[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 25 (Thursday, March 2, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H549-H555]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE PRESIDENT'S 2007 BUDGET
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I plan to yield to several of my
colleagues. Mr. Scott from Virginia is also going to speak, and as soon
as Mr. Spratt, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, comes
out of an important hearing on the Dubai ports issue, he will be able
to join us as well.
Mr. Speaker, the 2007 budget takes America down a wrong and
unsustainable path. The decisions the President made in this budget
favor the wealthy over the working class. These decisions reward those
who live off what the IRS considers to be unearned income, while making
those who have to work long hours every day, to support themselves and
their families, pay far more in taxes. In fact, I think you would have
found bipartisan agreement if we could have worked out tax cuts that
were more in the interest of the working class and those hardworking
families.
But, in fact, when you combine the focus of the tax cuts on those who
live primarily off unearned income and the spending cuts that
purportedly are necessary to offset the cost of these tax cuts, the
majority of young people in this country will find it harder to go to
college. It will be harder for low-income elderly to get the nutrition
and health care they need, and it will be much harder for our
grandchildren to pay for the future needs that their generation will
face.
The decisions made in the President's 2007 budget, like his budgets
since 2002, define a Nation, a community, if you will, that is not the
America that we know. In fact, his priorities are just the opposite of
what makes America great.
We heard from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle; they
call it a so-called Republican truth squad. It boggles your mind.
But the fact is that the Bush administration has raised spending
while they have cut taxes. You can't fight two wars on four tax cuts,
ladies and gentlemen.
The gentlewoman from North Carolina suggested that the government
never invests, it only spends. Well, what does she think is the purpose
of the interstate highway system that enabled our economy to fulfill
its potential during the Eisenhower administration and subsequent
administrations, or the money that we have put into the public schools
systems to empower our working class?
And that is what we are talking about, investment that will give us
sustainable benefits versus tax cuts that are immediately lost, most of
which seem to be invested overseas, and cuts in the real safety net
that can make America achieve its greatness.
The conscious choices made in this budget reflect the flawed policies
of an administration that has taken this country down a terribly wrong
path, one that consists of waging an unnecessary and extraordinarily
costly war, delivering huge tax cuts to the very wealthiest of this
Nation, and taking the Federal debt to depths never before experienced,
while reducing services to working Americans.
First, the 2007 budget is heavily impacted by the consequences of a
reckless foreign venture, namely, the war in Iraq. The President's 2007
budget sets aside another $120 billion supplemental to cover the cost
of waging this war in fiscal 2007. Of course, this is on top of a
regular defense budget of over $450 billion. And, in fact, we have now
allotted over $400 billion, when you look through fiscal 2007,
primarily for this war in Iraq, and very little for the war in
Afghanistan that was referred to by our colleague from Maryland.
The money that is requested in these Iraq war supplementals is $40
billion more than we request for transportation, $33 billion more than
we request for education and training, more than $40 billion more than
we request for the care of our military veterans, more than $90 billion
more than we will set aside to protect our environment and natural
resources, and more than $80 billion for what is considered diplomacy,
but is spent on dealing with the AIDS crisis, on dealing with the
ethnic cleansing, the genocide in Sudan and throughout the world,
places where we could have such a constructive, positive effect.
The amount of money that is being requested in fiscal 2007 for this
war in Iraq will bring the total amount requested by the Bush
administration to $490 billion, an enormous sum. The American people
have to ask, has this been worth it, given the results to date? But we
know the results are more than 2,300 Americans who have lost their
lives in Iraq; more than 16,700 who have been wounded; tens, if not
hundreds, of thousands of Iraqi casualties; and yet Osama bin Laden is
still on the run. Iraq now appears to be descending into an all-out
civil war and al Qaeda recruitment levels are reportedly stronger than
ever.
But while our men and women are risking their lives overseas, at the
instruction of this administration, and of course, we have great regard
for their courage and sacrifice, we are not being asked to sacrifice at
home; and, in fact, the people who have been the most rewarded by this
great economy--that was built on the investments that have been made in
prior generations--they are being asked to sacrifice the least. In
fact, they are actually being rewarded. The same time that these men
and women are going to war, we are continuing trillions of dollars of
tax cuts that primarily benefit the very wealthiest in our society. And
yet these tax proposals are going to cost the American people about $3
trillion, $3 trillion over the next decade. The benefits from these tax
cuts are heavily skewed toward the wealthy.
If they were to fix the alternative minimum tax for the middle class,
that would be one thing. If they were to help working-class families
deal with the vulnerabilities they face in providing for their
families, that would be one thing. But that is not where most of it
goes. More than half of these benefits go to the 4 percent of Americans
who make over $200,000 annually.
Four years from now, in 2010, taxpayers with incomes of more than $1
million a year will receive average tax cuts worth $155,000, 100 times
the tax cut that the average taxpayer will receive. Is that fair? Is
that smart? I don't think it is appropriate, and I don't think it
reflects America's priorities. And they come at a huge cost to the
fiscal security of this Nation; causing massive amounts of annual
Federal deficits.
Over the last 4 years, we have seen the largest deficits in the
history of our Nation. Mr. Scott is going to show you what has happened
over the last 5 years on a chart. I hope you will pay close attention.
It is unbelievable.
The current fiscal year, 2006, is expected to produce the largest
deficit ever in the history of our country at $423 billion. And this
doesn't even take into account the supplemental spending requests that
the President will send up to the Hill any day now which will increase
the 2006 deficit to well over half a trillion dollars. And fiscal 2007
will be another year of historic deficits predicted to be $354 billion.
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In fact, since President Bush took office, we have had the largest
annual deficits in the history of this country, and those numbers are
net numbers after you take the Social Security surplus and offset it
against general fund deficits. So you can add another $200 billion
annually to each of those numbers.
So we are creating debt of over $500 billion a year, Mr. Speaker.
These deficits and the $8 trillion in debt we now
[[Page H550]]
have as a result of prior deficits will place on our children and
grandchildren an unprecedented level of debt burden.
Because of these policies, every child born today automatically
inherits $28,000 as their share of the Federal debt. And under the
President's budget proposals, a child born just 5 years from now will
inherit a much larger share. In fact, they will be paying taxes for
nearly the first 5 months of every year just to pay the interest on the
debt that their parents' generation incurred.
The President's massive budget deficits also require us to borrow
from foreign governments. Foreign investors now hold half of the
country's publicly held debt. China alone holds $250 billion of the
public debt, which is more than 300 percent the amount that China held
only 5 years ago. They have a fiscal guillotine over our necks if they
chose to use it. We are so dependent upon China's being willing to
borrow all this debt that we generate year after year.
Let me just show you a chart, in fact, of this foreign debt; Mr.
Kahn, our very able staff director on the House Budget Committee, has
put this together. This is the aggregate U.S. national debt held by
foreign countries.
Now, the debt was climbing during the Reagan years in the 1980s,
continued to climb during the Bush years. During the beginning of the
Clinton years, it started to top off, and then with President Clinton
having adopted the pay-as-you-go policy of the first President Bush,
having to pay for tax cuts as well as additional spending, we got the
budget under control. We had an estimated $5.6 trillion surplus
predicted for the succeeding decade. So foreign debt would have gone
down just like this. And as our foreign debt went down, our national
security would have gone up.
But this administration decided they did not want to adopt the
policies of the father. They did not want any pay-as-you-go. They just
wanted to cut taxes. The heck with paying it. We will send a credit
card to the next generation. They can pay off our debt. That is their
problem, not ours. We are going to live high off the hog. We are going
to reward our contributors. And the fact is that that is exactly what
has happened, and we have driven this Nation into debt.
But even more seriously, look at what has happened to foreign debt.
Foreign debt has gone up like this to here. We are now at $1.5
trillion. Here we are at $1.175 trillion and here we are over $2
trillion in 2005, a substantial share being purchased by China, as I
just said, a 300 percent increase in China's share of the foreign debt.
But imagine what has happened to foreign debt since 2001 when this
President took office. Talk about endangering national security.
Now, who pays for all of this? Well, what happens is that the
American people obviously pay. Our children will pay most of it. But
even today the sick and the elderly who need care that cannot be
provided by their families will pay. We will have our college students
pay in reductions in student loans, and basically the dignity and the
upward mobility of the American working class is going to suffer for
these policies. Mr. Speaker, this is a situation that is not
sustainable, that has to be reversed.
Now, everyone is entitled to their own ideological opinions. I do not
think they ought to be entitled to their own set of facts. This is
factual information. You can check in any of these budget documents put
out by the government. You can find that the amount of debt has
skyrocketed. The amount of debt held by foreign nations has skyrocketed
to an even greater degree. We are dependent on countries like China to
keep us afloat.
And, in fact, the working class has suffered. Our children are going
to pay the bill, and we are involved in a war that we are only paying
for by borrowing from the future. We have not paid one dime of the cost
of the Iraq war nor have we paid for the tax cuts that we have so
blithely passed.
Mr. Speaker, with this, I would like to yield to Mr. Scott, who has
been on the Budget Committee for several years, and he is going to show
you some shocking charts as well.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from
Virginia for yielding to me.
My colleague from Virginia, you have done an excellent job in
outlining what the problem is.
I like to use charts as I describe what the problem is. Our previous
speaker indicated, the Truth Squad, as to what the truth is. I would
like to point out exactly what he is talking about because this chart
shows the deficit back through the Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton
administrations, up to a surplus and what has happened in the last 5
years.
When they talk about bragging about fiscal responsibility from the
Republican side, this is the line they are talking about, the one they
are bragging about right here.
When they ask what the Democratic plan is to get us out of this mess,
I would say, Mr. Speaker, the Democratic plan is this blue line right
here. That is what we had under President Clinton. My colleague from
Virginia will remember in 1993 the first budget passed under the
Clinton administration. It passed without a single Republican vote,
House or Senate, and we took that budget and took it up to a surplus.
In 1995, when the Republicans came in and took control of Congress,
they passed a different kind of budget, and President Clinton vetoed
that budget. In fact, they threatened to close down the government if
he did not sign those tax cuts, and he vetoed it again and the
government was shut down. President Clinton would not sign an
irresponsible budget. And as a result, we have almost a straight line
up into a surplus.
When President Bush came in, everything collapsed. They stopped
paying for tax cuts or paying for spending cuts. Pay-as-you-go
dissolved, and here is what you have. And this is the line they are
bragging about.
Now, unfortunately, it is going to get worse before it gets better.
The President says that he wants to cut the deficit in half in 5 years.
That is a fairly, what I would say, modest goal, taking into
consideration the fact that you had a huge surplus to begin with to say
that you are only going to clean up half of the mess, but the fact is
he cannot even do it if we make the tax cuts permanent and do other
things that he has suggested. And they are passing.
This is the line we are going to follow for the next 10 years. Deep
into deficits. This green line is the promise, which is not much, but
the red line is what we are going to probably do.
This little blue line up here is an interesting line because that is
the budget from this administration in 2003 before they continued
cutting taxes. They showed that by now we would be up into surplus.
2003 is significant because that is after 2001. After the war we still
had projected, before we continued to mess up the budget, we were
supposed to be in surplus now, but here we are deep in the ditch. In
fact, as my colleague from Virginia has indicated, we had, when this
administration started, a projected $5.6 trillion surplus for the
following decade. We have dropped almost $9 trillion to, the same year,
a $3.3 trillion deficit, a turnaround of $8.9 trillion.
Now, let us put that number in perspective because it is a big
number. If you add up everybody's individual income tax, what everybody
pays on April 15, every individual, what your individual tax is, it
averages year by year to be about $800 billion. An average
deterioration in the budget, almost $900 billion, deterioration in the
budget. And when you talk about the war, the gentleman mentioned less
than $500 billion, 0.5.
Talk about Katrina, $200 billion, we might want to pay for the
Katrina aftermath, 0.2. An $8.9 trillion deterioration; you cannot
blame it on 0.5 and 0.2. And since that happened, it looks like you
would have changed course somehow to accommodate it. No, you kept going
straight. But you cannot blame 0.5 and 0.2 on a $9 trillion
deterioration.
Now, the Truth Squad indicated a blank slate of the Democrats who
voted for the spending cuts in 1991. That is true. But they did not
tell you what the spending cuts were. Food stamps and health care for
the working poor, and I say ``working poor'' because when you cut, you
cut from the top. The ones that are struggling, the ones that are just
barely making it, you
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whack them. The very poor are untouched; it is just the working,
struggling poor that get whacked with food stamps and health care.
They also cut child care, child support enforcement, foster care. We
had a group come into my office the other day talking about the effects
on foster care. Many at-risk children who are in foster care now will
not have resources to help them. These are the ones at most risk of
getting into trouble, getting into other problems that we are going to
have to deal with. Those are the ones that got whacked by that budget,
as well as, as the gentleman indicated, student loans. That is what we
did not vote for.
But he also did not say what that was a total package of. They had
spending cuts and they had tax cuts. The spending cuts were less than
$40 billion. The tax cuts were $70 billion. Had we passed the plan, we
were going to be $30 billion worse off, further in the ditch than we
started off. These are some of the problems with the budget.
And let me get these other charts which point out that when you run
up that kind of deficit, that is kind of esoteric, but at some point
not only do you have to pay it back, but in the meanwhile, interest on
the national debt. By 2010, compared to where we were on the line on
interest in the national debt, we are going to be spending over $200
billion more in interest on the national debt, $227 billion more in
interest on the national debt than we had projected.
At $22,000 a year for a job, how many people can you hire with $227
billion? Answer: 10 million. There are only 8 or 9 million people
looking for work, drawing unemployment today. You could hire each and
every one of them with a $22,000 job and have money left over with the
additional interest in the national debt that we are going to have to
pay.
Now, as you have indicated, we are running up debt. This chart shows
the Social Security cash flow. What we are spending now, the little
blue line, shows that we are bringing in more than we are paying out.
In 2017, we are going to start paying out more than we are bringing in.
Right at the time we are deepest in the debt, paying the most in
interest on the debt, we are going to need to come up with cash to pay
for Social Security.
Now, there is an old adage that goes, ``If you don't change
directions, you might end up where you're headed.'' Let us look at what
where we are headed with this budget. This black line shows the taxes
if we continue making these tax cuts permanent, as the Republicans have
continued to pass. Where are we headed? By 2040, this line goes across
and shows that we could be able to pay for the blue, interest on the
national debt; the yellow, Social Security, and we would have to borrow
a lot of money to pay for that because you are not even covering Social
Security; but we would also have to borrow for the red, which is
Medicare and Medicaid; and green, which is government spending like
defense, education, FBI, and everything else we do, all with borrowed
money.
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Obviously, this is not a sustainable direction. We have to change
directions, and we need to start now. It is not getting any better.
I thank you for leading this Special Order. We have a lot of work to
do. Again, if people want to know what the Democratic plan is, the
democratic plan is the blue. We dug ourselves deeply out of debt and
ran up a surplus sufficient to have an over-$5 trillion surplus.
Mentioning Social Security, to pay for Social Security for the next
75 years, we would need today $4 trillion more in the trust fund, $4
trillion more. We had over a $5 trillion surplus squandered away,
turned into a deficit. We had the Social Security problem licked
because we had gone into surplus. We could have paid Social Security
for the next 75 years. But, no, we went in a different direction.
We need to get back to the Democratic plan and certainly reject more
of what we have been doing for the last 5 years.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I thank my good friend from Virginia. Let me
just clarify a couple of points. In the Democratic plan, it was
basically based upon the pay-as-you-go concept of 1990 with the first
President Bush, a bipartisan plan to pay for any subsequent tax cuts,
to have sufficient revenue to pay for whatever spending occurred, but
to balance the budget each year. By those efforts to balance the
budget, it actually created a surplus.
Now, I know that the gentleman voted after 9/11 to go to war in
Afghanistan, to go after the people that attacked us, Osama bin Laden,
as I did; but that is a small fraction of the money that we are
spending on the Iraq war.
The gentleman knows a lot of people, men and women, who have been
financially successful. Does he feel that if they had been asked to
sacrifice to pay for the war to go after those people who attacked us
on 9/11, that they would have readily foregone tax cuts so that we
could keep the budget balanced and avoid deficits being passed on to
future generations?
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. If the gentleman would yield further, not only
that, and the way the question is framed, it is significant, because
the overwhelming portion of the tax cuts are going to people that make
more than $200,000.
There is one tax cut that goes into effect this year, colloquially
known as PEP and Pease, dealing with standard deductions and other
kinds of deductions that can be made. To make a long story short, it
only affects the wealthy. If you are making more than $1 million, you
get out of this tax cut, when it is fully phased in, about $19,000. If
you are down between $75,000 and $100,000, on average you will get $1.
If you are under $75,000, you get zero. This shows how we are going to
spend $20 billion a year when this thing is fully phased in.
It would seem to me this is how we get into deficit, with those kinds
of cuts. $20 billion a year, let's put that into perspective. All the
BRAC base closings that you suffered in Northern Virginia and I
suffered in Hampton Roads, Virginia, all of the BRAC closings, we will
be lucky to save $20 billion over 20 years. $20 billion a year, when
people under $75,000 don't get a dime; people over $100,000 might get
$1; $100,000 to $200,000 might get $25, over $1 million, $19,000. That
is how we are spending $20 billion a year in that tax cut.
It seems to me before we pass tax cuts like that, we ought to get the
budget straight. Let's not be down here in the dumps talking about more
tax cuts, particularly when they are weighted overwhelmingly toward the
wealthy.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I thank the gentleman for illuminating those
misplaced priorities, and I thank him very much for his extraordinarily
illuminating set of charts and numbers.
Mr. Scott, do you have one further thing you wanted to share with the
American people? I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I would say that if we had actually improved
the economy with all those tax cuts, it might have been worth it. But
this chart shows that the economic improvement, the number of jobs
created since Herbert Hoover, it shows that after we have run the
budget into the ditch, we still have ended up with the worst job
performance since Herbert Hoover.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Unbelievable charts. So for all of those
Presidents since Herbert Hoover who had a net loss of job creation
because of the Great Depression, Presidents Roosevelt, Truman,
Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and the first
President Bush, and then President Clinton, of course, they all created
far more jobs than this Presidency, the worst job creation record in
our lifetimes, in the last, what, 65 years. So, it is an unbelievable
record. We thank you for sharing it with us, Mr. Scott.
We will now hear from the gentleman from Long Island, New York, Tim
Bishop, a member of the Budget Committee, and very much concerned about
the fiscal policy of this administration.
Mr. BISHOP of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Virginia for yielding, and I thank both gentlemen from Virginia and Mr.
Spratt and all of our colleagues on the Budget Committee for their
leadership and diligence in making the case against the Republicans'
failed economic strategy and misguided budget priorities.
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These shortcomings are conspicuous in the President's fiscal 2007
budget. If the last few years have taught us anything, the emerging
Republican budget resolution to be considered by this House in the
coming weeks will mirror the problems and missteps called for in the
President's proposal.
On one hand, we are hopeful, even optimistic, that the promise of his
competitiveness agenda represents a down payment on the long-term
priority investments we need to make in order to maintain our
competitive edge in the global economy. Yet, on the other hand, this
budget is perhaps the single most disappointing, counterintuitive, and
hypocritical proposal of his six requests thus far. Calling for deep
cuts in education and health care, for example, while advocating a
competitive workforce, represents a fundamentally incompatible
strategy. Americans shouldn't be surprised, though, given this
administration's history of cutting taxes for the wealthiest
individuals and corporations at the expense of middle-class priorities.
After a dozen town hall meetings in my district in recent weeks, my
constituents have spoken loud and clear about how these budget cuts are
making it tougher for their families to stay ahead in today's economy.
Let me focus on two aspects of the President's budget proposal, each
of which reflects deeply flawed policies.
First, education. Under the so-called Deficit Reduction Act and the
President's 2007 budget request, student loan programs are cut by $12
billion, Pell grants are frozen for the fourth year in a row, and the
Federal portion of the Perkins loan fund is recalled. This decision
alone will take out of the student loan system another $600 million per
year.
As a consequence, the rapidly expanding gap between the amounts of
available student aid compared to the total cost of obtaining a college
education is growing out of control. Yet this administration's response
is that colleges should simply charge less.
But it is not making the same demands of other industries that are
equally critical to our economy's infrastructure and competitiveness.
While the budgets of college students and their families are stretched
to increasingly thin margins and the dream of obtaining a higher
education is placed farther out of reach, the administration isn't
calling upon the drug companies or the oil and gas companies or those
industries operating with banner profit margins to make the same
sacrifices.
The central point is this: we can propose a competitiveness agenda,
but it is simply an empty promise if our policies are going to make it
more difficult for students to attend college. We can educate all of
the AP students we want, we can have the best AP teachers in the world
we want, but if once they finish those AP courses they don't have
access to a higher education, our competitiveness agenda is simply an
empty promise. It is a sham.
Investing where the government's help is needed the least, including
$16.5 billion worth of tax breaks and generous subsidies for the most
profitable oil and gas companies, at the expense of extending a helping
hand to those Americans that need it the most is an economic strategy
headed for failure.
Similarly, the President has chosen to scale back investments in the
other pillar of America's competitiveness and critical infrastructure,
health care. His plan to cut $36 billion from providers through fiscal
year 2011 could result in Medicare reimbursements to medical facilities
in my congressional district of approximately $28 million over the next
5 years, this on top of the $1.2 billion in cuts already enacted.
Reasonable people simply have to ask what kinds of priorities are
revealed by these policy initiatives. More importantly, what kinds of
values are revealed by these policy initiatives? Cutting funding for
medical facilities doesn't save taxpayer dollars; it passes the costs
on to local communities and places a greater strain on the middle
class. Our health care system is already in tatters. The Medicare part
D drug benefit remains in shambles, and more families are joining the
ranks of the 46 million uninsured Americans.
These are the consequences of the Republicans' flawed policies.
America needs a new prescription for competitiveness, one that we
should rewrite as we take up the budget resolution in the weeks ahead.
If we are truly committed to sharpening our competitive edge and
meeting the goals set forth in the President's budget, I suggest that
we back up our promises by fully funding our health care and education
priorities.
Mr. Speaker, this budget reflects priorities and values that simply
cannot be supported. We can do better, and I look forward to working
with my colleagues towards that end.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, we are very appreciative of the
gentleman's comments. Thank you very much, Mr. Bishop.
I yield to the very distinguished gentleman from Washington State,
Brian Baird.
Mr. BAIRD. I thank my good friend and colleague. This is an important
topic, because it strikes at so many issues important to our families
back home and the people we represent.
This administration has said repeatedly, no new taxes. What they are
not telling you is while they say on the one hand no new taxes, they
are in fact passing a host of hidden fees that are tantamount to taxes
onto the backs of the American people.
Let me give you some examples that directly impact my constituents,
the first of which is, indeed, according to the administration, a new
tax. If you listen to President Bush and our friends on the other side
of the aisle, they will tell you that if we do not extend the capital
gains and dividend tax cuts that go to the wealthiest Americans, that
is equivalent to raising taxes. In other words, if you don't extend the
tax cut, then you have effectively raised taxes. Yet the President's
budget does not extend deductibility of the State sales tax that
affects people in my State of Washington and six other States across
the country.
How much is this matter worth? Last year our deduction for sales
taxes, which we fought to put in on a bipartisan basis, saved the
taxpayers of Washington State alone $500 million. If the President
believes that we don't need to extend that, then the President,
according to his own logic, would raise taxes on Washington State
taxpayers to the tune of $500 million a year, which would be $5 billion
over the next decade.
A second effective tax increase that is going to strike the Northwest
comes from the President's ill-conceived proposals for dealing with
Bonneville Power Administration revenues. The President would force
Northwest taxpayers and the Bonneville Power Administration to take
additional revenues from Bonneville and send them to the Federal
Treasury to disguise the true cost of the deficit, rather than using
them to lower the power rates, which currently are 50 percent higher
than they were before the 2001 energy price crisis, which, not
coincidentally, was precipitated by the actions of this very
administration.
Friends, if policies of this administration increase your utility
bill 10 percent above the current levels, that is equivalent to a tax
from an administration that swore it would have no new taxes.
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The President also is going to shift critical fees and expenses that
also amount to an effective tax onto our local communities through
their proposals to cut dramatically the Secure Rural Schools
Initiative.
In my district, two of the highest recipients in Washington State,
two counties are the highest recipients, Lewis and Skamania Counties,
absolutely depend on this money to make their counties operate.
As we have seen curtailments in timber harvests and resulting
revenues, these counties have come to depend and desperately need this
money for public infrastructure, education and safety, yet this
administration would first cut the funding for this program and,
second, require that we sell off Federal lands again in a short-term
effort to disguise the deficit, that we sell off Federal lands in order
to provide the meager funds that would remain.
Our local communities depend on this creative, collaborative effort
by environmentalists and timber companies and timber interests to get
responsible, practiced harvests in the woods, that would be decimated.
We cannot let this go forward.
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That the Federal Government would also renege on its fundamental
commitment to community safety by cutting this figure is astonishing,
up to 80 percent of Federal support for local law enforcement programs.
Come to my district, Mr. President and my friends on the other side
of the aisle. Talk to my local sheriffs and police officers who fight
the daily battle against the scourge of methamphetamine, other drugs
and other crimes. Ask them, can you do without Byrne Grants? Can you
sustain the kind of cuts we are talking about in the COPS program? Can
we really support further cuts in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Area? We are making progress in the battle against methamphetamine, but
increasingly international supplies are coming through our virtually
open borders.
Our young people, even middle-aged people are getting addicted to
this horrific drug, and this administration says, now is the time to
cut funding that the Federal Government provides local communities. It
is bad policy, friends, and it amounts to a tax on our local
communities because they will be left to pick up the tab of the reduced
Federal dollars. And it is a tax on you if your home is burglarized, if
your family is assaulted, if your workplace no longer functions
effectively because of the effects of this drug. It is a tax, my
friends, and it is being levied by the policies of this administration.
Finally, last month, we had a number of folks from our local school
boards in my office. And they talked to me about the proposed cuts to
critical education programs and the shortfalls in key educational
opportunities. We all know that this administration and this
Republican-led Congress has proposed to increase the cost of student
loans even as college costs are skyrocketing.
But we need to know too that folks who are not planning to go to
college, the folks who need a vocational education, who want to learn a
trade or a skill will be dramatically and adversely impacted by this
ill-conceived budget.
The President has proposed zeroing out the Perkins Grant program
which local high schools and community colleges and voc programs
absolutely depend on to sustain their voc education program.
It happened to me last month that we had school board members and
community college board members in my office one day talking about how
devastating these cuts would be. The next day I heard from Josh Bolten,
the President's OMB Director, who said everything is going to be just
fine.
Mr. Bolten, Mr. President, please come to my district. When we finish
talking to law enforcement about what you are going to do to them, we
will come talk to our educators about what your proposals will do to
them. It is a tax on our schools. It is a tax on our students. It is a
tax on our families if you cut these resources.
You cannot continue to do this. You are funding a war without paying
for it. You are funding tax cuts without paying for it. You are passing
the debt onto our children and our grandchildren, and all the while you
are cutting vital and essential services and you are trying to disguise
the costs of our cuts by increasing the rates on our northwest
electrical ratepayers, by shifting costs to local communities, and by
trying to sell off the Federal lands.
None of that is responsible policy. The American people should know
about it. And we must reject this ill-conceived budget plan by this
administration, and our friends on the Republican side. I yield back to
you.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I thank the very astute gentleman from
Washington State. And now we have our very diligent, conscientious
member of the Budget Committee from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
Ms. Schwartz.
Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, the President's budget
is fiscally irresponsible and cuts services vital to American families.
I rise today in opposition to the President's proposals to cutting
funding for homeland security.
I represent the Port of Philadelphia, the world's largest freshwater
port and one of the Nation's strategic military seaports. Over 3,000
ships load and offload at the Port of Philadelphia each year, making it
one of the busiest ports on the Atlantic coast, and the fourth largest
port in the United States for the handling of imported goods.
In addition to the port, the greater Philadelphia region is home to
other critical transportation economic infrastructure, such as a large
portion of Amtrak's northeast corridor, SEPTA and PATCO high-speed
lines, and major highway infrastructure.
Situated around this transportation hub are almost 5.7 million
people. These factors led to the Insurance Services Office, which
assesses risks for the insurance industry, to conclude that
Philadelphia is among the 10 cities most vulnerable to a terrorist
attack.
Madam Speaker, the President's cuts to port security and first
responder funding will adversely affect the ability of Philadelphia and
cities across the Nation to protect those who live, work and visit the
city, to protect them from traditional and emerging threats.
Specifically, the President's budget slashes funding by 25 percent
for first responders. These are the very dollars that allow American
cities to equip, hire and train police officers and firefighters. The
President's budget eliminates funding for law enforcement terrorism
prevention, and the President's budget eliminates funding for port
security grants which were created by Congress in 2002 as a means of
directly funding the installation of security perimeters, surveillance
technology, and other very important counterterrorism measures at our
ports.
These cuts come at a time when the administration is allowing our
major ports, including Philadelphia, to be managed by Dubai Ports
World, a UAE-owned company, a company located in a country whose key
agencies, including security and monetary agencies, al Qaeda has
claimed to have infiltrated since 2002.
While the President justifies this decision by saying that the
Federal Government, not Dubai Ports World, will be responsible for
security, he has proposed to eliminate funding for port security by the
Federal Government. Neither justification nor the President's proposals
will make Americans safer.
My colleagues, while it is good that the Nation is finally focused on
the critical issue of securing our ports, our rhetoric and our passion
about Dubai must be matched by the funding necessary to keep our ports
and our citizens safe.
That is why when the House Budget Committee votes on the President's
proposed budget in the coming weeks, I will lead the fight to restore
these and other harmful cuts to port security. The security of our
Nation depends on our making the right investment and the right funding
choices to protect America.
I yield back.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I thank the Congresswoman from Pennsylvania.
I am happy to yield to the Congressman from Alabama, Congressman
Artur Davis. Thank you for your leadership, particularly on the Budget
Committee.
Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman
from Virginia (Mr. Moran) for what you and Mr. Spratt and Mr. Scott and
so many others do.
Mr. Moran, Mr. Scott, one of the helpful things about these
colloquies and these special orders at the end of the day is that they
have enormous nutritional content for people who really want to
understand the budget issues. They expose some of the argument that
happens on the floor.
As you know, when we have our full-fledged budget debate, we match
each other in bits of 1 minute, 2 minutes, and it is hard to get
clarity in 1- and 2-minute exchanges. These kinds of conversations
allow for a lot more light to be shed.
And one of the points that you have made, that my friend from
Virginia has made, and others have made, is exactly how fundamentally
unserious the administration is about restraining spending. That is the
point we ought to make over and over again, Madam Speaker, because when
people hear these budget debates, they often think that folks on our
side of the aisle are enamored with spending, they think the people on
the other side of the aisle are resistant to it.
Well, you cannot be serious about spending cuts when you pass a
reconciliation package that cuts spending
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by about $45 billion, and then you push just as hard for revenue cuts,
for tax cuts to the tune of $70 billion. That is a simple matter of
math and arithmetic. You cannot be fundamentally serious about spending
cuts when your administration has presided over the largest rise in
discretionary spending in the last 10 years for a variety of programs.
So the American people ought to understand, this is not an argument
about who wants to spend more and who wants to spend less. It is an
argument about a far different set of issues. That is what we value and
what we prioritize.
As so many have pointed out during all of these debates, Mr. Moran,
the reconciliation packets that passed a few weeks ago, the budget that
we will debate in committee next week will not make much of a dent in
the deficit when all is said and done. But it will wreak havoc with a
lot of families in this country.
Just a few weeks ago, this body thought it was so important to start
this session of Congress out by passing a bill, a reconciliation
package, that will mean that 13 million working poor and poor families
will have to dig deeper in their pockets to go to the doctor.
This House thought it was so vitally important to open this session
of Congress by passing a package of cuts that took the heart out of the
Federal Government's efforts to collect child support, that took the
guts out of a program that the administration said was one of the best
performing programs in the government.
And you will see it again and we will see it again in committee next
week. You will see a budget that does very little to rein in spending,
when all is said and done, but yet will have a disproportionate impact
when it does make cuts on the people who are struggling in our
communities right now. And that is what the people ought to understand
this debate to be about.
We can do all kinds of things, cut spending that will attract support
from both sides of the aisle. We can do all kinds of things to rein in
the deficit that would attract support from all sides of the aisle. But
every choice that the administration and the majority have made has
been aimed at one set of people, the weaker people, the older people,
the younger people, the people who are struggling to get by. And it is
just wrong to put them in isolation. It is wrong to make them bear the
brunt of these kind of cuts.
So as we move through this budget debate next week and over the next
several weeks, I hope the American people understand, it is not an
argument about cutting spending, it is an argument about what we value.
It is an argument about what we prioritize. And finally it is an
argument about who we give value to.
We know who the administration and our friends on the other side of
the aisle often value. They often value people who are doing rather
well in this society and they often reward that. They do not put a lot
of value in some of the people who are living in my district, which
happens to be the fifth poorest district in the United States. They do
not put a lot of value in their needs.
So if you believe in a better way of looking at the American people,
if you believe in a more principled way of understanding that everyone
should count and not just some people, you will vote against this
budget, you will reject this budget. And that is the kind of debate
that we ought to be having in the next several weeks.
So, Mr. Moran, I thank you for your leadership. Mr. Scott, I thank
you for your leadership, and I yield back.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I thank the gentleman very much, and
particularly for revealing the real effects upon the hard-working
people in your congressional district. Many of them are poor because
they have not had the opportunities to be as prosperous as others. And
that is a situation perhaps more pronounced in your rural district, but
it is the case through so many parts of the country.
We need to be investing in as strong an America as we can possibly
create. Our strength is in America's workers, and the education our
children receive, in the roots that our families put into their
communities.
And I know your total commitment to the people of your district as
well as to the country and I appreciate your input. Thank you,
Congressman Davis.
We now call upon the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy), the
former State insurance commissioner who watches this budget very
carefully. And he is going to share with us some of his concern about
the direction our fiscal policy has taken over the last 5 years.
Mr. POMEROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and
thank him and all of my colleagues, Democratic colleagues, on the House
Budget Committee.
I have previously served on the House Budget Committee and the task
before you points out the absolute lunacy of the Republican budget
plan. This is extremely important. Thank you for the time you are
spending on it today.
Earlier this morning I was at an event where we heard from several
Republican Congressmen and the Vice President of the United States.
They were sharing the same talking points. Because even the phrasing
was identical in speech after speech. And it was something like this:
The economy is going great. Growth is strong. Unemployment is down. We
deserve a lot of credit.
What they did not tell you, what they did not tell the crowd this
morning, made no mention of it at all, is that this crowd is funding
the government on borrowed money.
{time} 1615
The good times we are seeing today are very much like someone that
might be living down the street, living high and mighty, driving nice
cars, wearing fancy suits and doing it all on borrowed money.
There is a wonderful television commercial that has a very self-
contented man. He says, I have got a nice family. I have got a nice
house. I have got a nice car. And then he looks at the camera and says,
And I am in debt up to my eyes. Because what they are doing is
artificially creating today the appearance of prosperity while they
mask the depth of debt they are pushing our country into. That is what
is so important on this chart.
We have had the most significant financial swing in the history of
our country going from projection of surpluses as this crowd took over
to the deepest deficit we have ever had in the history of the country.
Record deficit in 2003. Record deficit in 2004. Record deficit in 2005.
And this year the biggest kahuna of them all, the deepest deficit ever,
which is why they have brought this case in the national debt. It seems
like this crowd and their wonderful economy have borrowed so much money
the Nation has maxed out its credit card limit. They are at the edge of
what we have authorized them to borrow.
Now, we have already increased this debt limit by votes of Congress
on three different occasions under this President. I feel like the loan
officer as a Member of Congress. They keep coming back for more and
more and more. And now even while they proclaim how wonderful things
are, they are presiding over the deepest deficit in the history of the
country and an increase in the national debt limit authority down to
$3.3 trillion of debt.
This is going exactly the opposite of the values of the families I
represent. Household after household in North Dakota and across the
country, you have got moms and dads at the kitchen table working hard
to make ends meet and sharing a conviction that, no matter what, things
are going to be better for their children; no matter what, they are
going to make sure that their children have more opportunity.
Do you know what? A recent survey shows that more than half of the
people in this country believe that it is going to be worse for our
children than we ourselves have had it. Now, I ask you, why should
Congress run this ``live for today economy,'' racking up debt for our
children, doing exactly the opposite, living for today, reducing the
prospects for tomorrow for our kids when individually the families of
America would do anything to leave things better for their children
than they themselves had it? In my opinion, that is the heart of this
budget debate.
Are we going to pay our way? Are we going to take the stand now to
leave things better for our kids? Well, you sure would not have known
from this morning. They are crowing about the happy economy and not
saying one word about pushing our Nation into the
[[Page H555]]
deepest debt it has ever been in, leaving our children to clean up this
mess. I believe they should be ashamed of themselves.
As I prepare to yield back, I again want to express my appreciation
for the efforts of the House Democrats on that Budget Committee
fighting this fight and getting the word out. We should not fund
today's good times based on tomorrow's debt that our kids are going to
have to take care of. We ought to pay our own way, and I intend to work
with Republicans and Democrats to get us back to that point. I thank
the gentleman.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I thank the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr.
Pomeroy) for his extraordinary leadership and his very deep and genuine
concern over the fiscal policy direction of this country.
Even beyond the immorality of this wild, profligate spending and then
sending the bill to our children to pay, what American family would
take a credit card, max it out, and then tell the credit card company,
Do not worry about it. Send the bill to my kids after I die.
And that is what is going to happen. The amount of debt and even the
interest on that debt is going to cripple generations to come.
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