[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 15 (Monday, January 26, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H495-H496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE STIMULUS PROPOSAL AND LONG-TERM BUDGET CONTROLS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I know that each Member of this body, 
Democrat and Republican, understands that our country is in trouble. 
The CBO recently projected that the Federal budget deficit for the 
fiscal year, which started last October, will balloon to $1.2 trillion. 
This number, which Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad called ``jaw-
dropping,'' does not include the $825 billion stimulus plan we are 
scheduled to consider in the House this week.
  David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, has said, ``We should 
not just engage in timely and targeted stimulus. We need to put a 
process in place that will enable elected officials to make a range of 
tough decisions,'' and this institution does not make tough decision, 
``that have been delayed for too long.''
  Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has 
called our situation ``catastrophic,'' noting that ``doing deficit math 
is always a sobering exercise. It becomes an outright painful one when 
you apply your calculator to the long-term fiscal challenge posed by 
entitlement programs.''
  Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has said, ``The quality of the 
future we will endow to our children and our grandchildren will depend 
in important measure on how well we rise to that occasion.''
  I could stand here all day quoting different experts about our 
Nation's grave long-term outlook. I believe that most Americans know 
that our country is facing dire economic conditions that will continue 
to deteriorate unless we change our current course. The fact is the 
American people are ahead of the Congress.
  As elected officials and Members of the 111th Congress, we have an 
obligation, a moral obligation, to find solutions to the long-term 
nightmare that our children and grandchildren will wake up to should we 
choose to do nothing. We are talking about over $56 trillion in 
unfunded obligations through Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, 
the national debt nearing $12 trillion, and China now holding the paper 
on 1 out of every 10 American dollars. America is now being sold to 
China. Does that make this Congress feel very good?
  By letting the stimulus legislation pass the House without addressing 
the underlying problem of out-of-control spending, we are evading our 
responsibility as Members of Congress. David Brooks said this package 
has no ``strategic vision.'' He said it has a relatively modest short-
term impact, and then he said ``there is no sunset.''
  Is it right for us to ignore the fact that we are mortgaging our 
children's and grandchildren's future? We must set up a difficult 
bipartisan mechanism to deal with the underlying problem of autopilot 
spending and show the American people that we can make the difficult 
choices.
  There is a bipartisan plan already on the table to review Federal 
spending in every area, entitlements and tax policies. It garnered the 
support of 110 Members in the last Congress, Republican and Democrat. 
You have heard me talk about it many times. It is the Cooper-Wolf SAFE 
Commission plan, similar to a Senate effort led by Budget Chairman Kent 
Conrad and Ranking Member Judd Gregg.
  We offered the bipartisan SAFE Commission as an amendment when the 
Appropriations Committee marked up the stimulus last week. It failed on 
a mostly partisan vote. I will go to the Rules Committee on Tuesday to 
ask that the amendment be made in order so that it can be voted on by 
the full House during the stimulus debate.
  If we look the other way now, Congress will have fundamentally failed 
the American people. Congress will have to explain to the American 
people that when it had the chance to act in the best interests of 
future generations, meaning children and grandchildren and existing 
generations, it chose to do nothing.
  Make no mistake. This could well be the toughest economic issue our 
Nation will be faced with, but we can't afford to wait. The future of 
the children and grandchildren hang in the balance.
  I will end with President Obama's words from his inaugural address. 
He said that the current state of affairs is the result of ``our 
collective failure to

[[Page H496]]

make hard choices and prepare the Nation for a new age.'' He went on to 
say that ``our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and 
putting off unpleasant decisions, that time has surely passed.'' I 
could not agree more. For years I encouraged the Bush administration to 
adopt this process. They did not. We have also reached out to the new 
administration and his economic team.
  This is an economic, moral, and generational issue, and I am 
astounded as we prepare to debate the stimulus on the floor that we are 
doing so without having bipartisan entitlement reform as part of the 
underlying package.

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