[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 9, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H555-H556]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, we hear now that the Republican majority is 
serious about the deficit, and that's good news because we are running 
up a huge pile of debt which is going to be handed on to our kids and 
our grandkids and won't be paid off over 30 years. Some of this debt 
will weigh upon the country. But the question is, how do we get there? 
The deficit this year will be $1.5 trillion, an unimaginable amount of 
money, borrowed, a lot of it from China, and that is just virtually 
unfathomable.
  Now, they're going to dink around essentially and pretend they're 
doing something meaningful next week. They're going to take out after a 
Federal budget of $3.7 trillion--and remember, $1.5 trillion of that is 
with borrowed money--they are going to discuss cuts to actually $446 
billion of that. So a $3.7 trillion budget, but the only place you can 
cut is $446 billion of that. Hmm, let's see, if we eliminated that 
entire $446 billion of expenditures, we'd still have a deficit of over 
$1 trillion.
  Now, that doesn't seem quite to work. So perhaps they've made a few 
too many things off-limits in terms of where we might look to cut.
  Then there's one other thing they've done which is totally bizarre 
and I don't think many Americans would think very honest. They're 
saying if we decrease the income of the Government of the United 
States, i.e., cut taxes, give you back your money, and we don't reduce 
expenditures in the same amount, that doesn't count as new debt or 
deficit. You've got to borrow the money, probably from China; and you 
can send the debt forward but it doesn't count. So they're not going to 
look at something called tax expenditures.
  So, you know, we can't begin to address things like the $20 billion 
of subsidies in the agriculture bill for five crops grown in eight 
States that are in surplus and paying people not to grow things. That's 
off-limits. That's mandatory spending. That can't be considered for 
cuts, paying people to not grow things. We can't do away with that. 
We're going to borrow the money so they can get paid to not grow 
things.
  All right. Well, how about the oil companies? Now, Exxon Mobil 
reported the largest quarterly profit for a corporation in the history 
of the world the last quarter of last year, $9 billion, and they didn't 
pay any taxes in the U.S. last year. None. They pay a lot of taxes 
around the world, but not in the United States. We actually gave them a 
tax refund because of the loopholes in the tax laws. That's called a 
tax expenditure. We're borrowing money to give to the Exxon Mobil 
Corporation, which had a $9 billion profit by gouging consumers in 
America. Now, that's pretty extraordinary; but, no, we can't talk about 
eliminating the subsidy to Exxon Mobil. The Republicans have put that 
off-limits. That would be called a tax increase. You know, by plugging 
that loophole, that's a tax increase, can't talk about that.
  Let's look at one other aspect of this. We were headed for a lower 
deficit this year. It would have been lower than last year, $1.3 
trillion last year. We were headed toward $1.1 trillion, a good glide 
path, $200 billion reduction in 1 year. If we could do that for 5 more 
years, we'd be down to virtually zero. But with one vote, one vote, 
with a deal cut between the Republicans and

[[Page H556]]

the President of the United States, we increased the deficit by $400 
billion this year. Yep, the tax cuts. But remember, tax cuts don't 
count. Now, they increase the deficit by $400 billion. We didn't cut 
expenditures by $400 billion. So the money is going to be borrowed for 
those tax cuts, from China and elsewhere; and it's going to be passed 
on to our kids and our grandkids, part of the national debt.
  But that doesn't count in the Republican world. Reducing the income 
of the government while not reducing expenditures by the same amount 
doesn't count. They pretend.
  Let's not pretend. This is deadly serious. Let's not go after 
programs that are essential to America. They're going to put things 
like Pell Grants that are helping people get a college education and 
become more educated so they will have better lifetime earnings and our 
country will be more competitive, educate the next generation of folks 
to lead our Nation--that's on the table next week. We'll probably see 
some cuts there. Other programs like that will be on the table. 
Subsidies to oil companies? Tax cuts, yes, we can do more of those and 
increase the deficit.
  So let's get real. It is a real problem, and let's stop pretending 
that you really care about it and you're going to do something about 
it.

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