[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 18 (Tuesday, February 14, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H248-H253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BLUE DOGS FOR CHANGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, it is indeed always an honor to have an 
opportunity to speak on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  And tonight I join with fellow members of the Blue Dog Coalition. The 
Blue Dogs, as you know, is a group of moderate to conservative 
Democrats in the House of Representatives, a group that has taken 
positions on many issues over the years, and a particular issue which 
the Blue Dogs have a solid reputation on is that of promoting fiscal 
responsibility for this country.
  And that message is needed now more than ever, and the Blue Dogs are 
going to continue to speak out in terms of what we think is the right 
thing to do for this country and particularly for future generations in 
this country.
  You know, I just had a new addition to my family about a month ago, 
had a little boy born into my family. And the day he was born, he 
already owed over $27,000 to the United States of America. Because if 
you take our national debt and divide it over our whole population, 
that is about how it calculates out.
  And that little boy entered this world with that kind of debt hanging 
on him not having had anything to do with that debt. He was not around 
when the money was spent, was not involved in the decision-making that 
created that debt. And I find it appalling that we allow this to 
continue to take place and grow in terms of a problem.
  I see this as a moral obligation we have to future generations, and 
for me personally I see it in my own new son. What is disturbing is the 
trend that we are on right now, because there are going to be times 
when the economy is good and times when the economy is bad, and 
sometimes revenues are going to be up and sometimes revenues are going 
to be down.
  And there may be times when a deficit occurs for valid reasons. But 
when you are in a deficit situation, what you want to do is you want to 
have a plan for working your way out of that debt. The concern I have 
is that we do not see that plan on the horizon. What we see instead is 
an ever-increasing amount of debt over time.
  Let us put it into context. From 1789 until the year 2000, the total 
debt that was incurred by this country was $5.63 trillion. But by 2010, 
the total national debt will have increased to just under $11 trillion. 
So we will have doubled the 211 years' worth of debt in just 10 years.
  You do not need to get out your calculator to figure out that that is 
not a good trend, and it is increasing at way too fast a rate. So now 
more than ever it is time for us to stand up in a statesman-like way 
and make the decisions that are going to be tough decisions if we are 
ever going to get a handle on being fiscally responsible.
  That is what we are here to talk about tonight as the Blue Dog 
Coalition. I have been joined by some of my colleagues from the Blue 
Dog Coalition. I am honored to be associated with all of them.
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to call on them at this time, and I would 
like to first recognize my colleague from the great State of Tennessee 
(Mr. Tanner).
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
  I have been here before with the Blue Dogs because it is about the 
only opportunity we have to discuss what we all believe, as Mr. 
Matheson said, a trend line that is leading us to a financial 
Armageddon. There is no other way that one can look at it.
  I have been talking about and writing about the fact that our country 
is currently borrowing more money faster than any previous political 
leadership in the history of the United States.
  To give you some idea, and I wish I were making some of this up, but 
if anyone cares to go to the Web site of the public Treasury, 
www.publicdebt.treas.gov, you can see for yourselves there what I am 
about to talk about.
  What happened in this country, basically, is two things: one is we 
embarked on an economic plan for America in June of 2001 that assumed 
various things that would happen in the future. In so doing, the 
outlook was for a $5 trillion surplus over the next 10 years.
  We all know what happened on 9/11 in the year 2000, some 2\1/2\ 
months after this economic plan was adopted. The economic plan has not 
changed, but everything else in the world has.
  So what we did was we reduced revenue in 2001, and we have increased 
spending; and we have not gone back and tried to adjust for this new 
world that we live in.
  So what is so disturbing about this is since 2001 the debt held by 
non-governmental agencies has increased by $1.4 trillion. Now, if that 
were not bad enough, you know how much of it we borrowed from 
foreigners? Almost 90 percent: $1.16 trillion has been borrowed from 
foreigners, primarily Asia, China and Japan, who together own over $1 
trillion worth of IOUs from Mr. Matheson's little boy and others, me, 
everybody else in this country that is a citizen.
  So what we are trying to alert the American people to is that this 
country has a broken economic game plan, and we do not like the 
remedies that are being prescribed for this deal by the current 
administration and the current Congress.
  Now, I said the other night, half jesting, it is so bad now and 
getting worse by the second, I am going to tell you in a minute how 
much we are borrowing every second, that if China attack Taiwan, we 
would have to borrow the money from China to defend Taiwan. I say that 
tongue in cheek; but if you look at where we are, we do not have the 
money, and we do not have the ability to seemingly right this ship of 
state.
  Now what are the consequences? There are consequences to actions. 
What are the consequences of this unprecedented borrowing that has 
taken place here in the last 48 to 60 months? Unless one is able to 
repeal the laws of arithmetic, interest rates must go higher. Every 
reputable economist says that. What does higher interest rates mean? 
Well, it means more finance charges on every American's credit card. It 
means cars and homes cost more. All of the things that we buy on time 
will cost more. And it crowds out private investment that creates new 
jobs in this country, because the interest rates cripple one's ability 
to invest in new plants, new equipment, modernization, all of those 
things.
  That is the consequence of a willful and deliberate plunge into debt 
that is taking place here in Washington, DC. It eventually will mean 
higher taxes.
  Did you know that $16 out of every $100 that comes to Washington now 
goes not for health and education and troops, it goes to pay interest? 
Now, this inability of the government to invest is going to catch up 
with us.
  There are three things, basically, American families, my friend the 
gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) says, three things, basically, that 
American families live by: one is live within your means; second is pay 
your debts; and the third is invest in the future. In other words, save 
money for your kids' college education or for your retirement or 
something.
  Your government is not doing any of the three. We are not living 
within our

[[Page H249]]

means, deficit spending every year for the last 4. We are not paying 
our bills; we are borrowing the money. We are borrowing the money to 
fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and giving the soldiers who 
return home the bill with interest.
  If that is not immoral, I do not know what is. These guys and women, 
too, are giving their lives sometimes, their legs, their arms, 
everything else. And what do they get from us? They get a bill when 
they get back with interest for what they did for this country.
  And the other consequence of this is what our friend from Nebraska 
(Mr. Osborne) said earlier tonight. We are having to zero out the drug 
task forces in this country that are the front line to try to keep our 
young people from getting hooked on these drugs like methamphetamine 
and so forth that will rob not only them of their future but will rob 
this country of their ability to contribute to a free and strong land.
  The other thing is, when we continue to do this, we degrade the tax 
base so that more and more money that comes here is not available for 
any investment by the government in infrastructure or human capital.
  What do I mean by that? I mean infrastructure, that only the 
government can do, whether it is dams, roads, bridges, airports, all of 
the things that allow private enterprise to move in and around the 
infrastructure and create jobs and create opportunities for our 
citizens. That is not being done because there is no money for it. It 
is going to pay interest on the national debt.
  And when we do not do that, just go to any country on the face of the 
Earth that has no infrastructure and see how many people are doing 
pretty well. Nobody is, because there is nothing for private enterprise 
and entrepreneurship to build to.
  The other thing we are not doing is investing in human capital. If 
this country is going to remain strong and free, the citizenry of this 
country must have a good education and must have good health care.
  We are robbing ourselves of the ability to invest in education and 
health care because of this ever-growing burden of debt and interest 
that takes away from the tax base of the taxes we all pay. There has 
never been, if one reads history, there has never been a country that 
is strong and free with an unhealthy, uneducated population. It is not 
possible.
  And yet as this trend line continues, as Mr. Matheson said, this is 
exactly where we are headed. Now, again, you can go to the Treasury Web 
site and see what I am talking about.
  Last year, the deficit was $319 billion. To put that into something 
that hopefully we can all understand, that is $26 billion a month, $886 
million a day, $36 million an hour. By the time we finish this hour, 
this Blue Dog hour, we will have borrowed another $36 million. It is 
$615,000 a minute, and $10,200 a second.
  That is how much money we are borrowing. Last year, the fiscal year 
2005, the net interest last year we paid was $184 billion. Do you know 
how much interest checks are? That is $15 billion a month in interest, 
$511 million a day in interest, $21 million an hour in interest, 
$354,000 a minute in interest, and $5,900 a second that we are paying 
in interest because of this growing debt.
  I was trying to put this in some kind of context; I guess this is 
about the best I can do. If you have $1,000 bills, $1,000 bills, and 
you stack them like that, to get to a million dollars, it will be about 
a foot high. To get to a billion dollars, $1,000 bills stacked like 
that, it is as high as the Empire State Building. And a trillion 
dollars is 1,000 bills, 1,000 times the height of the Empire State 
Building.
  It is staggering. It is the most unaccountable, irresponsible 
activity that I know any political leadership in the history of this 
country has engaged in knowingly, willfully, and deliberately. And it 
is going on tonight, and it will go on when this budget is presented on 
the floor here. Because there is no accountability.
  We do not have any hearings particularly on holding people 
accountable. You have heard a lot about that. Well, the Blue Dogs have 
tried to do a couple of things. The first thing we did, or tried to do, 
to fix it was to reinstitute PAYGO rules. That is something every 
American family does. If you decide you want to spend some money, you 
either have got to raise the money to pay for it or you have got to cut 
the budget somewhere else that is of a lesser priority and fund it that 
way.
  PAYGO rules were allowed to expire. The majority will not let them 
come back here, and that is one of the reasons that we keep digging 
deeper. The other thing we have recommended, or tried to recommend 
actually, is that in addition to the PAYGO rules, and we are going to 
do this, we are going to unveil an accountability plan, the Blue Dogs 
are, that is going through every Federal agency, the IG reports, to 
pick out the programs that are ineffective, duplicitous, or otherwise 
do not work and cut them. And we will have that coming out. We are 
working on it right now.

                              {time}  2030

  The lack of accountability here, the lack of responsibility here, 
cannot go on; and the American people need to really pay some attention 
to this. We have a birth tax of $27,000. That is hideous. It is not 
right. And this generation has got to bear most of the blame. My 
generation has to bear most of the blame because we are simply not 
doing the three things that American families do every day, and that is 
live within our means, pay your debts and invest in the future.
  If we do not change this, Mr. Speaker, then I fear more tonight for 
my country's future than I ever have in the 60 years I have been on 
this earth.
  Mr. MATHESON. I appreciate those comments from my Blue Dog colleague, 
Mr. Tanner. He is one of the leaders of the Blue Dogs, and he has been 
a real voice of reason in Congress. I appreciate him taking the time 
tonight.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize my Blue Dog colleague from the 
State of Georgia, Mr. Barrow.
  Mr. BARROW. Mr. Speaker, I want to address an issue that is important 
to all the families that I represent; and it is just being abandoned in 
this 2007 budget proposal submitted to Congress. I am talking about 
support for our local police officers and law enforcement agencies, men 
and women on the frontlines of homeland security, protecting our 
communities and patrolling our neighborhoods.
  Large cities in my district like Savannah are dealing with a rise in 
violent crime. At the same time, many of our smaller rural communities 
in Southeast Georgia and all around the country are fighting an 
epidemic of meth labs. Mr. Speaker, we cannot afford to let drugs and 
violent crime continue to go up in this country. For more than 14 
years, homicide was on the decline in this country. That changed last 
year. According to the latest figures from the FBI, homicide rose by 
2.1 percent in the first 6 months of 2005, the first increase since 
1991. That is unacceptable, and these cuts in this budget are 
unacceptable.
  The COPS program, cut by $376 million. During the '90s, we figured 
out what works in reducing crime. More police officers on the streets 
makes them safer and reduces crime. The COPS program helps our 
community hire, train, retain and equip our police officers. But this 
budget cuts this program by 78 percent.
  The Byrne Justice Grant Program, completely eliminated. Byrne JAG 
grants help State and local law enforcement agencies identify and break 
up regional drug syndicates. This budget completely eliminates that 
program. Why would anyone want to do that?
  If you think that a rise in violent crime is an issue that Congress 
should ignore, then this budget is for you. If you think we ought to be 
cutting back on the tools we give our police officers to keep our 
neighborhoods safe, then this budget is for you.
  In the short time since the President dropped this budget, I have 
discussed this budget with sheriffs and police chiefs all across my 
district; and the verdict is unanimous. These budget cuts are hurting 
and not helping local law enforcement. We need to do more, not less, 
for our police officers.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the proposed budget cuts 
to the COPS program and to oppose the complete elimination of the Byrne 
JAG grants. Our local police deserve all the tools that we can give 
them to protect our families. We need to give them more help, not less.
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I think what you heard here, Mr. Tanner

[[Page H250]]

first alluded to it and then Mr. Barrow gave a more elaborate 
description of proposed reductions in local law enforcement funding, 
and that is the example of the squeeze that is on. The deficits that we 
are incurring and the increased interest costs, and, by the way, 
interest expenses are one of the fastest growing components of the 
Federal budget today. And with that increased interest cuts you are 
squeezing other programs.
  Some of these programs mean a lot. Local law enforcement grants are 
something that I think most people in Congress think are a good idea. 
And the notion that we have a budget presented to Congress that zeros 
that out is something that is not going to be received well here, I 
would think. But, again, it is a reflection of the pressures that these 
increasing deficits are putting on the situation; and that is why it is 
just another example of why it is so important we try to get a handle 
on this program.
  I now recognize my colleague from Florida, Mr. Boyd.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Mr. 
Matheson from Utah, who is our distinguished leader of the Blue Dogs, a 
group, Mr. Speaker, that I am very proud to be a member of. I joined 
when I first came to Congress in January of 1997, and I am proud of the 
work that they do in trying to bring to the attention of the country 
and of the Congress the importance of the economic model and making 
sure that the government meets its obligations to the community and is 
willing to pay for those obligations.
  Mr. Speaker, we live in the greatest country on the face of the 
Earth. I like to tell my constituents back home when I speak to Kiwanis 
Clubs or civic clubs that we have 5 percent of the world's population. 
That is about one of every 20 people in the world live in America. And 
we control 25 percent of the world's wealth.
  We got into that position in a relatively short period of time. It is 
less than 230 years this year we have been a Nation, and we have done 
it by creating an economic model that is unsurpassed in the world.
  That economic model really to me, when you break it down, does one 
thing. It always strives to expand the middle class and move as many 
people as you can out of the bottom rung and into the middle class 
where they can be productive members of our society. In the process, 
you narrow the gap between the very rich and the very poor; and that 
served us well over the years.
  I remember talking to my parents when I got old enough to register to 
vote and asked them about why they happened to be registered Democrats. 
And they said, well, they thought that, coming out of the Depression in 
the 1920s and 1930s, that the Democratic party under the leadership of 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt really laid the groundwork for making this 
country the greatest economic and military machine on the face of the 
Earth.
  Expand the middle class, Mr. Speaker, to expand the middle class you 
have to have a well-educated and healthy population, and those are 
functions that our government has to be involved in. We have to be 
providing a good educational system for our children. We have to 
ensure, if we are going to stay competitive in the world, Mr. Speaker, 
that each generation is better educated than the previous generation. 
You have to have a good health retirement system. You have to have a 
good income retirement system.
  Prior to the implementation of Social Security and Medicare in this 
country, if you reached the age of retirement, age 65 in America, there 
was a great chance, over a 50 percent chance, that you would be below 
the poverty level. Less than 10 percent of our folks today live below 
the poverty level because of this great economic model that we have 
created which strives to expand the middle class. Social Security and 
Medicare were important components of that.
  Why do I talk about the expansion of the middle class and the 
economic model? This government has a budget which talks about how it 
funds its community responsibilities, community obligations, and that 
budget proposal was just presented by the administration to Congress in 
the last couple of weeks. And that budget proposal for the coming 
fiscal year which starts on October 1 proposes to spend $2.47 trillion.
  Let me say that again. It proposes to spend $2.47 trillion. But its 
collections to pay for that $2.47 trillion amount to $2.15 trillion. 
That is a budget deficit of approximately $318 billion. That is after 
we spend all of the Social Security surplus masking the much larger 
deficit.
  But the problems do not stop there. The budget does not even address 
the costs of the war effort in the Middle East, in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, in the coming year. It does not address some other issues 
which we know as a Congress and a Nation that we have to address, such 
as the alternative minimum tax exploration and some other tax issues 
like that.
  So what we have before us as a Congress presented by the 
administration is a budget that really is not a very useful document 
for us to start with.
  Mr. Speaker, my wife and I own a farm, a family farm that has been in 
my family for over 175 years. And it is not always easy on the farm. It 
is a small business. And this past week at home I spent a good part of 
the week doing a budget.

  Why do I do a budget? I do my budget to take to my creditors so they 
can provide us the funds we need to run our little small business. I 
spent a good many days on that budget and did the very best I could to 
present to my creditors just as accurate a picture as possible of what 
I thought the revenues would be and the expenses would be for the 
coming year. That is honesty in budgeting. And out there in the country 
our constituents have to do it in running their own homes. They do it 
in running their own businesses, and they certainly have to do it in 
running their own local governments and school boards.
  We certainly could expect that the Federal Government could be honest 
in presenting this budget to the American people. So I would hope, Mr. 
Speaker, and I would ask my colleagues to join in as we have this 
discussion about accountability and honesty in budgeting, that we can 
as a Congress be a little more honest with the American people about 
what the cost of some of these programs are that we are involved in and 
how we are going to pay for them.
  I do know something for a fact, Mr. Speaker, that you cannot increase 
spending, cut taxes and cut the deficit all in one lick. The math does 
not does not work. I learned that in grade school. It is a simple 
mathematical calculation. You cannot increase spending, cut taxes, and 
decrease the deficit. It just cannot be done, and that is what 
evidently this budget pretends to do.
  So I hope as we so have this discussion for the next 30 minutes or so 
that we can delve into some of these issues and have a little straight 
talk. Let us shoot straight with the American people about what the 
budget issues are.
  Mr. MATHESON. I appreciate those comments. I do think people should 
expect an honest budget. I think we all know we are going to have 
troops in Iraq during the next fiscal year; and the fact that this 
budget does not list a dollar to fund that, in and of itself, tells you 
that this budget is not an accurate reflection of the expenses that 
this government is going to face in the next year.
  That is not being honest. That is not being straight with people. We 
know we are going to incur that expense. We ought to acknowledge we are 
going to incur that expense, and we do not do it, and I think that is 
something the Blue Dogs feel real strongly about in terms of having 
honesty and integrity in the budgeting process and the budget numbers.
  Part and parcel of that is that we ought to have planning for 
contingencies. I suspect when Mr. Boyd was developing the budget for 
the family farm, for his business, that he had a line item in there 
called contingency, because you know that something else is going to 
come up. You do not know what it is going to be. You do not know when 
it is going to be. It could be weather related. It could be something 
that you cannot even anticipate, but you know there is going to be an 
expense that comes up that you cannot identify today but it is going to 
happen. You cannot estimate with absolute accuracy down to the dollar 
what it is going to be, but you know there is going to be something.

[[Page H251]]

  And based on your experience and based on your judgement you 
guesstimate what it is going to be. And when you go to your bank, if 
they are helping you finance it, they want you to do that, and they are 
going to work with you to make sure that is a good estimate of what a 
contingency might be. We do not do that in the Federal Government, but 
I am sure you do that when you are planning your own budget.
  Mr. BOYD. Absolutely we do do that. I think most people who run a 
small business understand that. Most folks who run local governments 
understand that. But there is something else in this budget that we are 
looking at that we received from the administration in the last few 
days that really belies any thought of sensibility.

                              {time}  2045

  A couple of examples: the veterans medical portion of the budget, we 
know those are issues that we have to deal with and we have not dealt 
with very well in the past. In that budget that we were presented are 
significant fees, increases in copayments that the veterans will have 
to pay. The Congress has rejected that soundly over all the years that 
I have been here. So I would not expect that the Congress would 
increase the fees on the veterans; but yet that is in the President's 
proposal that he sent up.
  Student loans cut significantly. I do not think Congress is likely to 
cut student loans. I certainly hope they are not, but that is in the 
budget. Those are the kinds of things that we ought to be honest with 
the American people about, what the costs are, and how are we going to 
raise the money to make sure those costs are paid for.
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee 
(Mr. Tanner).
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about accountability again. 
Another consequence of what we have done in the last 48 to 60 months 
with this unprecedented borrowing has not only degraded tax money 
coming here that could have been used for foster children, the poorest, 
most neglected and abused citizens in our society, but what we are 
doing is we are not fulfilling the congressional role in the scheme of 
things in this country.
  We do not have any hearings about accountability. I saw on television 
the other night on one of the shows bundles of money that they were 
handing out in Iraq. They played football with them, and they asked the 
guy, well, where is the audit for that. He said it is nonexistent. We 
do not know where the money has gone.
  We see Katrina. We see in Hope, Arkansas, 12,000 house trailers 
sinking in the mud at the Hope airport. That is total incompetence.
  What is really disturbing is the Government Accountability Office 
reports that 16 out of 23 Federal agencies cannot produce an audit. 
What we want to do, if we are allowed the opportunity to do so, we want 
to get every one of those Inspector Generals in here and make them tell 
us what they did with the money. The Congress does not even ask, now 
what you did with the money that we appropriated to you to the 
executive branch. We have got basically a one-party government here. 
They do not ask them; and if they did ask them, they could not tell 
them.
  This is outrageous. There is not a businessperson in America who 
would go to their comptroller and say here is an item of $20,000, what 
is that for? I could not tell you; I do not know. Nobody will put up 
with that, and yet the American people are putting up with it in this 
town every day.
  We just borrowed another $18 million, by the way, since we have been 
talking.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I know this accountability issue is one that 
we are all very concerned about. I saw some reports today that in the 
FEMA response to the Katrina and Rita disasters and other storms of 
2005, which were dreadful and particularly dreadful for the people on 
the gulf coast, but one of the tools they used to help the folks was a 
$2,000 credit card that FEMA passed out. I read some reports today that 
many of those, maybe as many as 30 or 40 percent of those credit cards, 
were received with fraudulent Social Security information; and, also, 
the expenses on some of those cards were for some very unreasonable 
items like tattoos and massages and things that we would not think that 
necessarily the taxpayer ought to be paying for.
  So we do need oversight, and one of the things that I am hopeful for 
is the majority party in this body had an election here a week or so 
ago, and there is a new majority leader on the Republican side here. It 
is my hope and I am sure the hope of the Blue Dogs that we can work 
with him in a way that we have not been able to work with the leaders 
in the past to try to address some of these issues, because this issue 
of one-party rule and lack of oversight into the administration's 
activities is costing the American people greatly. I think it is time 
that we addressed it and try to do something about it.
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I think that really centers on a 
fundamental issue about the way our Constitution was set up. This is 
not supposed to be driven by party when it comes to oversight.
  When they wrote up our Constitution, they created the three branches 
of government. We all learn this in grade school. It is called the 
checks and balances. There is an institutional role for the legislative 
branch to play. We legislate but we also keep an eye on the executive 
branch and on the judicial branch, and we do that through oversight. We 
are supposed to be asking questions. It is all what makes the 
government accountable. It is pursuing good government. It is not 
looking for a scandal or anything like that. This is just basically 
making the trains run on time, ask the right questions.
  We know that is not happening right now, and so you mentioned 16 out 
of 22 major agencies cannot even give you a clean audit of their books. 
The government cannot tell you where they spent $24.5 billion in the 
last fiscal year. That is enough to fund the entire Department of 
Justice, and we do not know where the money is, and Congress is not 
asking the questions.
  It should not be a party issue. We all ought to be asking these 
questions; and I know the Blue Dogs, as much as anybody in this 
Congress, are ready to work with anybody because it is an America-first 
issue, not a Democrat or Republican issue. It is about putting this 
country in the right position and doing the right thing.
  So this issue of accountability and oversight that my two colleagues 
have been talking about rings real true with me in terms of what the 
Framers of the Constitution asked us to do. That is our role here. We 
took an oath to uphold that Constitution. My concern is the non-
oversight. I hope we do take action. I hope this conversation helps 
spur some action in this body, because it is the right thing to do.
  Mr. TANNER. Certainly it is the right thing to do. We take money 
involuntarily away from people in the form of taxation and appropriate 
it to the executive branch and then do not even ask them what they did 
with it. If we ask them, they could not tell us. That is outrageous, 
and the American people ought not to put up with it, and I hope they 
will not for too much longer.

  Let me say one other thing about the consequences of these deficits. 
We have raised the debt ceiling, and we are going to have to raise it 
again either this month or next month. It will be the fourth time we 
have raised the debt ceiling in 4 years, and the consequences of this, 
not only are we degrading the tax base because we are diverting more 
and more to interest, but 90 percent of these interest checks are now 
being sent overseas, not even staying in this country.
  When one is dependent upon foreign interests that do not see the 
world as we do for their finances, that creates a vulnerability, a 
financial vulnerability, for our economy, number one; but, two, I think 
it is a national security issue.
  If one reads history, as we all do from time to time, one will see 
that there are two things that a country cannot survive if they allow 
themselves to get into that situation. One is for a country to remain 
strong and free it must have the inherent ability to feed and clothe 
its citizens, agriculture. If one is dependent upon a foreign source 
for one's food supply, one is necessarily at risk when that supply 
chain is interrupted. We know that. You read history.
  The second is economics. When one is dependent upon someone else for 
their

[[Page H252]]

funding, any interruption in that supply will sink that country 
economically.
  Someone in the administration testified that it was naive to think 
that China, which holds $300 billion worth of our paper now, Red China, 
they say it would be naive to think that the Chinese would do anything 
to hurt their economic short-term interests. I think it would be naive 
to think they would not. That would be the cheapest war they ever 
fought against the United States.
  My dad told me one time, I tell you something, Son, he said, It is 
easier to foreclose a man's house than it is to shoot your way in the 
front door. When we are dependent upon China and China can say to us, 
U.S., back off, whether we are demanding that they conform to trade 
standards, we know what the trade imbalance is with China, or whether 
or not they make a move on Taiwan and we say you cannot do that, they 
are getting themselves in a position to say, U.S., stay out of it, or 
we are going to roll Wall Street and we can do it.
  That is the financial vulnerability that puts this country in grave 
jeopardy. If we lose control of our own economic self-interests, we 
have lost part of our freedom; and this mortgaging of our country to 
anybody on Earth that will let us have money on the cheap, 90 percent 
of last year's deficit was financed from offshore. When we allow that 
to happen, we are playing Russian roulette, so to speak, because 
anytime they want to, when they get a critical mass, they can really 
put the squeeze on us, and there is not a thing on Earth we can do 
about it.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, you can foresee a situation that would put us 
in a dependent situation with agriculture and funding like we are with 
oil. For instance, I think 60 percent or so of our oil consumption in 
this country comes from another part of the world. Many of those 
people, like you said earlier, do not necessarily have our best 
interests at heart. So we have it within our own ability to stay out of 
that situation with the economics, and we really need to get this 
turned around and stop this deficit spending to the tune of 400 or $500 
billion a year. If we do not, then we can foresee a situation down the 
road where it could be an economic wreck here.
  Mr. TANNER. The other thing that the supporters of this economic plan 
for our country say, well, do not worry about it; as a percentage of 
the gross domestic product, it is not historically too high. Well, when 
it was higher was World War II, and we did deficit spend and we 
borrowed a lot of money; but you know who bought the debt then? 
Americans, the war bonds, the savings bonds. They are not buying it 
today. They do not have the money to buy it because the middle class 
you talked about earlier is shrinking, not growing. It is shrinking. So 
we are not even financing our own debt.
  I had a fellow call me on the phone the other day and said, I am 
afraid we have gone from the greatest generation to the greediest 
generation, and if our forefathers had borrowed money like we have seen 
in the last 48 to 60 months, at this pace, I guarantee you we would not 
have the standard of living that we have enjoyed in this country up to 
now. You said it pretty well awhile ago when you said this country was 
built with investment in infrastructure and human capital, and we are 
robbing ourselves of the ability to do that.
  We do not have the drug task forces. If there is anything on Earth we 
need to do in this country it is to try to alert the young people to 
the dangers of that, and the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) 
spoke, I thought, very eloquently about that. It is zeroed out.
  We are eating the seed corn, so to speak, with regard to our 
investing in the future. I go back to three things every American 
family does: live within your means, pay your debts, and invest in the 
future, whether it is for your retirement, kid's college education or 
something. Leave the place better than when you found it.
  This is the first time I can remember when people who are in power of 
this government are knowingly, willfully, and deliberately leaving this 
country worse off than they found it financially.
  Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I think you said it very well. We do have a 
tendency here to be very selfish, this generation, unlike the Greatest 
Generation, which came out of World War II and paved the way for us to 
be a great country.
  But the Blue Dogs have a plan. We have a plan that talks about some 
very basic principles that would put this country back on sound footing 
in terms of its budgeting for its government and funding its 
priorities, and would the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson) care to 
share those points with us?
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to do that, and I think I 
would put it in the following context. This is not easy to balance this 
budget. It is going to require a lot of really tough choices, tough 
political choices.
  What the Blue Dogs have decided is we need to put in a structure for 
this institution and for the White House, for the President and 
Congress to work within a structure that is going to guide us on the 
path of fiscal responsibility because without that structure it is just 
too easy to deficit spend.

                              {time}  2100

  That is what has been going on around here. It will take some tough 
choices. We do not deny that at all. We are ready to work with people, 
but it will have to be all of us working together to take on those 
tough choices.
  So what the Blue Dogs have done is they have tried to establish a 12-
point proposal to set up a structure that addresses some of the issues 
we have talked about here tonight. For instance, I talked about 
contingency planning when my colleague, Mr. Boyd, plans his family 
business budget, which we called one of our 12 points for a rainy day 
fund, or the Federal Government plans for things that you cannot 
articulate at the start of the year.
  Thirty-five States in this country have rainy day funds. Apparently, 
we thought that was not appropriate for the United States of America, 
but we know every year something happens. Natural disasters may happen. 
We do not know what it is going to be, but we know we ought to plan. 
That is one of our 12 points.
  We talked about accountability earlier, the fact that you can't get a 
clean audit from most agencies. One of our 12 points is, you know what, 
any Federal agency that cannot give us a clean audit and properly 
balance their books, we freeze their budget at the previous year's 
level. They are stuck. That has some real teeth in it, and that is 
going to motivate that agency to do the right thing and give you a 
clean budget.
  Another point of the Blue Dog 12-point plan is going to be acquiring 
a balanced budget amendment for the Constitution. Now this will be 
appropriately written with exceptions for times of war and natural 
disaster. But I think that is something we need. As I said earlier, we 
need a structure. We need something to force Congress and the White 
House to move toward a balanced budget, and that balanced budget 
amendment in our Constitution is a key component of making that happen.
  Another part of the 12-point plan is something called pay-as-you-go. 
Now, we throw these terms out a lot. People may not know what that 
means, but it is a pretty basic concept. That means if you have got 
something new, a new program you want to spend money on, guess what, 
you have to pay for it. You can do it by taking money away from a 
another program or raising revenues.
  Same thing if you reduce revenues someplace, you have got to pay for 
it by cutting spending or raising revenues someplace else. It is 
something that every family deals with in their household budget, what 
every business deals with. It is a responsible way to look at things.
  This isn't a new idea. This is something that the Congress was 
working with before. In fact, these rules were in place from 1990 until 
2002. Then they expired, and while the Blue Dogs have advocated putting 
the pay-as-you-go rules back in place, we can't get a vote out here on 
the floor of the House to do that.
  Because as I said earlier, in the short term, it is a lot easier to 
govern if you do not have to make the tough decisions and you would 
rather deficit spend. But if we put those rules back in place, it is 
going to force people to make the tough decisions.
  As an aside, I might add, Alan Greenspan who just retired after 18 
years as

[[Page H253]]

head of the Federal Reserve, and he has such a great reputation in 
terms of his economic model, he made a rather prophetic statement back 
in 2001. This is just when we finished a couple of years of surplus. He 
was testifying before Congress.
  He said, ``With today's euphoria surrounding the surpluses, it is not 
difficult to imagine the hard-earned fiscal restraint developed in 
recent years rapidly dissipating. We need to resist those policies that 
would readily resurrect the deficits of the past and the fiscal 
imbalances that followed in their wake.''
  He sure was right, because by November of 2005 he came back before 
Congress, and in testimony he said, ``Our budget position is unlikely 
to improve substantially further until we restore constraints similar 
to the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, which were allowed to lapse in 
2002.'' That was the pay-as-you-go provision that existed before.
  So we have proof. We have a track record that shows that these rules 
worked. Without these rules, we have seen us spin into tremendous 
fiscal imbalance. It is another one of the Blue Dog points. There are 
12 points. I thankfully may not go through all 12 of the points 
tonight, but I wanted to highlight some of the ones that we have talked 
about tonight, and ones that I think anyone in this country, regardless 
of political party understands, and they know it is the right thing to 
do.
  I encourage, again, any colleague in the House of Representatives 
should know the Blue Dogs want to engage them on this issue.
  If these 12 points that we have come up with aren't the perfect 
solution, and somebody has a better idea, we welcome the chance to have 
a dialogue with them. Because these are not easy issues, and we have 
got to work together to work this one out. But I think the 12-point 
plan represents a thoughtful process and a good start for setting up a 
structure that will force this institution to put us back on the path 
to fiscal responsibility, and so we can avoid increasing, and I will 
close with coming back to the comments I started with.
  That is not increasing the problem of that birth tax, that we called 
it, that was employed on the son I had just 3\1/2\ weeks ago, that my 
wife had actually, my new son, came into this world owing $27,000. That 
is not right, it is not fair, and we have got to do something to make 
sure we do not grow that anymore.
  Mr. TANNER. Now you have got a part of another $36 million that we 
have borrowed since we started talking, and 90 percent of that is 
coming to us from overseas.
  Mr. MATHESON. I appreciate my Blue Dog colleagues joining me tonight. 
This is an issue we feel strongly about, and we are sincere when we ask 
our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work with us on this 
because we think it so important to the future of this country.

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