[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2293-2294]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     REJECT THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Green of Wisconsin). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, if one were to believe the White House and 
all they are saying regarding the debt of our Nation, one would be 
convinced that the President's recently released FY 2000 budget is good 
fiscal policy for future generations. Unfortunately, the exact opposite 
is true.
  The White House would like the American people and this Congress to 
believe that the national debt is going down under their budget, but 
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of the President's own budget from his Office of Management and Budget 
shows a very different picture.
  Looking at the chart, we see that the total national debt goes up 
from $5.394 trillion in 1998 to $5.576 trillion in 1999, and to almost 
$5.8 trillion in the Year 2000, and the red ink continues to rise every 
year under Clinton's budget.
  The truth is, the total Federal debt under the Clinton plan does not 
go down, as the President would like the American people to believe. In 
fact, the total Federal debt goes up to the tune of over $1.3 trillion 
over the next five years.
  I asked the President's Budget Director, Jacob Lew, during a recent 
Committee on the Budget hearing about this discrepancy, and he was 
evasive about the fact that the President's own budget called for a 
$1.3 trillion more in debt on our children and grandchildren.
  I then asked Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin the next day during a 
Ways and Means hearing the same question, and Secretary Rubin refused 
to answer a simple yes or no question about whether the total debt is 
going up.
  Regardless of where the debt is placed, it will still need to be 
paid, and guess who will pay it? The answer is the American taxpayer. 
Debt is debt is debt is debt. The Clinton Administration only wants to 
speak in terms of the publicly held debt going down.
  Mr. Speaker, President Clinton and his administration are misleading 
the American people when they say the public debt is going down. They 
are telling half a truth. The President and his administration are 
correct in saying the public debt will go down over the next few years, 
but what they are not telling you is that the debt held by the Social 
Security and other trust funds is going up, and that it is going up at 
a faster rate than the public debt is going down, which means the total 
debt goes up by, yes, $1.3 trillion over the next five years under 
President Clinton's budget. No matter if debt is held by the public or 
in the various trust funds, it is still debt, and must still be paid 
back at some future point.
  The Clinton Administration is doing future generations no favors in 
this budget. It is dishonest and disingenuous for the Clinton-Gore 
administration to tout huge surpluses on the one hand, when on the 
other their budget places even more debt on the shoulders of our 
children and grandchildren.
  Mr. Speaker, this Congress and this President have not achieved true 
fiscal discipline and responsibility until our total national debt 
begins to go down.
  Furthermore, as if forcing $1.3 trillion in more debt on future 
generations was not enough, the President's budget called for a net tax 
increase of $45.8 billion and requests $150 billion in new spending 
over the next five years.
  Mr. Speaker, it is the duty of this Congress to stop this assault on 
our future generations and all taxpayers. I urge my colleagues to 
reject the President's budget.

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