[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 36 (Thursday, March 10, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H1673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     BUDGET/DISCRETIONARY SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the gentleman from 
Washington State for focusing America on what the issues are before us.
  In recent weeks I have come to the floor to argue that the Republican 
spending plan does two extremely harmful things: It weakens our economy 
and fails to seriously reduce our debt.
  Democrats agree that cutting spending is part of the solution to our 
difficult problems that confront us. But we also believe that cuts 
should be smart and targeted, not reckless.
  Rather than cutting investments in growth--at the same time our 
international competitors are ramping up theirs--Democrats support the 
Make It In America agenda, a plan to invest in innovation, 
manufacturing jobs, and middle class opportunity. That's what the 
President talked about in his State of the Union, and he was right.
  Unfortunately, the consensus that the Republican spending plan will 
halt our economic recovery and cost jobs is widespread and nonpartisan.
  Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, appointed by President Bush, tells us that 
the plan will cost ``a couple of hundred thousand'' jobs. Macroeconomic 
advisers tell us that the Republican plan will wipe out approximately 
450,000 jobs. Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who advised 
Senator McCain in his Presidential campaign, tells us that it will cost 
up to 700,000 jobs. The Economic Policy Institute puts the number at 
800,000 jobs. Whatever the precise number, it is a large number of jobs 
that will be lost if we pass the Republicans' budget solutions.
  What they want to do, as the gentleman from Washington State said, 
this is all exempt. This is security. These are all mandatory 
expenditures. This small slice of the budget, about $460 billion, the 
Republicans want to cut by 22 percent, give or take a percentage point. 
So they are holding harmless almost all of 85 to 86 percent of the 
money that we spent and say we're simply going to cut from education, 
from health care, from children, from community development--projects--
the guts of what makes our communities have a better quality. At the 
same time, I have argued the Republican spending plan barely puts a 
dent in our budget deficit.
  It's reasonable to ask how can this plan have such severe 
consequences for our economy, yet so little impact on our fiscal 
predicament? This chart helps us answer the question. All of the 
proposed cuts, all of the cuts, come from this small slice of the 
budget, the category of our budget called ``non-security discretionary 
spending.''
  But non-security discretionary spending, the gentleman from 
Washington State said 12 percent. We have here 14 percent. It's in that 
neighborhood depending upon exactly what you include as security or 
non-security. When you attempt to find $100 billion in savings and when 
you insist on getting these savings from 14 percent of the budget, you 
have to cut very deeply into absolutely essential projects and programs 
for our people.

                              {time}  1040

  You have to cut billions in funding into new medical cures and energy 
technologies. You have to kick 200,000-plus children off of Head Start. 
You even have to cut port and transit security by two-thirds. Hear that 
again. They're cutting port and transit security by two-thirds while 
they're holding terrorism hearings.
  The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, a Republican, 
said those cuts were ``too dangerous.'' As David Brooks recently 
argued, Congress should ``never cut without an evaluation process.'' 
But instead, legislators--he referred to the Republican initiatives--
``are simply cutting on the basis of what's politically easy and what 
vaguely seems expendable.''
  It may be possible to portray taking on 14 percent of the budget as 
fiscally responsible, but only because doing so exploits Americans' 
misunderstanding of the budget. A recent poll shows that 63 percent of 
Americans think we spend more on defense and foreign aid than we do on 
Medicare and Social Security--all the blue, all the green, and then the 
yellow, that small sliver--which, by the way, includes discretionary 
foreign policy expenditures.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge our citizens to look at the consequences of these 
cuts and look at the small sliver that the Republicans are focusing 
themselves on and you and me on. We need to see the whole picture if 
we're going to come to grips with the challenge that confronts us.
  When another poll asked Americans how much we spend on foreign aid, 
the average estimate was 27 percent--when the right answer is about 1 
percent.
  It is entirely out of step with fiscal reality to attempt to tackle 
our deficit while ignoring 86 percent of the budget.
  ``Fiscal responsibility'' is not synonymous with ``cutting non-
security discretionary spending.''
  In truth, fiscal responsibility is much more difficult than that.
  As former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough put it this week, 
``The belief of some on the right that America can balance the budget 
by cutting education, infrastructure, the corporation for public 
broadcasting, and home heating assistance to the poor is tantamount to 
budgetary witchcraft.''
  We have to start doing more.
  We have to address the Defense spending that takes up more than a 
quarter of our budget. We have to make hard choices that can keep our 
entitlements strong for generations to come.
  And, with tax revenues at a 60-year low, we have to pass deficit-
reducing tax reform.
  Unless we're willing to take on that hard work, on a bipartisan 
basis, none of us deserve to call ourselves fiscally responsible.

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