[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 94 (Tuesday, July 18, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H5369-H5375]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BLUE DOG COALITION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, this evening as I do each Tuesday evening that
the United States House of Representatives is in session, I rise on
behalf of the 37-Member-strong fiscally conservative Democratic Blue
Dog Coalition.
As you walk the halls of Congress, as you walk the halls of the
Cannon House Office Building, the Longworth House Office Building and
the Rayburn House Office Building, it is easy to spot an office that
belongs to one of the 37 Members of the fiscally conservative
Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, because you will find this poster as a
welcome mat by each door of a Blue Dog member.
As you can see, today the U.S. national debt is $8,419,147,820,878
and some change. Your share of the national debt, that is every living
man, woman and child, including the children born today, every American
citizen's share of the national debt is $28,134.
As Members of the Blue Dog Coalition, it is what we call the debt
tax, d-e-b-t, and that is one tax that cannot go away until this
Republican Congress and this administration gets our Nation's fiscal
house in order.
Last week, the President made a big announcement about how the
deficit really was not as bad as what his White House had first thought
and reported it would be. I think the best way to sum up the events of
last week can be found in an editorial, July 11, 2006, from the Los
Angeles Times entitled ``Another Mission Accomplished,''
And I will not read the entire editorial, but I think it sets the
stage for what we plan the spend the next hour discussing this evening.
It starts off like this: ``The release of the White House mid-session
budget review is an annual event normally marked by a few wonkish
observations and the routine updating of various spreadsheets, not by a
full-dressed Presidential dog-and-pony show. But President Bush plans
to preside today with Members of Congress and invited guests in
attendance. By all indications, including his own, in his weekly radio
address last Saturday, he plans to turn this into a celebration just in
time for the fall campaign.''
The editorial from the Los Angeles times dated July 11, 2006
continues. ``This is proof, if anyone still needs it, that this
administration is desperate for something to boast about. On Mr. Bush's
watch, triple-digit budget surpluses have turned into annual triple-
digit budget deficits.
``There is no information in the mid-session report to alter that
utterly dispiriting fact. Yes, the report is expected to project that
this year's deficit will be somewhat less gargantuan than last year's,
probably somewhere between $280 and $300 billion versus a $318 billion
shortfall in 2005.''
And it concludes, that part of the editorial, by saying, ``That is
not much to crow about.'' Well, they are right. Last week the
administration released its mid-session review of the budget. And after
further examination, let's take a closer look at what the report
actually tells us.
The report actually tells us that what we have here is another record
deficit. The administration's updated estimate of $296 billion deficit
makes 2006 one of the four largest deficits in our Nation's history. It
is hard now to believe that we had a balanced budget in this country
from 1998 to 2001. But it did not take this administration and this
Republican-led Congress very long to turn fiscal responsibility into
record deficits.
{time} 2000
As you can see, the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history
occurred in 2004 when the Republicans controlled the White House, the
House, and the Senate. It was $413 billion in red ink, in hot checks,
if you will.
The year 2003 was the second largest deficit ever in our Nation's
history, where, for the first time in over 50 years, the Republicans
controlled the White House, the House and Senate, and they gave us the
second largest deficit ever in our Nation's history, $378 billion.
The third largest record deficit ever in our Nation's history again
occurred while the Republicans controlled the White House, the House,
and the Senate. It was in 2005, and it was $318 billion deficit, the
third largest deficit ever in our Nation's history.
Then this year, the President has a press conference, has a grand
ceremony and event to announce that the deficit for fiscal year 2006 is
only $296 billion, the fourth largest deficit ever in our Nation's
history. I think the editorial in the Los Angeles Times had it right
when it said that is not much to crow about.
The administration's updated estimate of $296 billion deficit, as I
indicated, makes 2006 the fourth largest deficit ever in our Nation's
history.
While this number represents an improvement over the 2005 deficit of
$318 billion, it still ranks as the fourth largest deficit ever in our
Nation's history. These revised estimates do not account for the extent
of our budget problems, because they include in the calculation the
annual surpluses in Social Security.
The first bill I filed as a Member of Congress when I got here in
2001 was a bill to tell the politicians in Washington to keep their
hands off the Social Security trust fund. This Republican Congress
refused to give me a hearing or a vote on that bill, and now we know
why, because they are raiding the Social Security trust fund to fund
tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 a year.
They are raiding the Social Security trust fund to fund this out-of-
control deficit, this out-of-control debt, this reckless spending that
we are seeing occurring in our Nation's capital and the way the
Republican leadership is running our government and this country. In
fact, when the Social Security surplus is excluded, as it should be,
the 2006 deficit is not $296 billion; it is $473 billion.
Now, throughout the evening we are going to be talking more about
this, including projected surpluses, and how they became huge deficits.
I will talk more about that in a little bit, but I have been joined
this evening by the cochair for policy for the Blue Dog Coalition, Jim
Cooper from Tennessee. Glad to have you with us this evening.
Mr. COOPER. Thank you. I thank my good friend from Arkansas, and I
appreciate your excellent summary of our fiscal situation.
Because Americans lead busy lives, we were happy to get a little bit
of good news last week, or what we thought was good news. The President
and the administration certainly built it up as if it was good news. I
am glad that the deficit is looking a little smaller than the White
House had predicted. That is good news, and I appreciate that.
But it is still very important for Americans to put that in
perspective. As my friend from Arkansas points out, it is good news,
and it is not the largest deficit in American history; it is only the
fourth largest deficit in American history. So that is something to be
grateful for.
But it reminded me a little bit of telling somebody, hey, the good
news is your cancer is in remission. Well, that is good news. It is
good news the cancer is in remission, but the bad news is you still
have cancer.
What we are concerned about as Blue Dogs is not a temporary deficit.
Sometimes the Nation has to run a temporary deficit. What we are
concerned about are permanent structural deficits, deficits that grow
beyond our possible ability to repay the debt, deficits that strangle
economic growth, that prevent us from building a stronger country for
our kids and grandkids.
We are worried about deficits that hurt the middle class, because as
my friend from Arkansas mentioned, there is a $28,000 per citizen tax
on everyone in America, man, woman or child. That is a lot of money to
be born owing the country before you even have a chance to grow up or
earn a living.
But I know there are some folks out there who are watching us, and
they are saying, well, the Blue Dogs, they are only mentioning absolute
deficit dollars. They are not putting it in perspective with gross
domestic product. I would agree that is a percent of GDP; we should
look at it that way too. You can say, well, this is not a percent of
GDP, the largest or even the fourth largest deficit in American
history.
[[Page H5370]]
But I brought along a document tonight that I hope everyone in the
country will pay attention to. I first saw it when it was in the Wall
Street Journal a few weeks ago. It is a document not from the
Republican Party or the Democratic Party or anybody connected with
politics. It is a document from one of the Nation's leading business
organizations called Standard & Poor's. Now, they are a Wall Street
outfit, but they are supposed to be the neutral judges of all the debt
from all the corporations, and all the debt from all the countries, and
all the debt from all the States and cities and towns in America and
around the world, S&P, it is called, Standard & Poor's.
Well, they issued this document on June 6, 2006. To read this
document, you wouldn't dream that any President of the United States
could have a press conference a few weeks later championing good news.
Because what Standard & Poor's says about America is this, it says that
we are in such bad fiscal shape, and getting worse every year, that by
the year 2012, which isn't that far away, it is just 5 or 6 years away,
that America will lose its AAA credit rating for the first time in our
modern history.
Now, American Treasury bonds, bills and notes are considered
basically the gold standard of all debt instruments on the planet.
If you need to put your money in a safe and secure place and you want
it to earn interest, Treasury bonds are safer than putting it in any
bank as a deposit or putting it anywhere else, because they are backed
by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.
There is no sounder financial instrument than the U.S. Treasury bond,
and we should be proud of that.
But what Standard & Poor's is saying, as a result of the deficits my
friend from Arkansas is talking about, in just 5 or 6 years, we will
lose our AAA credit rating. Now that is not just like getting, say, an
A minus instead of an A in class. What it means is higher interest
payments.
It means that every time that America borrows money in the future,
possibly forever, we will have to pay more for it. Because the good
part about being a solid credit risk is that you pay the lowest
possible rate of interest. You are able to borrow money cheap. But by
losing our AAA credit rating, our interest rates are going up.
There is another bad part to this S&P report. Again, this is not a
political report; this is from one of America's leading business
organizations. It says that by the year 2020, which isn't that far away
either, that our Treasury bonds will basically be junk bonds, or what
they call below investment grade.
Now, that is such a far cry from our current AAA rating, the rating
that U.S. bonds have had for all of modern American history; it is a
literal tragedy to see America go from AAA ratings down to junk bond
ratings in just a few short years as a result of the work of one
administration, the current administration.
Because even though the current administration will be out of office
in 2008, the impact of their fiscal policies stretches for decades
beyond their time in office.
That is why this S&P report is so significant. They state carefully
that it is not a prediction. They are hoping, and I suppose praying,
that America will change course drastically from what we have seen from
the current Republican administration.
But they do say that although it is not a prediction, it is a
simulation of what will happen if we don't change course.
So it is a lot like that famous old ship, the Titanic. When they saw
the iceberg in the distance, did they change course? No, they hit it
head on.
Well, America still has a few short months and years to change course
before we hit the iceberg that literally destroys America's credit
rating and forces us to borrow money at much higher rates of interest,
possibly for the rest of American history. That is permanent structural
damage to our economy. Permanent structural deficits caused that damage
that hurt the outlook for our kids and grandkids.
So I hope that people will go to the Internet, check out the Standard
& Poor's Web site, look for this publication dated June 5, 2006, and
check it out for yourself. Some of it is written in fairly technical
business language. You will see that a number of nations face the
problem that we do in America of an aging population. Some nations face
it more severely than we do. But we are in such a fundamental imbalance
that it is important to note that one of the primary causes for that
imbalance is actually the crowning achievement of the Bush
administration domestic policy.
They cite specifically the U.S. position has worsened since 2003
because of the new drug benefit added to Medicare, which increases
estimated health care costs by nearly 2 percent of GDP annually by 2050
and accounts for one-quarter of the rise in spending on the elderly.
Now, we all want seniors to have medicine. Medicine needs to be
affordable. But the Wall Street Journal pointed out in their editorial
that in the Bush legislation that Congress passed and was signed into
law that only $1 out of $16 by that bill would only actually buy
medicine, only $1 out of every 16 would go for its intended purpose.
Mr. ROSS. The gentleman from Tennessee makes an excellent point about
how we have gotten into this mess with these record deficits. This
Republican Congress, this administration, gave us a so-called Medicare
part D prescription drug plan. We all want our seniors to be able to
have access and be able to afford the medicine that they so desperately
need.
I thought that we were going to pass a bipartisan meaningful benefit
for our seniors, but instead we passed a bill that was written by the
big drug manufacturers. In fact, the chairman of the committee writing
the bill at the time left the committee and took a multimillion dollar
job as the head of PhRMA, the association in Washington D.C. that
represents the big drug manufacturers.
Now, every State in America, through its Medicaid programming was
negotiating with the drug manufacturers to reduce the cost that those
States paid for the Medicaid program.
When this Medicare part D program became law, they shifted Medicare-
eligible seniors that were poor enough to be on Medicaid away from
Medicaid and on to Medicare and into a bill that actually has language
in the legislation.
I thought this was going to be a bill to help our seniors with the
high cost of medicine. But this legislation included language that said
the Federal Government shall be prohibited from negotiating with the
big drug manufacturers to bring down the high cost of medicine. So we
shifted that cost from the States and, more importantly, from the big
drug manufacturers, because every manufacturer out there was giving
rebates to the States to help offset the costs to the program and to a
Federal program where the Federal Government is prohibited from
negotiating with the big drug companies to bring down the high cost of
medicine.
We are seeing, as a result of that, our seniors not really getting
that good of a benefit, and yet it is a program that is causing these
deficits to go up.
Mr. COOPER. Today's news revealed that that bait-and-switch provision
that was in the Medicare drug bill would add $2 billion in additional
profits to our drug companies this year.
{time} 2015
Two billion, billion with a B as in boy, and that is all as a result
of this sleight of hand that was engineered in part by the committee
chairman who left public service to go almost immediately to represent
special interests, and not just any special interests but the very drug
manufacturers for whom he had just passed legislation.
Think of $2 billion extra profits in one year as a result of this
technical switch with a lot of seniors from Medicaid to Medicare, from
a program that could negotiate for lower prices to a program that
cannot, by law, negotiate for better prices. It is outrageous, and some
of the money in that horribly expensive bill has gone not to help
seniors get more affordable medicine but to line the pockets of major
drug companies.
We are all thankful for the life-saving discoveries they make. We are
thankful for the research and development, but I am less thankful for
the advertisement and TV ads where things
[[Page H5371]]
like that are not helping create new medicines. They are more trying to
make money off people's illnesses, and there has got be a better way.
We live in the greatest country on Earth in the history of the world,
and there has got to be a better way to do is this so we can live
within our means, so we can treat everybody fairly, so we can build a
stronger middle class, so we can be strong so we can be the world's
only superpower. We are not living up to that potential today.
Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thought we would go through a few other
charts that we have here and talk a little bit more about this entire
discussion about the projected surpluses becoming huge deficits.
When the administration took office in 2001, it had an advantage no
administration in recent times has enjoyed, a 10-year projected surplus
of $5.6 trillion. The administration has replaced that surplus with
recurring deficits and a record debt.
When the cost of items omitted from the mid-session review are
included, the deterioration in the budget between 2002 and 2011 is
about $8.5 trillion. Although these numbers are more positive than the
administration's February forecast, which some would argue they
inflated again so they could boast now about not having the largest
deficit in our Nation's history, but rather having the fourth largest
deficit in our Nation's history, they unfortunately do not represent
any significant improvement in the long-term budget picture.
Even the administration's 5-year forecast, which omits the cost of
certain planned policies, never shows a deficit smaller than $123
billion. You can see here in 2000 we had a real, actual surplus of $236
billion. In 2001, we had a projected surplus of $281 billion, which in
the end result ended up being $128 billion.
And then as you can see, when the Bush administration came here,
surpluses were projected for year 2002 through 2006; but, instead, we
got deficits, including four of the largest deficits ever in our
Nation's history. This was a $610 billion swing from having the first
balanced budget in 40 years to having the largest debt ever in our
Nation's history and having the largest deficit ever in our Nation's
history for 4 years in a row.
I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.
Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, we are, like all Americans, acutely aware of
the terrible tragedy that happened on September 11, 2001. That changed
the world, but we should not make the mistake of thinking that it gave
us all these deficits because that claim, that belief would not be
true. It hurt our economy temporarily, but we were already pulling out
of a shallow recession, and we have not been in a recession since. So
you cannot blame our overall economic condition for that.
What it is the result of, and again, do not take our word for it,
read the reports from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative
foundation think tank here in Washington; read the reports of the CATO
Institute, a libertarian organization, and they will tell you, they
will demonstrate to you that the Bush administration is the biggest-
spending administration since at least Lyndon Baines Johnson and
probably even way before LBJ.
It has nothing to do with defense or homeland security, budget needs
that are really set more by our enemies than by ourselves. It has
everything to do with a wasteful and mismanaged and sometimes
incompetent government like we saw in Hurricane Katrina relief.
That is a waste of taxpayer money. That is a shame for everyone
because no one wants to pay more taxes. We are not for more taxes. We
want every tax dollar to be spent wisely so the taxpayers think their
government is on their side instead of working against them, but we
really have not been seeing that and especially with these deficits.
Adding these taxes to our kids and grandkids, a tax that can never be
repealed, a debt tax as the gentleman so ably described it a while ago,
is limiting our growth in future years. It is crippling America's
future potential. As I showed with this S&P report, it is destroying
America's credit rating, and yet the administration holds triumphant
press conferences as if they are announcing good news.
A lot of folks think maybe we have been cured, but the cancer is
still there, and we have got to get at that cancer.
Mr. ROSS. This administration has told us for 5\1/2\ years now that
if you cut taxes on folks earning over $400,000 a year, I do not have a
lot of folks in my district who earn that kind of money, but this
administration, this Republican-led Congress, for 5\1/2\ years has been
telling us about that trickle down business, that if you cut taxes on
those earning over $400,000 a year, it will eventually trickle down to
everyone else and stimulate the economy and bring in new revenues and,
therefore, a stronger economy and a stronger government.
Well, as you can see here, the realistic estimate shows a bleak
deficit outlook for those tax cuts for people earning over $400,000 a
year. All they have gotten us is in the business whereas of today our
Nation is borrowing $1 billion a year, 45 percent of which we are
borrowing from places like China, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea and, oh,
yeah, OPEC nations.
In fact, these tax cuts for folks earning over $400,000 a year, what
they have gotten us is not only a record debt and record deficit and in
the business of borrowing $1 billion a day. It has also resulted in our
Nation spending a half a billion dollars every day simply paying
interest on the debt we have already got.
Again, as Blue Dog members, fiscally conservative Democrats, we
coined the phrase the ``debt tax,'' D-E-B-T, which is one tax that
cannot be cut, cannot go away until we get our Nation's fiscal house in
order.
As you can see, we had actual deficits back in the 1980s and the
1990s; and then in 1998, under the leadership of President Clinton, we
popped into a surplus, first time a Democrat or Republican had done
that in 40 years. We saw a surplus. We saw a balanced budget from 1998
through 2001, and then look what happened, and then tax cuts for those
earning over $400,000 a year, and we started seeing record deficits.
This administration, this Republican-led Congress have given us four
of the largest deficits ever, ever in our Nation's history. The
administration's estimated future deficits failed to include the full
cost of items on its agenda; and once likely costs are included, the
deficit is never better than $229 billion for the foreseeable future.
The true state of the budget is worse than the administration's
forecast depicts because it omits certain costs. When realistic
adjustments are made for omitted items, annual deficits never improve
to better than $229 billion for any year over the next decade, and by
2016, the deficit grows to $444 billion.
I think it is important to note that the administration's new
estimates for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan reflect a total of $110
billion for 2007, $60 billion more than the President's February
budget. However, beyond 2008, the administration provides no further
funding for these efforts. It is like the White House is telling us
that everything will be rosy in Iraq, Afghanistan and all of our troops
will be able to come home by 2008.
It is time for some truthful budgeting in our government. Based on a
model presented by the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, costs for
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could run as much as $371
billion over the next 10 years, from 2007 to 2016, and this calculation
is likely conservative.
I have Middle East experts at the State Department telling me that we
will be in a situation that is costing us billions of dollars in Iraq
at least for 10 years, some believe for as much as 30 or 35 years; and
yet this administration can look the American people in the eye with an
honest look and an honest face and say that there is no reason to
budget for the war beyond 2008.
It is time for this administration and this Republican-led Congress
to be truthful with the American people and to give this government, to
give the people of this country an honest budget.
The report also estimates that the President's plan to partially
privatize Social Security will worsen the unified deficit by $721
billion over the next 10 years.
Finally, the report does not include the cost of addressing Medicare
physician payments which must be addressed. A long-term fix could cost
[[Page H5372]]
from $127 billion to $275 billion over the next 10 years in the absence
of other policy changes, another omission from the numbers presented to
us in this mid-year report that the President presented last week.
I am also joined this evening by our cochair for communication with
the 37-member strong fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog
Coalition, and that is the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza) who
I yield to.
Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from
Arkansas (Mr. Ross). You have been so gracious to lead the Blue Dog
effort here on Tuesday nights for several weeks now, and I consider it
an act of patriotism what you are doing here because, truly, it is
something that the American people must know, and it is what we will do
to strengthen our country and our fiscal order if we can simply pass
half of the accountability measures that the Blue Dogs have put in
place, the 12-step Blue Dog program that I am sure you have talked
about tonight because you have talked about it so many times on the
floor. Hopefully, the American people are listening and the Congress is
listening that we must, in fact, bring accountability to our
government.
As you said, the Blue Dogs have been fighting for greater
accountability in Washington for over 10 years now. We have argued for
a return of pay-as-you-go budgeting to balance our budget. And as I
said, we offer a 12-step reform plan to cure our Nation's addiction to
deficit spending.
We have argued that all earmarks should require written justification
from a Member of Congress before being considered, and now the Blue
Dogs have authored and endorsed two bills that strike at the heart of
this administration's mismanagement and its fiscal mismanagement of our
government.
We have introduced the Blue Dog accountability package, and one is a
bill that I authored which requires the reconfirmation of any Cabinet
official whose agency cannot produce a clean audit for 2 consecutive
years.
The second piece of legislation, written by our colleague from
Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) requires an oversight hearing 60 days after the
Inspector General reports waste, fraud and abuse above $1 million in
any Federal Department.
I would like our audience tonight to consider these facts: in 2004,
the Federal Government spent $25 billion of everyone's tax dollars,
yours, mine and everyone else who pays taxes in America, $25 billion
that it cannot account for.
{time} 2030
Now, Mr. Ross, you and I, when we write a check out of our account,
we have a check stub. But for some reason the Federal Government has
lost $25 billion in check stubs. They are our tax dollars.
That same year, 2004, only six of the 63 Pentagon departments were
able to produce a clean audit, about 10 percent.
For 2005, the General Accounting Office reports that 19 of the 24
Federal agencies can't produce a clean audit or fully explain how they
have spent our taxpayer dollars.
In March of 2005, the Veterans Affairs Inspector General issued a
report calling for agency information systems to be upgraded for
security purposes. As you probably know, no action was taken; and since
that time, the personal information of millions of our veterans has
been stolen or lost, putting millions of our veterans' personal
information and virtually their financial history in jeopardy.
Mr. ROSS. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. CARDOZA. Certainly.
Mr. ROSS. Actually, my office received a call today from the GAO, and
I have got some good news. We have been saying, I have been saying,
that the GAO reported that 19 of 24 Federal agencies were not in
compliance with all Federal accounting audit standards and could not
fully explain how they had spent taxpayer money appropriated by
Congress. I am here to correct that. The GAO convinced me today that
that statement is not true. Here is what they tell me is true: that the
GAO reports that 18 of 24, not 19; 18 of 24 major Federal agencies have
such bad financial systems that they don't even know the true cost of
running some of their programs. I don't really see the difference, one
sounds about as bad as the other to me, but the good news is we no
longer have 19 of 24 major Federal agencies that can't produce a clean
audit. Instead, we have 18 of 24 major Federal agencies that have such
bad financial systems that they don't even know the true cost of
running some of their programs.
And yet Republican leaders in this Congress did not force these
agencies to fully account for how the money was being spent before
doling out billions more of taxpayer dollars for the same programs. And
that is why I am so proud of our 37-member strong, fiscally
conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition for coming forward, not just
to criticize the Republican leadership on this. You can bet we are
going to hold them accountable. But we are going to do much more than
that.
We have offered up a bill, it is led by one of the founders of our
Blue Dog Coalition, Mr. Tanner of Tennessee, and you have been
discussing that bill in your comments tonight, and I appreciate you
doing that. It is about accountability, and it is about restoring some
common sense and accountability to our government.
And with that I will yield back to the gentleman from California.
Mr. CARDOZA. I thank the gentleman for the correction. I am not sure
that 18 out of 24 is a whole lot better than 19 out of 24. Maybe they
got one of the little departments to come into compliance. I think the
year before I think it was 16 out of 24 or 23. So it is sort of like
the Bush deficit numbers. You inflate them one year so you can show
improvement the next. It boggles my mind that they can't find $25
billion in check stubs. You would think that they would be able to do
that. But I guess when they think it is not their money, they are not
so worried about it. But I have got to tell you, I am worried about it,
and I know you are, Mr. Ross, because when we lose the confidence of
the American people for our voluntary tax system that we have, and when
people don't think that their money is going to be used the correct
way, I think this Nation is in serious, serious trouble.
Mr. ROSS. I share your concern because we have been sent here. We
have been sent here by the people to be their representatives. And part
of being their representatives is to ensure that their tax money is
being accounted for and being spent in a meaningful way and in a way
that we would deem responsible.
It kind of reminds me growing up at that little country Methodist
church just outside of Prescott in Hope, Arkansas, Midway United
Methodist Church. I still try to get back there every year for
homecoming. My parents still go there. My mom still plays the piano
there.
And growing up there at Midway United Methodist Church, every Sunday
I heard the preacher talk about being a good steward. Being a good
steward. And I think that the American people have sent us here and
expect us to be good stewards of their tax money and make sure that it
is being accounted for and make sure that it is being spent in a
responsible way, a way that will help lift people up, a way that will
invest in their children and their education and their future. And that
is why I am so very concerned about this.
That is why we are pleased to offer up a 12-point plan for budget
reform, to cure our Nation's addiction to deficit spending. That is
why, as Blue Dog members, we are pleased to offer up this
accountability plan under the leadership of Mr. Tanner, one of the
founders of the Blue Dogs, and that is why I am so pleased to be a part
of your legislation, Mr. Cardoza, another part of our Blue Dog package,
to basically tell Cabinet-level agencies that Mr. Secretary, Madam
Secretary, if you can't produce a clean audit, then you have got to go
back to the Senate and have a reconfirmation hearing.
And there is another bill that you have got that I am real proud of,
and that is, again, about being good stewards, about the public trust
that is being placed in us to come here and to represent the people
from back home. They place a lot of trust in us. And when we violate
that trust, when we break the laws that we helped write as Members of
Congress, we shouldn't be held to the same standards as every other
citizen in this country. We should be held to a much greater standard.
And we should have to serve even
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longer prison terms and have even bigger fines than everyone else,
because if we are going to come here and violate the public trust and
break the laws that we helped write, we should be held to an even more
strict standard.
And I am proud of the bill that we have on that. And I will yield to
the gentleman from California to describe that piece of legislation
Mr. CARDOZA. I thank the gentleman. And in fact I will describe it.
But before I do, I just want to say one thing. You know, you talked
about your growing up in rural Arkansas. I grew up in rural California.
My grandparents were all Portuguese immigrants. They all naturalized,
became legal citizens, proudest day of their lives was when they got
their citizenship papers. And they imbued in me and my parents, who
couldn't speak English when they were growing up, a sense of duty and
responsibility. And you did the right thing.
I will never forget my grandmother, she wasn't so excited when I got
into politics because she said, you know, Dennis, that is a dirty game
sometimes. And if you are going to get in that business, you just make
sure you do the right thing.
And when I introduced the legislation that you described, it is
really holding us to a higher standard. And the legislation says that
if you break the public trust and you enrich yourself while you are
standing here in the Halls of Congress that you would have to serve the
time that you would get convicted for fraud or for all the other kinds
of things that you can do to get put in jail, but you would have to
serve a sentence enhancement for two additional years because you broke
the public trust, the trust that the people gave you when you signed up
to run for this office.
And I hold that sentiment very strongly, that that is something that
we should all stand up and be held accountable to a higher standard if
we are going to take the oath of office. So I thank you for raising
that issue and that I could talk about my bill tonight.
I want to also tell you that the work that we are doing with regard
to oversight and demanding that this Congress do oversight, that is one
of the fundamental jobs of Members of Congress, to hold hearings and to
examine where our tax dollars are going. And we simply, as a Congress,
are not doing that anymore. It is part of the problem with having one-
party government that there is nobody to hold it accountable. And we
can't get the power of the subpoena to go in there and look and see
what is going on. And we need to examine the books. We need to audit
the books in a more effective way. We need Mr. Tanner's bill that says
if the Inspector General finds fraud and abuse, that we will, in fact,
do a hearing in the Halls of Congress. And I see you putting up a
poster.
Mr. ROSS. You have been there.
Mr. CARDOZA. I have been there. We went together, and we saw, talk
about waste, fraud and abuse. What we could do for $1 billion in this
country is just amazing. We can educate so many kids, send our kids to
college. We can do so much good for $1 billion. And here we are looking
at about a half a billion dollars. You tell the story, Mr. Ross,
because this is in your district. You took me down there. We did some
uncovering of some waste, fraud and abuse.
And I will yield back to the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. ROSS. I just want to quickly make the point as I do every Tuesday
and I am going to as long as these things are still down there. But the
reason that we have House Resolution 841 by Mr. Tanner and those of us
in the Blue Dog Coalition, this is a bill about accountability and
about holding agencies accountable. This is why we need legislation to
restore accountability within our government.
I don't know how good you can see this, Mr. Speaker, but this is the
airport in Hope, Arkansas. Hope used to be known for something else.
Now we are known for the trailer houses, mobile homes, manufactured
homes. As you can see, this is an active runway at the Hope Airport.
And these are old World War II proving ground runways that are no
longer being used. So FEMA decides they are going to go out and buy
about 20,000 brand-new, fully furnished, microwaves built in, whirlpool
tubs built in. We have been in them. We have seen them.
Mr. CARDOZA. Jacuzzi tubs. It is amazing.
Mr. ROSS. I don't know if they are Jacuzzi brand but they are
whirlpool.
Mr. CARDOZA. That is what we call them where I come from, even though
that might not be the brand.
Mr. ROSS. They are fully furnished, 16-foot wide, 60-foot long mobile
homes, about a half a billion dollars worth of them. And they are
parked here at the airport in Hope, Arkansas. Except the theory was
they were going to bring them in and then take them to the storm
victims from Hurricane Katrina. We are coming up on the first
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. And so the theory
was that they were going to be coming in and then going out. This would
be a FEMA staging area.
Well, they all came and never went. And as a result, they quickly
filled up these old World War II-era proving ground runways and started
parking them just in the hay meadow. I mean, just literally on the
pasture.
And then the Inspector General noted that with the rains they were
going to start sinking this past spring. Lord knows, we would love to
have rain now. It is awful hot and dry in Arkansas.
But FEMA's response was not to get the homes to the people who need
them. FEMA's response was to spend 4 to $7 million putting gravel on
200 acres of hay meadow pasture land at the Hope Airport to keep these
mobile homes from sinking.
The bottom line is, if you can't really get a good look at it there,
if you have ever wondered what 9,959 mobile homes look like, that is
what it looks like. At one time we had 10,777. We finally have got it
down to 9,959. But this is a better look of what it looks like. I mean,
there is a fence, barbed wire fence and pasture. They are just sitting
there on the areas. Here, as you can see, 16-foot wide, 60-foot long,
mobile homes; 9,959 of them sitting there at the airport in Hope,
Arkansas, 450 miles from the eye of Hurricane Katrina nearly a year
after the storm.
Now, FEMA buys these for victims of Hurricane Katrina; and then FEMA
says, well, we are not going to put them in a flood plain. Well,
everybody that lost their home and their housing in Hurricane Katrina,
they loss it because they lived in a flood plain.
It is time to restore some common sense to FEMA, and it is time to
find a good use, a responsible use of these 9,959 mobile homes that are
simply parked there at the airport in Hope, Arkansas, an example of
mismanagement by a Federal agency. Example of mismanagement by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. An example of why we need to
restore accountability in our government. And I am not going to let up
on this until every single one of these mobile homes that taxpayers
have paid for, about $400 billion worth, are put to good use.
They are not serving anybody any purpose. They are not doing anyone
any good sitting in a hay meadow at the Hope Airport in Hope, Arkansas.
This is a symbol of what is wrong with this administration. This is a
symbol of what is wrong with this Republican-led Congress. It is a
symbol of what is wrong with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
I yield back to the gentleman from California.
Mr. CARDOZA. The gentleman is absolutely right. And it is interesting
that so many of our Departments are run this way. But the Office of the
Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security Department,
which FEMA is part of, was quoted recently as saying: ``Unfortunately,
the Department had made little or no progress to improve its overall
financial reporting during the whole fiscal year of 2005.'' And KPMG
accounting firm was unable to even provide an opinion on the
Department's balance sheet because the books were in such bad shape.
Another example is the Inspector General for NASA, in its 2005
financial statement said: ``In the enclosed report of independent
auditors, Ernest & Young disclaimed an opinion on NASA's financial
statements for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2005.''
{time} 2045
The disclaimer resulted from NASA's inability to provide Ernst &
Young with auditable financial statements and sufficient evidence to
support the financial statements'' that they did
[[Page H5374]]
have ``throughout the fiscal year and at year end.''
Basically it is what we were talking about earlier. The Federal
Government is writing checks and does not even keep its check stubs.
They cannot find $25 billion of our taxpayers' money, and then they
want to spend more of it. And it is just a crying shame that we cannot
do a better job, and it is a crying shame that we are not doing the
accounting and the investigative hearings and the oversight hearings
that is the job of this Congress. It is an abdication of our duty as
Members of Congress, and it is an indication that we need to change the
one-party system that we have got going on here because we need to
audit the books. It is just a basic fundamental necessity of running a
good government. And what it means is that we have gone, like that
chart you showed, from a situation where when we had a Democratic
President, we were actually paying off the national debt, and now we
are going in the wrong direction. We are going into a deep trough, and
I see the slide that you have put up now. This is what the resulting
action is. First of all, we are not able to do what we need to do for
education, send our kids to college, do all the things that we need to
do proactively to prepare our country for the next century, but we are
having to do instead what you are about ready to talk about, Mr. Ross.
Mr. ROSS. Since President Bush took office, the amount of foreign-
held Treasury debt has more than doubled, increasing from $1 trillion
to $2.1 trillion, meaning that this administration has already accrued
more foreign debt than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
Let me repeat that. This President and this Republican-led Congress
has borrowed more money from foreign central banks and foreign
investors than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
As you can see here in 2001, the amount of money borrowed from
foreign central banks and from foreign investors was $988 billion. That
was troubling enough. In 2006, we are up to $2.66 trillion that has
been borrowed from foreigners. Unlike deficits in earlier years,
current deficits have been primarily financed by foreign investors with
the rise in foreign-held debt equaling three-fourths the increase in
publicly-held debt since the start of the current administration in
2001.
This rise in foreign-held debt is troubling because it makes our
economy beholden to foreign creditors and represents another financial
burden passed on to future generations. Foreign-held debt is
fundamentally different from domestically-held debt, since the interest
payments on foreign-held debt flow outside the United States of America
and reduce Americans' standard of living.
The cost of servicing foreign-held debt is high. Local, State, and
Federal Government interest rates to foreign investors totaled $114
billion in 2005, an amount that will grow rapidly if the Treasury
continues to sell debt to foreign investors at the current rate.
Compare this to only $23 billion in foreign holdings in 1993. Today,
the debt, the foreign-held debt, is $2.1 trillion.
And just like David Letterman, I have got a ``top ten list.'' The top
ten current lenders, again, our government is borrowing $1 billion a
day. We keep passing tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 a year.
And where does the money come from? We have got record deficits. Where
is the money coming from to give tax cuts to those earning over
$400,000 a year?
Here is the top ten: Japan, our Nation has borrowed $640.1 billion
from Japan; China, $321.4 billion.
Mr. CARDOZA. Is that Communist China, Mr. Ross?
Mr. ROSS. Yes.
Mr. CARDOZA. I thought it was.
Mr. ROSS. That would be Red China, Communist China. Our Nation has
borrowed $321.4 billion from China to fund tax cuts for folks earning
over $400,000 a year at home, leaving our children and grandchildren to
foot the bill. That may be a tax cut for the wealthiest people in this
country now, but it is nothing more than a tax increase on our children
and our grandchildren.
The United Kingdom, $179.5 billion. OPEC, imagine that one, OPEC, our
Nation has borrowed $98 billion from OPEC. And we wonder why gasoline
is approaching $3 a gallon.
Korea, $72.4 billion; Taiwan, $68.9 billion; the Caribbean banking
centers, $61.7 billion; Hong Kong, $46.6 billion; Germany, $46.5
billion. And get a load of this, rounding off the top ten: Our Nation
has borrowed $40.1 billion from Mexico to fund this reckless spending,
these record deficits and this record debt given to us by this
Republican Congress and this administration.
Now, as members of the Blue Dog Coalition, why do we raise this
issue? We have got just a few minutes left here. We raise it because
our Nation is borrowing $1 billion a day. Never mind that. On top of
that, we are spending a half billion dollars a day paying interest on
the debt we have already got. That is a half billion dollars a day that
cannot go for education, cannot go for health care, cannot go for
infrastructure improvements. It has got to go to service the debt. It
has got to pay back these foreign countries, these foreign central
banks and foreign investors that are funding these record debts and
record deficits in this country.
In fact, as you can see here, like interest payments on a family's
credit card, every dollar spent on the national debt is a dollar that
does not educate a child, build a road, or keep the Nation secure.
Because of recent record deficits, the government's annual interest
payment is the fastest growing category of Federal spending over the
next 5 years and has posted double-digit percentage growth for the past
2 years. Interest payments dwarf spending on most national priorities
such as homeland security, education, and veterans health care. By 2011
annual interest payments under the administration's proposed budget
will grow to $302 billion, a 38 percent increase from the current
level. As you can see here, the amount of money we are spending in
billions of dollars simply paying interest on the national debt, this
is the amount of money going to pay interest on the national debt. This
is the amount of money being spent to educate our children. This is the
amount of money going for homeland security to keep America secure. And
this is the amount of money going to keep our promises to our veterans.
America's priorities are not being met because of this Republican
Congress' reckless fiscal mess.
It is time to put an end to these record debts and record deficits.
It is time to restore some common sense and fiscal discipline to our
Nation's government.
Mr. Speaker, if you have any comments, questions, or concerns about
what we have been discussing in the past hour, you can e-mail us, Mr.
Speaker, at [email protected]. That is [email protected].
I want to thank the gentleman from California for joining me this
evening.
As we are out of time, I want to leave you with how we started. When
we started this hour, I pointed out the national debt was
$8,419,147,820,878 and that every living soul in America's share was
$28,134.
Just in the hour that we have been discussing trying to restore some
common sense and fiscal discipline to our Nation's government, this
number, our Nation's debt has gone up another $41 million, roughly
another $41.666 million.
As members of the 37-member strong fiscally conservative Democratic
Blue Dog Coalition, we come to this floor of the United States House of
Representatives every Tuesday night to talk about restoring
accountability and fiscal discipline to our Nation's government. We are
going to hold the Republican leadership accountable for the reckless
spending and the lack of accountability, but we are also going to offer
up commonsense solutions to fix these problems, to ensure that we leave
this country just a little bit better than we found it for the next
generation.
Does the gentleman from California have any closing thoughts?
Mr. CARDOZA. I would just like to say thanks to the gentleman from
Arkansas for hosting this once again. We are going to make fiscal
responsibility a priority for this Congress. It is a shame that we have
not spent more time this year dealing with these matters. Hopefully, we
will have some oversight hearings.
Thank you for conducting this, and I just say we will continue to
work on it.
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