $50 billion in cuts, including the $600 million 
in cuts to orphans and foster care, went to help pay for a $56 billion 
tax cut, which mostly benefited those earning over $400,000 a year, 50 
percent of which went to those earning over $1 million a year; is this 
correct?
  Mr. CARDOZA. That is exactly right.
  Mr. ROSS. I just wanted to confirm that with you.
  Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, it seems like our country, or at least the 
Republican leadership and the leadership in the Senate and the White 
House, has totally turned what our priorities should be as a Nation on 
its ear. We are not balancing the budget. That is the first mistake. 
But the second mistake is we are cutting education. We are cutting 
those who are most vulnerable and who could build this country into 
something better. And it just seems to me that if we would just invest 
in education, invest in the future of America, try to make sure that 
these young kids who go into foster care do not go into gangs; it costs 
us over $40,000 a year to incarcerate someone who goes astray, and so 
many foster kids go astray when they are put into so many different 
homes. The average number of homes that most foster kids go to is 12. I 
have talked to kids who have been in 24 different homes. They are 
placed, placed, placed because we do not have money in the system and 
people drop out, and it is no way to live one's live. Twenty-four 
homes.
  One young lady was a valedictorian in her class. I do not know how 
she did it, but she managed to break out of that system. She was in 24 
different foster homes over her period of time.
  We can do better, Mr. Speaker. And I know Mr. Ross is for that, and I 
thank him for highlighting that fact.
  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am certainly supportive 
of tax cuts, targeted tax cuts that help working families. But when we 
are borrowing money from foreigners, when we are borrowing money to 
fund a tax cut, that is nothing more than a tax increase on our 
children and grandchildren because they have got to pay that money 
back. And no one understands this issue any better than one of the 
founders of the Blue Dog Coalition, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Tanner).
  I will yield to the gentleman from Tennessee, and following the 
gentleman's remarks, we will go through these 12 points one by one 
until we run out of time this evening.
  And for folks who happen to be seeing this this evening, do not be 
confused. This is not recorded. This is live. Congress is meeting on a 
Saturday night here in our Nation's Capital. And we are here on the 
floor to try to hold this government responsible and accountable and 
restore some common sense and fiscal discipline to our Nation's 
Government because this debt is out of control.
  And with that, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Ross for yielding to me. And I 
am pleased to be with him here tonight and with Allen Boyd and Dennis 
Cardoza.
  We all talked a little bit about our small town origins. I am from a 
small town in Tennessee. And I tell people, when they ask me where I am 
from, I say, well, let me put it like this: In the town I live in, you 
do not need a blinker signal on your car because the guy behind you 
knows where you are going to turn off.
  So I think probably Prescott, Arkansas; Monticello, Florida; and 
Dennis lives out in California, but there are some small towns out 
there as well. I say that only to highlight the fact that a lot of the 
values that we hold dear in this country have been characterized from 
time to time as small-town values, where people know each other, where 
families live and so forth. And I think the Blue Dog Coalition reflects 
a lot of that commonsense philosophy. And we come here to Washington 
and we band together as the Blue Dog Democrats and try, as best we can, 
to project this message, this message of values, of small-town 
camaraderie and all the rest. And I know we are going to get to the 12-
point plan, but I want to say just a couple of things very quickly.
  It is very hard for me, and I know it is very hard for people who are 
listening to this discussion to relate to $8-plus trillion. I mean, how 
much is that? It is mind boggling. And to give some idea how much it 
is, if one took $1,000 bills and just stacked them like that, one after 
another, $1 million would be about 1 foot high. That is 1,000 $1,000 
bills. One billion dollars would be as high as the Empire State 
Building. And $1 trillion would be 1,000 times as high as the Empire 
State Building in New York City. That is how much money we are talking 
about.
  And what has happened here in the last 4 or 5 years is we had the 
debt where it was static, it was not growing. As a matter of fact, we 
were actually paying some down. And as the economy grows and the debt 
stays static, it becomes much less of a drag on our economy. But we did 
not stay on that course, and in 2001, we embarked on an entirely 
different course, a financial course here, and so what has happened is 
the debt ceiling has been raised, the amount of money this government 
can borrow, almost $3 trillion, and we have actually borrowed in hard 
money over $1.3 trillion in a matter of about 48 months.
  And what does this mean? If that was not bad enough, borrowing $1.3 
trillion, the interest rate that we now are having to pay every year at 
4 percent on just the money we borrowed in the last 48 months is some 
$50 billion a year.
  If that was not bad enough, what is worse is 85 percent of this money 
that we borrowed in the last 48 months, 85 percent of it has been from 
foreign interest. So not only are we mortgaging our country, but we are 
mortgaging it to people who do not see the world as we do.
  Primarily, the biggest gainer of the debt that we owe is China. Now, 
I say

[[Page H12162]]

that there are two problems here. One is the financial vulnerability 
that this country now has to people who do not see the world as we see 
it. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that China has 
designs on taking Taiwan. The President said we will defend Taiwan. If 
China moved on Taiwan and we said, You cannot do that, it is not 
fantasy to think that China would not tell us to stay out of it, U.S., 
or we are going to roll the value of the dollar, and we can do it. We 
can make your interest rates go up. We can wreck havoc on your markets 
if we want to because we have your debt. And as my dad told me one 
time, he said it is easier to foreclose on a man's house than it is to 
shoot your way in the front door. And that is what we are talking 
about, a financial vulnerability of this country that is being created, 
as we speak here tonight, by the deliberate, intentional financial 
policy of this country as passed by this Congress and endorsed by the 
administration. A financial vulnerability that is every bit a national 
security matter. That is the first thing.

  The second thing is when I was talking about this $50 billion, we are 
eroding the tax base in this country by transferring moneys that come 
here that people pay taxes, hard-earned taxes; we are not spending it 
on human capital, investment in human capital in this country, and 
infrastructure, which they are paying their taxes for. We are 
transferring those taxes and that sort of spending to interest for 
which we get nothing. And 85 percent of the interest checks that we are 
writing now that we borrowed in the last 48 months have not even stayed 
in this country.
  Human capital, investment in human capital, exactly what do I mean by 
that? I mean basically human beings, citizens of this country, who must 
be educated and healthy for this country to be strong, free and 
competitive in an increasingly globalized world marketplace. There has 
never been in all of recorded history a country that was strong and 
free that had a population that was uneducated and unhealthy. It has 
never existed. It never will. And by transferring the tax base that 
people send the money to Washington for interest rather than education 
and health care, we are absolutely forfeiting the people's right to 
have a country and a government that is interested in their welfare.
  The second thing is infrastructure. We have a lot of crumbling 
infrastructure in this country. We are losing the ability to invest in 
that, and if you do not think that that is important, go to some 
country that has no infrastructure and see how many people are doing 
well. Nobody is.
  And let me close with this: The Blue Dogs have endorsed a bill that 
we drafted earlier this year that basically does away with partisan 
political redistricting of the congressional seats. We did a lot of 
work on it. We have briefed it through all of the legal pitfalls, and 
the Blue Dogs have endorsed this bill. And there was an article in the 
Wall Street Journal today, this morning, talking about it. What we are 
seeing in this country is an increasingly polarized House of 
Representatives that is rendering itself, in the opinion of the 
moderates here, the people who want to work across the aisle, it is 
rendering it impossible for this House of Representatives to address 
the real problems of the country because of this blind allegiance to 
party first and constituents second. We have seen just egregious 
examples of the abuse of that power by the professional politicians.
  I am under no illusion. We are asking people to give up a lot of 
power because they really carve their own districts out now with 
computers and so forth. And we are asking them to give up a lot of 
power. But our country is losing the middle, and the middle is where 
the problems are solved, politically speaking, in our country. And I 
wish everybody would take a very serious look at this because if we can 
take it out of the hands of professional politicians and give the voice 
back to the people, I think, one, we will be able to respond better. 
But, secondly, if our House of Representatives becomes so polarized and 
so gerrymandered by the process that we are living under now that 
people at the ballot box cannot change the direction of the country 
when they want it to change, the majority want it to change, and they 
cannot at the ballot box, we will either wind up with a dictatorship or 
a revolt. I really believe it is that serious. So I wanted to mention 
that in passing. It is not one of our 12 points, but it certainly is 
part of our Blue Dog philosophy because the Blue Dogs have endorsed it, 
and I appreciate that very much.
  So, again, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and we will go 
through the 12-point plan.
  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee 
for having founded the Blue Dog Coalition.
  In the rest of this Special Order, we plan to go through, beginning 
right now, all 12 points of the Blue Dog plan. And as the gentleman 
from Tennessee mentioned, he talked about the problems with the 
professional politicians and a lot of the issues we face. And those of 
us who wrote these 12 points, I know I am a small business owner back 
home in Prescott; Mr. Tanner from Tennessee is a small businessman; Mr. 
Cardoza from California is a small business owner; and Mr. Boyd was a 
small business owner, a veteran and a farmer.
  Mr. TANNER. We all would like to be big business owners someday, but 
we are still small business owners.
  Mr. ROSS. Number one, and it is kind of like David Letterman's top 
10. This is the top 12, and I do not know if it is going to be as good 
as Letterman's top 10 or not, but it is very important.
  Point number one to the 12-point reform plan is: Require a balanced 
budget. And I think we all get that one. I mean, I was in the State 
senate for 10 years. Forty-nine States, including my home State of 
Arkansas, must live within its means. They constitutionally require a 
balanced budget. I know at the Ross home in Prescott, Arkansas, we sit 
around the kitchen table and we have to have a balanced budget. At the 
small town family pharmacy my wife and I own, we have to have a 
balanced budget. It should not be asking too much to ask this Congress 
and this government to also tighten its belt and learn to live within 
its means. And that is what we mean when we talk about requiring a 
balanced budget.

                              {time}  2230

  The second point that I think is very important also, do not let 
Congress buy on credit. Now, back when Congress had a balanced budget 
in the Clinton administration from 1998 to 2001, they had a thing in 
the House called PAYGO rules, pay-as-you-go basically is what it meant, 
meaning if you are going to cut taxes, you got to cut spending, and if 
you are going to fund a new program, you got to cut another program. 
You have got to make it fit within your budget, like most of us do in 
our families at home and with our businesses and certainly like 49 
States in this country are required to do. That, I believe, is 
something we must do in this House Chamber, is restore the pay-as-you-
go rules.
  The third point, I will yield to the gentleman from Florida. Anytime 
you all want to jump in on any of these points, please feel free to do 
so.
  Mr. BOYD. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. Some of us were here 
when we put the 1997 Balanced Budget Act in place. I think you heard 
Mr. Tanner and the others talk about the economic model. You heard them 
talk about human capital, health for our citizens, and also education 
for our citizens.
  The economic model that the U.S. has is the greatest experiment in 
democracy ever in the history of mankind. We are the richest nation in 
the history of the Earth. I tell my constituents that we have 5 percent 
of the world's population and control 25 percent of the world's wealth.
  There is an underlying model, an infrastructure, human capital that 
Representative Tanner talked about. We have to get back to this notion 
of fiscal responsibility and make sure that economic model works. It 
does not work if we got to go into the markets every year and borrow 
$350 billion or $400 billion or $500 million to run the government. You 
are borrowing much of that from overseas so it will not work. What do 
we do to get back to a balanced budget and to reduce the deficit 
spending?
  One of the really key things is spending caps, and that is the third 
point of our 12 point plan. Put a lid on spending. We know that you 
cannot fix it all in one year, but you put in a long-term

[[Page H12163]]

plan, a long-term budget. Most of our small business people are used to 
doing that, a 5 or 3 or 10 year budget, or whatever it might be. That 
is what we did in 1997, and you cap your spending at certain levels and 
live within that, and then economically you can grow your revenue to a 
point where you get back into a balanced situation.
  Let me just give you one example of what happened when we did this 
earlier during the nineties. The non-discretionary defense spending 
increases were 2.5 percent, the annual increase, during the Clinton 
years. During the nineties, 2.5 percent, non-defense, discretionary 
spending.
  Under this administration they have been between 8 and 9 percent. We 
have an annual average growth in government spending between 2001 and 
2003 of 16 percent. No wonder we have $350 billion annual deficits. We 
have to get a handle on that spending.
  So that is point number three.
  Mr. ROSS. Number one, require a balanced budget; number two, do not 
let Congress buy on credit; number three, put a lid on spending.
  Number four is something that I know I have heard the gentleman from 
Tennessee talk about quite often, and that is require agencies to put 
their fiscal houses in order. Require agencies to put their fiscal 
houses in order. By that we are talking about the fact that some of our 
Federal agencies, they have a problem keeping books. And with that, I 
yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.
  Mr. TANNER. Thank you, Mr. Ross.
  The Government Accountability Office in a report this year revealed 
16 of 23 major Federal agencies cannot produce a simple audit. In other 
words, they cannot tell the American people and the Congress what they 
did with the money that was appropriated to them for the purposes 
provided in the bill.
  Now, it is unbelievable to imagine that going on in your business. If 
you went to your comptroller and said here is an expenditure of 
$10,000, what happened to it, and the guy said I do not know, I cannot 
put my finger on that, nobody, no business person in this country would 
tolerate that, nor should they. Yet 16 of 23 Federal agencies cannot do 
that.
  In our plan, in this plan, if they cannot, we do it very simple: They 
do not get the money next year. It is straightforward, it is common-
sensical. People understand it. And, by gosh, when the Congress 
appropriates money to the administration, whatever administration it 
may be, and they cannot tell us what they did with it, then they ought 
not to get it next year.
  I will tell you one other thing. Not only do we withhold money under 
our plan, which makes perfectly good sense, but there ought to be some 
accountability. What we have seen is I think a derivative of the 
gerrymandered districts that come here in this party allegiance first 
and the country second.
  We now have a one-party government here in Washington. The 
Republicans have the White House, Senate and House. The people elected 
them. But what you have as a by-product of that is a compliant 
Congress, a friendly administration. And this Congress has totally 
abdicated its oversight of the Federal executive branch because they do 
not even ask them what they did with the money. They do not even have 
hearings and say what happened to the money we appropriated to you last 
year? If they did have a hearing, the administration could not tell 
them, or could not tell us, the American people.
  So you have a bad by-product of one-party government here with a 
compliant Congress, a friendly administration, nobody wanting to 
embarrass each other. So, consequently, we have got a financial house 
that is not only not in order, but running amuck.
  Mr. ROSS. Number four, require agencies to put their fiscal houses in 
order. Again, 16 of 23 major Federal agencies cannot issue a simple 
audit of their books. The Federal Government cannot account for $24.5 
billion it spent in 2003. The Blue Dogs propose a solution, to put a 
budget freeze for any Federal agency that cannot properly balance its 
books.
  You are talking about waste. You are talking about a government 
agency that cannot get it together. If the gentleman will pause with me 
for just a second here, I want to point out something.
  You know, all of us all across America, our hearts went out for the 
people when the hurricanes hit in places like Louisiana and Mississippi 
and I know the gentleman from Florida has experienced this in the past 
as well.
  The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, has purchased over 
20,000 manufactured homes, they are 14 feet wide, 60 foot long. You can 
see some of them right here.
  For some reason, they are not getting them, FEMA is not getting these 
homes to the people who need them, the people who lost their home and 
everything that they owned. In fact, I was with Congressman Gene Taylor 
from Mississippi earlier tonight, and my heart goes out to him and his 
family. He has done all he knows how to do to help his constituents 
while also trying to rebuild his life. He even lost his own home in 
that horrible tragedy in August with Hurricane Katrina. But he was 
telling me tonight, I believe he is like living with his brother or 
something, but he was telling me there are people still living in 
tents, people living in small campers, people that do not have homes, 
people living in hotel rooms.
  Yet FEMA has now moved 5,000 brand new unoccupied manufactured homes 
to an old Army World War II airport at Hope, Arkansas. They just showed 
up one day and told the mayor they wanted to give him $25,000 a month 
for the next two years to use it as a ``staging area,'' and then they 
have since delivered somewhere close to 5,000 homes. FEMA has told the 
mayor they may have as many as 12,000 homes. Yet these homes are not 
getting to the people. These are not even at the Hope airport.
  They are running these homes down the interstate at well above the 
speed limit, I know, because they passed me before, with a sign they 
usually put right here on the back, a banner, that says ``urgent FEMA 
delivery.'' I guess urgent for what? To get to a cow pasture in Hope, 
Arkansas, 450 miles from where they are needed?
  If one shingle blows off in transit, they will not accept it at the 
FEMA designated staging area they opened down at Hope. So they have 
come back to Prescott, which is where I now live, a town of about 3,500 
people, and they are renting this cow pasture. They did no site 
preparation. When we have a good rain these things are going to sink to 
the axle.
  We have over 200 of them in Prescott. They filled up the pasture in 
Prescott now. There is a story from the Arkadelphia Siftings Herald on 
December 16, that was yesterday, they have now got 200 of them stacked 
up at truck stops in Gurdon, and I suspect that the folks in 
Arkadelphia in the next day or two are going to start seeing them 
there.
  So my point, Madam Speaker, is this: To the acting director of FEMA, 
why cannot we get some 5,000 homes that FEMA has purchased, why cannot 
we get them moved from Hope and Prescott, Arkansas, 450 miles south to 
where they need them, where people tonight are going to bed in camper 
trailers and in tents? This is a good example of what we are talking 
about when we talk about wasteful spending and agencies that cannot get 
their act together.
  At this time for point number five I recognize the gentleman from 
California, Mr. Cardoza.
  Mr. CARDOZA. Thank you, Mr. Ross. You know, what you just spoke about 
is a matter of priorities. It is what I spoke about earlier when I was 
talking about the foster care system and was there not a better place 
to cut.
  Number five on our planks of the 12 step program for Blue Dog fiscal 
responsibility is make Congress tell the taxpayers how they are 
spending our money. The American people want to know that their tax 
dollars are being spent on our national priorities.
  I got to tell you, if you ask the folks around the country what our 
national priorities are, they are going to tell us they want to get 
those folks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama back on their feet. 
That is a priority. Education is a priority. Fighting the war effort is 
a priority.
  But what happens here in Congress is we pass these bills on voice 
votes. And today, just today in this House, on a voice vote they passed 
a continuing resolution for 30 days, until December 31, well, two 
weeks. And we are spending billions and billions of dollars on a

[[Page H12164]]

voice vote. I got to tell you, I know that if the American people knew 
all the money that is being spent in that continuing resolution, they 
would not be happy about it.
  So the Blue Dogs have decided that we need to tell the American 
people what the priorities are. We need to tell the American people 
what we are spending their money on. We have proposed that no bill 
should pass Congress above the threshold of $50 million, which is a 
significant amount of money in anybody's book, without a vote of 
Congress.
  We need to tell the American people where we are spending their 
money. If we are going to spend billions, we have to take a vote. Today 
we should have had a vote. It should not have been a voice vote, just 
agreed upon. We should have had a vote on that continuing resolution.
  Mr. ROSS. Where I come from, most people think we ought to have a 
vote if we are spending a dollar. We cannot even get the leadership 
here to give us a vote when we spend $50 million. It is time for that 
to change.
  I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. BOYD. I thank the gentleman from Arkansas. There are several 
other points. One is something that I think most of us understand. Set 
aside a rainy day fund. You know, I am sure Mr. Ross, Mr. Cardoza, 
Madam Speaker, I am sure you have rainy day funds in your businesses or 
even in your own personal home budgets. Most people understand that. We 
are not always able to have as big a rainy day fund as we want, and 
sometimes we have to spend our fund, but, if we do, we try to build it 
back up.
  Congress never set aside a rainy day fund. That is one of the things 
we want to get Congress to do. That is part of our 12 point plan.
  If I can, Mr. Ross, I will go on to number seven, and that is one 
that really bugs me a lot. When you move from a $5.6 trillion debt in 
2001 when this administration came into office to a $8.137 trillion 
debt, that is $2.5 trillion of additional money that Congress had to 
borrow on behalf of the American people to pay our bills. That has to 
be authorized in statute. That has to be authorized. The Treasury 
cannot just go and borrow the money without the U.S. Congress 
authorizing it and the President signing it into law.
  We have gotten into a bad habit around here in the last few years of 
raising that debt limit without a separate vote. You know, from time to 
time our listeners, our constituent, have to go and borrow money. Most 
of the time when they have to borrow money, they have to get a 
corporate resolution, some sort of authorization to go borrow that 
money. They have to have a meeting, have to have a vote of the board.
  Mr. CARDOZA. You have to go see your banker and justify it.
  Mr. BOYD. Guess what? Here, we stick it into some other bill that has 
to be passed, or some self-executing rule or something like that, and 
never have a vote on the debt limit increase.

                              {time}  2245

  I think that is the seventh point of our 12-point plan.
  Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from Florida for sharing the issue of 
the debt limit with us. He is right, and that is why it is one of the 
12 points. We should have a vote any time we are going to raise the 
debt limit. I mean, the debt limit today is currently at $8.184 
trillion, so it will not be long before we raise it again. This number 
right here is increasing to the tune of about $41 million an hour. In 
other words, in the time we have been speaking here on the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives this evening, the national debt 
has increased by about $41 million because of this year's deficit. So 
it will not be long before we will be raising the debt limit here in 
the Congress. And unless we are able to get them to start allowing us 
to have a vote on it, they will just put it in some other bill and try 
to hide it from the public. We believe that is wrong, and we want to 
put a stop to that.
  Number eight, justify spending for pet projects. I think that pretty 
much speaks for itself. We always from time to time pick up the paper 
and read about some outrageous project that is being funded with 
Federal funds. There are a lot of good projects that are funded across 
this Nation, but we are saying that you should have to justify a 
project. You should not get a project because of who you are. You ought 
to have to justify a project for your district.
  Mr. BOYD. It is the American people's tax money, and we should 
justify if we are going to spend it.
  Mr. ROSS. If we are going to spend the tax money, the people need a 
voice in it and we need to make sure that money is going to benefit 
them to create jobs, economic opportunities; and that is what we are 
trying to do here, and that is why we say justify spending for pet 
projects.
  Number nine, ensure that Congress reads the bills it is voting on. 
That seems quite silly, but the reality is that many times they will 
bring bills to the floor of the House that are thousands of pages, 
thousands of pages thick and give us less than a day or less than an 
hour, in fact, at times, to actually read the bill we are voting on.
  Our point is this, what we are proposing is a minimum of 3 days to 
have the final text of legislation made available before a vote. We 
cannot require Members of Congress to read a bill before they vote on 
it; but I can promise you this, if you give us less than an hour, if 
the leadership gives us less than an hour to read a 3,000-page bill, no 
one is going to be able to read that.
  Mr. BOYD. The work we have done here the last 2 or 3 days, we are 8 
days before Christmas, we are working really hard to try to get out of 
here and doing some work that has been put off that should have been 
done earlier in the fall, even earlier in the summer. But the work that 
has been done here in the last 2 or 3 days, all of it has been done 
under what we call a marshal law rule which allows bills to be brought 
to the floor without even 24 hours' notice. It really exacerbates this 
problem of having stuff going into the statutes that Members really do 
not have a chance, the American people do not have a chance to read and 
understand. I think this solves that problem.
  Mr. ROSS. We have about 5 minutes left in the Special Order, as we 
come to the floor of our Nation's Capitol here, the floor of the United 
States House of Representatives, to discuss this overwhelming debt that 
is saddling our country and jeopardizing its future.
  Mr. Tanner, if you would, number 10, require honest cost estimates 
for every bill that Congress votes on. The Medicare bill, there are a 
lot of bills that are good examples. The Congress, the people of this 
country need to know how their money is being spent. They need an 
honest cost estimate for every bill they vote on.
  Mr. TANNER. Well, it is a shell game, somebody called it three card 
monty, when you low ball a bill that you know is going to cost more 
than that, but you do it to fit it into some preconceived notion of a 
budget so you can basically fool the American people to make them think 
you are being fiscally responsible and not doing something foolish 
financially, and yet you are. And we saw this and we saw the 
administration, the administration that we are under now, they knew 
better on the Medicare bill and told the Congress it was going to cost 
$350 billion over time, and really they knew it was about $750 or $800 
billion. That is the kind of thing we are talking about, because then 
people do not know what to believe.
  Mr. Cardoza said earlier, We can do better than this. This place is 
broken and our 12-point plan is our attempt to fix it.
  Mr. BOYD. Honesty and integrity are basic character traits that our 
citizens warrant us to have. We see so much of that in all of 
government now, the dishonest statements, the misleading statements, 
people defrauding or bribing or taking bribes, those kinds of things. 
Corruption, it is a pattern of corruption. And this is what this is 
about.
  We want honesty and integrity in our government. I think we should 
shoot straight and talk straight with the American citizens.
  Mr. ROSS. Number 11, make sure that new bills fit the budget. 
Basically, we are proposing the Budget Committee strengthen its 
oversight role in preparing budget-compliant statements for every bill 
that is reported out of committee.
  Does anyone want to add anything on number 11?

[[Page H12165]]

  Mr. TANNER. I would say that we see time and again the rule 
resolution that comes to the floor and is passed basically on the party 
line; what you see is that in the rule, all points of order are waived, 
which means that the budget rules that we try to put in place are 
meaningless. Because if you are going to waive them on virtually every 
bill now that comes to the floor, we really do not have any enforceable 
mechanism, and this will change that. And we think that is a 
commonsense idea.
  Mr. ROSS. Finally, number 12, Mr. Cardoza, if you want to share that 
with us.
  Mr. CARDOZA. I would be happy to, Mr. Ross.
  Number 12 is to make Congress do a better job keeping track on 
government programs that it passes.
  As Mr. Tanner said earlier, we have basically abdicated our 
responsibility in this one-party form of government that we have right 
now. We are doing no oversight. We are not keeping tabs on the bills 
that we pass. In fact, the last four planks in the Blue Dog program all 
sort of relate to the same kind of thing. It is about accountability. 
It is about making sure that we read the bills, that we require honest 
cost estimates, that we make sure that the new bills fit the budget 
that we have already passed, and that we make sure that Congress does 
an adequate review on the bills that we have passed.
  They are just basic commonsense tenets. If you look back at the 
Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, it is a perfect example of how this 
process has gone off the rails. And it has cost twice as much.
  I remember Mr. Dooley had a competing bill, but I think it probably 
did more for seniors than the one that we passed. And he could not even 
get a score from the Congressional Budget Office to say how much his 
bill was going to cost. That is just wrong. A Member of the Congress 
should be able to get the score. We should all have the score. The 
American people should be able to get the lowdown on what a bill costs 
and have that up front 3 days at least before we pass it.
  Mr. ROSS. We are out of time this evening. I want to thank the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza), the gentleman from Tennessee 
(Mr. Tanner), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) for coming to the 
floor of the United States House of Representatives with me this 
evening to discuss our Nation's debt and deficit and the Blue Dog 
Coalition's 12-point plan to restore some integrity, some common sense, 
and fiscal discipline to our Nation's government.

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