[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 41 (Tuesday, April 4, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1397-H1398]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADMINISTRATION SHOVELS

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, it is budget week here in Washington 
and on the Republican side of the aisle they are issuing shovels.
  Now, the shovels here in Washington have two purposes. One is to 
shovel certain substances to obscure what they are really doing, and 
the other is to dig the debt hole of the United States of America, the 
indebtedness of the American people, yet deeper while languishing 
programs that are important to average folks while the wealthy get 
more.
  This budget would reserve substantial funding for tax cuts for the 
richest among us. It would reserve tax cuts so that we can extend the 
tax where people who own stock that pays dividends would pay a much 
lower rate of tax than an American who works for, say, $30,000 a year 
in wages and salary.
  It would extend the capital gains tax cuts which again primarily 
benefit people over $300,000 a year. For someone who earns, 50, $60,000 
a year, the average tax break in capital gains is $50 since we exempt 
people's principal residence. That is where most middle class people 
have their capital. They do not have a whole lot of other investments. 
They are kind of struggling to get by. This budget is not going to 
help.
  This budget would borrow every penny. We are taxing working people 
more than we need to collect money for Social Security. The theory is 
that money is being set aside to pay for the retirement of the baby 
boom, the coming change in the demographics of the society, the crisis 
the President talked about in funding Social Security.
  Well, what are the President and Republicans doing with the $192 
billion extra we will collect in Social Security taxes this year only 
from people who earn $94,000 a year or less? They are going to spend 
it. They are going to spend part of it on tax cuts for people who earn 
a heck of a lot more than $94,000 a year.
  This deficit-producing budget is going to do an incredible disservice 
to our Nation. It will give us a new record and, of course, there have 
been many records under the Bush administration, and this will set the 
record of the five consecutive years of largest deficits in the history 
of the United States, from the small government folks down there at 
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Now, true, a lot of it is done in emergency supplementals. They 
cannot anticipate. This budget, for instance, says, unlike the 
President who says it will be a future President who decides when and 
if the United States withdraws from Iraq, the Republican budget, as 
honest as the day is long, says that we will spend $50 billion next 
year on Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, that is quite a bit less than 
half of what we spent this year. So maybe they know something the 
President does not know and America does not know about the withdrawal 
timetable, or maybe it is more dishonest bookkeeping where we will have 
yet another unanticipated expense for the war in Iraq and the ongoing 
problems of pacifying Afghanistan.
  So this budget is rife with these sorts of things. The total deficit 
this year will be $543 billion, including borrowing $192 billion of 
hard-earned money that is going to pay for supposedly future Social 
Security retirement. And over 5 years they are going to raise the debt 
of the United States of America. Again, it has been raised. Four times 
in the last 5 years, the debt ceiling has been raised. It is a 65 
percent increase in the indebtedness of the United States of America.
  This President has accumulated more foreign debt than the 42 
Presidents that preceded him in office. Record after record after 
record is falling to the Republican leadership and the Republicans in 
the White House, something that they can be proud of. All so they can 
feed tax cuts for people who earn over a million bucks a year. That is 
really a great way to run a country.
  They are anticipating with this budget, again even with dishonest 
bookkeeping, that we will be up to $11.3 trillion of debt by 2011. That 
would be about $27,000 for every American. $27,000 of debt. That would 
have more than doubled the debt since George Bush took office. Doubling 
the debt in that short period of time is, again, quite an 
accomplishment. It took 42 Presidents and more than 200 years to 
accumulate a significant debt and the President is going to manage to 
double it in a mere 5 years.

[[Page H1398]]

  So hopefully we can take away the shovels, we can pull aside the 
veils, we can reveal to America what is going on and we can pass a 
budget that meets the priorities of the American people, not a 
privileged few.

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