[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 100 (Tuesday, June 17, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5466-H5470]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE BLUE DOG COALITION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Donnelly). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you in that 
chair as a member of the Blue Dogs, a freshman member of the Blue Dogs. 
We are very proud of you. And also I want to thank my friend and 
colleague from Utah (Mr. Matheson). Mr. Matheson has been a solid 
leader of the Blue Dog Coalition since he arrived here 6 or 8 years 
ago. And he actually, in the previous Congress, served as one of the 
Chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition. And I am grateful to him for his 
leadership and also for filling in tonight. Thank you very much, Mr. 
Matheson.
  At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield as much time as he 
would consume to our friend, the gentleman from Kansas, Dennis Moore, 
who is the cochair of the Blue Dog Coalition. He is the cochair for 
policy. So I will yield at this time to Mr. Moore.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. MOORE of Kansas. Thank you, Mr. Boyd. I appreciate the 
opportunity to speak here tonight about something that should be very 
important and that, I believe, is very important to every one of us 
whether we acknowledge and understand the importance or not.
  After the change in the last election when we got the majority after 
8 years--and this is my 10th year in Congress, and as Mr. Boyd said, I 
am the policy cochair for the Blue Dog Coalition--the Blue Dog 
Coalition leadership was invited, along with the leadership of a group 
called the New Democratic Coalition, over to the White House to meet 
with the President. Frankly, I think all of us appreciated the 
opportunity to go over and to meet with the President because we wanted 
to discuss items of interest to people in our Nation, not on a partisan 
basis but simply to find some common ground where we could work 
together. There were, I believe, nine of us all together--four from the 
Blue Dog Coalition and five from the New Democratic Coalition. We met 
in my office before going over.
  We only had a 45-minute meeting, and I think all of us had a little 
concern that somebody, if we didn't have any ground rules, might spend 
more time and take virtually all of the time. So we agreed, if we had a 
chance to speak at all--and the President was running the meeting--that 
we would each take 2 minutes.
  When it was my turn, I said, ``Mr. President, I'm a year older than 
you are. I have seven-and-a-half grandchildren, and we have mortgaged 
their future.'' I said, ``I'm not pointing at you and your 
administration. This goes back 25 years to Democratic and Republican 
Presidents.'' Although, because I was trying to find common ground, 
what I did not say was our debt in this country has gone up over $3.4 
trillion in the last 7 years. Fully a third of our debt has been added 
in the last 7 years of this Presidency.
  I tell folks back home all the time that 80 percent of what we do in 
Congress should not be about Democrats and Republicans. It ought to be 
about taking care of our people and our country, and I think people out 
there really believe that and want that to happen.
  Put aside this partisanship, and let's work together. Working 
together for fiscal responsibility should not be a partisan matter at 
all. We should all be concerned about that because, as Mr. Scott, the 
previous speaker, pointed out, we have a large portion of our debt 
right now held by foreign nations that might have control over some of 
our actions in the future by virtue of the fact that they hold our 
debt. We should be very concerned about that, and we should try to do 
something positive about that.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity, I think, at this time with the 
reinstitution of a rule called PAYGO that expired in 2002. Some of the 
previous speakers, I think, have told you ``PAYGO'' simply means ``pay 
as you go.'' If you have a new spending proposal, a new program 
proposal or a new tax cut, section 1 is here is my proposal, and 
section 2 is here is how it's paid for so it's revenue neutral and 
doesn't increase our deficit and our debt. To me, that is a very 
simple, understandable rule that we all should follow. If we do that, 
we can stop this increase which is going to be detrimental to future 
generations in our country.
  The Blue Dogs passed out a chart that's not manufactured or made by 
our group. I think it's U.S. Budget ``something,'' and you can get it 
on the Web site. It shows a bar graph of expenditures in our country, 
different categories of expenditures. The big three bars on the bottom 
are, as most people would imagine, defense. We all want an adequate 
defense for our Nation; the Department of Health and Human Services, 
which basically is

[[Page H5467]]

Medicare; and the third is interest on our national debt. Interest on 
our national debt is the third largest category of expenditure in our 
Federal budget at this time. That's money that could be used for 
education, for health care, for anything worthwhile besides paying 
interest on a debt.
  Folks, we have got to get back to living like most American families 
do, within a budget. We have got to do this, not just for us. It's not 
about us. It's about our children and our grandchildren and about 
future generations in this country. I believe we owe them the very 
best, and we owe them to do that.
  I encourage and I ask that our compatriots across the aisle, our 
Republican friends, join with us and support this concept of PAYGO 
because we need to do this for future generations in our country.
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. I want to thank my friend and colleague, Mr. 
Moore from Kansas, for coming tonight to speak to us on behalf of the 
fiscally responsible 49-member-strong Blue Dog Coalition. Dennis Moore 
has been a great leader on this issue in Congress ever since he got 
here 8 or 10 years ago, and I'm very pleased to work with him.
  Mr. Speaker, this whole notion of how we run our government's fiscal 
matters is not rocket science. The people watching us out in the 
country tonight understand that they have to balance their budgets in 
their own households. They have to balance their budgets in their own 
small businesses. They can't spend more money than they take in. In 
local governments, if they didn't balance their budgets, if they 
continuously spent more money than they took in, the people would elect 
somebody else. It's only the United States Government that doesn't put 
in place a requirement that it lives within its means.
  I think it's time that we fix this. The Blue Dogs will continue to 
press this issue. PAYGO is one of the tools that we can use to make 
this happen.
  I'm delighted to be joined tonight by other Blue Dog members. There 
is no member who is more passionate about this issue and more 
principled on this issue than our friend and colleague from Indiana, 
Representative Baron Hill.
  I would like to yield to Representative Hill now whatever time he may 
consume.
  Mr. HILL. I thank my friend, Congressman Boyd from Florida, for being 
a leader of the Blue Dogs on this particular issue.
  Mr. Speaker, I remember when I got elected back in 1998 that PAYGO 
rules were in place, and there was the strong possibility that if we 
kept those rules in place that we would actually produce surpluses for 
the first time in, I think, probably 40 years. Well, that dream did 
come true. PAYGO rules were in place in 1998 when I got elected, and 
they were in place in 1999 and in the year 2000. Those rules that were 
in place caused this place to come up with surpluses for the first time 
in 40 years.
  I can remember at the time how elated I was because, as a Blue Dog 
who believes in pay-as-you-go rules, the predictions that we were all 
making in our campaigns were actually coming true. That was, if you 
have PAYGO, it is the one discipline that Congress can practice that 
will actually produce balanced budgets and surpluses, and that's 
exactly what happened in the year 2000. I can remember at the time that 
I was thinking, now, finally, we've got a handle on the deficit, that 
we're actually producing surpluses, surpluses to the tune from a lot of 
economists of $1 trillion over 10 years, that we could actually start 
doing the things that have to be done to correct some problems that we 
have with Social Security, with paying down the debt, with maybe 
reducing some taxes. That's the position the Blue Dogs took when those 
surpluses materialized. We advocated paying down the debt, fixing 
Social Security and cutting taxes.
  Then we had an election, and Mr. Bush became President of the United 
States, and the Republicans grew their majorities. They had a different 
way of looking at things, and that's okay. That's what elections are 
all about. In that particular year, the Republicans won, and they 
wanted to change the policies.
  One of the policies they changed was in dropping the principle of 
PAYGO. I can remember, at the time they dropped the principle of PAYGO, 
that people like Allen Boyd and Baron Hill and other Blue Dogs were 
warning that, if you dropped this discipline, there would be a good 
chance that these surpluses that we had then would disappear. Well, 
that's exactly what happened.
  In the year 2000-2002, there was an approximately $6 trillion 
deficit, which was bad enough, but with the surpluses that we knew were 
going to be created we thought we were going to be able to fix that. 
Now that those policies were changed, we predicted that the deficit 
would grow. Sure enough, it has. It is now $9 trillion in debt. So it 
took us well over 200 years to go $6 trillion in debt, and because we 
dropped those PAYGO rules, in 8 short years, we've added another $3 
trillion to the national deficit.
  As Congressman Moore said earlier this evening, we are paying huge 
amounts of interest on that deficit, and it is growing, and it is 
spiraling out of control. We have got to get a handle on it.
  Now, there was an article in the U.S. News and World Report recently 
that talked about the Blue Dogs' advocating these PAYGO rules. Let me 
read you a bit of what it said. So this is just not the Blue Dogs who 
are pontificating here tonight and who are bragging on the policies 
that created surpluses in the year 2000.
  ``The Blue Dog Democrats are colorfully named, but they're dead 
serious about their mission of attacking the record $9.4 trillion 
national debt . . . The group's top dog, Representative Allen Boyd,'' 
who is leading this discussion tonight, ``a 63-year-old cattle farmer 
from Florida's panhandle, thinks Americans have been lulled into 
believing that any new program or tax cut will fly, `and if there's a 
gap, we just go overseas and borrow the money.' We go to the piggy bank 
in the People's Republic of China until it goes empty or until they cut 
it off.''
  What is this talk about China that we're talking about here tonight?
  Well, because the American government can not pay its debts, it has 
to borrow money. One of the countries that we're borrowing money from 
is the People's Republic of China. I think most people, when they hear 
that, are appalled that we're actually borrowing money from China to 
pay for our debts that we have here in the United States.
  Now, what does this mean in translation in terms of how this affects 
the real lives of most Americans? Here is what it does.
  These PAYGO rules are tough for Congress. They're tough for Members 
like myself and Congressman Boyd because we've got to make the tough 
decisions about how we're going to pay for programs that we think the 
American people deserve, and we've got a tough vote coming up here in 
the very near future on the GI Bill.
  We all believe as Blue Dogs that our veterans who are coming home 
from Iraq and Afghanistan deserve additional education benefits through 
the GI Bill, and the Blue Dogs want to vote for this bill, but we've 
got to pay for it because it's going to cost approximately $60 billion.
  I would think that any veteran who is listening out there on C-SPAN 
all across this Nation, that most of the American people and that most 
people in this Congress would believe that we should not be borrowing 
money from the Chinese to pay for the GI Bill. I think most veterans 
would agree to that, but that's what I mean when I say it's tough to 
have these PAYGO rules. We have to make the tough decisions about how 
to balance the needs of the American people in terms of veterans' 
programs and also how to balance the needs of the American people 
because, I think, most veterans would not want us to borrow this money 
from the Chinese in order for their children and grandchildren to pay 
for that veterans' program.
  So that is the reality of PAYGO rules. It disciplines Congress. Quite 
frankly, the Blue Dogs are the only ones in Congress right now who are 
insisting that these rules remain in place so that we can discipline 
the Members of Congress in doing the right thing.
  I throw that out there about the veterans' programs. These are the 
tough decisions that we have to make. Congressman Boyd and myself and 
every Blue Dog in this Chamber want to make sure that we extend those 
benefits to our veterans who deserve them,

[[Page H5468]]

but we're going to insist that it be paid for because, I think, our 
veterans would demand that, and I think the American people would 
demand that.
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I know that the viewers can see the 
passion that exists within Congressman Baron Hill. He is a great Member 
of Congress. He is a good leader of the Blue Dogs. I am happy to serve 
with him and to call him my colleague.
  He has explained what the PAYGO rule does. It makes us make the hard 
choices. If money just grew on trees, we could do any program we 
wanted, but somebody has to pay for these programs, and we either pay 
for them today or we borrow the money and send the bill to our 
children, along with an interest bill, down the road. We think that's 
immoral. We think it's wrong, inherently wrong.
  I know Mr. Hill said that the Blue Dogs care passionately about PAYGO 
and about getting this thing back on track. We went to Speaker Pelosi 
after the 2006 election and said we would like to do this. We know that 
we can't get a statutory PAYGO, which is one that goes into law.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, in order for it to go into law, the House 
would have to pass it; the Senate would have to pass it, and the 
President would have to sign it. We were assured by some other bodies 
and the White House that that wouldn't happen.
  So we asked the Speaker to at least put a rule in place in the House 
of Representatives that would make the House abide by PAYGO. We knew it 
wouldn't be as good as statutory PAYGO, but it would, in some ways, 
serve the same purpose. It would be a rule for which the House would 
have to take a two-thirds vote. Even though it would only apply to us 
in the House, the House would have to take a two-thirds vote to waive 
that. She agreed to do that, to her credit, and she is a great advocate 
of the PAYGO principle.

                              {time}  2015

  I am grateful to her and the Blue Dogs are grateful to her for her 
position on PAYGO.
  Now, we would like to see PAYGO become part of the law, like it was 
back in the 1990s. PAYGO, along with discretionary spending caps and 
other tools that were used, enabled us to dig out of a hole back in 
1992, the largest deficit in the history of the Nation at that time, 
$290 billion.
  Congress, working together with the White House, and in the 1990s, 
that was mid-1990s and late 1990s, that was a Republican-led Congress, 
and a democratically controlled White House, working together in a 
bipartisan way, put in place statutory PAYGO, discretionary spending 
caps and other budget enforcement tools. This enabled us to dig out of 
that big deficit hole, $290 billion in 1992 is what we were borrowing 
to operate this government, $290 billion.
  For the efforts of the Congress and the White House in the 1990s, 
tools were put in place. We had an economic turnaround and, lo and 
behold, the next thing you knew all kinds of good things were 
happening.
  In 1997, Congress put in place The Balanced Budget Act. I had just 
gotten here as a brand-new freshman, and I was very fortunate to be a 
part of the Blue Dogs in some ways, and in some minor way involved in 
helping President Clinton and the congressional leadership get the 
votes to pass that budget, The Balanced Budget Act.
  That was an important act in 1997, and statutory PAYGO, the law of 
the land, paying your bills as you go, don't borrow money to do it. If 
you are going to have a program, you have either got to cut spending 
someplace or find a revenue source. That was a good tool, and it served 
this country well economically, the greatest economic expansion in the 
history of this Nation during the 1990s, the greatest economic 
expansion in the history of this Nation during the 1990s. The 
government was doing its part, acting responsibly in the discharging of 
its duties and acting fiscally responsible.
  So, what happened, $290 billion deficit in 1992, we worked hard 
together, we cut spending, we put in place the PAYGO rules. Lo and 
behold, at the end of the 1990s and the year 2000, we had a budget 
surplus for the first time, as Baron Hill said, for the first time in 
40 years, with we had a budget surplus.
  The next year, I think it was 1999, we had our first one. The next 
year in 2000, we had another one, over $200 billion surplus. It was 
unheard of in recent American history.
  Then what happened? We had an election. The economic forecasters were 
forecasting over a $5 trillion surplus, its projected surplus. Now, 
it's not real, it's projected if things worked like they were supposed 
to for the next 10 years.
  We had an election, had a new President, and that President and the 
Congress decided that they wanted to go a different route, as Baron 
Hill says. Now, they came and met with the Blue Dogs.
  I remember Vice President Cheney and the OMB Director, who now is the 
governor of Indiana, came and met with us. We told them they needed to 
do three things with that surplus.
  Cut taxes, who doesn't want to have lower taxes? We know what lower 
taxes do for our people. It gives them more to spend on their own 
families, and it helps economically. Cut taxes, number one.
  Pay down debt, number two. Debt was continuing to climb, and we 
thought it was important to pay that down.
  Thirdly, we could see the baby boomer retirement coming right over 
the horizon, and we knew Social Security and Medicare were in trouble. 
Let's take some of that projected surplus and use it to fix Social 
Security and Medicare.
  Those were the recommendations that we as Blue Dogs made to the White 
House and their fiscal team, their budget team. What do they decide to 
do? They said, no, we can't pay down debt, and we don't have time to 
fix Social Security and Medicare. We have got to take all the money we 
can get our hands on and put it in tax cuts. The number back then was 
about $1.7 trillion. It was projected now, it wasn't real, it was 
projected. That was like in June of 2001.
  September 11, 2001, everybody here listening knows what happened. All 
those projections, every assumption that went into that rejection went 
out the window on September 11, 2001.
  After the Bush economic plan had been put into place, then what do we 
do as a government? We just charge right ahead with that economic plan. 
You have seen a continuation or a return to budget deficits that have 
set records in the last 3 or 4 years, highest budget deficits in the 
history of this Nation.
  You have seen an increase, as Baron Hill said, from $5.6 trillion 
debt to the a debt that is expected this year to pass $10 trillion, $10 
trillion, trillion with a ``T.'' That's a lot of zeros on the end of 
it. I think it's about 12. I am not even sure.
  So the economic policy is wrong, and the Blue Dogs are going to 
insist that we do it differently. If we have to take baby steps, if we 
have to do with a PAYGO rule, we are going to stand tough when it comes 
to the votes on that rule. We are hopeful that the other Members of 
Congress, House and Senate and the White House, will come to us on this 
position of fiscal responsibility.
  Mr. HILL. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. I will be glad to yield to the gentleman from 
Indiana.
  Mr. HILL. I was listening with great interest what the gentleman from 
Florida was talking about as he went again down history lane and about 
what happened in late 1999 and the year 2000, because I get asked quite 
often, you know, how are we going to balance our budgets? It's almost 
like when I go home that my constituents don't feel like it is it's 
realistic for us to be thinking about balancing the budget.
  They don't think there is any practical way that we can balance our 
budget, but we can now use history as our guide that back in the late 
1990s and 2000, these issues of PAYGO worked and produced surpluses, 
and it was Blue Dog proposals during those surplus years, that we 
should cut taxes, that we should pay down the debt, and that we should 
fix Social Security.
  Now, we are not able to do that because we are running up these huge 
deficits again. It's important that we return to fiscal discipline by 
implementing these PAYGO rules.
  Now, I don't know about you, Congressman Boyd. Well, I do know about 
you. We have had many, many discussions about this in the Blue Dogs. 
Blue Dogs meet every Tuesday at 5:00 to talk about this issue.

[[Page H5469]]

  But I believe, as you pointed out today very eloquently at the Blue 
Dog meeting, that it is immoral for us to be passing on this debt. It 
is immoral that we are not fixing Social Security for our children and 
our grandchildren.
  It's going to be probably okay for us, but it's going to be a real 
problem if we don't fix it for our children. It's also going to be a 
problem if we don't fix Medicare. It's probably going to be okay for 
us, but it's probably not going to be okay for our children and 
grandchildren unless we start to fix these problems.
  One of the ways that we fix it that was thrown down and thrown away 
after the elections in the year 2000, one way we fix it is to return to 
the days of fiscal discipline so that we can create these surpluses 
again.
  We create the surpluses, and then we can begin to fix Social Security 
and Medicare and other programs that the American people demand, want 
and deserve.
  So the Blue Dogs are not only speaking for the principle of PAYGO 
rules and fiscal discipline just on the merits of fiscal discipline and 
PAYGO, this is about programs that we believe in and getting our fiscal 
House in order so that we can preserve Social Security, so that we can 
preserve Medicare and so that we can start paying down this debt so 
that we are not passing it on to our children and grandchildren.
  Congressman Boyd was right at the Blue Dog meeting today, and he is 
right tonight to say that it is immoral if we don't start fixing these 
problems.
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. I thank my friend for those insightful remarks.
  May I ask the Speaker how much time we have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Florida has 14 minutes 
left.
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. I thank my friend, Mr. Hill of Indiana.
  You know, looking back at the 1990s and coming out of an era where we 
didn't have much fiscal discipline in the 1990s and then to a period 
where we put in place some tools, I want to cite some statistics to 
you. Of course, I already talked about one, in 1992 this country had a 
deficit of $290 billion, deficit, annual deficit. That was the largest 
at that time in the history of the Nation.
  By the year 2000, we had turned that into a $236 billion surplus, 
which was also the largest surplus in U.S. history. Again, that's about 
a $526 billion swing in 8 years with good fiscal management.
  Actually, President Clinton was the recipient of those PAYGO 
policies, but he was very involved, and he believed in it. He, working 
with the Congress, helped write those PAYGO policies. He was also 
committed to fiscal discipline, however unpopular that trend was back 
then, but it also, by doing that, fostered very rapid growth in net 
national savings and investment in this country.
  In 1992, the net savings in the U.S. economy, the net savings, by all 
of its citizens, were only 3 percent. Eight years later, after fiscal 
discipline and moving from a deficit to a surplus, savings was at a 6 
percent level, had doubled, from 3 percent in 1992 to 6 percent in 
2000. Actually, you know what these savings are due, they are used to 
finance investment, domestic investment, and it makes the economy grow 
and everything works better.
  Unemployment, obviously unemployment is an issue that we are all very 
concerned about today. We saw some figures come out last week, we are 
now at about 5.5 percent.
  In the early 1990s, unemployment was at 7.5 percent. Those fiscal 
discipline tools were put in place and the government began to act 
responsibly from a fiscal perspective. By 2000, 8 years later that, the 
unemployment rate had dropped from 7.5 percent down to 4 percent. Now, 
you know, we are back up at that time 5.5 percent figure.
  Let's talk about jobs. The average annual increase in jobs in America 
during the 8 years from 1992 to 2000 was during the Bill Clinton 
presidency at a time when Congress and the President were working 
together to solve this deficit problem. The average job creation number 
was 2.8 million a year, an additional 2.8 million jobs a year.
  Does anybody, do you have any idea what it has been since the year 
2000, since the new administration, since this administration came in? 
It's actually less than a half a million a year.
  You figure all that out over a period of 8 years, it's 15 to 20 
million jobs that we didn't create. Many of us think it's because of 
the deficit problems that exist, the irresponsible fiscal policy of 
this Nation.
  I want to recognize my friend from Georgia again, but I want to close 
this point by reminding our viewers that PAYGO helped with this 
economic boom. Fiscal discipline and the conduct of the government's 
business is an important part of how this economy works. We can 
increase productivity, we can increase gross domestic product, and we 
increase employment.
  I want to remind you that the economic expansion of 1991 to 2000 was 
the largest in U.S. history. We can do it again, but we have to start 
disciplining ourselves, and we have to get away from this notion that 
we can have every program we want, and we can have every tax cut we 
want, and we go somewhere else and borrow the money and not worry about 
paying for those programs.
  I would like to yield to my friend from Georgia.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you very much, Mr. Boyd.
  I want to go back and complement what you are saying because you are 
hitting it from the domestic side in terms of our jobs. I want to 
complement that because I serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee, as 
you know. In addition to that, I serve on the Middle East Subcommittee 
and am vice chairman of the Subcommittee on International Trade, 
Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism, and I am a sitting member of 
NATO's Parliamentary Assembly. I mention those committees that I serve 
on because it puts me in a pretty good position as we get around the 
world to really focus on this other side as to why we have to pay this 
debt down. We don't have all of the answers, but it is incumbent upon 
us to start this ball rolling. The very future of our country is at 
stake.
  In this past winter's meeting when we were at NATO, word came out 
that a Chinese lawmaker, and incidentally, we are borrowing $500 
billion from the Chinese, he stands up and he says I think we ought to 
now start buying euros instead of dollars, and the stock market plunged 
300 points. That is what I am talking about in terms of our own 
national security, the threat that we have if we do not take care of 
this debt, particularly in the hands of foreign countries.
  The other point is in Russia, for example, it is tied into our 
failure to deal with this debt, it is tied into our energy dependence. 
And $46 billion of our debt is in the hands of Russia whom we are 
having a difficult time with. Any reason why? And they are now Iran's 
number one buddy. And dig this, Mr. Boyd, this is the interesting 
point: 45 percent of all of the natural gas reserves are controlled by 
Russia and Iran. And they hold our debt.
  When you combine that with the $153 billion that the OPEC countries 
hold, and the treatment that they gave our President when he went there 
and asked for them to increase their oil output and they said no. The 
comment was we control your oil and we control your debt.
  The point I am getting at is this, that our failure to pay down this 
debt will have a devastating impact on the future of our country and 
our ability to have the leverage we need to survive on the world stage.
  I just wanted to make that point from the foreign affairs perspective 
on why we have to put these PAYGO rules in and make them stick.
  Mr. BOYD of Florida. I thank my friend from Georgia for bringing 
forth that point from the foreign affairs perspective. It is a good and 
valid point.
  Mr. Speaker, we live in the greatest and richest Nation on the face 
of the Earth. We have 5 percent of the world's population and control 
25 percent of the world's wealth. If we are not careful and with poor 
fiscal management, we will shift a good portion of that wealth to other 
parts of the world.
  A couple of statistics, and I don't know what the trade deficit is 
today, but we are running huge trade deficits as a result of the oil 
prices. That trade deficit is ever increasing as a result of the 
increasing cost of oil because a majority of our oil, more than half of 
our

[[Page H5470]]

oil comes from foreign sources. So that is a very serious problem for 
us.
  I talked earlier about the savings having been 3 percent in 1992 and 
we moved it to 6 percent, those are American citizens saving their 
bucks, saving for the future. You know, for the first time since I 
think maybe World War II, 2 years ago this country had a negative 
savings rate. That goes directly to the management of our fiscal policy 
and the performance of the economy. I think that it is sad that we as a 
nation have a negative savings rate. We need to turn that around and 
one of the things that we can do as a government is do our job well. 
Let's identify those functions that we are supposed to do as a 
government, national security, transportation, education, and 
environmental protection. We need good strong foreign policy, and there 
are some other areas. But we ought to be willing and make sure that we 
perform those functions well, and we ought to be willing to pay for 
them and we ought not be wasting money.
  I agree with many on the other side of the aisle that we can root out 
some waste. There has to be tremendous cooperation between the 
legislative body and the executive branch to figure out how to do that 
because the executive branch obviously operates those agencies that we 
appropriate money for. So it is their job to operate them and operate 
them efficiently, and we have an oversight role and we ought to 
continue to do that.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Georgia for being here 
and I want to thank the other Blue Dogs who came in and helped today. I 
see another good Blue Dog in the Speaker's chair now, Representative 
Space from Ohio, one of our freshmen members, and we are very pleased 
to see you. You look good up there, Mr. Speaker.

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