[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
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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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