[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 21 (Thursday, February 10, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H609-H610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CBC BUDGETARY PRIORITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Davis) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, as we prepare to debate the 
budget, and as we have already begun to debate, it is a budget that in 
many instances and in many ways spells gloom and doom for people who 
have been expecting and looking for some opportunity to move our 
government and our country forward.
  In order to really understand how we got to where we are, I think it 
is important for us to remember that President Clinton left President 
Bush with a 10-year projected surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2001.

                              {time}  1030

  Whereas President Bush on January 20, 2009, left President Obama with 
a $1.2 trillion deficit. And let's keep in mind that this was the 
deficit on day one of the Obama administration, weeks before the 
President enacted a single piece of legislation and the American 
Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
  The failed economic policies of the Bush administration led to this 
enormous deficit: the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts totaled $1.3 trillion over 
10 years, in which most of the tax relief went to the top 1 percent of 
income earners; a Medicare prescription drug benefit with a 10 year 
cost of nearly another $1 trillion that was not offset; two overseas 
war that are near a cost of $1 trillion; a $700 billion bailout of Wall 
Street banks.
  And all of these unpaid-for policies were compounded by the worst 
economic recession in 70 years that began in 2007, which led to huge 
shortfalls in Federal tax revenue and increased reliance on 
unemployment insurance and other Federal social safety net programs.
  In order to get these huge deficits under control, we have some tough 
decisions to make. We have some very serious and some difficult 
decisions as we attempt to balance the budget and as we attempt to 
continue to promote and project economic recovery.
  I have always been told that you can measure the greatness of a 
society by how well it looks after its young, how well it looks after 
its old, and how well it looks after those who cannot look after 
themselves effectively. So as we begin to talk about cuts, where I come 
from, I have been told that if all that you do is cut, cut, cut, all 
that you are going to get is blood, blood, blood; and, of course, the 
blood of the people will be on the hands of those who have the knives.
  So as we cut, let's look seriously at the Community Services 
Administration, the one little program, one little agency, one little 
area that still provides resources to fund programs like those 
established during the OEO War on Poverty days, when we took a good 
look at poverty and what was causing it.
  As we begin to cut, let's understand that health is essential for 
wealth, so let's make sure that we don't tamper with what I consider to 
be one of the most effective ways of providing primary health care to 
large numbers of poor people in this country, the community health 
centers, that provide primary care to more than 20 million low-income 
Americans without regard in many instances to their ability to pay.
  And let's understand that our prison system has become the largest in 
the world. More than 2 million people are incarcerated, so let's not 
cut or decimate the little justice programs that we are funding to help 
these individuals try and successfully reintegrate back into society.
  So, I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I urge that when we cut, let's make 
good cuts, and not those that cut the poor.
  How much longer can we afford to extend the Bush-era tax cuts? The 
President and Congress extended all of them through 2012 at a two year 
cost of $800 billion. A ten year extension of all these tax cuts will 
cost $3.8 trillion--$3 trillion of which are the popular middle-class 
tax cuts.
  Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office released its 
latest projections of the Social Security Trust Fund. It was previously 
projected to go into a cash deficit in 2017, but now CBO has projected 
that the trust fund is now running a deficit. The trust is expected to 
be exhausted in 2037.
  We can no longer operate under the assumption of the last decade, 
that we can increase spending and reduce taxes without having to pay 
for it.
  The last Congress took important steps to restore some important 
tools that were used to produce the first budget surplus in more than a 
generation in the late 1990s, such as Statutory Pay-As-You-Go--meaning 
if Congress wants to increase mandatory spending, we have to offset it 
by reducing spending elsewhere in the budget or increase taxes to cover 
the increase.
  Unfortunately, the new Republican Majority has changed House rules 
gutting PAY-GO's effectiveness in the Congressional budget process. The 
so-called CUT-GO rule prohibits offsetting any new mandatory spending 
with a revenue increase. This makes it nearly impossible to offset any 
new spending or tax cuts with revenue increases and will require only 
spending cuts.
  In another unprecedented change, the House last week voted to give 
the House Budget Committee Chairman the sole responsibility for setting 
discretionary spending levels for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011. 
The House of Representatives as a whole will be deprived of the right 
to vote up or down the Budget Chairman's levels.
  We have to remember that what we do with Federal budget touches 
everyone. Our fiscal problems are very complex and they need to be 
addressed, but there is no simple, one-size-fits-all solution.

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