[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 34 (Thursday, February 26, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H2867]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PRESIDENT OBAMA'S BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, today the President 
of the United States continued a tradition that has existed since the 
beginning of this Republic, and that is for the Presidents of the 
United States to send to Congress a message including his budget. This 
is the blueprint for this administration in the area of taxation and 
spending for the foreseeable future.
  At the outset, Mr. Speaker, let me give the President credit where 
credit is due. We should remark that the President's budget does 
highlight the dire problem with unsustainable growth and entitlement 
spending. He acknowledges that, as it should be acknowledged, and he 
does it up front. And for that, he is due respect.
  Secondly, the President does propose to fix the alternative minimum 
tax, the AMT, and builds the impact of this proposal into his budget's 
out-year projections. Now, this is something the previous 
administration did not do. So this is an improvement in terms of what 
we might call accounting procedures.
  The reform of the AMT does fall short of full reform since it only 
adjusts for inflation, and bracket creep will push more and more of our 
constituents, the taxpayers of America, on to the AMT, which was 
originally considered to catch just a few, a handful, of 
multimillionaires who, in periods of time some decades ago, escaped any 
payment of taxes--not because they did anything illegal, but because 
they took advantage of various tax credits, tax shelters, et cetera, 
that were then available in the Tax Code.
  The President does one courageous thing, I would suggest. He asks us 
to consider means testing Medicare Part D premiums. Always a 
controversial issue but one that the President at least presented us 
with the facts forcing us to deal with those facts.
  And the President should be commended for proposing in this budget 
for emergencies. The previous President, President Bush, set aside $5.6 
billion in a reserve for emergencies in his first budget, but President 
Obama should be advised that the results of that were that Congress 
quickly spent the reserve on other problems--base programs, not 
emergency programs. And there is a tendency in this body, and that on 
the other side of the Capitol, to do the same thing.
  Now, those are the things for which I can give the President credit, 
but overall, this budget is of great concern to me and ought to be 
great concern to the rest of the American people.
  What it would do is increase the national debt by $2.7 trillion. 
That's not billion; it's trillion with a ``T.'' $2.7 trillion this year 
to $12.7 trillion requiring another increase in the debt limit which 
was just increased to $12.1 trillion in the stimulus bill. It actually 
doubles the national debt in 8 years.
  Now, I know my friends on the other side of the aisle have said, 
``How can you Republicans speak? You didn't do a very good job.'' And I 
will be the very first to admit that when I came back here after an 
absence of 16 years, I was surprised by the lack of intestinal 
fortitude in this institution towards fiscal responsibility, and my 
party was in charge.
  You might say, well, President Bush allowed the debt to rise from the 
first day he was in office to the day he left by $4.9 trillion. That is 
a record. But President Obama has already shown us that he's a record 
breaker because under his budget, the debt is projected to increase by 
$5.6 trillion in just 3 years.
  How are we going to take care of this? Are we going to be more 
indebted to the Communist Chinese? Are we going to be more indebted to 
those around the world? When do we stop the printing presses printing 
our money? When does the impact of that fall on our most vulnerable in 
this society, that is those on fixed incomes, when the value of the 
dollar they have in their pocket or in their bank account or somewhere 
in the their investment portfolio is worth less than it was just a few 
months before?
  So we raise taxes by $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Now, some 
of it doesn't really look like taxes because it's called cap and trade 
revenues. Cap and trade. So under the guise of global warming or 
climate change, we now are going to have a huge tax increase.
  So what we have here is a budget with some small good points, huge 
debt, huge taxes. That's not the way forward. We must do something 
better. We can do better.

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