[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 100 (Tuesday, June 17, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5464-H5466]
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 18, 2007, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. MATHESON. Mr. Speaker, I stand before you tonight to lead a 
discussion among the Blue Dog Coalition as we talk about issues of 
fiscal responsibility, pursuing a balanced budget, and doing the right 
thing for future generations.
  I would like to open this discussion by recognizing one of my 
colleagues, one of the newest members of the Blue Dogs, Mr. Cazayoux 
from Louisiana, and I would yield to him as much time as he may 
consume.
  Mr. CAZAYOUX. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to express my support for 
the PAYGO principles by which the Congress has committed to govern.
  As a newly elected Member of Congress, PAYGO simply makes sense to 
me. Thomas Jefferson realized the importance of PAYGO principles nearly 
200 years ago when he said, ``It is incumbent upon every generation to 
pay its own debts as it goes.''
  In the 110th Congress, we have made PAYGO a priority, and I hope it 
continues to remain a priority. My Blue Dog colleagues and I are 
cosponsoring H.R. 2686 that will extend the PAYGO rules through fiscal 
year 2012. I urge all Members of Congress to support this important 
piece of legislation.
  I believe that balancing a budget and paying down the debt can be 
done. We will have to make tough choices now to ensure that our future 
remains financially solvent for our children. Thank you for the 
opportunity to speak tonight, and thank you to all my Blue Dog 
colleagues for their work in furthering the PAYGO principle.
  Mr. MATHESON. I thank my colleague for his comments, a new Member of 
this body, but someone who recognizes the importance of fiscal 
responsibility.
  I think that it's important to expand on what PAYGO is. This is a 
term that gets thrown around a lot in Washington, but we really ought 
to review what it means. And at its basis, it's a pretty simple 
concept, and that is that if you have new spending, you've got to pay 
for it. You've got to pay for it by cutting spending elsewhere or 
raising revenues, but you've got to pay for it.
  And, you know, this isn't a new concept even here in Washington. It 
turns out back in 1990, during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, 
Congress passed legislation to put a pay-as-you-go, or PAYGO, policy 
into effect. And at that time, Congress came together in a bipartisan 
way and then President Bush signed that into law.
  And when it was passed, it put us on a path to where decisions had to 
be made where you had to live within a budget. Everybody in this town 
can come up with a new idea about how to spend money, both sides of the 
aisle, everyone can come up with those ideas. It's easy to say yes to 
that. It's a lot more difficult to say, you know what, we're going to 
live within a budget. But you know what, we ought to be doing that 
because that's what everyone in this country does, everyone who runs a 
business, everyone in their own household budget, everybody does that.
  So let's look at what happened after passage of that law in 1990. 
There were a number of other things that happened during the decade of 
the 1990s. There was a strong economic growth period, the dot-com 
industry really took off, and a whole series of reasons, including 
restraint on spending in Washington, allowed us to move from annual 
deficits to annual surpluses. It was a remarkable period in our 
country's history to have that transition take place. And it was an 
exciting time for this country. And it was good for the government's 
books to be balanced and it was good for our economy, and it led to a 
stronger dollar. I mention that, and we'll come back to that later in 
this discussion, because today we all know we're suffering from a 
rather low dollar situation in the global economy.

[[Page H5465]]

  So if that was such a good idea, if it worked so well, why is it that 
we aren't having both the House and the Senate live by that same law 
today? Well, it turns out that law expired at the end of 2001. And that 
was really unfortunate that it did because it provided that set of 
constraints, if you will, on Washington--on Congress, on the President, 
on everybody, on Democrats, on Republicans. It provided that constraint 
that asked people to live within a budget.
  And after it expired, I think we all know what happened. You had over 
6 years, 2001 through 2006, you had an explosion of spending. You had 
an explosion of debt. Annual deficits were so large. And over those 6 
years, our national debt went from $6 trillion to $9 trillion. Now, you 
throw these numbers around, it almost gets to the point where it's hard 
to recognize what they really mean. But I think we all know a trillion 
dollars is a lot of money. And I think we all know that when you have 
$6 trillion created through the whole country's history through the 
first 42 Presidents, and then during the first 6 years of the 43rd 
President you add another $3 trillion, you're adding a lot of debt in a 
short amount of time. And PAYGO didn't exist. Spending took off at a 
huge rate, greatest increase in government spending since the 1960s, in 
fact.

                              {time}  1945

  That is what happened during those first 6 years. And the Blue Dog 
Coalition during all that time said, wait a minute. Wait a minute. 
Let's not get into a deficit mode again. Let's not create more debt 
that creates a burden on future generations who have to pay the 
interest on that debt. Let's not ensure high taxes on future 
generations to pay the interest on the debt. Let's recognize that we 
have an obligation to future generations that they shouldn't have to 
pay for obligations that we have created on our watch.
  But we could never get the PAYGO principles put back into place. We 
couldn't get a vote to put it into statute. We couldn't get it in a 
rule of the House of Representatives, either, until January of 2007. 
There was a change in control in the House of Representatives. And on 
the first day when we were all sworn in here to take the oath of office 
for the 110th Congress, we set the rules that we are going to work 
under during that 2-year session. And in that rule, pay-as-you-go was 
put in place for the House of Representatives.
  And I am really proud of the Blue Dog Coalition for taking the lead 
on pushing that rule to be put in place. It is not easy to live under a 
budget. The PAYGO rule has been attacked. And yes, there have been a 
couple of circumstances where it has been waived. But I think that the 
Blue Dog Coalition deserves a lot of credit for taking a stand, forcing 
the tough decisions, and quite frankly, creating the dynamic where I 
think there has been a real restraint on this body in terms of what 
could have happened instead in terms of additional spending and adding 
to our national debt.
  It is at the start of a real challenging period we face in this 
country, because we all know that as baby boomers retire and additional 
pressures occur on Social Security and Medicare that it is going to 
take a very thoughtful and aggressive effort by this body in a 
bipartisan way to navigate through that challenge and make sure that we 
maintain fiscal discipline and fiscal responsibility. And pay-as-you-
go, the PAYGO principles, provide a tool. They provide a tool that 
would benefit all of us.
  So this isn't really, again, about Democrats or Republicans. This 
isn't about trying to place blame on people or anything else. It is 
really just talking about the fact that if you look at the way we are 
set up in this country as a government, in the Federal side we are 
allowed to run deficits. You can have deficits if you don't bring in as 
much revenues as you spend. In a lot of States, they have 
constitutional amendments that require a balanced budget. That doesn't 
exist here in Washington.
  As a result, as I said earlier, it is easy to spend money. And over 
the years both parties have shown an ability to spend money. There's no 
doubt about that. And so we need this external constraint, if you will, 
of pay-as-you-go. And I will go beyond that to say the Blue Dogs 
support a balanced budget, as well. That is one of the guiding 
principles of the Blue Dog Coalition, is a balanced budget amendment to 
the Constitution. It takes a long time to amend the Constitution. It 
takes many years to get enough States to ratify and whatnot. And that 
is an important goal. But pay-as-you-go we can do right away. We've had 
it as a rule in the House. We would like to see it as a law. We want a 
statute passed by the House and the Senate because it will serve us all 
so well.
  I will close with one more comment. And I will recognize a couple of 
my colleagues from the Blue Dog Coalition to participate in this 
discussion. But I just want to come back, as I mentioned, to the issue 
of the low dollar we have today. When you're borrowing lots of money, 
and the United States has been borrowing a lot of money from foreign 
lenders, that devalues the dollar. It's a supply-and-demand issue. And 
we're having to borrow to pay for so much in this country. And we know 
that that low dollar has had some serious implications for us. Oil is 
priced on a dollar-per-barrel basis. The global market is one market 
for everybody. And as other currencies in the world go up, as the 
dollar goes down, that means the price per barrel in dollars is going 
up. That's just one example of where a low-dollar policy can have a 
serious impact on our economy and on the daily lives of all of us.
  A strong dollar and a dollar that we can be proud of can be 
reinforced by public policy that encourages balanced budgets. A 
government that lives within its means has a stronger currency. And 
again, that shouldn't be about Democrats or Republicans, or the left or 
the right. That's about what's right for this country. And that's what 
the Blue Dogs are about. And that's why I'm proud to be a member of the 
Blue Dog Coalition, because the Blue Dogs like to look out for what's 
right for this country. And they take an independent approach. And they 
want to sit down, roll up their sleeves, tackle these issues and work 
with everybody on these issues.
  So that's why we are here tonight, to talk about pay-as-you-go, to 
talk about the benefits of this country. I have been joined by some of 
my other Blue Dog colleagues. And I would like to now recognize my good 
friend and colleague from the State of Georgia, Representative David 
Scott, for as much time as he might consume.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you very much. It is always a pleasure to 
come down and to be able to communicate with the American people with 
my distinguished members of our Blue Dog Coalition. What I would like 
to do as a part of this discussion tonight is to certainly communicate 
why we need to institute and maintain what we have instituted or 
reinstituted, and that is PAYGO, to pay our bills as we go.
  Let me see if I can just set the stage to show the American people 
just how precarious a position we are in both from a national security 
standpoint as well as an economic security standpoint. As we stand 
right now, the national debt is a staggering $9.13 trillion. That is 
almost $10 trillion of national debt. And just to show you how serious 
this is, we are accumulating this debt at an astounding rate of $1.4 
billion every single day. That amounts to nearly $10 billion every week 
that we are adding to our national debt.
  And then we compound that. This debt is not free. We must pay 
interest on this debt. And the interest on this debt last year alone 
was an astounding $430 billion. So I can put that in perspective. Just 
the interest that we pay for borrowing this money is four times more 
than what we pay for education, for the health of our children, for our 
veterans and homeland security combined. Folks, that's mighty, mighty 
dangerous ground for this country to be on. That is one of the foremost 
reasons why we must change this direction, or else we are going off the 
cliff. And this is something that is of very, very much concern to 
Democrats, I think to some Republicans as well, and most assuredly, to 
our Blue Dog Coalition that is providing the leadership here so that we 
can be responsible.
  Now let me just add another point. This money that we are borrowing 
is broken down into two groups. Of the $9.13 trillion in debt, about 
$5.1 trillion of that is what we call the public debt. The other $4 
trillion is debt that we

[[Page H5466]]

incur through our private means, through borrowing from Social Security 
and other government agencies. But let's just look at that public debt 
for a moment because the other reason that this is so much of a great 
concern is the threat to our national security. Because, ladies and 
gentlemen, 45 percent of our public debt is being borrowed from foreign 
governments, and not just any foreign government. We are borrowing this 
money from places like China. They have $500 billion of our debt. Japan 
has $601 billion of our debt. And then Saudi Arabia and the oil-
producing OPEC nations have $153 billion in debt. And then if we go to 
places like Russia, $43 billion, and to Korea, $42 billion. And I think 
you are getting the picture, ladies and gentlemen. These are countries 
that we have got to deal with firmly. It is undermining our security to 
have our debt in the hands of these countries because he who controls 
your debt controls you and your future. And it begins to weaken our 
leverage in dealing on the international stage.
  Let me just give you one example. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, our 
President Bush went over to Saudi Arabia, yes, to really try to do 
something about the high price of gasoline that my dear friends on the 
other side have just talked about a few moments ago. But here is the 
President going to Saudi Arabia begging hat in hand basically to ask 
the Saudis to increase their oil output. Keep in mind that it only 
costs the Saudis $2 a barrel to get that oil out of the ground. And now 
it's going for what, $120, $130 a barrel? But the Saudis said ``no.'' 
In the back of their minds I am sure they were saying, we got your oil, 
and we got your debt.
  That's why I'm saying that this debt situation is placing our Nation 
in a terribly precarious situation from an economic security standpoint 
as well as a national security standpoint. And we have got to change 
that.
  And finally, I want to just add this one point, too, because this 
business of continually not only having this huge debt, which we've got 
to saddle on the backs of our grandchildren and other generations, is 
not fair to them. But not only that, but the monies that we are 
spending in Iraq and in Afghanistan are being borrowed from China and 
Japan.
  Finally, on the foreign standpoint, it is very important to really 
dramatize the seriousness of this debt. Over the last 8 years, since 
2001, we have borrowed under this President and this Congress, he 
couldn't have done it by himself, more money from foreign governments 
than we have borrowed in the previous 224 years of our existence. 
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. We have borrowed more money under 
the Bush administration and under this last 7 years of Congress than we 
have done in the previous 42 administrations of this country. That is 
numbing. It is mind-boggling. This is a terrible situation for us to be 
in. This is the reason why we have got no choice in this matter. We've 
got to pay our bills.
  And it is a great testimony to the leadership of the Blue Dogs and 
certainly the leadership of the Democratic party in this Congress that 
we have indeed instituted pay-as-you-go so that we can have both 
economic security as well as national security. The American people 
deserve no less.
  Mr. MATHESON. I want to thank my colleague from Georgia for those 
words. He is an excellent member of the Blue Dog Coalition.
  And Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield back my portion to let Mr. 
Boyd control the rest of the 60 minutes if I could.

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