[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 3 (Thursday, January 8, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H83-H84]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, we saw yesterday the CBO projection that the 
Federal budget deficit for this fiscal year, which started in October, 
will balloon to $1.2 trillion. A member of the Senate Budget Committee, 
Kent Conrad, called it ``jaw-dropping.'' And our budget chairman, John 
Spratt, said he got ``sticker shock.''
  President-elect Obama has predicted that ``potentially we've got 
trillion dollar deficits for years to come.'' President-elect Obama 
then said, ``if we do nothing, then we will continue to see red ink as 
far as the eye can see.''
  Most Members know that our country is facing a critical crisis, and 
if we fail to find solutions that will halt a mortgaging of our 
children and grandchildren's future, I seriously consider and believe 
the 111th Congress will really go down as a failed Congress.
  We have an opportunity at hand to deal with this issue, and we need 
to do it in a bipartisan way. There's a bipartisan plan on the table 
that Congressman Cooper of Tennessee and I have, called the Cooper-Wolf 
SAFE Commission, that sets up a bipartisan panel to put every spending 
program and tax policy on the table and require this institution that 
has avoided its responsibility to vote it on up or down.
  Today's Washington Post, in this editorial which I will submit for 
the Record, talked about our effort and the tough decisions that 
Congress faces. The editorial said, ``Ideally, Congress could make the 
necessary hard choices through the normal legislative process. Its 
repeated failure to do so, however, may necessitate a commission to 
recommend reforms for the House and Senate to accept or reject.''
  Amen. The Post is right. Unless we do the Cooper-Wolf concept of a 
commission, this Congress will not deal with the issue. And if we don't 
do it now, both parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, 
will have failed the American people, and both parties will have to 
explain to the American people their failure to act in the best 
interest of future generations.
  Others have spoken out. Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman said, ``The 
quality of the future that we will endow to our children and our 
grandchildren will depend in important measure on how we rise to the 
occasion.''
  David Broder, a respected columnist for The Washington Post said, 
``The need for such a bipartisan approach (to examine the future of 
entitlement programs) is evident.''
  Robert Samuelson, Washington Post columnist, Newsweek said, ``What 
would distinguish this commission from its many predecessors is that 
Congress would have to vote on its recommendations.''
  David Brooks, from the New York Times, said ``The Commission would 
come up with a plan to restore fiscal balance, and the plan would 
immediately go to Congress for an up-or-down vote.''
  John Snow, the 73rd Treasury Secretary, said, ``I agree that because 
of the huge debt overhang we face a looming financial crisis and I know 
of no better approach than the SAFE Commission idea.''
  Editorials from the Richmond Times Dispatch said, ``The Cooper-Wolf 
bill would give the commission some teeth by requiring Congress to take 
an up-or-down vote on the recommendations of the 16-member bipartisan 
panel.''
  The Washington Times said, ``Two rays of bipartisan sunlight appear 
to be trying to shine through the clouds casting dark shadows on the 
Nation's long-term fiscal horizon. The two rays of bipartisanship 
sunshine take the form of legislative proposals working their way 
through the House and the Senate.''
  And there were many others. Policy groups across the political 
spectrum,

[[Page H84]]

including the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the 
Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget 
also have embraced the SAFE Commission.
  Make no mistake. This could well be the hardest economic issue our 
Nation will ever be faced with, but we cannot afford to wait.
  I will end with a statement by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a 
Lutheran pastor who stood up to the Nazis and was executed, hung in 
Flossenberg Prison when the artillery was coming, the western ally 
artillery was coming to liberate Germany. He was hung by the Nazis. 
Here's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, and I think he was exactly right 
when he said, ``The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of 
world that it leaves to its children.''
  Will this Congress, will this 111th Congress meet the Dietrich 
Bonhoeffer test? I don't know. But I'm going to do everything I can, 
offer amendments on the floor, amendments in committee, to see that 
this Congress is forced to deal with this issue so that we can honestly 
say to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we have tried and done whereby we, however, 
are a moral society, and we have left a good environment and society 
for our children.

              [From the The Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2009]

                             Years To Come

       ``FISCAL SPACE'' is an economist's term for a country's 
     capacity to borrow and spend its way out of recession without 
     risking exorbitant interest rates and inflation later on. 
     Generally speaking, the more public debt a country already 
     has as a share of its economy, the less new debt it can take 
     on.
       As President-elect Barack Obama and Congress contemplate a 
     fiscal stimulus package that could total hundreds of billions 
     of dollars, they still have some fiscal space to work with. 
     At $6.3 trillion, the publicly held national debt is about 45 
     percent of the $14 trillion economy--not much above the post-
     World War II average debt-to-GDP ratio of 43 percent. But the 
     space is shrinking rapidly. According to new figures from the 
     Congressional Budget Office, federal debt is rising at the 
     fastest rate since World War II. It is estimated at $1.2 
     trillion in fiscal 2009, or 8 percent of gross domestic 
     product. This stunning number reflects both the direct effect 
     of the recession on tax revenue and spending and the high 
     cost of measures taken to combat the downturn, such as the 
     financial sector bailout. And it is likely to be matched or 
     exceeded when the Obama stimulus plan kicks in.
       Mr. Obama was just leveling with the American people when 
     he noted yesterday that the country faces `` trillion-dollar 
     deficits for years to come'' unless policymakers ``make a 
     change in the way that Washington does business.'' The 
     question, of course, is how to change. Though Mr. Obama's 
     appointment of an efficiency-minded chief performance officer 
     sent a useful signal, the real answers are legislative. The 
     stimulus package must not bloat the government's permanent 
     financial commitments. According to a recently published 
     International Monetary Fund paper, appropriate measures 
     include increased transfers or temporary tax cuts to 
     consumers at the bottom and middle of the income scale; aid 
     to state and local governments; and repairs and improvements 
     (especially energy-saving ones) to existing infrastructure. 
     The IMF recommends against increasing the federal payroll, 
     cutting corporate tax rates or letting companies deduct their 
     recent losses against past years' profits. The stimulus plan 
     should include a plan for offsetting spending cuts and 
     revenue increases once the economy recovers.
       Over the long run, investors will finance the U.S. 
     government at reasonable rates only if it tackles its huge 
     unfunded health-care and pension commitments. Unchecked, the 
     cost of providing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to 
     77 million retiring baby boomers could push the debt-to-GDP 
     ratio up to nearly 300 percent by 2005, according to a 
     December 2007 CBO report.
       Ideally, Congress would make the necessary hard choices 
     through the normal legislative process. Its repeated failure 
     to do so, however, may necessitate a commission to recommend 
     reforms for the House and Senate to accept or reject. Reps. 
     Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and Sens. Kent 
     Conrad (D-N.D.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) have offered 
     proposals for such a panel. Hard as it is, jumpstarting the 
     U.S. economy will be easy compared with securing its 
     financial future. But Mr. Obama and the Congress must do 
     both.

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