[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 50 (Tuesday, May 2, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1963-H1969]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BLUE DOG COALITION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schwarz). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BOYD. Mr. Speaker, I come tonight before the country to discuss
the state of our Nation and to talk about a few of the things that I
think that we can do to improve the state of the Nation. This hour that
we will have tonight, there will be some other members of the Blue Dog
Coalition that will join me, I am sure.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, the Blue Dog Coalition is a group of 37 men
and women from all over the country, Democratic Members that believe
that there are certain things that we should do as a government,
certain functions that we should perform to make the economic model
work well, and we should try to perform those functions well, and we
should be willing to pay for it.
I was very interested in the previous speaker and actually agree with
what some of the previous speaker said, and I think he wound up by
saying that we ought to balance the budget.
The Blue Dogs, Mr. Speaker, could not agree more that that is a very
important step, and I think most Members, most folks out in the country
would understand the concept or the notion of balancing the budget,
whether it is our individual home budgets or whether it is our business
budget, whether it is our local governments. Eventually, you have to
have revenues meet expenditures, or you do not stay in business too
long. Most of us understand that. Except in the Federal Government, we
have a difficult time understanding it sometimes, and I think we have
not done very well on that front in the last 6 years certainly.
I was also interested in some of the comments made by the previous
speaker. You would have thought that the Democrats were in control of
the Congress of the United States. I would remind the Speaker that the
White House, the House and the Senate are all controlled by the
Republican party. When it comes to doing budgets and
[[Page H1964]]
programs and balancing those budget and programs, that is certainly
within the control of the majority party to do that.
There also was a good bit of talk about the welfare program. Mr.
Speaker, the welfare program was something that this Nation worked
together on back in the 1990s under a Democratic President and
Republican-led Congress, worked very hard, sat down in a bipartisan way
and came up with a good solution to find ways to move people off of
welfare and get them into the workplace.
The previous speaker is absolutely right in that we need people in
the workplace, getting paychecks, being productive, paying taxes into a
society, and that way our economy works best and our lives are better.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about three specific issues, three broad
areas, basically, where I believe this administration and this
Republican-led Congress have failed us in being responsible.
Number one is they have failed to balance the budget. For 5
consecutive years now, we have had a budget that is out of balance.
Number two, they have failed to manage our Federal Government and its
functions effectively and efficiently. Let me say that again. They have
failed to manage the Federal Government and its functions effectively
and efficiently, and I want to talk specifically about that a little
more.
Thirdly, I believe that this administration and this Congress has
failed to uphold the standards of honesty and accountability when it
comes to perform their functions.
Now, I want to start with the second of those particular bullet
points and talk about the management of the Federal Government and
point out some of the things that have been going on the last 5 to 6
years.
When President Bush took office, he told us and we all knew that he
came from a business world and with an MBA and with the charge that the
government would be run like a business. Instead, Mr. Speaker, we have
seen many of our Federal agencies managed by people with little or no
experience. As a result, you find today 19 of the 23 Federal agencies
are not in compliance with proper accounting standards. In other words,
they cannot give a clean audit of their own actions in how and where
they spent the money, the taxpayers' money that was given to them to
perform their governmental function. What this means is that we cannot
account for all of the government's assets and liability.
The previous speaker talked about the Department of Defense being the
biggest offender; and, in actuality, the Department of Defense is the
largest offender of this. Of course, the Department of Defense is one
of the largest agencies in the Federal Government, the largest agency
in the Federal Government, and we all know the high-profile story of
the over $3 billion that was allocated, appropriated for Iraq
reconstruction that nobody can account for. The Department of Defense
cannot account for the over $3 billion that was appropriated for Iraq
reconstruction.
The complete lack of management and accountability in our Federal
agencies is unacceptable. If you had a manager that operated like that
in your local government or in a business, you would replace that
manager. So I think that we really should demand more of our executive
agencies in terms of management and accountability as it relates to how
they spend the money that is appropriated to that particular agency.
In the 1990s, Mr. Speaker, Congress and the President, again a
Democratic President, a Republican-led Congress working together in a
bipartisan way enacted a series of reforms for the Federal civilian
workforce known as the Readmission of Government. These reforms reduced
the size of the Federal Government, Mr. Speaker, by over 300,000
employees.
Let me say that again. In the 1990s, the size of the Federal
Government was reduced by over 300,000 employees.
Despite this reduction, many Federal agencies improved their
performance substantially; and I want to talk about one of those
Federal agencies specifically, I think, which is a good example.
Because, Mr. Speaker, I come from Florida, and in Florida we are
accustomed to natural disasters, primarily hurricanes that start about
this time of year and run all the way through the summer and into the
fall. Last year, I think we had so many hurricanes that we ran out of
alphabetic names and had to start back through the alphabet a second
time to name all the storms. I think there has been a lot of press and
a lot of publicity about the storms that we have had.
Florida has created an excellent emergency management system to deal
with those storms, but we always work hand in glove with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, which is known as FEMA, and I found in my
18 years of public service in Florida that FEMA was one of the premier
Federal agencies, really a professional agency that knew what its role
was and knew how to get the job done probably more than any Federal
agency I knew in the 1990s. It was the poster child, if you will, of a
well-managed Federal agency. FEMA's structure was transformed, and
three national response teams were created to quickly react to any
national emergency. I guess in the 1990s, FEMA's performance was more
notable for the newspaper stories that weren't written about it.
Anytime you find an agency that is doing a good job, doing what it is
supposed to be doing, then you do not hear much about it. Disaster
victims and State officials alike, including myself, gave FEMA grade A
marks, unanimous applause, if you will.
Now we fast-forward 5 years, 6 years, we find FEMA in response to
Hurricane Katrina an utter failure. Just last week or 2 weeks ago, you
had a Senate committee with jurisdiction over FEMA stating that FEMA is
so broken that that bipartisan committee, leadership of that committee,
believes that it should be completely dismantled.
How did we go in the late 1990s or in the 1990s from an agency that
was acclaimed to be the most efficient and effective Federal agency to
an agency that is almost dysfunctional today? Why do we have so many
problems with FEMA?
Well, maybe it is because the administration dismantled the three
national response teams prior to Katrina, so there was no group of
folks within FEMA ready to go at a moment's notice. Perhaps it was that
FEMA was folded into a brand-new Department of Homeland Security and,
by all accounts, became the dumping ground for the Department.
Whatever these reasons are, I think every one of them point back to a
management style or scheme or capability. One factor that certainly
played a role in the change was that in the 1990s FEMA was run by
professionals with strong emergency management experience at the State
and local level.
Let me say that again. In 1990, early 1990s, the previous
administration brought in emergency management professionals with
strong management experience at the State and local level, and they
took FEMA and they transformed it into a world-class organization.
However, under the current administration, until weeks ago, FEMA was
run by political hacks with little or no emergency management
experience.
It is clear that on the fiscal and management fronts that this
administration is failing the American people; and, as a result, you
have agencies which cannot produce clean audits. They cannot tell you
where the money was spent, the taxpayers' dollars that we are
appropriating, and what was done with it. And that is one of the points
that I want to make.
The other point and the one I mentioned earlier was the balancing of
the Federal budget. Now, the previous speaker spoke of that; and,
actually, as I said earlier, we are in complete agreement, that the
Federal budget should be balanced.
I see that we have been joined by one of our fellow Blue Dogs,
Representative Jim Cooper from Tennessee. Mr. Cooper serves in a role
in the Blue Dogs where he chairs the policy committee and, as a result,
has the task of leading us in developing of our policy positions. Mr.
Cooper has done a lot of work on these issues, fiscal responsibility.
{time} 2115
Mr. BOYD. Madam Speaker, I would like to call on my fellow Blue Dog
from Tennessee, Mr. Cooper.
Mr. COOPER. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's friendship
[[Page H1965]]
and leadership of the Blue Dog Coalition because we are perhaps the
leading voice in Congress for fiscal restraint and fiscal
responsibility.
The chart the gentleman has been referring to showing our national
debt and each individual's share of the national debt is a truly scary
document. But as the gentleman knows, I am afraid there are even
scarier numbers in Washington than that because the debt figures that
the gentleman is holding shows what the debt is according to a cash
basis; and that is, unfortunately, a very weak form of accounting that
is illegal for most businesses in America, certainly businesses of any
size.
I want to put that in context for folks both in this Congress and
back home because the numbers the gentleman referred to come from this
document here, which is the President's budget. Every Congressman gets
a hand-delivered copy of this. It is widely publicized in the media. It
has a lot of good information in it, but it is the budget of the United
States on a cash basis, counting dollars when they come in and go out.
There is another document which is even more important. It is almost
secret. It is not classified secret, but it is even better than that.
It was distributed on Christmas Eve without a press release by the
United States Department of the Treasury. They only printed a thousand
copies for all of America, so it is not exactly like they wanted
everybody to read it. This is called the ``Financial Report of the
United States Government.'' It is issued by the Treasury Department and
signed by Secretary John Snow, and it also gives a picture of our
financial situation. But it does not use cash accounting; it uses
modern accounting that all large corporations in America are required
by law to use. So if you really want government to be run like a
business, you pretty much have to use this document.
The gentleman referred to our MBA President, the first one we have
had in American history, and how so many Americans expected him, with
his MBA degree, to run our country like a business. But this is still a
largely secret and ignored document.
Why would that be? Because the numbers in it are so grim.
Mr. BOYD. So do I understand it to be Federal law that any business
over $5 million has to use that accrual accounting procedure?
Mr. COOPER. That is exactly right. Modern accounting is required of
all businesses in America with revenues over $5 million. That basically
says any business larger than, say, a single McDonald's would be
required to use modern accrual accounting. And lest anyone not hear the
word correctly, ``accrual'' has nothing to do with the word ``cruel.''
In fact, accrual accounting is probably the kindest form of accounting
because it remembers our elderly and sick and disabled. Cash accounting
tends not to do that.
So modern accrual accounting is a very important innovation in
accounting. All our businesses have used it for years. In fact,
generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP accounting, really says
that all businesses of every size should use accrual accounting because
it is a more accurate picture of where we are.
As the gentleman knows, because he has a business background himself,
the saying in business is if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. That is what accounting
does, it helps us measure our financial situation. This shows a picture
of our financial situation. I hope it is clear.
Maybe I should come down to the gentleman's easel.
This is a very important chart because it shows us in clear
perspective the difference between the budget numbers calculated on a
cash basis and on an accrual basis. This top number of $319 billion is
the cash deficit for the year 2005. That is a lot of money. That is the
third largest budget deficit in all of American history in absolute
dollar terms. It is not quite the third largest in percent of GDP
terms; but it is a huge, whopping number.
If you look down the chart, you will see if you do not count the
borrowing from the Social Security trust fund, the true cash deficit
for the year 2005 was $494 billion, almost $500 billion. That is still
using the old-fashioned, antique cash accounting method.
If you use modern accrual accounting, according to the Treasury
Department and the Bush administration, Secretary Snow says the deficit
for 2005 was $760 billion. That is starting to be a truly large number.
That takes into account many of the obligations that we have in future
years because what accrual accounting means, it takes into account when
you use that national credit card to buy something. You have obligated
yourself to buy something. It might have been pensions for our elderly,
health care for our elderly, health care for the disabled, things that
we know we are going to have to spend money on but we have not actually
paid cash yet. That is the $760 billion number; but that is not the
scariest number on the chart.
Everybody in this body has said that they believe Social Security and
Medicare are vitally important programs for our Nation and that those
benefits should be preserved for our seniors and those who are going to
be seniors. Guess what, folks. The accrual number, as good as it is,
does not take into account Social Security and Medicare benefits. How
could that possibly be? Well, the reason is under modern accounting
methods you only take into account contractual obligations, and Social
Security and Medicare are not contractual obligations. Congress retains
the right to vary the benefits.
Because of that, those numbers are left out of this deficit
calculation. So I believe if you truly care about preserving Social
Security benefits and Medicare benefits, as I do and most Members of
Congress do, certainly on the Democrat side, you have to look at these
other numbers because the budget deficit for 2005 actually goes up to
$1.7 trillion if you include the anticipated Social Security benefits
that we are going to have to pay in the incremental increase of 1 year.
If you add Medicare to that, the true budget deficit for 2005 was an
astronomical $2.7 trillion.
I am indebted for these last two numbers to the professor of law and
accounting at Harvard Law School, a gentleman named Howell Jackson who
did these calculations. And they are still in draft form and subject to
some refinement. But it is the first time we have really taken the
numbers that originally professors at the Wharton School of Business
and a business economist in Washington, D.C. have helped put together.
Those gentlemen are Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale. Those
gentlemen have shown America and the world that our true unfunded
liabilities are astronomical. If you look out a few decades, they are
on the order of $49 trillion to $67 trillion.
So it is a situation where if you are just trying to measure it so
you can manage it. Look at one year's annual deficit: you will see that
the number we are given by the administration of $319 billion is
probably not an accurate number. In fact, it is probably only one-tenth
of the true size of the deficit because if you believe in Social
Security and Medicare, as I do, you have to take into account the
obligations that we are incurring on an annual basis to fund those
programs.
These numbers are huge, Madam Speaker, because even this number of
$760 billion, that is a deficit for the year that is greater than most
all of the discretionary spending of the Federal Government. That is
greater than the entire defense budget and greater than all of the road
programs, agricultural programs, parks, recreation, arts, all of the
things that the Federal Government is involved with. So that is a large
number. But this number down here of $2.7 trillion, that is greater
than the total Federal budget of the United States.
Madam Speaker, I think we should look at these accounting numbers,
these facts, these fiscal facts so that men and women of goodwill all
across America can evaluate our situation. As I said earlier, if you
can't measure it, you can't manage it.
This should not be a partisan issue. I am taking these figures
primarily from administration documents. This is a reality that I
especially think all of our business people should pay attention to.
The Tennessee bankers were in today. I acquainted them today with all
of these numbers, and we had a number of Tennessee insurance agents
visiting today. Unfortunately, our media have not seen fit to do many
stories on these numbers. Perhaps they
[[Page H1966]]
are too large for the media to understand. I think it is very important
for America to focus on this. What they really spell is a crisis for
our country.
We are borrowing so much of this money; and we are not just borrowing
it from ourselves, we are borrowing it from foreign nations.
I am proud to stand with my friend from Florida who is a great leader
of the Blue Dog cause. It is very important that we get the word out on
these facts.
There are many different ways to measure it. John Tanner from
Tennessee points out that it took 204 years of American history to
borrow our first trillion dollars. That is 204 years, all of the way
from George Washington through almost Jimmy Carter to borrow $1
trillion. Then we started on this pace where we are borrowing a
trillion dollars now almost every 18 months, something that it took us
204 years to do before. That is unsustainable, to put it politely. It
is crazy if you use more normal language.
There are other things that are going on that are worrisome. Under
President Bush's administration, we have borrowed more money than all
previous presidencies in America put together. President Bush is our
43rd President, and that means he has borrowed more money than our
first President, George Washington, all of the way through our 42nd
President, Bill Clinton. That is an amazing thing. And it is not just
borrowing in general; it is borrowing from foreign nations. We have
borrowed more money from foreign nations today than all previous
Presidents in American history.
I am hoping that men and women of goodwill across this country will
focus on some of these accounting facts. Maybe ask a little more of
your newspapers and TV stations back home to get more real news because
I think this will do more to determine the future of our kids and
grandkids than anything else we talk about on the floor of Congress,
because when you run deficits like this, that means you accumulate debt
and that debt carries a high interest rate, and that interest simply
must be paid.
That is the one tax increase that can never be repealed, and those
debt costs are mounting every year. Petty soon the debt that we are
having to pay our creditors, many of whom are foreign, is getting to be
so large it is almost larger than the entire defense budget of the
United States.
So it is a crisis, Madam Speaker. It is something that we must deal
with, and I hope that our colleagues will pay more attention to these
issues.
We understand that next week the budget is supposed to come up for a
floor vote. They were unable to pass a budget a few weeks ago. It is
vitally important that not only do we have a budget, but we have a
budget that reflects reality. The budget that will be brought to the
House floor will not reflect these true numbers. They will still be
focused on the cash numbers with inadequate accounting.
However, I was able to get passed in the Budget Committee
unanimously, House Democrats and Republicans, an amendment that said
for next year we will start using the more accurate, accrual-based
numbers. I think that is progress. Accrual will not replace cash
budgeting, but at least you will be able to refer to both sets of
numbers as we do the budget so that you can see what our true fiscal
situation is.
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend from Florida for
yielding. He has been a great leader of the Blue Dogs for a long time
now, and I appreciate his leadership, and together I think we can
continue to make progress on these issues.
{time} 2130
Mr. BOYD. Thank you, Mr. Cooper.
A couple of things that you said struck me. One is, unsustainable;
and the other is, we have to work together. Those of us who have been
in this business, those of us who have any kind of accounting training
in our background understand that those sorts of numbers, first of all,
that reporting procedures, or those reporting procedures, are wrong;
and the trend there of red ink, deficit spending, is unsustainable. It
will be, and I think the public will recognize it when the markets
begin to react to their fears that someday, if America doesn't turn
around its habit or change its habit of deficit spending, that it will
have difficulty sustaining itself economically.
The other thing that struck me about what you said is what I call the
bipartisanship thing. I want to go to this chart here, and this talks
about the budget deficits from 1982 to 2006, a 24, 25-year period,
starts with President Reagan back in 1982. And you see the minus
numbers here, all the way down through the fourth year of the Clinton
administration, or fifth year of the Clinton administration, in which,
working together right in here, a Republican-led Congress and a
Democratic President worked together for the Balanced Budget Act of
1997, which then produced a positive result that got the country back
on the right track, at least in terms of its cash basis deficit issue.
So you see that that was a very positive thing here.
And the biggest issue we had in 2001, when President Bush was sworn
into office, was how do we deal with the $5.6 trillion, 10-year
projected surplus we had. We had a $5.6 trillion, trillion, now,
projected surplus in 2001.
Many of us, especially of those of us in the Blue Dogs said, hey,
there are several things we can do. Number one is we ought to address
these priorities related to Medicare and Social Security. We know those
programs have long-term problems. Let's spend part of the money there.
Let's use part of it to give back in tax breaks and let's use part of
it to pay down this huge Federal debt that we had.
But this Congress and this administration decided not to follow that
sort of three-pronged approach, debt reduction, deal with Medicare and
Social Security, and tax relief. Instead, they poured all the money
into tax relief. And then immediately you see what happened. You had 9/
11 come after that and an economic downturn, and then now we have got
deficits.
We have structural deficits. What does a structural deficit mean? It
means that even if the economy works, everything works like it is
supposed to, you are still going to have a deficit. You are still
spending more money than you take in. That is wrong. That is
fundamentally wrong. And we ought to, we have to correct it. We just
can't afford to let it go on like this.
America is the greatest country on the face of the earth
economically, politically, militarily. We won't be that way long if we
don't fix this very dangerous structural deficit that we have.
We have been joined by another outstanding member of the Blue Dog
Coalition. We come from all over the country. We have with us tonight
Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez from California who has joined us now.
She has been a leader. She is a member of the Armed Services Committee
and a leader there; and I would like to yield at this time to my
friend, Loretta Sanchez.
Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Thank you so much, Mr. Boyd. I
just am very grateful that you decided to take this hour to talk a
little bit about the financial crisis, really, that our United States
is in, and what we can do or what we must do in the near future to
begin to get our financial house in order of our Nation.
As you know, I am an economist by training and a former financial
advisor and investment banker for 12 years before I came to the House
of Representatives; and besides sitting on the Armed Services Committee
and the Homeland Security Committee, I also sit on the Joint Economic
Committee for the Congress, the economic committee that looks at the
macro picture of what is going on in the United States.
And, quite frankly, we take a look at our position vis-a-vis the rest
of the countries of the world. In other words, how are we going to hold
on to our financial status, our quality of life, our way of life as we
know it? And I believe, every night when I go to sleep, I believe that
this is the biggest issue that is facing us here in Washington, D.C.,
and as Americans.
Earlier, Mr. Cooper showed a chart that said that we are telling the
American people, this Congress, this Republican-led Congress is telling
the American people that, in this coming year, our shortfall or what we
are overspending by for the year will be $319 billion. And it says it
right there.
But the reality is, take aside our responsibilities that we have told
people we are going to do for Medicare and Social Security for the
future, the reality
[[Page H1967]]
is that we spend much more than $319 billion this year. Without that
Medicare and Social Security responsibility, we really spend $760
billion more than the money we take in.
Now we sat down a while ago with the Comptroller of the United States
as a Blue Dog Coalition, and he said to us that 70 percent of the
deficit that we have on an annual basis is because we are not
collecting the taxes we should be collecting from the American public.
In other words, with the three sets of tax cuts that were given by
President Bush and the Republican Congress, we have failed to take in
the money we need to pay our bills. What we are basically doing is
borrowing to pay, and at some point that comes due.
It is like putting it on a credit card. At some point, the credit
card company will come and tell you, okay, you have got to pay up. And,
as you know, it becomes much more difficult than to have paid it as you
went along.
We, as Blue Dogs, believe that we should do pay as you go, that we
should make tough decisions every year and decide how we are going to
spend and how we are going to tax and bring in the monies we need, how
we are going to cut spending, if we need to cut spending. But we
haven't been allowed to do that. Each and every year, as Blue Dogs,
when we get together and we make our budget and we think about it, Mr.
Cooper, on the Budget Committee, others of us, and the reality is that
every year the Republicans decide that it is not the year to get our
house in order, our financial house in order.
Now, you know, there are some things that people haven't even begun
to think that will impact even more our deficit spending over the
inability for us to pay our bills on an annual basis and, therefore,
put it on the credit card.
The Medicare part D, the prescription drug program that the
Republicans voted in 2 years ago, okay, it hasn't gone very well. We
all know that. We all wonder what they are doing with it, et cetera.
They said it would cost $400 billion over 10 years. This is extra that
they were going to spend. We now know it is going to cost at least $1.5
trillion if we meet the responsibility of that program. That is not
factored into the budget deficit that we see coming in the future.
Hurricane Katrina, that is not factored in. We have done really very
little. We have already given about $83 billion towards Hurricane
Katrina, but the two Louisiana senators from that State have a bill
that says they want us to spend almost $300 billion more just for
Louisiana to get the place fixed up. That is not counted in the
deficits we see for the future.
And the Iraq war, $1.5 billion a week of spending. How long is it
going to take? We are already approaching almost $400 billion spent on
that war by the end of this year. And I sit on that committee, the
military committee. I don't think we are going to be out by the end of
the year.
You do the math. $1.5 billion a week. That is the operating cost of
being bogged down in Iraq. Will it be 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20
years? Korea, at 50 years?
Start adding up those numbers, America, and you will understand why
we, the Blue Dogs, are so concerned that the Republicans will not take
this seriously and sit down with us and hash out what we need to do in
order to begin to get this under control.
That is why I am grateful that you have come down here today to talk
about this, Mr. Boyd.
Mr. BOYD. I thank the gentlewoman from California for your leadership
on these areas and particularly on the Armed Services Committee.
Mr. COOPER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I just wanted to add a note to what the gentlewoman from California
said talking about pay as you go. That is a policy that former Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said would be the single most important
thing we could do in Congress to help get our fiscal house in order.
Alan Greenspan saying the single most important thing we could do to
get it in order.
Because Chairman Greenspan and most other economists know that PAYGO
worked very well from 1990 when it was first put in place, until 2002,
when the Republican majority allowed it to expire. Chairman Greenspan
can even remember the day and the hour that PAYGO was allowed to
expire, because he knew then that our Nation was risking serious
trouble.
But we have not really been allowed to vote on bringing back pay as
you go. It is a shame, because that pay as you go policy forces
Congressmen to make responsible decisions. You cannot increase spending
unless you find offsetting cuts somewhere else, and you cannot reduce
taxes unless you find some way to pay for it. It is very sensible. It
is the sort of policy we all have to do in our own household expenses,
and our Nation was doing so well with it for 12 years, from 1990 to
2002. But, since 2002, we have not had PAYGO, and that is one reason
you are seeing these terrifically high deficits.
Mr. BOYD. If the gentleman would yield.
I know the gentleman served in Congress prior to 1994 and is actually
on his second trip back and was not here in 1997 when we did the 1997
Balanced Budget Act. But Congresswoman Sanchez and myself were. And one
of the keys to that 1997 Balanced Budget Act which led us to balancing
the budget here in this era was PAYGO.
Spending caps was another key element of that. You put caps on
spending programs, and you leave them there, and you agree upon that.
Those are not here anymore, as you know, under this administration,
this Republican-led Congress and Republican administration. Back then,
it was President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, Speaker Newt Gingrich, a
Republican, and Majority Leader of the Senate, Trent Lott, a
Republican, sat together and said how do we do this in a bipartisan
way. You don't have any of that at work anymore.
I think that is the thing that disappoints me more than anything, is
I know that there are people of goodwill that would work in good faith
all over this country that serve in this body that don't have that
opportunity because we are not allowed to sit down. The majority party
in many cases just won't sit down with us and work together to solve
these problems. So these are very, very difficult solutions.
I know the chart that showed the accrual accounting and the $2.7
trillion deficit, those are hard numbers to understand. Here is one
that is not hard to understand. This is what you actually owe today. We
owe as a government today $8.352 trillion. That is trillion with a T.
$28,000 for every man, woman and child. That is what our debt is today.
And somebody has to pay that back. We also have to pay the interest on
that. We have to service that debt on a regular basis. And as the
interest rates go up, then, obviously, that is what I call a debt tax
which cannot be repealed. It has got to be paid.
Mr. COOPER. If the gentleman will yield.
He is exactly right. Those numbers are much clearer than the numbers
I gave, because every American can look at that $28,000 and say that is
what I owe. That is what my spouse owes. That is what each of my kids
owes.
But if the gentleman would like the modern accounting comparison for
those numbers, under accrual accounting, each American today owes
$156,000 apiece, $156,000 for every man, woman and child in this
country. And that would mean for a family of five, that is almost \3/4\
of $1 million. That is a luxury house anywhere in America, the cost of
a luxury house. And yet we don't get to live in the house. We just get
the mortgage. And that is on top of our real house and our real
expenses and car payments and rent and all those things we have to pay.
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So it is a terrific and crushing financial obligation that has been
put on us just in the last few years.
Mr. BOYD. Madam Speaker, the fact is that some future Congress and
some future President has a lot of hard, tough work to do, a lot of
painful decisions to make to get us back in balance. It will be done
somewhere down the road. We know that will happen, but it is going to
be very painful.
Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman
would yield, the other problem is that as soon as we focus, and we must
focus, on beginning to figure out how we pay this down, we need to do
that. We have explained why. But the
[[Page H1968]]
reality is that when we are doing that, that is less money in our
pockets, if you will, to be able to educate our children, to educate
ourselves, to invest in roads and water systems and sanitation systems
and what makes America productive vis-a-vis the rest of the countries
of the world.
I can guarantee you that this debt is held to a large extent by
countries around the world, Japan and China, the European countries.
They are who we owe. And they are looking at ways of how do they
increase their quality of life. And they are investing in education.
They are investing in water systems. When we have to pay this down, we
will not be able to make that investment.
Mr. BOYD. Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman makes a good point. In the
past when we had to run up debt, for instance, during World War II and
at other times in a national emergency, that debt in large part was
bought by Americans. That financing was provided by Americans. That is
not the case today. Of this over almost $3 trillion that has been
borrowed since January 2001, the great bulk of it, the majority of it,
has been lent to us by China and Japan. So in most cases, foreign
countries, some not necessarily that are friendly to our cause, are
lending us this money.
Mr. COOPER. If the gentleman would yield, many Blue Dogs have asked
where are the war bonds for the Iraq war. Because during World War II,
we had war bonds and it was a patriotic obligation, if you could afford
to, to lend money to our government to conduct the war. The
administration has not asked for war bonds for Iraq. Nor have we asked
for Katrina bonds. That would be a great way that Americans could show
their support. I saw in the newspaper today that a Middle Eastern
country, Qatar, has offered to pay millions of dollars to New Orleans.
There should be an effort for the American people to lend ourselves the
money we need to get through this. Instead, we run up $1 trillion of
debt with China. Already many countries have gigantic amounts. You may
have seen the cartoon. When the President of China, Hu Jintao, came to
visit a couple of weeks ago, there was a cartoon in the paper where
there was a little balloon out of the White House saying, ``Oh, our
landlord's here.'' When you start lending money on that scale from
China to the United States and we have to pay that back to China, that
almost means that we are beholden to them, and that is a very dangerous
security risk for our country.
So I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this issue.
Mr. BOYD. I appreciate both of you folks being here today.
One last thing that I wanted to talk about, the third point that I
wanted to make, was the issue of honesty and accountability by the
administration. We have to deal with the American people in all areas,
and particularly our financial area, with honesty, and we have to be
accountable. On the congressional side, our forefathers designed our
system so that the congressional side would have an oversight role,
that we would make the laws and appropriate the money, and our job was
to make sure that the executive branch, the President and the executive
agencies, spent the money and applied the laws in the way that we
intended them to be. And I do not think that is happening as well as it
should these days. And I want to cite a couple of examples.
An article in Monday's Boston Globe reports that the administration
has disregarded more than 750 laws enacted since he took office,
adopting the policy that basically the administration has the authority
to pick and choose a provision of which laws that they wish to follow.
This is a blatant disregard for the way our forefathers set up our
Federal Government and has really upset the balance between the
branches of government, and it has prevented Congress from carrying out
our responsibility of lawmaking and oversight.
Let me cite an example of oversight abdication: from 1994, when
President Clinton sat in the White House and the congressional House
and the Senate were controlled by Republicans, there were over 1,000
subpoenas issued from 1994 to 2000, over 1,000 subpoenas issued to
appear before House committees, under oath, to justify and explain
actions of the administration. It is a role that Congress should be
playing, an oversight role.
Since January of 2001, there have been virtually no subpoenas issued
by this House to this administration to explain their actions. And
Congress has basically abdicated its oversight role. And as a result,
you see misuse of power and some corruption springing up in places, and
I think we will see more of that unless Congress steps up and exercises
its role of oversight over the executive branch.
Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. If the gentleman would yield for a
moment, but part of the reason of why no subpoenas have been issued is
that this House is controlled by the same party that controls the White
House. And the Democrats, my party, we are not allowed to issue a
subpoena. A subpoena can only be issued by the consent of the chairman
of a committee, and that chairman would be a Republican. And, believe
me, I have had a lot of questions and a lot of things I have wanted to
ask the administration and its Departments with respect to some of
their spending. I am not allowed to do that. Nancy Pelosi is not
allowed to do that. It must be done by a Republican, and they have
refused to subpoena. This is one of the reasons why there have been no
subpoenas basically issued out of the House.
Mr. BOYD. That is a great point, and I thank the gentlewoman for
making it.
Madam Speaker, we have been joined by my good friend and fellow Blue
Dog from Tennessee, Representative Lincoln Davis, and I yield to my
friend now.
Mr. DAVIS of Tennessee. Congressman Boyd, thank you for yielding. I
deeply appreciate your efforts and the gentlewoman from California and
my good friend from Nashville, Tennessee, for the comments that you
have been making and trying to make this Congress, this House, and
those who may be observing us, aware of the situation that we are in.
In the mid-1990s, I was amazed and somewhat taken aback and, quite
frankly, somewhat was in agreement with the contract that was proposed
by a group of individuals on September 27, 1994. And I looked at most
of those and I thought that sounds just like a Southern Democrat in
what they would propose. I am going to read some of those to you.
I am a general contractor, and I do not do much work anymore. Our job
sure does not allow us to do that; so, therefore, I am not out building
as I was through the 1990s and the 1980s and the early part of the 21st
century. But when I signed a contract with someone, there were certain
ordinances in that that said you have to abide by these or else if you
do not, we will take over that contract and we will hire somebody else
or put someone else in your place that will fulfill those commitments
that you have made. And I would sign a payment of performance bond that
would do exactly that. So I felt that any contract that you made with
this country, it was a contract that was binding. So I want to read
some parts of the contract.
Item No. 2, it says on the first day we will ``select a major,
independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress
for waste, fraud, and abuse.'' We cannot even audit several of our
different Departments and agencies of the Federal Government today.
This was a pledge in 1994.
I look at something else here. It says we ``guarantee honest
accounting of our Federal budget by implementing zero base-line
budgeting.'' In the Tennessee legislature, we understood what that was.
Apparently, the folks who agreed to sign this contract did not, and the
rest of the story, as some famous person says, is still being told.
Then I take a look at No. 6, the National Security Restoration Act:
no U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential
parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national
defense and our credibility around the world.'' When I go to other
countries, I am sometimes frightened, not that I am an American,
because when God put my soul in the body of a woman who lived in
America at conception and let me be born an American, it was one of the
greatest blessings I could receive. But other folks I do not
necessarily agree with. I think they misinterpret the American people
and how they have a lack of respect for us. I do not like that and I
[[Page H1969]]
want us to change that, and I think foreign policy can make a
difference. So I think that those are failures.
Our national defense, September 11 happened after 1994. I am not
blaming anyone there, but I am just saying we need to start thinking in
this country.
Another one said ``term limits to replace career politicians with
citizen legislators.'' We have a Senator who ran from Tennessee and
said he would serve 12 years. I applaud Bill Frist for not running
again. I do not necessarily always agree with him, nor do I disagree
with him a lot. But one thing I do agree with him on: he kept his word.
We may not have passed the bill. But, quite frankly, the bill does not
require you to keep your word. My father always said if you are honest,
you will be rewarded; if you are dishonest, you ultimately will be
punished and will lose.
Here is something else: ``a balanced budget and tax limitation
amendment and a legislative line-item veto.'' I have been here for a
little over 3 years. I have never seen either one of these items that
these folks who signed the contract, as I would sign as a builder, have
tried to pass. Again, if you were back in Tennessee and if you were
working for a developer, the first thing that would happen is they
would say you have broken your contract; so we will take it over and
get somebody else to finish the job. I think the American public needs
to understand that, that when you give your word, your word is your
bond.
I travel my district, all 24 counties, and, quite frankly, there is
no conversation about $3 a gallon of gasoline, very little. There is
very little conversation about a $1,000 per month-plus for health care;
very little conversation about the huge deficits that we have today;
very little conversation about the war in Iraq, where we have lost
2,500 young men and spend $100 billion a year, approximately, in that
country. But we played a little game one day as I played when I was a
kid in school. We called it tag. In essence, you have to tag somebody
else out so they can chase the other folks until ultimately they
capture someone, and then they have to start running someone down. So I
said let us kind of play tag. If you were President, what would you do?
An older fellow in the back said, No, Congressman. We have elected
you. If you were the President, what would you do?
I said the first thing I would do for this country is I would audit
this country. I would get the best CPAs, the most honest, the most
knowledgeable, and I would audit every Department, every agency. I
would look at every no-bid contract to find out how much profit was
made. I would audit this country, and I would tell the American public
why in 2001 we had 200-plus billion dollars in surplus and why now we
have 300-plus billion dollars in deficits. So I would audit America. I
would find out and tell the folks, this is where the money went. This
is where your money went. It is your money and here is where your money
went.
And the next thing I would do, I would call up at Andrews Air Force
Base and I would have them cap off Air Force One with fuel. I would get
10 of the best pilots in the Navy. I would also get 10 of the folks who
can speak Arabic really well, and I would load them up, and we would
have a nonstop flight to Kuwait. And I would tell the folks in Kuwait,
remember about 10 years ago when you were invaded by this fellow named
Saddam Hussein, or almost 15 years ago, and you came to the world's
stadium and platform and said, Please help us. We have got 600,000
people, and a 25 million population country and their leader, Saddam
Hussein, has just invaded us and they have taken over our oil fields,
and the rest of the world came to your rescue.
I would get the sheiks. I would get the mullahs and the emirs and
whatever they call themselves, the royalty, the folks who inherit the
position, and I would say $3-a-gallon gas is breaking the back of every
woman and every man who is working in my district.
{time} 2200
That is our worst enemy. We have conquered your enemy. You help with
ours now.
I would go to Saudi Arabia and some of those folks, and I would tell
them the same story. Then I would go to Iraq and put the troops there
that was needed to put production back in those oil fields up to 3.5
million barrels a day that was there when Oil for Food was a policy
that we criticize now so much. And certainly the dishonesty of it
should be criticized. But I would put back on line those oil wells.
What that does for us is to help us balance our budget. Instead of us
spending $100 billion of American taxpayer money, Harold Ford, a
candidate for the U.S. Senate, says that the American taxpayers are
footing the bill for both sides in this war. As we pay $3 a gallon
gasoline, we are helping the insurgency get money, especially from some
of their buddies in Saudi Arabia, and other places fund their
insurgency through the dollars that go in and go back out to the
radical groups of Islam. And then American taxpayers are paying for the
American troops that are sacrificing their lives there.
I would put on line the oil fields in Iraq and get them producing
more than 1.5 to 1.9 million barrels a day, and I would bring the
revenue in to where the American taxpayers would have to quit paying
for the cost of the war in Iraq.
I know our time is about ended. I have a whole lot more I would like
to talk about. The point I want to make is that in this country today,
we have a battle on our hands.
If you notice, I am not mentioning a word on the other side, their
name. It saddens me when folks come to this floor and they want to
criticize Democrats and Republicans. We are all adult and mature
individuals. It is time we started acting like Americans instead of
Democrats and Republicans.
It is my hope we can start working together and take this bitterness
away. Bipartisanship is the only thing that is going to solve this
thing. In the Rules Committee, when we are not allowed to introduce
amendments, I just got a news release that went out, and I will mention
this because it is from the National Republican Committee.
``Davis Shares Blame for High Gas Prices.
``National Democrats are desperate to gain traction on any issue they
can in the lead up to the 2006 elections. As gas prices across the
Fourth District rise, so does the Democrat rhetoric. What
Representative Lincoln Davis probably hasn't mentioned though is that
he voted twice against helping consumers feel less of a pinch at the
pump.''
They mention resolution number 519 and number 145, the Gasoline for
America's Security Act and the Energy Conservation, Research and
Development Act.
You realize that Republican Senator Bill Frist wouldn't even put this
bill up on the Senate floor because it didn't do what it said it did?
So, in essence, even the Republicans in the Senate disagreed with those
who voted in this House on this bill. That is the kind of truth you get
from the truth squad when they come up and start talking.
Mr. BOYD. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the
gentleman. He brings a lot of common sense and wisdom.
I know our time has expired, Madam Speaker. I just want to conclude
by saying that I hope that you understand that the Blue Dogs are a
group of men and women who are ready to work together across the aisle
in a bipartisan way to solve these problems. We have some very, very
tough problems, and we have a group of folks who are ready and willing
to roll up our sleeves and go to work, and let's solve some of these
problems.
Mr. DAVIS of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, that doesn't say Blue Dog
Democrats. It says Blue Dog Coalition. Republicans can join it.
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