[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.
____________________