[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 121 (Thursday, July 18, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7140-H7146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include 
extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Hawaii?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, I rise as a proud member of the Democratic 
Blue Dog Coalition.
  For a quarter century, the Blue Dogs in Congress have focused on 
three missions: fiscal responsibility for our country, a strong 
national defense, and commonsense solutions to practical problems.
  We are 27 proud Democrats with democratic values. Our individual 
views and votes on the broad range of issues that come before this 
Congress run the gamut from progressive to moderate, centrist, and 
beyond; but together, we believe that the best way forward for our 
country on all of these issues is an underlying focus on fiscal 
responsibility, a strong national defense, and commonsense solutions 
wherever they may be found to practical problems.
  Today, I wish to focus on fiscal responsibility. I do so as co-chair 
with my colleague from Utah, Mr. McAdams, of the Blue Dog Task Force on 
Fiscal Responsibility and Government Reform.
  Let me start by saying, unfortunately, and very directly that it is 
very arguable that at no point in our entire history have we operated 
our Federal Government in as fiscally irresponsible a manner as we are 
operating it today.
  There are lots of indicia of this out there, but nowhere does this 
show up more directly and stare us straight in the face than our 
national debt. Let me say what that is.
  Our national debt is exactly what it sounds like. It is the amount 
that our Federal Government--you--owe to everyone who has loaned us 
money to pay for government.
  Why do we have to do that? Because we are not bringing into 
government the revenues that are sufficient to match and pay for what 
we are paying for out of expenses.

  We are now operating with a chronic and exploding deficit, and we are 
borrowing with abandon to make up the difference.
  This particular chart is taken from the Congressional Budget Office. 
You will not find a more nonpartisan, objective, and professional group 
anywhere studying our fiscal responsibilities, our fiscal status, and 
our budgets than the Congressional Budget Office. I encourage everybody 
to take a look at their materials at cbo.org. This is just one of their 
many publications, and it is a wealth of information:


[[Page H7141]]


  

       CBO The Budget and Economic Outlook Fiscal Years 2019 to 
     2049.

  They are not only responsible for what has happened today; they are 
responsible for taking a look at the long-term, as any one of us would 
want to do with our own budgets.
  What this chart shows is outlays, or spending, on the top line and 
revenues on the bottom line. In this particular chart, we are matching 
outlays over time, and the timeframe here is about 15 years, against 
gross domestic product, the percentage of gross domestic product.
  Why is that important? It is important because one could have outlays 
and revenues coming in, but the only way to match it up is, how much is 
the strength of your economy overall? It is kind of like asking 
yourself: Well, in my own household budget, what is my level of 
spending, what is my level of borrowing, what is my level of income as 
opposed to my overall financial situation?
  So here we have the percentage of gross domestic product over on the 
left in the vertical axis, and down here, time.
  We can clearly see here that as we look out over a long, long period 
of time, that if we continued on the way we are today, we would see 
massive continuing spread of the two lines between expenses on the top 
and revenues at the bottom.
  To amplify the situation, when we take a look at where we are 
currently, 2019, that dotted line right over here, that is about $1 
trillion, that gap, $1 trillion in 1 year of a deficit.
  So as we can see very obviously, not only are we in a very difficult 
situation today, but if we do nothing about it, it will spread over 
time.
  Now, what actually finances that difference? Debt. We go out and 
borrow it. It doesn't just arrive in the middle of the night in an 
unmarked bag. It didn't just grow on the tree outside. We are operating 
at a chronic and exploding deficit and borrowing to make up this 
difference.
  I am a returnee to Congress. I served in Congress from 2002 to 2007, 
so I tend to match up my experiences then versus now. I had a 12-year 
absence in between, half a generation if you want to think about it.
  When I left Congress in early 2007, our national debt stood at $9 
trillion. Today, our national debt stands at $22 trillion.
  By the way, if you want to have a harrowing view of something, take a 
look at usdebtclock.org and watch the numbers turn over about as 
rapidly as anything you can see.
  What you can see from studying the debt over time is an incredible 
increase over here on the right side of this chart.
  But $22.5 trillion today. Let's just think about that. That is 
$68,300 for each and every citizen of this country, $183,000 for each 
and every taxpayer. Really? 230 years in our country's history to get 
to a national debt of $9 trillion, but just 12 years later, increasing 
by 250 percent to $22.5 trillion?
  Again, we can't just look at the absolute numbers, because they don't 
tell the full story. After all, if we had a thriving economy that was 
producing an incredible amount of money, some of these figures wouldn't 
make as much sense.
  So let's, again, take the total debt against the total gross domestic 
product, again, just like any house or business would do. We can see 
here that if we chart total debt against GDP--again, on the far left 
side on the vertical axis, we have GDP--as a percent of GDP, and down 
here, we have a period that starts at the origins of our country and 
concludes in 2049, from the start of our country to 2049, you can see 
the peaks right here.
  Obviously, our country was in bad shape at the beginning in the 
Revolutionary War and thereafter. We were just starting out as a 
country. And you can see, for example, the Civil War, this peak.
  Wars are times when we have to borrow money. Wars are times that are 
very, very difficult for economies, and obviously our expenses are up 
and people have needs, and during that period, we borrow money. We 
always try, or have always tried, to pay it back down because we don't 
know when the next emergency will come along.
  We can see another peak here, World War I. We see the Great 
Depression right here, the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's 
New Deal, which was financed with borrowing. And then, of course, the 
tragedy of World War II, the absolute peak of our debt versus our gross 
domestic product, right there.
  And why not? Our world was at war. Our economy was in a shambles. We 
had to finance that war.
  Not only did we finance that war, we financed the entire recovery of 
the world, the Marshall Plan, in so many ways. We rebuilt our cities. 
We rebuilt the national highway system. We incurred that largely 
through debt. This was the highest point of our debt to date.
  We see, again, some peaks that were related to great recessions and 
downturns in our economy where we had to borrow for a little while, 
then we came back down. And then we came to the last 15 to 20 years.

                              {time}  1415

  Up until this point, we operated fairly responsibly. By 15 to 20 
years, we abandoned fiscal responsibility and started down a road of 
accelerating debt, for the most part unrelated to wars, other than for 
Iraq and Afghanistan, which definitely had a consequence for our 
national debt, but mostly a result of a failure in this body and the 
administration to balance budgets as we went along.
  Here we are in 2017, 2018, and 2019. What is scarier than anything 
else is the CBO's projection of where it is going over time: out the 
roof, straight up.
  We can see that this is not a partisan issue. In this particular 
graph, the percent of GDP is over on the left axis, and the bottom 
vertical axis is over time. In more recent history, the postwar period 
by Presidencies, we have Democrats in blue and Republicans in red.
  We see over here President Truman in the late 1940s had a high 
threshold of debt-to-GDP, a little over 100 percent. Then, of course, 
it came down after that as we recovered. It went up in the era of some 
of our Great Recessions and, of course, our wars.
  Then, we had the period when we did the best, which was an evolution 
from President Clinton into President Bush, which was the last time we 
balanced our budget.
  Then, there is that spike starting with President Bush through the 
last Presidency and, especially, off the current Presidency into an 
ascending column, which is a projection from the Congressional Budget 
Office.
  These are scary projections because the CBO projects that if we do 
nothing, we will see our debt climb to around 144 percent of GDP within 
a couple of decades.
  Where does that rank us in the world? After all, we have had other 
governments that have had high debt. We have had other governments that 
have collapsed. We have had other governments for which their budget 
problems have caught up with them. Let's take a look at that.
  This chart shows the period projected from the current year out only 
5 years. It asks the question: What is the growth in our debt-to-GDP as 
compared to the rest of the world? How fast are we growing in our debt 
versus the rest of the world?
  Unfortunately, the line on the right is us. We project that our debt-
to-GDP will grow 11 percent over the next couple of years.
  The next line is Italy. We have Korea and Japan, but the rest of the 
world seems to be getting their growth under control. Some of these 
countries are recovering from recessions, but some of these countries 
just have sound economic practices.
  The embarrassing thing about this chart, the scary thing about this 
chart, is that we are not the world's leader. We are the world's loser, 
in terms of controlling our national debt.
  Why should we care about all of this? One of the questions asked 
sometimes is: Why does debt matter?
  I think the first and foremost obvious answer is that debt costs 
something. It is not free. If we borrow money, we pay interest. That is 
what everybody who loans us money expects. They expect to be paid some 
interest. These interest payments accelerate rapidly in times of 
accelerating debt.
  We see here a projection, again based on figures from the 
Congressional

[[Page H7142]]

Budget Office, of interest spending over time, the next 10 years, in 
this particular case. We see that, today, we have interest of somewhere 
around $400 billion a year but accelerating at a very rapid rate over 
the next decade, up to close to $1 trillion a year.
  The red line is a scenario that is very likely if we do not make some 
tough decisions. That gets us even higher.
  This is the actual trend that we are looking at. That is a lot of 
money to be paying just for interest.
  To make matters worse, try to compare that level of interest spending 
against some of our other spending.
  In this particular chart, we see this line is our interest spending, 
kept relatively modest until recently but then accelerating very 
rapidly, as was indicated in my prior chart, to the levels out to 2029 
that are truly scary. That is not the scary part, if that is not scary 
enough.
  This line is our total spending on our children. What do we do to 
take care of the children of our country? That is our spending line. 
Interest is just crossing it right now. This is our total defense 
spending projected out over time with interest crossing over.
  What this shows is that we are about to pay, in a very short period 
of time, if we don't do anything, far more money in basic interest on 
our national debt than we are spending on our children and our defense. 
That is an inexcusable situation for us to be in.
  The first basic problem is that we crowd out spending for other 
Federal purposes, which forces us, by the way, to borrow more, which 
forces us to have higher debt, which forces us to pay more interest. 
Everybody who has been in a business or a personal situation knows 
this.
  The second basic problem with that is why should we care about debt--
national security. Where does this money come from? Who is lending us 
this money?
  Two-fifths of our interest payments go overseas, two-fifths of the 
people in this world who are loaning us money. Two-fifths of our total 
debt is loaned to us, basically, by other countries. Other countries, 
26 percent.
  This is the line that is scary: China, up to 7 percent now and 
growing. Japan, okay, fine, we welcome Japan loaning money to us. But 
on balance, I would rather the blue be the blue rather than owing the 
money to other countries because who knows what is going to happen over 
the next 10 or 20 years or generations.
  This is, obviously, not just an issue of our own fiscal stability, 
but it is a question of national security.
  Another question of national security is that we need this money in 
case we get into other situations in the world, hopefully not, but 
prepare for the situation where we may have to have massive increases 
in defense spending over the next generation.

  These are areas where we have traditionally tried to pay down our 
debt so that we can borrow back up to finance these additional 
expenditures without destroying our economy. Yet, when we borrow in 
good times to finance even larger Federal spending, then we have very 
little safety net to be able to borrow in bad times.
  That is not just a matter of budgetary stability. That is a matter of 
national security.
  Finally, why should it matter? Economic damage. There is a school out 
there that is trying to justify more debt, which is largely not agreed 
to by most economists. Most economists agree that, over time, large 
levels of debt, large levels of interest payments, drive up basic 
interest rates. They drive up basic interest rates, and that is bad for 
the economy. They drive up inflation, and that is bad for the economy.
  They lead to a situation where the markets out there--the people who 
are loaning us money, the people who are relying on the United States 
for its full faith and credit--start to doubt our basic fiscal 
solvency. They start to not only loan us money, but they start to 
charge us more interest, and that causes an economic problem.
  Finally, it is just bad budgetary practice to skate too closely on 
thin ice.
  This is why we should care: because our interest payments are 
crowding out spending; because it is a national security issue; and 
because, over time, it is an economic issue.
  How did we get into this mess? Well, obviously, we are spending more 
than we are taking in. Our long-term deficit buildup and short-term tax 
reduction and spending increases are really the issue.
  This chart is an illustration, again based on CBO information, of 
where our deficits are coming from today. When we are talking about the 
total amount of deficits closing in on $1 trillion, we see that absent 
recent legislation--we are talking about just the last 5 years or so--
we had a chronic deficit of close to $400 billion a year. That is 
pretty bad since, if we take $400 billion and times it by 5 years, all 
of a sudden, we are at $2 trillion of debt.
  But, then, we made major mistakes from a fiscal responsibility 
perspective in the last few years.
  First of all, we had tax extenders that were not paid for. We will 
get into that. We had tax credits, tax reductions, and tax rates that 
were extended without accounting on the other side for the spending.
  We had a major tax bill, which is still debated in this Chamber as to 
whether it was the right idea or not. What is indisputable about that 
tax bill was that it drove incredibly increasing deficits and 
incredibly and rapidly increasing debt.
  Then, finally, we had a budget agreement, last year, to raise the 
amount of spending. There is nothing wrong with raising the amount of 
spending, per se, if it is a public judgment and a policy judgment that 
that is the best thing for our country. What is wrong is to pretend 
that there is no consequence to our deficit, debt, and national fiscal 
policy.
  What do we do about it?
  By the way, I want to go back to that point for a second. We are not 
debating here whether our government should be bigger or smaller. We 
are not debating here whether taxes should be higher or lower. We can 
have that debate. It has been going on, after all, for 250 years and 
even before that back to the Colonies. We have always talked about how 
big government should or shouldn't be, how much we should or shouldn't 
spend through government. We just had that debate here on this floor 
today.
  We have always talked about the overall level of taxes. Should they 
be higher? Should they be lower? Should we have high taxes to pay for 
spending? Should they be lower to generate economic growth? Those are 
good, solid policy decisions to be made.
  That is not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about 
here is the fiscal result when we don't balance spending and revenues, 
the result when we don't balance spending and revenues.
  We can choose to have high spending, but if we don't generate the 
revenue for that, then we are going to end up with incredible deficits 
and debt. We can choose to have lower taxes, but if we don't adjust the 
spending at the same time, we are going to end up with high deficits 
and debt. It just makes perfect sense.
  That is all that we are talking about here. We are willing and able 
to have the debate over the size of government and taxes.
  Again, within our Blue Dog Caucus, we have disagreements on that. But 
where we have centralization of agreement is in managing the 
consequence of that debate and having it be an honest debate, not a 
debate that pulls the wool over our fellow citizens' eyes on the 
consequences.
  What do we do about it? Well, I think, first of all, we start talking 
about it again. It is really hard. Twenty years ago, in the great times 
when we actually did balance the budget in the late 1990s and the early 
2000s, public sentiment was high on deficits and debt. People cared 
about this. People understood the risk.
  Then, all of a sudden, politicians stopped talking about it. They 
did, on both sides of the aisle, what many of us do when faced with a 
major issue: We deny it. We don't want to acknowledge it. It is too 
much trouble. We don't want to say that when we cut taxes and don't 
adjust spending, there is a consequence for our deficit and the debt. 
We don't want to say the reverse of that. We want to tell everybody 
that everything is okay. After all, we can have our cake and eat it, 
too.
  I don't want to go back to my district and say, well, I can't vote 
for a tax reduction because it is going to blow our deficit and debt.

[[Page H7143]]

  This is an insidious situation. The consequences of deficits and debt 
are not apparent right up front. They don't catch up with us for a long 
time. But I think we all know, deep down, that we have a problem and 
that is not true.

                              {time}  1430

  And the second thing we have to do, at some point, is simply make a 
plan and implement it. And that is what our Democratic Blue Dog 
Coalition has done and will try to do going forward.
  We have tried to come up with a blueprint for fiscal responsibility, 
which today, we endorsed and released. And these are a series of points 
that we believe need to be pursued in order to have some chance at 
fiscal responsibility and sustainability over time.
  From that perspective, I am very pleased that I am joined today by my 
colleague from Utah (Mr. McAdams), my co-chair of the Blue Dog Task 
Force on Fiscal Responsibility and Government Reform, to share his 
views and to outline some of our agenda items.
  I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. McAdams).
  Mr. McADAMS. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Case for 
organizing this Special Order today, and I thank him for his 
outstanding work as the co-chair of the Blue Dog Task Force on Fiscal 
Responsibility and Government Reform.
  I am lucky to serve alongside him as co-chair, and I also want to 
thank Stephanie Murphy for her tireless leadership in Congress and with 
the Blue Dogs.
  Madam Speaker, Washington has an addiction problem. It is hooked on 
deficits, and it is hooked on debt. Our entire Nation, our children, 
and their children will pay the price for this addiction.
  On March 2, 2019, the debt limit was reinstated as $22 trillion as 
Representative Case so appropriately outlined. To operate the 
government at this limit, the Treasury Department deployed 
extraordinary measures, accounting maneuvers, allowing government 
operations to continue. But if those measures run out and our cash 
reserves are depleted, the Federal Government would reach the 
unprecedented day on which our Federal Government cannot meet all of 
its obligations in full and on time.
  The consequences of defaulting on our obligations are unknown, but 
could be economically devastating, not only for the United States, but 
globally.
  As Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said recently about the 
prospect of not raising the debt limit: ``It is beyond even considering 
that the United States would not honor all of its obligations and pay 
them when due. It is just something that can't even be considered,'' he 
said.
  We know that the costs of barreling towards this fiscal cliff are 
already mounting. American taxpayers foot the bill for additional 
borrowing costs that come from delays in extending the debt limit.
  In previous years, uncertainty has caused interest rates on some 
Treasury bills to spike in anticipation of going over the fiscal cliff, 
resulting in many millions, if not billions of dollars in added 
interest costs.
  As we have done more than 100 times, we are now preparing to vote to 
raise the debt limit. Raising it does not authorize new spending. It 
enables the government to pay its bills and avoid the sorry reality of 
becoming an untrustworthy borrower. What better time to pair that vote 
with a plan to reform government spending?
  It is not as if we woke up this morning to suddenly face this fiscal 
calamity. It has been building for decades, as we just saw. Both 
parties in Republican and Democratic administrations have contributed 
to the problem. The question is: What are we going to do about it? And 
when will we start to get our borrowing and our spending addiction 
under control?
  The Blue Dog Coalition, of which I am a proud member, has a well-
deserved reputation for talking the talk and walking the walk when it 
comes to fiscal responsibility.
  Look at the Blue Dog priorities on fiscal responsibility and you will 
see a comprehensive list of pragmatic steps that we can take, some of 
which we have already taken.
  For example, Blue Dogs support the House paygo rules. It is one of 
the first things the Blue Dogs fought for when we got sworn in this 
year. And I was pleased to see the House keep paygo rules.
  We don't want those rules to be waived, but if they are, there should 
be a vote held on a waiver. Blue Dogs support a constitutional 
amendment to require a balanced budget every year, except in times of 
war, in times of national emergency, or recession.
  I was proud that my first bill introduced in this Congress was this 
exact balanced budget amendment that the Blue Dogs have endorsed. We 
want to return to regular order. Passing a budget every year and on 
time and avoiding omnibus appropriation packages that do not align with 
that budget.
  As a former mayor myself who had to balance a budget every year and 
do so in a bipartisan fashion, I was then, as I am now, accountable to 
the taxpayers for every dollar we spent. Do elected officials face 
tough tradeoffs? Yes, absolutely. That comes with the job. Just as 
hardworking families and small business owners must do, you must work 
together, and we, in Congress, must work together to set priorities and 
make sure the checkbook balances at the end of each month.
  It is important that we fully offset the cost of all new spending or 
reductions in fiscal revenues with spending cuts or revenue increases. 
We must make those tough choices. We need strict, enforceable spending 
caps to ensure a fiscally responsible budget.
  The Blue Dogs also support better oversight over our government 
spending. The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, and the 
inspectors general are important entities throughout the Federal 
Government that hold Federal agencies accountable to taxpayers and 
recommend improvements.
  We believe that Congress should know what it is voting on by having 
every conference report and bill that comes to the floor of the House 
accompanied by a cost estimate prepared by the nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office, and that should be done at least 24 hours 
in advance of the floor vote. We believe that committees should 
identify proper and related offsets before the legislation is reported 
out of committee.
  A $22 trillion debt burden is a heavy lift to eliminate, for sure. 
But at the very least, we should be able to agree not to take on new 
policies that add to that debt.

  We teach our kids that if they want something badly enough, they need 
to figure out how to pay for it. Tax reform should be deficit neutral. 
Spending plans should be fully paid for. Even emergency spending, which 
should be passed quickly to respond when our communities need it most, 
should include a plan to pay for it, and we can think ahead and plan 
ahead for those emergencies.
  We should get away from the ad hoc emergency spending and figure out 
how to establish a rainy-day fund which 45 States currently have. Every 
man, woman, and child in America owes $68,000 as Representative Case 
has highlighted as their share of the national debt. We will all be 
morally bankrupt, as well as financially bankrupt, if we don't stop 
kicking the can down the road and make future generations liable for 
our lack of fiscal discipline today.
  And so my colleagues often ask me why deficits matter? My answer is 
because future generations will be forced to bear the burden of our 
failure if we don't act today. And the longer it takes for us to act, 
the more difficult those decisions become.
  The cost of paying interest on our debt is the fastest growing part 
of the budget. We will spend more on interest than on defense by the 
year 2025. That is 6 years from now. Let that sink in. The government 
is projected to spend $383 billion on interest payments for its debt 
this year alone. This year, $383 billion.
  So why do I care about the debt and deficits? It is because a strong 
fiscal house means we have a stronger country. That $383 billion spent 
on interest payments in our debt is $383 billion we can't spend on 
other priorities, such as clean energy and transportation, and 
affordable healthcare. The interest we pay on the debt is simply going 
on to our credit card. It is becoming part of the debt.
  So if you care about healthcare, if you care about climate change and

[[Page H7144]]

building a 21st century infrastructure system, if you care about 
affordable housing and any other investment that the government can 
make, then I urge you, care about the debt, and care about our 
deficits. Because every dollar spent on paying down the debt and its 
deficits or interest on that debt is one more dollar that could have 
been invested in priorities that strengthen our country, that 
strengthen our national defense, and strengthens the American people.
  It is clear that we are on a dangerous and unsustainable course. The 
decisions will not be easy. But our children and our grandchildren are 
counting on us to make this right. We were elected to make tough 
decisions.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
  Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much, and I am 
privileged to be his co-chair.
  Would the gentleman engage me in a colloquy on a few of the issues 
that he touched on?
  Mr. McADAMS. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CASE. I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. I would be happy to.
  Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Let's talk about his 
proposed balanced budget amendment, by the way, of which I am a proud 
cosponsor.
  Some people criticized the balanced budget amendment which would have 
to be ratified throughout our country, as an overly restrictive 
mechanism, especially in times of national emergency.
  As the gentleman's balanced budget amendment is crafted, is there 
flexibility to borrow money and to deficit spend in times of genuine 
national need?
  I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. Yes, absolutely. We recognize that there may be 
emergencies that are unforeseen and unplanned for. And in those cases, 
the language of my proposed amendment would allow for deficit spending 
to help our communities in times of need, in times of national 
disasters or other emergencies. And I think that is important.
  Mr. CASE. So we always have the ability to override the basic 
provisions with that balanced budget amendment in Congress, or where we 
believe that we do have to borrow that money. This is just a mechanism 
to introduce the same fiscal discipline that a well-run business or 
household has to follow?
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. McADAMS. That is correct.
  Mr. CASE. As, by the way, is the case with 49 out of 50 of our 
States, who either have a similar balanced budget amendment in their 
constitution or by statute.
  Mr. McADAMS. Madam Speaker, that is correct. In my own State of Utah 
that has a balanced budget requirement, and has established a rainy-day 
fund, as I mentioned, such that when those emergencies arise, they have 
funds available to account for that.
  I would urge us to not only have that flexibility built into the 
language of the amendment, but to plan ahead. While we don't know what 
the next emergency will be or where it will strike, we know that dark 
days are ahead of us, and that there will be natural disasters and 
other emergencies and we should plan ahead for those.
  Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, the gentleman made reference to the fact 
that he was a mayor, and I made the comment to the gentleman once, and 
I believe it, that of all of the public officials I have ever worked 
with throughout the country, I think mayors understand fiscal 
responsibility the best.
  The gentleman made reference to the fact that he functioned under a 
balanced budget as a mayor. Was there any magic to that? How did the 
gentleman do that? He had a requirement to do that, so what did he do?
  I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. Well, one thing, I had a council of nine members: five 
Republicans and four Democrats. And one thing I know from experience is 
balancing a budget is hard. We have to make really tough choices. There 
are certainly things that may not be meritorious expenses that are easy 
to say no to, but by and large, we have to make some really tough 
decisions.
  We can't do it all, even though we might want to do it all. You 
cannot do it all. And what it takes is, first of all, have a bipartisan 
relationship where people put their priorities on the table, discuss 
what they want to accomplish, and how they want to get there.

  And then everyone has to continue to work together to refine 
proposals, to make sure that you cut the fat out of proposals and make 
sure that they are well refined, and every dollar spent is justified.
  Ultimately, we have been able to balance a budget. We have to make 
tough decisions, but we are able to balance a budget, because there is 
that expectation, that requirement that we must get there, and so we do 
get there.
  Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, so to that point, my experience in Hawaii, 
where we have had a balanced budget for a long time--and I was a State 
legislator--so I had knock-down, drag-out fights over all this kind of 
stuff, whether it be to increase spending, or tax reductions, or tax 
increases. But it was always against the backdrop that it had to 
balance.
  My sense was always that the folks that we represented understood 
that that presented us with a series of tough choices, and they 
understood that in the big picture, the tough choices that we had to 
make as a result of a balanced budget, were for the better, the 
overall, long-term, big picture fiscal health, economic health and 
social health of Hawaii.
  Did the gentleman have that experience in Utah?
  I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. Madam Speaker, we did have that experience, and I would 
add, it made us better. The county that I presided over as mayor, we 
had a AAA bond rating. The faith in our ability to pay our debts meant 
we paid lower interest rates. People knew that we would not default on 
those debts, and we saved tax dollars because people knew that we could 
balance our budget.
  I would like to add one point to the gentleman's consideration. 
Fiscal responsibility is important. It is important for our States. It 
is important for this country.
  But another element that I found in the process of balancing a 
budget, when we had to make those tough choices, when, at the end of 
the day, the ledger had to balance, what we were forced to do was go 
back and look at every expenditure we made and ask ourselves:
  Can it be done more effectively?
  Can we stretch our dollars further?
  Is the program or endeavor that we are engaged in the lowest-cost 
alternative?
  Are tax dollars being spent wisely?
  Are programs invested in our citizens, whether it is a program to 
reduce recidivism or to improve early childhood learning?
  We were expected to look and evaluate the effectiveness of each and 
every program because we were having to make competing choices. We were 
choosing between one good and, hopefully, a better good, and that 
required us to quantify empirically the outcomes we were receiving from 
our programs.

                              {time}  1445

  That was good for fiscal responsibility. More importantly, it was 
good for the people we were serving because the programs we were 
delivering were expected to improve. We held those programs to a high 
standard on behalf of the citizens who we served.
  Mr. CASE. I think what the gentleman is saying in a very gracious 
Utah way is that the lack of a balanced budget where we always have the 
recourse to just borrow money and kick some cans down the road 
disincentivizes the efficient and effective expenditure of government 
funds, of taxpayer funds. After all, if there is waste in that 
expenditure, there is a safety valve there, whereas a balanced budget 
drives a certain discipline.
  Mr. McADAMS. Waste in plowing snow or fixing streetlights is one 
thing, but in programs that serve our residents, there is a human cost 
to programs that aren't held to a high standard. It takes a toll on 
individuals and on families--on people--who were promised one outcome. 
If a program fails to deliver on that, there is a human cost.
  Mr. CASE. One other point that the gentleman made that I think bears 
further discussion is the gentleman's reference to paygo. Of course, we 
throw

[[Page H7145]]

``paygo'' around here all the time. Sometimes, people's eyes kind of 
blank out when we talk about paygo.
  Can the gentleman talk a little bit more about the simplistic and 
basic approach of paygo? What does it mean? What is its effect on the 
work that we do?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. The rules of the House require that any legislation that 
would have a fiscal impact has to be paid for. We can't simply add that 
on to the tab and put it on the taxpayers' credit card. Every 
legislation has to be paid for upfront.
  Mr. CASE. In other words, not financed by additional debt, which 
would have the result of driving up the deficit, the debt, and interest 
payments?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. That is exactly right. I describe it as saying that the 
first rule when you find yourself in a hole and are not sure how to get 
out is to stop digging.
  Mr. CASE. Let's take a pretty straightforward example. Let's say that 
we wanted to reduce taxes.
  By the way, we can acknowledge there is a debate about whether 
reducing taxes does, in fact, generate revenue or not. But for these 
purposes and especially the recent large tax cut, we simply did not see 
a return on revenues from those tax cuts.
  But let's just stick with the fact that if we reduce taxes, then we 
have to either increase another tax and/or reduce government spending 
somewhere to be able to have a budget-neutral, a deficit-neutral 
outcome.
  Is that correct?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. That is right. Every activity, whether it is reducing 
revenues or increasing spending, should be neutral as it relates to the 
Federal deficit.
  Mr. CASE. Conversely, if we want to increase Federal spending, we 
have to either reduce some other Federal spending or increase taxes, 
correct?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. Exactly. That is correct.
  Mr. CASE. The gentleman said that the House rules already provided 
for paygo. So why are we here so concerned about it?
  Mr. McADAMS. One of my concerns is the willingness with which both 
sides, both parties, will waive paygo. It takes a simple majority to 
waive paygo. We have seen that happen from time to time, whether it is 
exigent circumstances like emergencies, but other things that we can 
plan ahead and should look ahead for.
  Mr. CASE. Essentially, we have a rule that is honored in the breach?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah.
  Mr. McADAMS. Yes.
  Mr. CASE. Of course. One of the elements of our Blue Dog fiscal 
responsibility blueprint is to tighten up the rules on paygo so that we 
stop the bleeding on debt and deficit spending.
  Mr. McADAMS. Exactly.
  Mr. CASE. Again, I am honored to be the gentleman's co-chair, and I 
thank the gentleman for adding to our debate today.
  Madam Speaker, I want to make one other point before I close on this 
subject. I want to emphasize one of the points made by my colleague 
from Utah. He talked about restoring the budget and appropriations 
process. This starts to be real inside baseball.
  Congress goes through a process establishing a budget, which is the 
overall outline of Federal spending for the next year--because we do 
everything on a yearly basis, for the most part--and then passing 
appropriations bills that are consistent with that budget. In other 
words, we make the big picture decision upfront in a budget, and then 
we have our appropriations bills that must match that budget.
  In what we refer to here as regular order, what we would do is first 
have a budget resolution that passes the House, passes the Senate, and 
is agreed to by both the House and the Senate so that we know what our 
roadmap is. Then, we would take each of the areas of government that 
needs appropriations every year.
  The way we do it is, there are 12 separate appropriations bills, and 
we would individually pass each of those bills consistent with the 
budget. We would do all of that by October 1, which is when our fiscal 
year starts.
  We would call that regular order. That would be quite regular order 
for any business and any personal budget.
  The last time we followed regular order was 1995. The last time we 
went through a full budget process, an individual appropriations bill 
process, was 1995. And that has simply thrown our Federal fiscal house 
into disarray. We saw that with an incredibly tragic and unnecessary 
Federal Government shutdown just late last year and earlier this year. 
That was in part to be laid at the feet of our failure to follow basic 
budgetary, fiscal, and appropriations procedures.
  We have tried, on a bipartisan basis, to fix this. In fact, just last 
year, we had a bicameral, bipartisan committee set up to reform the 
rules of the House and the Senate as to the budget and the 
appropriations process.
  I want to read a passage from that committee's report. This was the 
Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, 
Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate.
  Here is a quote from the committee's report in late 2018: ``There 
have been numerous breakdowns in the budget process in recent decades. 
Fiscal year 1995 was the last time Congress passed a conference report 
on the budget resolution followed by passage of 13 separate 
appropriations bills before the beginning of the new fiscal year.''
  We now do 12.
  ``Continuing resolutions, CRs, have become the status quo for funding 
the Federal Government, demonstrating Congress' failure to complete its 
work on time. CRs create uncertainty for agencies and the American 
people.''
  By the way, I stop to describe a CR as a resolution that says: Sorry, 
we can't figure out what to do in this next fiscal year. So while we 
are trying to figure it out, all we are going to do is continue the 
spending the way it was in the last fiscal year, no adjustment of 
spending levels, no adjustment of priorities, and no update for current 
situations. Let's just kick this can down the road.
  That is a CR.
  Back to the report.
  ``In many years, there has been concern that parts of the government 
would have to shut down due to the failure to enact even stopgap 
appropriations, and shutdowns of various durations have actually 
occurred. In the 115th Congress alone,'' the most recent Congress, 
``there have been two government shutdowns. Whether it is Federal 
employees being furloughed, national parks shutting down, adverse 
effects on defense and law enforcement, shutdowns inflict severe damage 
and uncertainty on the Nation's fiscal state. Additionally, multiple 
JSCBAPR members expressed frustration regarding the lack of legislative 
tools available for Congress to address national needs or the national 
debt in a bipartisan manner.''
  The committee's report was submitted very, very late in the last 
Congress, so there was really not enough time to debate it fully and to 
proceed, but the report certainly remains highly relevant together with 
recommended legislation. Our Blue Dog Caucus believes that reform along 
those lines is necessary.
  Finally--and I don't speak now for the Blue Dogs, but I do speak for 
myself and, I believe, many individual Blue Dogs and perhaps others--we 
have another mechanism available to us, a mechanism that we shouldn't 
have to follow but that sometimes may be the only way to cut through 
the political dialogue and the fears of people to make tough decisions. 
That is to develop independent commissions outside Congress of experts, 
hopefully on a neutral basis and hopefully on a nonpartisan or 
bipartisan basis, who are charged with reviewing and making decisions 
on revenue and spending matters and reporting their results back to 
Congress, hopefully for an up-or-down vote. If Congress gets the 
opportunity to pick at a balanced report once it comes back, then it 
defeats the purpose of the commission to start with. Simpson-Bowles was 
one very well-known commission that failed, and there have been others.
  It is certainly conceivable that if we can't get our act in order in 
Congress--

[[Page H7146]]

as we should be able to do, and as I believe the American people want 
and think we should do--then we need to resort to some other mechanism 
to get this House in order.
  Finally, we need public support. We need to get people involved again 
in this issue.
  As I said earlier, the late 1990s and early 2000s were the height of 
public concern over deficits and debt, and it resulted in external 
pressure to Congress to balance our budget.
  A succession of two Presidents with bipartisan Congresses, by the 
way, got it balanced. The public demanded it; we delivered.
  Now, it is almost a forgotten issue. It doesn't even rank in the top 
10 of major issues. We have many, many major issues. But, Madam 
Speaker, I will tell you one thing, the issues that are in the top 10, 
our solutions to those issues will be crippled if we don't get our 
basic fiscal house in order.
  In conclusion, the Blue Dogs believe that we are, in fact, in a 
national crisis. We stand ready to work with anyone and everyone toward 
commonsense, mainstream solutions.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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