[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 72 (Friday, May 18, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H3157-H3160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1450
                          GOVERNMENT SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Woodall) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. I thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate you staying late 
on a Friday afternoon so that the gentlelady from the District of 
Columbia can have her time; and I can have a little time, too.
  I know folks often think, Mr. Speaker, that votes have ended at the 
end of the day and folks have left the Chamber, and you wonder what in 
the world's going on there in Congress. Why are those guys still down 
there on the floor of the House talking after everybody else has gone 
back to their offices? Well, there's a lot of good reasons for that.
  As the gentlelady from the District of Columbia said, folks don't 
always get their say in the hustle and bustle of voting on those 
amendments. It moves fast. It's limited to 2 and 3 and 10 minutes of 
debate at the time. And so you need some additional time at the end of 
the day.
  But more importantly, I guess this is just one of the wonderful 
facets of modern-day life, Mr. Speaker. You and I are both freshmen 
here in the House, but they pipe this back into our offices. I always 
thought when I was growing up, and I suspect you did, too, Mr. Speaker, 
when you're at home and you turn on C SPAN or it's on the college 
campus or what have you and you look and the Chamber is empty, you 
think, What's going on? You don't realize that it's piped through the 
closed circuit and it's sitting on everybody's television back at home.
  Because when I got up here as a freshman, Mr. Speaker, I got so busy 
I couldn't afford to sit down here on the House floor and spend my days 
here. I had to be back in the office meeting with constituents and 
going through the paperwork, doing all those things we have to do each 
day. And what a wonderful thing that is--lousy because it sends the 
wrong impression to America as it shows up on C SPAN--but wonderful 
that folks are able to both serve their constituents back in their 
offices as well as keep track of what is going on on the floor.
  And what I brought down to the floor today, Mr. Speaker, and you 
can't see it from your chair, but you have these numbers committed to 
memory, just as I do. I've got the pie chart here of the spending in 
this country.
  You know, spending comes in two parts. It comes in the parts that 
unless the Members of Congress act each and every year, the spending 
goes away. They call that discretionary spending, as you know, Mr. 
Speaker. You have to affirmatively act in Congress or else the spending 
goes away.
  The other part of spending is called mandatory spending, and that's 
the part of spending that goes out the door whether Congress shows up 
to work or not. The President can take the year off. Congress can take 
the year off, that money is going to go out the door. That's our 
parents' and grandparents' Social Security checks. Congress doesn't 
have to affirmatively act to give you Social Security, Medicare. If 
you're 65 years old, you've worked the required amount of time, you 
show up at the Medicare office, you just get Medicare. And then we have 
to figure out how to pay for it. That's called the mandatory spending 
side of the ledger.
  And as you know, Mr. Speaker, the discretionary spending side of the 
ledger, the part that we have to affirmatively act on each year 
represents about one-third of all Federal dollars. That's automatic 
spending, Mr. Speaker. That's spending that goes out the door whether 
Congress shows up or not, and it represents two-thirds of everything we 
spend.
  You know, as I do, Mr. Speaker, that when we actually talk about 
spending money, about 40 cents out of every dollar that this Chamber 
spends, that this Nation spends, is borrowed from the next generation 
of Americans; 40 cents out of every dollar, Mr. Speaker, is money we 
don't have, but we borrow from our children and grandchildren. That's 
why the spending decisions we make are so important, why you and I are 
working so hard to try to restrain that spending.
  I'll give you an example, Mr. Speaker. If you started a government on 
the day Jesus Christ was born, and you borrowed $1 million a day to 
fund your government from the day Jesus Christ was born until today, 7 
days a week you're borrowing that money through today, you would have 
to continue to borrow $1 million a day every day, 7 days a week for 
another 700 years to borrow your first $1 trillion. Your first $1 
trillion, Mr. Speaker.
  You know how much we borrow from our children and our grandchildren--
and by ``we,'' I mean folks who've come from both parties, generations 
before us, and still today--$15.5 trillion with no end in sight. No end 
in sight.
  Now, I don't want to be about doom and gloom, Mr. Speaker, you know 
me. We're part of this freshman class. When one of us falls, there are 
another 99 to pick him up and set him back on track.
  I brought down a chart today to talk about our successes because 
we've really have had some successes.
  Now, as I listened to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia 
talk before, it sounded like this is a very partisan place to work. And 
I know when I pick up the newspaper, that's what I read, too. But it's 
not true. You can't do anything up here as a party. It's not about 
party. It's about the 900,000 people I represent back home.
  I am a Southern Republican, Mr. Speaker. I'm a hard-core right 
winger. I have more in common with a Democrat from Tennessee than I do 
with Republicans from California. This isn't about party; this is about 
American. And the only things that get done get done working together. 
Why? Because we have a Republican House. We have a Democratic Senate. 
We have a Democrat in the White House, and we have a constituency. We 
have an America that is divided about what to do. But I don't think 
there's anybody out there--well, with the exception of the President, 
Mr. Speaker--who believes that the problem is that we're not spending 
enough. I think a lot of folks think Washington is wasting the money 
that it's spending and that we can do better.
  And let's talk about those successes, Mr. Speaker, because I have 
them right here. I've got a bar chart, Mr. Speaker. I'm showing FY 
2010. That was before you and I got here--$1.28 trillion in 
discretionary spending.

[[Page H3158]]

  Now, there's a lot of funny math in Washington, D.C., as you and I 
have learned, Mr. Speaker. A lot of funny math. But when I say $1.28 
trillion, I just mean that--$1.28 trillion. No rates of growth. No 
inflation. No time value of money. No index dollars. Just real money 
like it sits in your wallet, if your wallet could hold $1.28 trillion.
  Fiscal year 2011, Mr. Speaker, the year you and I showed up to this 
institution, we were still working on the FY 2011 budget in 2012 
because the folks who left the body before us didn't get it done. We 
actually reduced spending--it doesn't happen often in America--but we 
reduced discretionary spending in real dollars, actual dollars, from 
what we were spending in 2010 to what we spent in 2011. But that wasn't 
enough for this freshman class, Mr. Speaker. You know it wasn't.
  In 2012, we reduced spending again. Again, not rates of growth, not 
funny math, actual dollars going out the door. Fewer dollars went out 
the door in discretionary spending in 2012. We're in the middle of 
2012--2012 ends on September 30, as you know, Mr. Speaker. Fewer 
dollars will go out the door in 2012 than went out in 2011. And, of 
course, fewer dollars went out in 2011 than in 2010; 2 years in a row, 
the first time since World War II, Mr. Speaker, we reduced spending in 
this country by focusing on the priorities that our voters back home 
have asked us to focus on. And we're doing it again for 2013. That 
process is going on right now.
  We've begun the process of appropriating dollars for the 2013 fiscal 
year, that fiscal year that'll start this October, October 1, having 
those debates, open debates, allowing amendments from all parties here, 
Mr. Speaker; and we are on track to spend less in 2013 than we're 
spending right now in 2012.
  Budget my office, Mr. Speaker, one of those things we actually have 
control over. The budget for the Seventh District of Georgia, Mr. 
Speaker, lower in 2012 than it was in 2008 because we have this new 
Congress that said thrift has to begin at home. If I'm going to look at 
other programs to cut, let's start with our own office budgets. So 
we're having some successes. It's not all about arguing up here. It's 
not all about fussing at one another. It's about trying to come 
together and finding those opportunities that we can agree on.
  And when I talk about the way spending has actually gone down, I'm 
not talking about our vision of how it should go down, Mr. Speaker. I'm 
talking about bills that have been signed into law by the President of 
the United States, guaranteed savings that cannot be taken away.
  That's the kind of work we've gotten done here in 16 months, Mr. 
Speaker. I'm proud to have worked with you on it. This chart, though, 
shows the challenges that we're facing.

                              {time}  1500

  I see some folks sitting in the back of the room, Mr. Speaker, so I'm 
going to hold this one up, if you don't mind, just to make sure 
everybody can see it.
  I've got two lines here, Mr. Speaker. I've got the red line that 
shows spending in this country, the red line that shows where spending 
is headed in this country. Now, this chart goes, as you know, Mr. 
Speaker, from 1947, the end of World War II, as America was coming out 
of World War II, it begins to track spending in this country, tracks it 
with a red line. Here we are right here in today's dollars, Mr. 
Speaker. So the red line tracks spending going back to World War II.
  The green line tracks taxes going back to World War II--as a percent 
of the economy, right, because a dollar is not the same dollar today it 
was in 1947. Your parents probably tell you like my parents tell me, 
Mr. Speaker, Oh, Rob, I used to go to the movies for a nickel and I had 
money left over that I could buy a Coke and popcorn with. Do you get 
that same story, Mr. Speaker? The dollar is not the same dollar today 
as it was then.
  So we track this as a percentage of GDP, a percentage of our entire 
economy. Now, I want you to look, Mr. Speaker, at how level this green 
line is. The green line is taxes, taxes that the American people are 
willing to pay. It doesn't matter whether the income tax rate has been 
90 percent, as it was in the Carter years, or whether the income tax 
rate is 28 percent, as it was in the Reagan years. Taxes, as a 
percentage of the size of our economy, have remained relatively stable. 
That's the flat green line.
  The red line is the spending that this Congress, this Senate, other 
Presidents have chosen to associate with America. Now, you tell me, Mr. 
Speaker, do we have a taxation problem in this country or do we have a 
spending problem in this country? You need to look no further than a 
relatively level tax line and an incredibly exploding spending line. 
Spending is the challenge, and that's what you and I are focused on 
here in this body, Mr. Speaker.
  But all spending is not created equal. The United States Constitution 
gives us responsibilities, gives us responsibilities to defend this 
country, gives us responsibilities to regulate trade. There are 
responsibilities that the Constitution says, Congress, you need to 
raise money and you need to spend money on these priorities.
  But this chart, Mr. Speaker, tracks, going back to 1965 through 
today, that discretionary part of the spending pie that I showed 
earlier, that part that we actually have to affirmatively act on every 
year, and the mandatory part, that part that just goes out the door 
automatically. Again, Mr. Speaker, what you see is discretionary 
spending, in terms of real dollars, is staying relatively flat. What 
pushes the line up is this growth in mandatory spending.
  Why does mandatory spending grow? Because it's automatic, because you 
and I, Mr. Speaker, don't have an opportunity each and every year to 
try to rein that in and do oversight on it. It requires action by the 
Senate and by the President and by this House to change the laws about 
the automatic spending to stop it. If we can't agree on how to stop it, 
it just keeps going. That distinguishes it from discretionary spending 
where we have to affirmatively vote ``yes'' or ``no'' each year. That's 
the spending we've been so successful at controlling.
  Mr. Speaker, this chart just shows it a little differently. I've got 
the blue line representing mandatory spending and the red line 
representing discretionary spending. What you see here is that between 
1962 and 2012, the last 50 years, discretionary spending--which used to 
be most of what Congress does--has gotten smaller and smaller and 
smaller and smaller as a piece of the pie, and mandatory spending, that 
that goes out the door automatically, is getting larger and larger and 
larger and larger.

  So I say to you, Mr. Speaker, and I say to the young people who are 
in your district, if you're worried about your economic future, should 
you focus on your discretionary spending? Absolutely, you should. But 
should you concern yourself with mandatory spending more? The answer is 
yes. That's where the growth is. That's where the inability to 
constrain it is. And that's now where the big, big dollars are. It's 
mandatory spending, Mr. Speaker. And it's getting worse.
  I told you I would bring you some good news, Mr. Speaker, and I've 
got more good news to bring you, but we need to be honest about the 
nature of the challenge. Because I talk to folks back home and they 
say, Rob, it can't be as bad as you say that it is. It can't be as bad.
  I was just looking at the Federal Government books about 4 years ago 
and things looked like they were sustainable. Well, Mr. Speaker, you 
know the world's changed a lot in the last 4 years--and that's not a 
political statement. It started changing under the watch of President 
George Bush. It continued changing under the watch of President Barack 
Obama.
  I remember growing up in the 1980s, Mr. Speaker. Ronald Reagan was 
President. We used to talk about the deficits we were running, worried 
that the American economy might not survive--got to get those deficits 
under control. Those deficits, Mr. Speaker, those deficits are a page 
relative to the deficits we're running today, which look like a book--
trillion dollar deficits every year. The public debt, the debt that our 
young people owe, Mr. Speaker, has increased 50 percent in the last 4 
years.
  Now, change doesn't usually happen in America that fast. Change is 
usually slow. It was designed to be slow. You know, my gripe with the 
United States Senate, Mr. Speaker--a lot of folks say, Doggone that 
Senate, they haven't passed a budget in the last 3 years. Well, I share 
that frustration. But the truth is I'm not frustrated with the

[[Page H3159]]

Senate that they're moving too slowly. The Constitution designed the 
Senate to move slowly. I'm disturbed that over the last 3 years the 
Senate has been moving so fast. It was supposed to play a deliberative 
role, but instead it passed stimulus bill after stimulus bill, health 
care bill after health care bill, regulatory bill after regulatory 
bill, and did not slow the process down the way that our Founding 
Fathers designed the Senate to operate.
  What you get--you can see it here on this chart, Mr. Speaker. This 
red line is tracking Federal revenue; the blue line is tracking Federal 
spending. They move in concert right up until 2007, into 2008, into 
2009, into 2010, where those lines diverge, Mr. Speaker. These trillion 
dollar deficits, it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. We've 
taken steps to do it, but there's more that we have to do, and it's not 
easy to get it done.
  This shows the chart differently, Mr. Speaker. There are some folks 
out there, because I go home and I ask people in my district, Mr. 
Speaker, I say, Now, of the $800 billion that the Federal Government 
spent in the stimulus package--$800 billion--there are about 154 
million families in this country, right? So that's about $6 for every 
billion, eight times six. That's about $4,800, Mr. Speaker. I ask them, 
Did you get your $4,800? Did you feel it? When the Federal Government 
borrowed $800 billion from your children and your grandchildren, did 
you feel the additional money in your pocket? And the answer is, No, 
Rob, I don't know where that money went, but it didn't come to me and 
my family.
  Look what's happened with spending, Mr. Speaker. This is spending as 
a percent of GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars. Here we go.
  From 1970 to 2010, the average household income in this country, Mr. 
Speaker, increased by 25 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. The 
buying power of the average American family rose about 25 percent over 
the last 40 years--40 years, 25 percent growth in spending power of the 
average American family. The red line represents Federal spending, Mr. 
Speaker. Over those same 40 years, Federal spending has increased 290 
percent. You and your family have an additional 25 percent to spend; 
we, the Federal Government, have increased our spending 290 percent.
  You know, I learned something up here, Mr. Speaker, during freshman 
orientation. It turns out there's no secret drawer that we dig into 
here to get money to spend. The only place we can get money is to 
either take it from American families in taxes or borrow it from 
American children in future obligations. Those are the only two places 
we can get money. That's what we've done, to the tune of 290 percent, 
while households in this country only saw an increase of about 24 
percent.
  Going back to the good news, Mr. Speaker, it's not as if there aren't 
places that we can reduce spending. And we can agree on both sides of 
the aisle, Mr. Speaker, of those areas to reduce spending.
  This is a chart of the 10-year Federal program growth rates, Mr. 
Speaker, 10 years. This is what has happened to spending over the last 
10 years in Federal dollar terms. Won't surprise many people, Mr. 
Speaker, energy conservation is at the top of the list. In 2002, we 
spent almost $1 billion a year on energy conservation spending, $1 
billion in 2002. Today, we spend almost $10 billion, a 975 percent 
increase in spending over 10 years.
  Our food stamp program, Mr. Speaker. Now, I know families are hurting 
these days and we're trying our best to minister to the needs of those 
families. Over the last 10 years, food stamp spending in this country 
has increased 267 percent.

                              {time}  1510

  We had a debate on the floor of this House last week. You remember 
that, Mr. Speaker. The debate was should you actually have to qualify 
for food stamps to get food stamps, or should you just be able to get 
food stamps anyway because you're involved in a number of other 
programs? And it was a contentious debate.
  We could not even agree, Mr. Speaker, that the only folks who should 
get foods stamps are those who qualify for food stamps. There was a 
sense that we need to put food stamps into more families' homes.
  I get that folks want to legislate with their heart in this body, Mr. 
Speaker. But don't ask me to spend other people's money with my heart. 
Ask me to dig into my own wallet to legislate with my heart.
  When I come to Washington, D.C., I've got to legislate with my head. 
And I will tell you, the bill that we put forward last week, instead of 
increasing food stamp spending 270 percent, as is the law of the land, 
we wanted to increase food stamp spending by only 260 percent. Hear 
that, Mr. Speaker. Instead of 270 percent, we wanted it to be 260 
percent. And it turned into a knock down, drag out, brouhaha here on 
the House floor.
  I've got to tell you, Mr. Speaker, folks need to go home and talk to 
the young people in their district. Talk to those folks who are going 
to pay back that money that's been--the debt that's been increased by 
50 percent over the past 4 years. Ask them if they think, in the $3.8 
trillion dollars that go out the door in Washington, D.C., do they 
think we might be able to reduce the rate of growth of some spending 
programs from 270 percent down to just 260 percent. I don't think 
that's unreasonable.
  Education spending, Mr. Speaker, up 239 percent; unemployment 
spending, up 100 percent; Medicaid spending, up 86 percent; housing 
assistance, up 79 percent; community development, up 76 percent; ground 
transportation, up 62 percent; Federal employment retired, up 53 
percent. The American economy, up 16 percent.
  That's the only place we have to get money, folks paying taxes. Folks 
don't pay taxes unless they're making some money. The American economy 
has grown 16 percent, while the kind of spending that's happened in 
Washington, D.C., is growing in the triple digits.
  Mr. Speaker, GDP is up 16 percent, but family income in this country, 
over these same 10 years, down 4 percent.
  It's not free money in Washington, D.C., Mr. Speaker. Every dollar 
that goes out the door is either borrowed from foreign creditors like 
China, or it's taken from American families that would have spent that 
on something else like food or education or housing or possibly even a 
summer vacation, Mr. Speaker, if they're fortunate.
  Median income down 4 percent, Mr. Speaker. Spending in the Federal 
Government, up almost 1,000 percent in some categories.
  Well, we're taking action, Mr. Speaker. That's the take-home message 
here. So many folks talk and talk and talk and talk and nothing ever 
gets done. And candidly, when I read the newspaper and they describe 
what's happening here, Mr. Speaker, it sounds like they're describing 
people talking and talking and talking and nothing getting done. But it 
is getting done.
  I showed you that chart already of how the discretionary spending was 
coming down, not how we wanted it to come down but how it was actually 
coming down.
  What I have here is a chart about the Budget Control Act, Mr. 
Speaker, the Budget Control Act that begins to go after some of that 
mandatory spending I talked about earlier. It goes after some more 
discretionary spending, trying to bring spending down in a responsible 
way.
  But folks need to know, in terms of where we're saving money in 
sequestration, part of that Budget Control Act, about 14.6 percent of 
the savings, are in interest. By reducing what we're spending we're 
going to save about 14.6 percent of our goal by not having to borrow 
more money and not having to pay interest on it. And you see net 
interest as a size of the spending today. You see it as a size of 
savings down below. That's going to be a good chunk.
  Over here, this giant square, Mr. Speaker, that's the entitlement 
spending. That's that mandatory spending that we're talking about. The 
little bitty square down here, about 14.8 percent, is how much we're 
going to save out of that pie.
  Now, folks, I've just got to tell you, and I think honesty is one of 
the things that we lack. Nobody likes to deliver bad news. This big 
square is where the dollars are. We've got to get into that big square 
if we're going to put our fiscal path on track.
  I'm in my forties, Mr. Speaker. We have to come to folks who are in 
their

[[Page H3160]]

forties and tell them today, Rob, you are not going to get the Social 
Security and Medicare benefits your parents got, because I'm not. We've 
got to come to people today and give them the bad news. Rob, you are 
going to continue paying the highest payroll taxes in the history of 
this country to go into the Medicare and Social Security Trust Fund, 
but when you retire, you will not get the kind of medical and Social 
Security benefits that your parents got.
  We've got to deliver that bad news because I'm not, and other folks 
in their forties aren't, and folks in their thirties aren't, and their 
twenties aren't, and their teens aren't.
  We overpromised, Mr. Speaker. If you don't believe we overpromised, I 
want you to go back, you can look it up on the Internet, Mr. Speaker. 
In fact, it's on the Social Security Web page.
  A young woman named Ida Mae Fuller. You may not know who Ida Mae 
Fuller is, but she was the very first American to retire under the 
Social Security program. The very first monthly check that she 
received, Mr. Speaker, returned every penny that she'd paid in in taxes 
over her lifetime. Hear that. The first monthly check that she received 
returned to her every penny that she'd paid into Social Security taxes 
over her lifetime, and she continued to receive a check of that size 
every month for the next almost 30 years until she died in the early 
nineties.

  Well, Mr. Speaker, when you're handing out money like that, you have 
to know that system's not going to sustain itself. In those days there 
were about 30 American workers paying in for every one retiree, and so 
we could be generous. Today there are about two American workers paying 
in for every one retiree, and the American workers can't afford that.
  I don't want to pull the rug out from under today's seniors, Mr. 
Speaker. We've made promises, and we need to keep those promises. Folks 
have lived their entire life banking on those promises, and I think we 
owe it to folks to come through. They did everything they were supposed 
to do. They paid their taxes, they played by the rules. I think we owe 
it to them to come through for them.
  But for folks in their forties, for folks in their thirties, for 
folks in their twenties, we need to deliver the bad news today that 
that train has come to a stop. And we'll tell you what the new plan's 
going to be, we'll tell you what the new dollars are going to be, and 
you'll be able to plan for your future accordingly. But know that we 
have to deliver that kind of candid bad news.
  Take-home message from this chart right here, Mr. Speaker, is that 
defense spending in this country, over an 8-year period, is about $5.3 
trillion. But sequestration is going to find about 42 percent of the 
savings out of the entire bill out of the defense side of the budget.
  Now, I'm one of those folks who says we've been spending on wars for 
the last decade. Do we have waste in the Defense Department just like 
we have waste in the Ag Department and waste in the National Park 
Service and waste in the Judiciary, and on and on? Of course we do. You 
can't be in the Federal Government business spending other people's 
money without getting careless from time to time, which is why we need 
to push that money back to the State level.
  We can find savings in the Defense Department. But we're coming to a 
point where the President's Secretary of Defense tells us we are about 
to begin to undermine national security, our troops, and their 
families.
  Now, if you don't know, the Secretary of Defense today is Leon 
Panetta. He was once the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee 
right here in this House. He was once the OMB director, the Office of 
Management and Budget. That's the budget office for the President. He 
was once the OMB Director for President Clinton. He was once President 
Clinton's Chief of Staff. He understands everything that's happening in 
this town. He understands the challenges in Congress. He understands 
the challenges in the White House. And as Secretary of Defense, he 
understands the challenges of defending a Nation. And he says we're on 
the verge, if we keep targeting defense, of undermining national 
security, our troops, and their families.
  Now, that's not to say, Mr. Speaker, that defense gets a free pass. 
It absolutely doesn't. I have a chart right here that shows defense 
spending, Mr. Speaker. It starts in FY 2009. It goes out to 2021. It's 
in constant dollars.

                              {time}  1520

  It's a downward slope.
  If we do absolutely nothing more than what we've already done, Mr. 
Speaker, we're going to reduce defense spending year, after year, after 
year in a responsible way that protects our national security, that 
protects our troops and that protects their families. But if we leave 
in place this sequester--it's represented by the light blue line down 
here at the bottom--you're going to see defense spending cut almost in 
half.
  I challenge you, Mr. Speaker, and I challenge you to challenge your 
constituents: go and find the men and women in uniform in your 
communities. Go and find them, and ask them if there is waste, fraud 
and abuse in their particular parts of the Defense Department. I 
promise you they're going to tell you yes. I want you to ask them if 
there is 50 percent waste, fraud and abuse, and the answer is going to 
be no.
  We can absolutely reduce defense spending, Mr. Speaker. You and I 
together, with our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, have 
absolutely reduced defense spending; but it has to be done in a 
responsible way.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your being with me down here today, and I 
appreciate your partnership in these successes. I yield back the 
balance of my time.

                          ____________________