[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17429-17430]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            BLUE DOG ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to yield some of my time 
to anyone, but just a summary, and I appreciate the return gesture from 
the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) regarding doing this again.
  I wish we could do it every week, find a time to talk about not just 
perhaps this issue, but some of the other issues in which we have found 
ourselves in some very, very strict partisan differences.
  Just a few clarifying comments. The first one is when I hear 
mandatory spending being out of control, since when? Since when can 218 
Members of the House of Representatives not control any spending that 
we wish to control?
  I commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith). He is one of the 
few Members on either side of the aisle that has been willing to talk 
about Social Security and making some of the hard choices that have to 
go into eventually saving Social Security for my grandchildren. And I 
look forward to working with him on that endeavor. I wish we had had 
that on the floor last year. I wish we had it on the floor this year. I 
hope we have it on the floor next year. I get disturbed when we say we 
cannot do that again until after the 2004 elections. That bothers me 
because 2011 is getting awfully close to where we need to be.
  Now, when my friends on the other side of the aisle come in and say 
that the Blue Dog budget raised taxes, that is not speaking the truth. 
Now, I want to be very careful on this. I like to quote Will Rogers 
when I hear some of these quotes. ``It is not people's ignorance that 
bothers me so much. It is them knowing so much that ain't so--that is 
the problem.''
  And there were some statements that were made tonight that were just 
not true, and to stand here on the floor as we do in debate after 
debate and say the Blue Dogs raised taxes, we did not. We cut taxes. 
And to say that Blue Dogs spent more, we did not. We adopted the exact 
same spending levels that the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) had in 
H.R. 95. And to say that we spent more, we spent less because we spent 
$400 billion less on interest because we did not borrow that additional 
money to give it back to the people. Since when can we give back 
something we do not have?
  Discretionary spending this year will hit the lowest level since I 
have been in the Congress. In fact, it will be the lowest level of 
discretionary spending since 1958. Now, that is a pretty good record if 
you want to control spending. But our point was that you cannot have it 
both ways. We have heard it that we want to have it both ways. I would 
say you want to have it both ways because you want to ignore the debt 
going up, but you want to talk about controlling spending. Well, if you 
are going to talk about that, then do it. But you do not have the votes 
to do it or you would have done it.
  The enforcement is something that I know the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Nussle) is not for. I know the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) is for 
it. And pay-go worked when we had it. When you came to the floor and 
you

[[Page 17430]]

talked about increasing spending, you had to find someplace to find the 
money.
  Well, the bottom line is this: We are in a direction of a train 
wreck; the perfect storm, as some have described it. How long can 
America keep buying $500 billion from the rest of the world, more than 
the rest of the world is buying from us, without the law of economics 
taking over? How long can we borrow $400 or $500 billion a year, which 
under the budget that we are now under that we did not vote for, that 
we object to, how long can we borrow $300 billion without something 
happening to the economy of this country?
  Now, everything is on track for November of 2004, but there is a lot 
of folks worrying about 2005. And I think we have a consensus here 
tonight from most of those that participated on both sides that we 
would like to work together to change the direction.

                              {time}  2145

  The old rule of Confucius, of Garfield, or whoever it was that I like 
to give credit to, when you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is 
to quit digging; and it is very disturbing when week after week we 
continue to dig the deficit hole deeper, yes with tax cuts, yes with 
tax cuts, from money we do not have, and if you believe that that is 
any different in creating the deficit, then you are a supply-sider and 
you are a true supply-sider; but when we start talking to solve this 
problem, we have reached out the hand many times, but it has never been 
taken in the last 8 years, unless we happen to agree with a narrow band 
of thought that says supply side economics is the way to go and that 
the theory, the theory is if we just reduce the revenue we will starve 
government.
  Spending on defense is spending. Spending on agriculture is spending. 
Spending on anything is spending, and total spending is going up more 
than our revenue.

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