[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 26, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H368-H375]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2115
                          GOVERNMENT SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schauer). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, Thomas Jefferson once wrote, To preserve 
the independence of the people we must not let our rulers load us with 
perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty 
or profusion and servitude.
  Unfortunately, it increasingly appears this Congress has chosen the 
latter path of profuse spending and the servitude to Big Government 
that results therefrom. For the next 60 minutes, I and my colleagues 
are going to talk about the problem our country faces from a very 
different perspective than you have heard during the last 60 minutes.
  I want to start by pointing out the nature of this problem in terms 
of government spending. This chart shows the deficit each year, 
starting in 2000. In 2000 and 2001 under a Republican Congress and 
first a Democratic President and a Republican President we had a 
balanced budget and therefore we generated surpluses and, in fact, the 
two previous years before that we generated a total of $500 billion in 
surpluses that were paid down against the national debt.
  Then came the recession and September 11, 2001, and spending 
increases. Many have, I think fairly, criticized the previous President 
and Congress for spending too much money during this period of time 
when deficits rose as high as $400 billion. In fact, this deficit in 
2004 was the highest deficit in American history until we got to the 
very end of the Republican majority, when it went to $450 billion. 
Staggering sums of money; too much money spent.
  But look what happened when the Democrats took the majority in the 
Congress in 2007. It skyrocketed to deficits that last year and this 
year are over $1 trillion: last year, $1.4 trillion; this year 
projected to be close to $1.5 trillion. To give you an idea how much 
money we're talking about, this year's budget is projected to spend 
about $3.6 trillion with revenues coming in of $2.2 trillion. So we're 
going to spend 50 percent more than we take in in revenues. And what 
are we going to do? We're going to borrow every penny of that money 
against our children and grandchildren's future.
  Now, if this were going to resolve the problem, and some have argued 
on the other side of the aisle that the so-called stimulus, which 
contributed almost all of this deficit in this Congress, if they were 
going to argue that that was going to solve the problem and we would 
get back to balanced budgets and we wouldn't be borrowing against our 
children and grandchildren's future for as far as the eye could see, I 
would listen to their argument. I still wouldn't agree with them.
  But their own budget belies what they claim about what they're doing 
with this so-called economic stimulus package because this is the 
projected budget for each year until 2019. For the next 9 years, it 
never goes below $700 billion and is around $800 billion, ending at 
close to 900, over $900 billion in 2019. Never does it go down, never 
does it even approach these numbers, which I and my colleagues who will 
speak with you tonight, all agree were excessive.
  But they're nothing compared to what is being done right now, since 
the Democratic Party became the majority party in this Congress, and 
Speaker Pelosi has pushed these budget deficits that are absolutely 
staggering. What does it mean? It means that in 1990, the total 
national debt, the accumulation of those deficits was $2.86 trillion. 
And in 2007, when the Democratic majority took over, it was $8.45 
trillion. In just two more years, it's now $12.18 trillion, rising by 
the end of the term of our current President, 6 years into the 
Democrats' control of the Congress, to $16.36 trillion, nearly 
doubling, and

[[Page H369]]

then continuing at that upward arc even more dramatically after that.
  This is the public debt outlook. This is the projection that says 
what the outlook was first in January of 2009 and then, after the 
stimulus had taken effect, after they had begun spending nearly $1 
trillion that was allegedly going to stimulate the economy and create 
jobs for the American people, they came back and revisited it in 
August.
  And while they were projecting this gradual but still very serious 
increase, it skyrocketed instead. Why? Because they have done nothing 
to control spending. They have done exactly the opposite. So now the 
President is going to come to the Congress tomorrow night and, as the 
President of the United States, we are all anxious to hear what he has 
to say about what we should be doing to address the problems of our 
country. And we are told by those who are in the know that the 
President will call for a spending freeze for 3 years. But what is he 
doing with the spending freeze but locking in those higher spending 
increases that have been passed through all the appropriations bills 
this year, some with 12, 14, 16 percent increases over the previous 
year, locking in those higher levels of spending when we all know that 
what really has to take place is to cut government spending.
  What has been the effect of the President's efforts? Well, this is a 
chart showing job losses since the stimulus took effect in March of 
last year: 2.74 million more jobs have been lost in this country over 
the ensuing 10 months, notwithstanding the claim that this would create 
jobs and would halt the unemployment rate at 8 percent. Instead, it is 
now over 10 percent, and we've lost 2.74 million more jobs.
  Well, what is the solution to this? A big part of it is something 
that 49 out of our 50 State governments have got to do, and the 
Congress should be required to do as well, and that is to balance the 
budget each year except in times of war or national emergency. In the 
last 40 years, those 4 years, in the late 1990s and into the early 
2000s were the only 4 years in which the Federal Government balanced 
its budget. The other 36 years they ran a deficit. And you can see how 
that deficit is adding and mounting each year now, adding to that 
national debt. It should be the reverse.

  In the last 40 years there have been economic crises like the one 
that we are in now, and there have been times of war when we might not 
balance that budget. But instead of four times out of 40 balancing it, 
it should be four times out of 40 not balancing the budget.
  And that is why we need a balanced budget amendment in the United 
States Constitution; 49 out of 50 States have it. This Congress came 
very close to passing it as a part of the Contract with America in 
1995. It passed the House of Representatives with a strong bipartisan 
majority, and was sent over to the United States Senate, and it failed 
in the Senate by one vote to get the two-thirds majority. It requires a 
two-thirds majority in the House, a two-thirds majority in the Senate, 
and then three-quarters of our State legislatures to ratify it.
  Well, we got all but one vote that we needed in the Senate. Had that 
vote been provided to give us two-thirds, it would have been sent to 
the States. The President does not have any say in an amendment to the 
Constitution. So it would have been sent directly to the States. And I 
believe by now three-quarters of those States long ago would have 
ratified that balanced budget amendment, and we would be in a much 
different situation in this country today if we had done that.
  Well, the American people have never abandoned this idea, even though 
the Democratic Congress long ago abandoned this idea, and that's 
unfortunate. But the American people, poll after poll shows that 75, 80 
percent or more of the American people believe that the Federal 
Government should be required to balance its budget each and every 
year, except in times of war or economic emergency. And this would 
require a supermajority vote of the Congress to declare that they would 
not balance the budget in any particular year.
  How popular is this? Well, here's what our current majority leader 
had to say about a balanced budget when we had that debate in 1995: the 
issue of balancing the budget is not a conservative or a liberal one, 
nor is it an easy one, but it is an essential one for us in this House, 
for the American people, and, most assuredly, for future generations.
  Representative Steny Hoyer, a member of the minority in 1995, voted 
for a balanced budget amendment; but we have not heard about a balanced 
budget amendment from this majority in this Congress at all. And we're 
here tonight to urge the Congress to bring up the balanced budget 
amendment that I introduced on the first day of this Congress, House 
Joint Resolution 1, a balanced budget amendment to the United States 
Constitution. And we will keep pushing for this until we have 
leadership in this Congress that will bring this bill to the floor for 
a vote so we can send it to the Senate again and challenge them again 
to provide those two-thirds votes needed and then send it to the States 
for ratification.
  It is never too late for the Congress to do the responsible thing. 
But we have dug a much, much deeper hole as a result of the 
irresponsible budgets that have been passed by this Democratic majority 
in each of the last three Congresses and projected, as I pointed out, 
projected for the next decade, huge deficits as far as the eye can see, 
far greater than anything we have seen previously in the history of our 
country.
  I'm joined by several of our colleagues, and I want to recognize the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Coffman), who has been a real leader on 
this issue and has been working to organize support in the Congress for 
the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I'm pleased to yield 
to the gentleman.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. I thank the gentleman from Virginia for all 
your work as the prime sponsor of that resolution for a balanced budget 
amendment and certainly want to work with you to do everything I can to 
get that passed. You know, when we look at, I think as you mentioned, 
discretionary spending, nondefense discretionary spending now stands, I 
think, about $536 billion, up nearly 24 percent since the Bush 
Administration's last full budget in fiscal year 2008, which was $433.6 
billion.
  So we have a $1.4 trillion deficit right now. And the President is 
expected to address a joint session of Congress tomorrow night, and I 
think he's going to present two plans, from what I understand, to bring 
down the deficit. The first is he's going to freeze one-sixth of the 
budget that will be domestic discretionary nondefense spending, but 
only one-sixth of the budget; and over 10 years, the estimated savings, 
should that section of the budget not be allowed to increase, would be 
about--is estimated to be, by the administration, $250 billion. But 
when we look at the extraordinary increases that this administration's 
done, I think we're looking at nondefense discretionary spending went 
up 10.3 percent in fiscal year 2009, 12.3 percent as projected this 
year, when inflation is at an all-time low.
  And I think that the other program that I believe that he's going to 
be presenting to the Congress is some sort of a Presidential bipartisan 
commission, controlled by his party, to lower the deficit. And first of 
all, I think if we look at the first plan, it's far too low. He needs 
to get spending down to where it was before he certainly got in office. 
But the second one, I think, is just going to be cover for a tax 
increase to have some kind of bipartisan increase for a tax increase 
without really reducing spending.
  And I really want to rise in support of what I think the most 
important thing is that the United States can do, and that is the 
balanced budget amendment. And having been a former State legislator 
from one of those 49 States that requires a balanced budget, you have 
to make the hard decisions. And you rise in debate where you're 
debating tradeoffs, where you can't have everything, where you can't 
simply run a deficit for your operating budget. You can certainly go to 
the people or float bonds for certain capital improvement projects like 
roads and bridges and things like that, but you cannot simply increase 
spending that is out of balance with revenues that are coming in, 
unlike the Federal Government.

                              {time}  2130

  This is my first year in the Congress, and I see that as the most 
significant

[[Page H370]]

problem facing the Congress, that you're in a situation where there are 
no tradeoffs, that an administration can come in and really try and 
have it all in terms of spending and put it at such an extraordinary 
burden, not simply on the economy in terms of inflation and high 
interest rates that could choke off this recovery, but to put a 
crushing debt on future generations yet unborn I think is 
extraordinarily unconscionable.
  So with that, I rise in support with the gentleman from Virginia and 
look forward to working with you on what I think is absolutely the most 
critical thing. If there is one thing that we can do in the Congress of 
the United States to save this country from financial ruin--and without 
a strong economy we cannot have a strong defense to protect our 
national security interests--a balanced budget is the most critical 
thing that we can do for the future of this country in this Congress.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. I thank the gentleman. I hope he remains. There may be 
other things we may want to discuss about this.
  But before we get back to him, I'd like to recognize the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Conaway) who is a very outspoken Member of Congress on 
this issue of fiscally responsible budgets and that we balance the 
budget of our country. And I will yield to the gentleman from Texas, 
and shortly we will get to the gentleman from Florida who I know wants 
to say a few words and then needs to leave, but I hope the gentleman 
from Texas can also remain and we will continue this dialogue.
  Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman from Virginia, and I look forward 
also to working with you on the balanced budget amendment.
  As our colleague from Colorado said, the single most important 
constitutional amendment that is bandied about these days, and there 
are several that are important, but there is none more important than a 
balanced budget. If we only could do one constitutional amendment in 
the next 10 years, let's do this one.
  Think back. I wonder who those 35 Senators were in 1995 who all voted 
``no'' on the balanced budget amendment, if any of them are still in 
Congress, if we could point to one of them and say, Had you voted 
``yes'' in 1995, then surely during the surplus years we experienced in 
the late 1990s, it's easy to pass a balanced budget at that point in 
time because nobody's pig's getting stuck.
  We would have avoided trillions and trillions of dollars in debt had 
one Senator moved over in 1995. It would be interesting to see if any 
of those 35 who voted ``no'' are still in the Congress right now and 
would fess up to having a good slug of this problem.
  My colleagues all know that anybody can start a diet tomorrow. The 
easiest diet is the diet you start tomorrow. Wait until you start a 
diet today.
  The single greatest threat to our way of life is not al Qaeda. It is 
not the Islamist jihadists, as bad as they are. They will get some of 
us, but they will not get all of us. The single biggest threat to our 
way of life in my view is the growth in this Federal Government as 
demonstrated by the growth in spending.
  If you look at the chart, the more insidious two things about that 
chart are that, one, the 2010 deficit is estimated to be $1.4 trillion, 
which I think is not on that chart yet; two, the out-years, which are 
the least accurate, the out-years are all increasing. The deficit goes 
up. They can't even put together a set of numbers and facts that at 
least give the facade of showing they are going to drop spending in the 
out-years.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. If the gentleman will yield, that is very similar to 
the fact over the weekend three different representatives of the 
administration got on television and claimed that the stimulus--which 
we've seen has not resulted in job creation but, rather, 2\3/4\ million 
jobs lost--claimed, well, there would have been more jobs lost had we 
not had the stimulus, but they can come nowhere near agreeing with each 
other on what those jobs saved are.
  I think the only really accurate figure is what is reported by the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics, which points out that we've lost 2.7 
million jobs.
  Mr. CONAWAY. Even over the weekend they were saying that yes, we've 
lost 7 million jobs but we've created X number of million jobs. The 
real issue is the net job loss, because those are folks that are out of 
work. That is kind of a hollow thing to brag about.
  Another thing about the chart. It assumes that the Bush tax cuts from 
2001 and 2003 expire. Hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes are 
in those numbers, and those numbers are still as bad as they look and 
with the trillions of dollars of deficit that are accumulating.
  Now, the bad news about this is that we're not going to pay that debt 
off. I had a fifth grade student in Fredericksburg, Texas. I was doing 
a town hall meeting for a school that was K-12. A little fellow raised 
his hand and said, Mr. Congressman, what's the plan to pay off the 
national debt? And I looked at him. I said, What? This is a technique 
you use to try to gain time to try to think of what your answer might 
be. He said, Yes, sir. What's the plan to pay off the national debt? I 
said, Young man, that's the single best question I've ever been asked. 
There is no plan to pay off the national debt.
  So what we are doing is we're putting a floor under future 
generations' tax rates, because this cumulative debt, America will 
constantly pay the interest on this debt from now until eternity. So 
what we've done to future generations is you're going to have to tax 
yourselves enough to pay the interest on the debt from now on. That's 
before you get to start thinking about national security. That's before 
you get to start thinking about homeland security or anything else you 
might want to do with the world you inherit from us. You're going to 
have to pay the debt because your parents and grandparents didn't have 
the fiscal discipline to just say ``no.''
  So I would love to stay around and visit with you this afternoon for 
some other comments, but I know our colleague from Florida wants to 
talk as well.

  I couldn't agree with my colleague from Virginia any more. This is 
House Joint Resolution 1. It should be number one in our hearts and 
number one in the docket for this Congress. It should have been that a 
year ago in January, and it ought to be tomorrow on the ballot to be 
talking about because there is nothing more important to our way of 
life than gaining control of our profligate spending ways.
  So I thank the gentleman for having this hour tonight.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. I thank the gentleman for his comments about House 
Joint Resolution Number 1. It is, by the way, the same balanced budget 
amendment that passed the House as a part of the Contract with America, 
missed by one vote in the Senate. Same language entirely. And it has 
over 170 cosponsors in the House right now, including many Democrats. 
It's bipartisan, and it needs to be bipartisan to get that two-thirds 
majority of the House to vote for it and pass it and be able to send it 
on to the Senate.
  I would now like to recognize the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Buchanan) who has also been a leader on this issue and has, in fact, 
introduced a balanced budget amendment on his own. And we are proud to 
work together in promoting fiscal responsibility here in the Congress.
  Mr. BUCHANAN. I would like to thank the gentleman from Virginia for 
his enormous leadership.
  As I agree with all of my colleagues, everybody has a different 
reason why they run for Congress. I have been in business for 30 years. 
Your first term, my second term. But that was my number one issue by 
far is these runaway deficits. And since I came in 2006, we've got $1.4 
trillion. We've picked up another $2 trillion. Another 20 percent we've 
added to the deficit in the last 3 years. It's crazy.
  The numbers today were over $12 trillion in debt. And with the budget 
the Democrats have presented in terms of going forward, they're talking 
about close to $20 trillion in the next 6, 7, 8 years. If you took the 
number of 5 percent cost of money on $20 trillion, it's a trillion 
dollars a year before you pay $1 for Social Security, Medicare, or 
anything. It's unbelievable.
  This past year, the deficit was $1.4 trillion. As bad as it's been in 
the past, if you look at $300 billion, $400 billion is way too much. We 
should have been balancing those budgets. But $1.4 trillion, that is 
three times larger, plus, than any other deficit from that standpoint.

[[Page H371]]

  The last 50 years--and what really motivated me is why this has to be 
a bipartisan effort. In the last 50 years, I think--and you might know 
exactly the number, but I think it's only been about four or five or 
six times we balanced the budget. Forty-four times we haven't. We're 
incapable of balancing this budget, with the exception of getting a 
constitutional balanced budget amendment.
  Forty-nine out of fifty Governors have to balance their budgets. Our 
city in Sarasota, Florida, or Manatee County, they've got to balance 
their budgets. Families have to balance their budgets. Businesses can't 
continue to spend.
  I grew up in Detroit down the street from General Motors. If you look 
at the most powerful, successful corporation in the world, made a lot 
of commitments to a lot of folks who used to be 30 and out for the blue 
collar worker. My brother was there when he was 18. Many of them looked 
at 30 and out. But now they've reneged on all of the benefits and 
everything else. We've got to stop it. It's crazy, and we've got to 
bring some common sense to this whole process.
  That is why we've got to have a constitutional balanced budget 
amendment. As my colleague mentioned, we were one vote short in '94, 
and we've got to go back in that effort. It defies logic why we don't 
do that.
  The other thing, I came here and I want to be the best I can, 
bipartisan. The Democrats talked about PAYGO. That's a joke. PAYGO, it 
sounded good. You know, it's better than nothing, I thought. But we ran 
our largest deficit ever--$1.4 trillion with PAYGO. You look at now we 
want to have a commission and talk about that on a bipartisan basis. 
Again, they won't get it done. I have absolutely no confidence that 
that is going to get done.
  We need a constitutional balanced budget amendment that says if you 
take in $3 trillion--that is what we took in my first year in 
Congress--you don't spend more than that, $3 trillion. As we said, 49 
out of 50 Governors can't spend more than they take in. In the State of 
Florida, our budget was $72 trillion a few years ago. It's down to $62 
trillion. They've had to make the adjustments. They've had to find the 
efficiencies. And we've got to do the same thing here.
  I tell people--I think it was roughly a year ago you might remember 
we had a bill here, Aid to Africa. We were giving them $15 billion a 
year. And the thought was in this environment, same environment we're 
in now, tough year, families are making cuts, businesses are making 
cuts, you think they might cut it 10 percent or maybe add 2 percent. 
We're a very generous Nation. They went from $15 billion to $50 
billion. And I think every Democrat voted for it and half the 
Republicans.

  So my thought was, Okay, here we go. We're going to go borrow the 
money from China. Taxpayers are going to pay interest on that for a 
long time, and our children and grandchildren. And it's going to go to 
Africa, and God only knows where it goes when it gets to Africa. I 
thought to myself, Why don't we have China give it to Africa? Why do we 
have to be the middleman in that process?
  But the bottom line is we've got to recommit ourselves. I think what 
happened on Tuesday a week ago in Massachusetts, spending and runaway 
spending has got so many people in my district and I think across the 
country, they realize that we defy common sense up here. That's why 
they're so angry and mad. There are a lot of other issues, but I think 
the top of this is they're concerned about what we leave our children 
and grandchildren.
  I was in Bradenton, Florida, at a town hall meeting. A gentleman 
stood up, 63 years old. He said, Congressman, I have never been to one 
of these. I don't get involved politically in this. But he said, I have 
five children and I think 13 grandchildren. It's the first time in my 
life--I've been a small business man all my life. I am very, very 
concerned about where we're at and where we're going. I feel like we're 
heading towards bankruptcy, what I see, what I sense, my business 
background. He said, We can't continue to keep spending.
  And I share that feeling. I know that my colleagues all share that 
feeling today, and this is the most important issue. It's the reason I 
came in 2006. I have two children in their mid-twenties. Every 
generation has left it better for the next generation. I don't want our 
generation to be the first generation that doesn't do this. And we need 
to come together in a bipartisan basis and do what's best, in the best 
interest of not only Americans but America.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  I'd like to talk a little bit about what those economic consequences 
are, not just for our children and grandchildren, which should be our 
greatest concern, but not too far down. And in a moment I will turn to 
the gentlemen from Texas and Colorado and ask them, to get the benefit 
of their thoughts about what the consequences are of these deficits 
running as far as the eye can see if we don't pass a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution and start living within our means like 
every family, every business, large and small, every local government, 
and yes, even every State government, some of which are not managed 
very well. But they have to come to terms with the consequences of 
their actions a lot more quickly than the Federal Government ever has 
because of the fact they don't have this requirement to balance the 
budget, and every year they kick the can down the road. They say, We 
can have it all, and we'll just borrow more money to pay for it.
  Well, I've asked high school students when they have come to see me 
or when I've had an opportunity to speak to them in their classes, I 
said, Who do you think is going to bear the burden of this debt that 
we're piling up? And they know the answer to that. They know that it's 
falling on their shoulders, but they don't have an appreciation of how 
serious it is, how large a debt it is and how dramatically it can 
affect the future of our country in the long term and also in the not-
too-distant future as well.

                              {time}  2145

  So I said, let me give you a starting point to think about that. I 
said, how much is $1 trillion? The economic stimulus package, $1 
trillion, cha ching. The budget deficit, the $3.6 trillion spending at 
the beginning of the year--they projected $2.4 trillion in revenue, 
$1.2 trillion deficit. We now know that we are several months into that 
year, and lo and behold, it's even greater than $1.2 trillion. Over $1 
trillion, the health care bill, the monstrosity that brought people out 
to the polls in Massachusetts last week, $1.1 trillion, according to 
the Speaker's budget projections; in the Senate, $800 billion.
  But we all know that when you have a bill that has 10 years worth of 
taxes to pay for it and only 6 years worth of benefits that you are 
using smoke and mirrors and it costs way more than $800 billion over a 
full 10 years of benefits. Most economists say it will be over $2 
trillion over 10 years to pay for either the House or the Senate health 
care reform bill.
  So how much is $1 trillion? I said, let me give you a starting point. 
If you had a stack of $1,000 bills, nice, freshly printed, tightly 
packed $1,000 bills, just 4 inches high, you would have $1 million. 
These students were pretty impressed with that. Most of them had never 
seen a $1,000 bill, and to think that just 4 inches would be $1 
million. I said, how high would that stack of $1,000 bills, not $1 
bills, $1,000 bills, have to be to reach $1 trillion?
  Well, one young lady said, would it be about 12 inches? And a fellow 
in the back of the room raised his hand. He laughed. He said, oh, no. 
It would be a lot more than that. It would be about 20 feet. I said, 
well, think about it this way. One billion is 1,000 times 1 million. 
And 1 trillion is 1,000 times 1 billion, or 1 million times 1 million. 
And so that stack of $1,000 bills that is 4 inches high, to be $1 
million, would have to be 4 million inches high to be $1 trillion. Four 
million inches is 63 miles high. It reaches up into outer space. And 
that's just $1 trillion.
  That's just for the stimulus, or just for the deficit for the coming 
year, or double that for the new health care bill that they want to add 
in terms of overall spending that will cost either the taxpayers of 
this country or borrowed against the future of our country.
  When you're talking about trillions of dollars, you're talking about 
a staggering amount of money. Back in the 1960s, there was a very 
famous Senator

[[Page H372]]

who was widely quoted as having said, $1 billion here, $1 billion 
there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. But do you know 
what? That is not what he said. Everett Dirksen, the Senator who said 
that, actually said, $1 million here, $1 million there, pretty soon 
you're talking about real money. And that was just 45 years ago that he 
said that. And we've moved from millions to billions to trillions 
because this Congress doesn't have the fiscal responsibility that would 
be required by a balanced budget.
  There are consequences, serious consequences for every American 
family and every job holder in this country. And that's why I want to 
turn to the gentleman from Texas and the gentleman from Colorado to get 
their perspective on just what happens if we don't get this problem 
under control.
  Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  It is stunning to think that a stack of $1,000 bills, 1,000 of those, 
which would equal 1 million bucks would be 4 inches tall. Another way 
to look at $1 trillion, if you were to try to spend $1 trillion in 1 
year, to do that, you would have to spend $32,000 per second every 
second of the year in order to get, to fight your way through $1 
trillion. It's a staggering amount of money.
  The number that doesn't show on your charts there is the unfunded 
promises that we've made. There is about $62 trillion in unfunded 
promises that we've made. To pay off that $62 trillion--that is the 
present value of those unfunded promises, this Federal Government over 
the next 75 years would have to run a $62 trillion surplus. I don't 
know who thinks that is even remotely possible to make that happen. The 
4 years out of the last 40, I think, that cumulative $17 billion in 
surpluses over that 40-plus year period, and now we've added another 10 
years to that 40 of deficits.
  The first-quarter deficit for fiscal year 2010 is the fourth-largest, 
and would have been the fourth largest annual deficit ever, just to 
show you how fast we are running through this money.
  The doctor fix, I mentioned that--starting the diet tomorrow. I hope 
the President comes in tomorrow night and says, we have a looming 
problem with our doctors and the Medicare reimbursement issue. The 
Congress gave it a 2-month extension back in December. The fix he 
referred to is that doctors on Medicare get a 21 percent cut in their 
reimbursement rates. None of us want to let that happen, period, to our 
seniors and to our physicians. But by the same token, we don't want to 
take the fix and simply add that burden to future generations. Let's 
start tomorrow night with the first doctor fix, which will expire 
February 28, and have that paid for by cuts in other spending so that 
we don't, in fact, take a difficult problem--but it's the most, it's 
the most near-term difficult problem--and show the world that we can 
fix it.
  The other thing I would like to make a point of before I hear from 
the gentleman from Colorado in terms of what would happen, the 
Democrats are talking about the economy this and jobs that, all those 
kinds of things, I don't think there is a single thing we could do more 
important to incentivizing American jobs than it would be to seriously 
address this looming financial crisis of the Federal Government. If we 
were to say, yes, we are serious about balancing a budget, I think the 
confidence that that would instill in the market, in small businesses 
and large businesses all over this country, would do more than any $787 
billion stimulus, any $150 billion stimulus that the House passed over 
that one Republican vote in December, the $80 billion stimulus that's 
being contemplated in the Senate, nothing of that sort will have a 
dramatic impact the way that balancing this budget, or at least telling 
the American people we are serious about balancing this budget, with an 
amendment that requires it; not good faith efforts, but requires a 
balanced budget.

  I don't think there's anything we could do that would stimulate jobs 
and this economy any better than doing that. The confidence it would 
instill in this country would be palpable, I would think, if we were to 
do that.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. I thank the gentleman. And I yield to the gentleman 
from Colorado.
  Mr. COFFMAN. I thank the gentleman from Virginia and appreciate the 
comments of the gentleman from Texas on this very critical issue about 
a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget to the U.S. 
Constitution.
  Let me just say about what is the impact as a former small business 
owner and actually as a former State treasurer for the State of 
Colorado, what is the impact of this deficit spending on the economy as 
a whole?
  First of all, it's interesting that you hear rumblings around the 
world from other countries about given the U.S., given their fiscal 
policies, given their lack of fiscal discipline and how that will 
impact the dollar in terms of the strength of the dollar, should the 
dollar still be used as the international reserve currency? But I think 
the immediate effect that we are going to see certainly is a weakened 
dollar. And a weakened dollar is going to lead to higher inflation 
rates. Particularly as the economy tries to expand, you will have 
private borrowing competing with public borrowing, and that will create 
a higher demand and higher interest rates. But certainly the perception 
of a prolonged weakening of the dollar is going to cost us more as 
borrowers. It will drive up interest rates.
  Then also look at just the extraordinary inflationary impacts the 
chronic deficit spending will have on that economy. I think that those 
things are shorter. And I believe that those things in concert will 
choke off the ability for this economy to fully recover. If we do not 
control spending soon, it will choke off the ability for this economy 
to ever fully recover. We will never see, we will never see the 
prosperity that Americans have experienced up until now. And it has 
always has been the next generation always had it better than the last. 
And I believe that we are at a turning point now where unless this 
Congress changes its ways fairly dramatically fairly soon, this next 
generation will not have it better than the previous generation.
  I yield back.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. I agree with the gentleman entirely. We are at great 
risk.
  And let's start with the stimulus. The group speaking just before us 
were touting the great benefits of this economic stimulus package. 
We've already seen that during the time that we have been in the 
process of spending this nearly $1 trillion, all of which, by the way, 
is borrowed against our children and grandchildren's future, every 
penny of it is added to the national debt, but before we mention that 
we've lost 2.74 million jobs since the stimulus program began, the 
stimulus is founded on an economic theory, and that is called Keynesian 
economic theory. This says that if there is an economic downturn, the 
government will borrow money and use that money to spend on various 
projects and programs to employ people, and they will then generate 
economic activity. They will spend the money they earn with other 
people. That will cause people to manufacture goods in response to that 
demand, and the economy will start growing.
  And this is the last part. This is the part that is always left out 
when they talk about the economic stimulus package in Keynesian 
economic theory. The last part of Keynes' theory was that when that 
economic activity took place, and the result was a growing economy, and 
there would be increased revenues coming into the Federal Government, 
that they would use those revenues to pay back the money they borrowed 
to get the process going.
  And every time there is one of these so-called economic stimulus 
programs, do they pay the money back at the end? No. And it's very 
clear that there's no such intention here when you have $800 billion-
plus deficits as far as the eye can see, to say nothing of the unfunded 
liability, the promises that the gentleman from Texas referred to, that 
is even far, far greater than what we are seeing here on this chart.
  And so, that is what really puts the lie to the idea that this 
stimulus is going to have any long-term good effect.
  The first concern I have is that at some point in time the amount of 
money we've borrowed, when the economy does start to grow, not just in 
this country but elsewhere in the world, and in some economies, they 
are already growing, and, in fact, they are

[[Page H373]]

growing at a pretty healthy pace in countries like China and Brazil. 
They're going to have increased demand to borrow money. And our 
government is going to have increased demand to borrow money. And that 
means that at some point, not right now because people are saving money 
at a higher rate than they ever had, and interest rates are very low, 
and banks are afraid to lend that money to a lot of people, therefore 
there is a lot of money in the bank that is not being lent. And 
therefore interest rates are low. But in the not too distant future, 
whether it's 1 or 2 years, we are going to see demand for that money 
rise. And then the point made by the gentleman from Florida, that you 
will have $14 trillion, $18 trillion $20 trillion accumulated debt and 
interest rates go up to 5, 6, 7, 8 percent.

  I can remember back during the Carter administration in the late 
1970s when the prime interest rate got over 20 percent. If we face 
those kind of interest rates with this amount of debt, the burden on 
our government is going to be staggering, and therefore the burden on 
our economy and our people. And it's going to result in very near-term 
staggering problems in terms of high interest rates, perhaps 
hyperinflation related to the very weak dollar compared to other 
currencies around the world. And then we are going to have what it 
seems like we are already getting into right now, and that is some 
evidence of some growth in our economy, but continuing to lose jobs. 
And then, behind that, you have inflation set in. You're going to have 
the stagflation that people remember from the 1970s and early 1980s.
  This is not a prescription for the future of our children and 
grandchildren. This is a prescription for an economy that will go 
downhill and have a very, very different future for this country and 
the people of this country. And it's not too distant when that kind of 
impact could take place.
  I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman. I would just like to add to what 
you're talking about. U.S. taxpayers have benefited from artificially 
low interest rates because when the world's economy went bad, a bunch 
of the money that was out there fled. It was a flight to safety. That 
money fled into U.S. Treasuries. And we have basically been warehousing 
that money for folks all over the world at pretty near zero interest 
rates because they knew they would get it back from the American 
taxpayer.
  What's happening now, with these increased deficits, is not only are 
we having to issue debt to pay off maturing debt, but we also have to 
issue new debt to fund these trillion-dollar deficits out there every 
year. Normally, you would expect that an increasing demand would cause 
the price of whatever it is you are demanding to get more of to go up. 
And that hasn't happened because the rest of the world, like I said, 
has fled into U.S. Treasuries.
  Now, as the gentleman said, economies around the world are beginning 
to rebound. People are having opportunities to invest their money at 
higher interest rates or higher expected rates of return. And so we 
will very soon, one of the first indicators that things are going awry 
is as you begin to watch the weekly auctions of debt, our interest 
rates begin to inch up because we have to pay higher interest rates in 
order to attract lenders to our debt versus the opportunities they have 
got in other currencies.

                              {time}  2200

  This fallacy that the stimulus bill worked is based on the premise 
that government spending will solve the economic problems of this 
country.
  If that is the case, then this government has spent more money in 
2009, 2010, 2011 than has ever been spent in the history of man. So if 
runaway government of spending were the solution to a vibrant economy, 
why aren't we in the most vibrant economy ever known? Because we have 
spent more money out of the Federal Government than has ever been spent 
before.
  It makes no sense that you can continue to borrow greater and greater 
levels of debt and continue to spend that on programs that, quite 
frankly, aren't in and of themselves stimulus programs. They are just 
basically money transfers or transfers of wealth between one group of 
people and the others. It doesn't create any additional wealth. That 
cannot sustain itself. But our colleagues across the aisle seem to 
ignore just the hard common sense that you cannot spend your way out of 
this problem.
  I think it was Ben Franklin who said, You can't stand in a bucket and 
grab the handles and try to lift yourself off the ground, which is 
equivalent to trying to tax and spend your way out of a problem. And 
that is what we have been trying to do with this thing, which is a 
giant bucket with all of us standing in it.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. If the gentleman would yield, I am curious what the 
gentleman thinks about the speculation the President tomorrow night 
will call for a spending freeze on discretionary spending.
  Obviously, we are pleased that he would want to stop the dramatic 
trajectory upward in spending that we have seen from this Congress in 
each of the last 3 years since they have been in the majority. But is 
that enough? Is that going to solve this problem if we lock in at these 
higher spending rates that we are experiencing right now?
  Mr. CONAWAY. If the gentleman would yield, I would feel a lot better 
about our President tomorrow night if he would say not only are we 
going to freeze spending, but we are going to freeze it at 2008 levels.
  I go back a couple years. What has happened with the $787 billion 
stimulus, much of that money went into already-existing programs and 
elevated the floor of current spending. And then, on top of that, the 
2010 appropriations bill, as our colleague from Colorado said, double-
digit increases on that. So we are spending a significant amount of 
money more in 2010 than we did in 2008.
  So if the President would say, All right, let's reset the clock back 
to 2008, when he first got here, at those levels and then freeze it 
there, I would feel a lot better about what he is trying to propose 
tomorrow night.
  I do want to point out that it seems as if over the weekend he was 
going to freeze spending except for defense, homeland security, VA, and 
foreign affairs. Then I heard today or yesterday that, well, even 
within the discretionary spending that is going to be frozen, if 
programs create new jobs, then they are not going to be frozen. So it 
will be interesting to see what the fine details are tomorrow night on 
what the President has to say.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. And I would add to that that it would be wonderful if 
this President of the United States, or any leader of our country, 
would step forward and say what we really need is the kind of 
discipline that requiring each and every year that we balance the 
budget would impose upon this Congress. Because we make tough 
decisions; but, most of the time, when the going gets really tough, 
they spend money on both.
  We talked about PAYGO. The gentleman from Florida mentioned that as 
well and pointed out that it is really meaningless. If you look at it, 
they imposed these new rules after the adoption of this new health care 
bill and the enormous cost of that and claimed that it is being paid 
for, but do so with smoke and mirrors by taxing for 10 years but only 
providing benefits for 6 years, and claiming they are going to cut $500 
billion out of Medicare at a time when the number of people eligible 
for Medicare is going to skyrocket.
  Starting this year, 2010, those who turn 65 were born after World War 
II; and for the next 15 years, the number of people who are eligible 
for the Medicare program is going to increase dramatically.
  During that time, I think we are going to see a need to have 
significant reform of the Medicare program. But the money saved is 
going to have to be made available to have more people covered under 
the program, not to divert it to set up a whole new government spending 
scheme.
  We have been joined by the gentleman from Iowa, and I would like to 
yield to Mr. King for his comments about the balanced budget amendment.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) 
for leading on this Special Order tonight and for leading on fiscal 
responsibility here in the United States Congress.
  This balanced budget amendment is something that I am proud to be an

[[Page H374]]

original cosponsor of. I have done so every time that this has been 
offered since I have been here in Congress. And the dialogue that is 
here tonight adds so much to something that has been missing 
completely, I think, from the administration and from the White House.
  We went from a point of Republicans pushing towards a balanced budget 
and listening to the PAYGO arguments of the Blue Dog Democrats 
demagoging on the issue. I don't know where they are today. It seems to 
me that they have gone underground. Maybe they are the Ground Hogs 
rather than the Blue Dogs at this point.
  I don't hear anything from them about balancing the budget any more, 
because they understand that in order to fund this kind of profligate 
spending that we have, this $1.4-plus trillion deficit created by this 
Obama budget, that, by their method, we would have to raise taxes 
dramatically.
  What I wanted to do is keep the taxes low, slow the growth in 
government; and for years I said, slow the growth in government so that 
the economy can catch up. I am now to this point where I would say the 
other way is that I don't believe the economy can catch up with 
the spending that we have. I think we actually have to shrink 
government in order to get it back in line.

  This is going to be a very big task. It isn't going to happen under 
Speaker Pelosi's watch. It isn't going to happen if President Obama has 
a veto pen to control our spending in this Congress. But we do have an 
obligation to advance, as much as we can, this constitutional 
amendment. We have an obligation to offer a balanced budget, which we 
did this year. The Republican study committee balanced budget, that is 
something that I had pushed for for some time, and we will have a 
balanced budget offered this year.
  So I just encourage all of my colleagues, Madam Speaker, and 
everybody in the United States of America to step up to this level of 
responsibility. If we can do it with our family checkbook, we must do 
it with our government checkbook. If we fail to do so, our economy will 
continue in this downward spiral.
  We have got to get our capital, our money, our spending back 
underneath us and realize that government cannot grow us out of this 
economic problem that we are in. It has got to be the private sector. 
And the private sector cannot continue to pay the taxes to service the 
interest and the debt of a deficit that we have been spending under 
this administration.
  I would point out, also, that Speaker Pelosi took the gavel at the 
end of November elections in 2006, January of 2007. At that time, we 
saw capital investment in industry go significantly downward. And I 
watched the members here and the freshmen from the other side tonight 
talk about how this was all Bush's problem. Well, if they are taking 
responsibility for anything that turns good, they have to accept the 
responsibility for what has happened since Speaker Pelosi took the 
gavel. All spending starts in the House of Representatives.
  I thank the gentleman from Virginia, and I yield back.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. I thank the gentleman. And the gentleman raised a very 
interesting point about how we grow this economy and what this does to 
it, because he correctly points out that we are going to grow this 
economy in the private sector, people who will go out and take the risk 
of creating a new business or expanding the business they have and 
creating new jobs as a result of that by offering a product or a 
service that people want and are willing to pay for and can afford to 
pay for it.
  But if the government is out there borrowing $1.3 trillion, $1.5 
trillion, $900 billion, and then $800 billion-plus every year 
thereafter as far as the eye can see, what is that going to do to the 
amount of capital that is available in the private sector? Especially 
if interest rates go up, and the government is absorbing so much of the 
credit that may be available around the country and other countries, 
and their growing economies are also competing for those same limited 
resources, we are going to find it very, very hard for free enterprise 
to survive if our government keeps spending more than it takes in and 
keeps growing in the enormous size.
  It is projected that if you continue this rate of spending, we are 
going to have government spending 28 percent of our gross domestic 
product. The Federal Government, not even counting State and local 
governments, historically, it has ranged between 18 and 20, 21 percent, 
which is pretty high, in my mind, and many others as well. But it is 
nothing compared to having that shoot up to 28 percent. That is a huge 
additional amount of spending, more than $1 trillion each and every 
year.
  And as you can see from this chart, almost all of it borrowed, 
borrowed against the future not only of our children and grandchildren 
but of the jobs that people hold today and the jobs that 15 million 
Americans who are out there looking for work hope to get if some 
employers will take the chance and can get the credit to allow them to 
start or expand their business.
  We have been joined by another Member. I want to point out the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) are members of the House Judiciary Committee, as am I. This is 
the committee that has jurisdiction over all constitutional amendments, 
and it is the place where we are pushing the hardest to try to get the 
Democratic chairman of the committee to examine this legislation, just 
as it was not that many years ago and passed the House of 
Representatives on more than one occasion, and on one occasion came 
within one vote of passing the United States Senate. Think of what a 
different country we would have today if we had been living under 
balanced budgets for the last decade instead of what we have seen.
  I would now like to yield to my good friend, the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. I sure thank my friend from Virginia for yielding.
  And, yes, we need a balanced budget amendment, and that will do great 
things. It will strengthen the dollar. It will show the world that we 
are responsible when it comes to spending for a change. And also, of 
course, we know that takes ratification of the States and passing both 
Houses, and we just flat need to do that.
  In the meantime, we understand the President may come into this very 
Chamber and stand right up there and actually suggest that perhaps we 
ought to freeze the budget of three Departments.

                              {time}  2210

  Well, I am so glad that our President is coming around and getting on 
board with some Republican proposals. This is H.R. 4408. But rather 
than three departments, this is--and I will read from the bill. It was 
filed last year. Got lots of Republicans on as cosigners. No Democrats 
yet. Hope they will come on board once the President starts talking 
about this. But it says, to amend the Balanced Budget and Deficit 
Control Act of 1985 to eliminate automatic increases for inflation from 
CBO baseline projections for discretionary appropriations, and other 
purposes. It will end the automatic increase in every discretionary 
budget in the Federal Government.
  Now we're talking about being responsible with our spending. No 
automatic increases every year. Nobody I know of in America gets that 
kind of thing. If they're working, if they produce, perhaps they'll get 
an increase. Well, the government shouldn't get automatic increases 
every year. If you're going to get an increase, it has to be justified. 
And that has been lacking for so long.
  I will just read here. It says, This act may be cited as the Within 
Our Means Budget--WOMB--Act of 2009; whereas, from passage of this bill 
will come a new birth of freedom for American taxpayers and an end to 
the automatic increases for each department that has been bankrupting 
America.
  There are all kinds of good solutions. So I'm proud the President's 
coming around. Perhaps if we can push him a little further, we can make 
him even a little more responsible so we start reining in the greatest 
budget deficit in a 1-year history that has just gone on under this 
President's watch.
  So I appreciate my friend from Virginia yielding, and I look forward 
to starting to get Democrats, now that the President is talking about 
some good Republican ideas.
  Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, I thank the gentleman for his comments. You

[[Page H375]]

know, Washington, D.C., has a spending addiction, and it has proven to 
be an addiction that the Congress cannot control without a balanced 
budget amendment requiring that it make the difficult decisions to 
balance it each and every year. We have gone in a few short years from 
a deficit of billions of dollars to a deficit of trillions of dollars 
and we're printing money at an unprecedented pace, which presents risks 
of inflation, the likes of which we have never seen. Our debt is 
mounting rapidly and so is the waste associated with paying the 
interest on that debt, yet Congress has so far refused to address these 
unsettling problems.
  This is not a partisan addiction. It reaches across the aisle and 
afflicts both parties, which is why neither party has been able to 
master it. We need outside help. We need pressure from outside Congress 
to force us to rein in this out-of-control behavior. We need a balanced 
budget amendment to the United States Constitution. Families across our 
country understand what it means to make tough decisions each day about 
what they can and cannot afford. According to a recent Zogby 
Interactive survey, approximately 70 percent of Americans said they 
have reduced spending on entertainment in the past year; 40 percent 
have limited or canceled vacation plans due to the economic 
environment; 40 percent have decreased spending on food or groceries; 
almost 10 percent have either changed their education plans or have 
chosen not to pursue education plans at all. Most troubling, 16 percent 
have foregone medical treatment or prescription drugs.
  These numbers show how sobering our economic recession is, but they 
also show something more. They demonstrate a basic principle that 
honest, hardworking American citizens understand: When your income 
drops, your spending must drop, one way or the other. Yet, far too 
frequently this fundamental principle has been lost on a Congress that 
is too busy spending to pay attention to the bottom line. If Americans 
must exercise restraint with their own funds, then government officials 
must be required to exercise an even higher standard when spending 
other people's hard-earned income.
  I urge my colleagues to support the balanced budget amendment to the 
United States Constitution, House Joint Resolution 1, and I yield back 
my time.

                          ____________________