[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 3089]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



          CONCERNED ABOUT A TAX CUT BILL BEFORE A BUDGET BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Boswell) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BOSWELL. Mr. Speaker, I come tonight at this late hour troubled 
somewhat about an event that I think needs some attention. I kind of 
hesitate talking about it after those wonderful words said by the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) about a very important thing. This 
is on another subject; but I appreciate what the gentleman said 
tonight, and I want to thank him for it.
  Tomorrow, according to our majority leader, we are going to be 
dealing with the first round of our tax bill, and I am concerned about 
that. A few days ago President Bush came up to Nemacolin and talked to 
our caucus, and we enjoyed that visit very much. We appreciated it. And 
in the process we asked him, Can we see a budget first? Can we see the 
budget? For me, that was very real, because before I came here there 
was a time when I was in our State legislature and had a very 
significant role to play in working up a balanced budget and getting 
our State out of bondage and out of debt. So I am very conscious of 
that. So we appreciated him saying that.
  So he sent the document, as he said he would. I thank him for that. I 
did not expect it to be a perfect thing. It does not have to be, 
because we have the legislative process. So the document came and we 
laid it side by side with what our staff has, and I have had for some 
bit of time, and things just do not quite jive in the sense of what it 
does for agriculture and what it does for education and some of the 
things I am very concerned about, the construction in some of our 
research centers and so on. I think it needs some attention.
  I thought, well, that is okay, we have a process. The gentleman from 
Iowa (Mr. Nussle), along with the ranking member, the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), will bring us a document that we can look 
at, and it will have the refinement of their work, and that will be 
good, it will be helpful. But that is not going to happen, so I am 
told, and that is wrong. It is very wrong.
  I just have to reflect on what we do in our own families. I travel 
across my district; and when families sit at the table and talk about 
what they are going to do with their resources, they want to pay off 
their debts, if they are planning a vacation, they have to be sure that 
they have things in order; that the kids are ready for school, they 
have their clothes, all those things. They see their budget before they 
spend that which they may not have to spend.
  County and city government, I have dealt a lot with them. In our 
States they have to deal with property tax. That is how they run most 
of county and city government. Everybody would like to have relief from 
property tax, me too; but they would not think of declaring a property 
tax relief until they considered the needs of the budget for that 
entity. They just would not think of it. Yet here we are about to 
embark on this.
  In 1981, 20 years ago, when the tax bill of that day was passed, I 
was talking to my accountant, Mr. Chuck Church, down in Des Moines, 
Iowa, he is a CPA there, and we discussed this. We thought, well, this 
is pretty good, but then we started thinking about some of the other 
things that could take place. Now, I bring this up for comparison, 
budget first, because things are much different than it was 20 years 
ago.
  Twenty years ago, we only had $1 trillion in debt. Now we have $5.7 
trillion. The service of the debt now is quite a contrast. If we made a 
mistake then, we had the strength and so on to recover from it. Do we 
today, if we make a mistake? I do not know. I am concerned about it. I 
do not think that in those days they were thinking about the baby 
boomers coming on. They are coming. Now they are just 8 years away 
before they start entering into the fray, and we have to deal with 
that. Twenty years ago they were not giving that much attention. And I 
think that needs attention.
  So we need the budget first, and I want to say to the American people 
tonight and whoever else is listening in their offices or wherever, 
common sense says show the budget. Like the little lady said on 
advertising some years ago, ``Show me the beef.'' Show us the budget so 
we can see where we are at and so we can go forward with good sense and 
make the progress we need to make.
  We all would like to have tax relief. I want tax relief. The money we 
have here is not our money. It is the people's money. We all know that. 
If we have more than we need, then we ought to send it back. But we 
ought to deal with the realities of where we are at and not jeopardize 
Social Security and Medicare and defense and agriculture, and a number 
of things that are very, very high priorities to us. We ought to think 
of it and be sure that we have the budget first.
  So here we are tonight, Mr. Speaker, at this point, a few hours away 
from taking it up, and I would hope we would give some consideration to 
what we have talked about.

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