[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 27078-27084]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               ECONOMY SUFFERS UNDER BUSH ADMINISTRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, last week, the Commerce Department released 
the growth rate for the third quarter. It was good news, welcome news, 
the kind of news we can all cheer. According to the Commerce 
Department, the economy grew at a rate of 7.2 percent in the third 
quarter this year.
  Now, we all doubt, the President and all the rest of us, that this 
pace can be sustained, but we all hope that it signals the start of a 
strong recovery because, Mr. Speaker, it has been a long time coming.
  Most Americans will be surprised to hear it, but this economy 
officially moved out of recession 2 years ago, November 2001.

                              {time}  2045

  And yet for 3 solid years, ever since even the recovery from the 
recession,

[[Page 27079]]

the official recovery, the economy has continued to creep along, to 
scrape bottom.
  All together, we have had a net job loss in the private sector since 
2001 of 3.2 million jobs; 3.2 million jobs have been lost; 2.6 to 2.7 
million of those jobs have been lost in manufacturing, some of the best 
jobs we have got. And I am afraid some of those jobs are not coming 
back, even if the economy recovers.
  So before anybody hangs out a ``mission accomplished'' banner over 
this economy, I think it is important we recognize tonight and 
henceforth that there is a lot left to be done.
  Here in a nutshell is what this administration has been able to 
accomplish, or not accomplish, on its watch with respect to the budget 
and the economy since January of 2001, things that still cry out for 
correction, notwithstanding the growth rate that we are experiencing 
right now.
  This chart shows that the private sector has shed 3.2 million jobs. 
That is the worst job record since the Hoover administration, the Great 
Depression. Long-term unemployment, that is, people who are unemployed 
for 6 months or more, has tripled. That is when it really begins to get 
tough. The growth in the economy over the last 3 years, it has grown, 
it has not been all recession, but the growth has been 2.1 percent on 
average for 3 straight years. There is only one administration in 
history who has a worse record than that, that is George Walker Herbert 
Bush in the 1990s, early 1990s.
  Real business investment, that is investment in productive assets, 
business assets that generate jobs and generate profits, has fallen 6.6 
percent a year, the worst rate for real business investment since the 
Second World War.
  And our other deficit, the so-called balance-the-payments deficit, 
the trade gap, has also increased by $100 billion over the last 3 
years.
  Let me just show you in further detail more about what has happened 
to the economy. Growth during this administration, 2.1 percent for the 
last 3 years. As I said, to find an administration with a worse record 
since the beginning of the Truman administration, the end of the Second 
World War, you only go back to the Bush administration. Every other 
administration has experienced better growth than that.
  The unemployment rate has increased from 6 million people to 8 
million people. You can see from this chart what has happened to 
unemployment. It has gone from 4 percent to as high as 6.5 percent and 
now rests at around 6.1 percent, persistent unemployment, even though 
we pulled out of the recession.
  Let me make that point more clearly. As I said earlier, the economy 
pulled out of recession in November of 2001. Now, in all of the postwar 
recessions since the end of the Second World War, if you measure them 
in jobs lost and jobs recovered, from peak to peak the length of the 
business cycle downturn has been about 26, 27 months. And here you see 
that average recession plotted on this chart. You also see across the 
bottom the red line which indicates the path of this recession. 
Typically, in every other recession of nine that have occurred since 
the end of the Second World War at about the 13th, 14th month, you 
begin to see the job recovery. We begin to regain the jobs that we have 
lost in the first 13 months. And by the 25th or 26th month we are back 
to where we were a couple of years before, the jobs have been restored.
  But look what has happened here. In the 13th, 14th, 15th month of 
this recession, this red line keeps going down. It does not turn up. 
And this is where we are right now today in November of 2003, barely 
holding our own, hardly improving at all over the dismal loss of 3.2 
million jobs over the last 3 years. That is what is happening to jobs 
in our economy. That is why this is a jobless recovery. That is not 
just a turn of phrase, that is not just some rhetorical creation. This 
is a jobless and a joyless recovery. That is why the people in this 
country have not felt the recovery even now officially when we did 
recover in November of 2001.
  Now, one of the concerns that we all have when you look at this 7.2 
percent growth rate is that it represents one quarter. You have to ask 
yourself what does the future hold? We hope that this means that the 
economy as a whole is beginning to pick up. But we have, I think, 
reason to be worried about the long-run future, not the next several 
months, not the next quarter, not the next year, but 3 years from now, 
10 years from now, 15 years from now when we look at what it has cost 
to turn this economy around and in terms of tax cuts.
  The Bush administration is sure to credit what has happened to the 
tax cuts that it has implemented, three different series of tax cuts 
over the last 3 years, totalling about $3 trillion in all in revenue 
reduction. And they say that this has been the key factor in turning 
the economy around. Of course, it has played a significant part, I am 
sure. But we argued all along that this same level of stimulus could be 
achieved with a lot less damage to the long-term budget, that you could 
have short-term stimulus with the right tax cuts and still have long-
term balance. And that is where the Bush administration comes up short.
  Because you will see that in running the budget, running this 
economy, in trying to deal with the recession, in putting through ahead 
of everything else preemptively its series of three tax cuts we have 
seen here this red line here the most precipitous decline, the most 
drastic reversal in the fiscal fortunes of the United States since at 
least the Second World War, maybe since Woodrow Wilson. It has just 
been a tremendous decrease.
  Here in a nutshell is what has happened. In the year 2000, fiscal 
year 2000, the Government of the United States booked a surplus of $236 
billion. That was 4 years ago. Hard to believe, but we had a surplus 4 
years ago of $236 billion. Three years ago the Bush administration came 
to office with an advantage that few administrations in history, none 
in this country, have enjoyed and that is a budget surplus, big-time 
surplus. And they had some major decisions to make, but they went first 
and foremost with their tax cuts.
  Their economists looked out over the next 10 years, and they foresaw 
surpluses totalling $5.6 trillion between 2002 and 2011. In 3 years 
they have changed that picture from a cumulative surplus of $5.6 
trillion to a cumulative deficit of nearly $4 trillion, 3.5 to $4 
trillion if you simply assume that what we know to be on the Bush 
agenda is implemented and carried out over that period of time with 
respect to prescription drugs, with respect to the war in Iraq, with 
respect to other tax cuts which it is still calling for.
  And when you factor that all in, we see not a surplus of $5.6 
trillion but a deficit of 3.5 to $4 trillion. And that is the question 
we would like to address tonight.
  We are pleased, we are excited, we are hopeful to see the 7.8 percent 
growth rate that the economy racked up in the last quarter. But we have 
to stand back and ask ourselves at what cost have we come, what long-
term damage have we done to the budget in getting here.
  Let me show you one little piece of math that everybody can 
understand. If you take the tax cuts that have been implemented to date 
and look just at the cumulative cost in terms of revenues lost to date, 
which is about $860 billion, and you divide that by the jobs that the 
Treasury Department, the Commerce Department claims have been created 
during this period of time so that we would have had, they say, 5.2 
million jobs lost but for the tax cuts, instead of 3.2 million jobs 
lost we would have 5 million but for the fact that these tax cuts have 
actually generated a total of 2 million jobs, divide the cost of the 
tax cuts through this year by the jobs created, it comes to $3,420,000 
per job in terms of revenues lost to the Treasury. That is the 
situation we want to talk to you about tonight.
  Where are we going? The budgets that have been produced here, the 
deficits that have been generated over the last 3 years have been 
generated with an attitude almost of indifference to the bottom line as 
if the deficits being run were not consequential, as if they

[[Page 27080]]

will be wiped out, which we know they will not. All the forecasts of 
the deficits we will talk about tonight assume that the economy will be 
growing at 3 percent and we are still accumulating deficits of 3 to $4 
trillion despite that rate of growth. But they, nevertheless, have been 
incurred without any kind of sense of urgency or consequential effects.
  It seems to be that those who are overseeing this budget believe that 
these numbers are not consequential. We believe, those of us here in 
this Chamber, those on this side of the aisle, and many in this House, 
we believe those numbers are consequential and they will affect our 
future and that once we get this economy up and running and on its feet 
again, it is going to hit hurdle after hurdle as it has to deal with 
the fact that these huge deficits are there, record deficits, 3, 4, 
$500 billion a year.
  They will have several different effects on our economy. One is the 
government itself will have to pay more interest every year, bigger and 
bigger sums in interest, so eventually we will have to raise taxes to 
pay just interest. That creates cynicism in the American public because 
they are paying taxes to their government and seeing nothing in return 
for it, just interest payments.
  And, secondly, when the government goes into the open markets to 
finance its 4 or $500 billion deficits every year, it crowds out 
private borrowers and runs up the costs of capital.
  What are the consequences in the long run of the policies we have 
been pursuing for the last 3 years? That is the question we pose 
tonight.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. 
Allen) to respond to the issues we have just raised.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina 
(Mr. Spratt) for leading this Special Order tonight to call attention 
to the misrepresentations and the consequences that follow on this 
country as a result of the disastrous economic policies pursued by this 
administration.
  One good quarter of economic growth is something to celebrate because 
we have had so many bad quarters, but it is not an answer to what has 
gone before. The truth is that the administration of George W. Bush has 
done more damage to this country in a shorter period of time than any 
administration in my lifetime, largely because it has pursued economic 
policies that are reckless and irrational.
  Let me call up one chart here that I think will be helpful. The line 
at the bottom of this chart shows the total surplus or deficit without 
Social Security or Medicare over the last several administrations. What 
you can see is how the deficit, the non-Social Security deficit 
exploded during the Reagan and Bush years. And then as President 
Clinton came to office and instilled a greater sense of fiscal 
discipline, we drove that deficit down every year until finally we had 
a surplus.
  But no sooner had President Bush taken office than he immediately 
enacted very large tax cuts and drove us back into deficit again. That 
kind of record, that kind of policy has a consequence for jobs, because 
this President has racked up the worst private sector job growth record 
since World War II. Only in the second administration of Dwight D. 
Eisenhower has there ever been negative job growth during a 
Presidential term. But today, 1 year from completion of President 
Bush's term, we are down 3.2 million jobs in this country. And that is 
the worst record for any President since the Great Depression.
  What we need in this country is to get back to a sense of fiscal 
discipline so that we are not having the Federal Government suck up all 
the revenues that need to go to the private sector, that need to go to 
investment in this particular country.

                              {time}  2100

  We had Members down here earlier from the other side of the aisle, 
and those Members were saying that there is waste, fraud and abuse in 
the Federal Government; and surely there is. But Medicare remains the 
most efficient deliverer of health care services in this country. 
Medicare does not pay multimillion dollar salaries to its executives, 
and Medicare is able to hold down the price of those health care 
services that are so important to people here.
  What we have in this country today is a neglect of basic principles 
of the management of the Federal budget, and it seems to me that there 
is a lot more going on here than simply the inability to pay attention. 
It seems clear that this third tax cut passed in 2003 can only be 
explained as an effort to drive down Federal revenues to a point where 
we are not able, as a country, to preserve Medicare as we know it and 
to preserve Social Security as we know it.
  In conclusion, I would call to mind on that point what the chairman, 
the Republican chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means said the 
other day when asked on television. Someone said to him in a television 
interview: Will not this Medicare bill that you are working on destroy 
Medicare? And he said, I certainly hope so because fee-for-service 
Medicare is outmoded and not good for the American people.
  It is the only program we have. What is going on here is, in my 
opinion, a systematic effort to undermine the Federal budget so that 
these programs that are in many ways the great achievement of the last 
half of the 20th century will be not able to be continued in their 
current form.
  We need to return to fiscal discipline. We need a concentration on 
jobs for ordinary Americans instead of tax cuts for the wealthiest 
Americans, and then maybe we can get this country back on track.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. 
Berry).
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the distinguished gentleman 
from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for the wonderful work he does as our 
ranking member on the Committee on the Budget. I will be followed in 
just a few minutes by the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Stenholm), who has served on the Committee on the Budget. He has been a 
deficit hawk and a debt hawk and a very responsible person with this 
country's money for a long, long time, and I want to publicly 
acknowledge the great work that both these gentlemen have done and tell 
them how much the rest of us appreciate it.
  I can state that to be here this evening talking about this very 
issue is a heartbreaking thing for me, Mr. Speaker. I came here in 
1993, shortly after the historic vote when they changed the course of 
the economy in this country with only Democratic votes to pass the 
economic recovery plan of then-President Bill Clinton. I was part of 
the Clinton administration. I know how hard it was to reduce spending, 
and we did reduce spending. And we continued to reduce spending until 
we had the budget in balance with the help of both of these gentlemen. 
I know how difficult it was to achieve that.
  We reduced the number of Federal employees by 20 percent. And it was 
a hard thing to do. And yet, the President now says, this current 
President, he comes in, he squanders the surplus, and he says: We are 
going to stay the course. We are going to keep doing what we have 
already done that has been such a disaster. I guess what he means is, 
as near as I can tell, he is going to cut taxes on the wealthiest 
people in this country some more.
  There is nothing in the minority we can do about it. The Republicans 
have the White House. They have the House. They have the Senate. They 
can pass whatever they want to pass. But I can tell you where I come 
from, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that some people they just do not 
know a good deal from a bad one, and we have obviously been given a bad 
deal.
  Let us look at the record, and it will be talked about over and over 
and over. We are not able to fund education. We cannot fund veterans 
benefits; we have to cut them. There are 3.2 million lost jobs, and we 
are losing more every day. There is a $5.6 trillion surplus that was 
inherited by this administration that has just, simply, been 
squandered. Two million people that do not have health

[[Page 27081]]

insurance. This is the plan that we are going to stay with. And it is a 
heartbreaking thing because we did have a surplus when this President 
came into office.
  Now, I find the other gentlemen from across the aisle this evening, 
they were talking about we had wasteful spending, and they had found 
places where the government had not spent the taxpayers' dollars very 
wisely, and I do not think we ought to do that either. I agree with 
that. But the sad part of this story is if we did away with the whole 
department that they were talking about, we could not balance the 
budget. If we did away with an entire Department of Defense, Department 
of Transportation, Department of Education, and the list goes on and 
on, we could not balance the budget.
  The budget is so far out of whack that we would not salvage anything 
but about 15 or 20 percent of the discretionary spending. If we tried 
to balance the budget, that is all we would have.
  The wasteful spending they talk about is shameful, but at the same 
time it does not even come close to addressing the problem. We need to 
understand the magnitude of this problem.
  The Concord Coalition says that if we were to balance a budget within 
the next 10 years, we would have to cut Social Security benefits by 60 
percent, we would have to cut the Department of Defense by 73 percent, 
and those massive Draconian cuts go on and on and on. And this is what 
the President says that he is going to stay with, the plan. He is 
committed to his economic plan.
  At some point, Mr. Speaker, you have got to recognize a bad deal when 
you have one and deal with it in an appropriate fashion. We simply 
cannot afford to continue to do this as a Nation. I am sure our 
Founding Fathers would be horrified at this. I am horrified by it. But 
the most heartbreaking thing that I find, and that I feel when I see 
this happen, is the fact that we are passing it on to our children and 
grandchildren.
  Why would any responsible adult do this to their children and 
grandchildren? We are putting a tax on our children and grandchildren 
that they will not have a choice about. They will have to pay 
exorbitant taxes just to pay the interest on the debt, not to pay the 
debt off. And also I cannot forget the fact that our troops are on the 
battlefield losing their lives, making enormous sacrifices, in some 
cases the greatest sacrifice; and those that are lucky enough to return 
will have to go to work to help pay the interest on the debt where we 
borrowed the money while they were in battle. And they will have to 
help pay off the interest and the debt that we have incurred in such an 
irresponsible way. I think that is a heartbreaking set of facts.
  I think that it is absolutely unacceptable that we would allow this 
to happen to the next generations. I thank the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for his leadership in this matter.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Baird).
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his leadership, and 
I wanted to just expand on what was said.
  President Bush in the State of the Union address, and then later on, 
made a comment that I strongly agree with, in principle, but not in the 
way he has put it into practice. The President said, ``See, I ran for 
office to solve problems, not to pass them onto future Presidents and 
future generations.''
  That is with merit to say that. But what has he, in fact, done?
  This is the budget outlook under the current Republican policies. And 
I want to call your attention to a couple of things, and I know it is 
something that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) raised 
before.
  Virtually every Member of this body voted to put Social Security and 
Medicare in a lockbox. The President said he would put it in a lockbox. 
But what he did not say is he would keep the key to that lockbox in his 
back pocket and if budget numbers look bad, he would open up to lockbox 
and borrow from it to make his deficit projections look smaller.
  The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) pointed out that the deficit 
is so great under this administration that we could completely 
eliminate the Department of Education, the National Institute of 
Health, the National Park Service, transportation funding at the 
Federal level and a host of other programs, lock up the National Parks, 
shut down all the research at the National Institute of Health, and we 
are still not out of deficit.
  When the President and the leadership of the Republican party say we 
have a $400 billion deficit, what they are not telling you is we are 
borrowing hundreds of billions more from Social Security and Medicare. 
That debt is going to come due at precisely the time that the tax 
breaks these folks have passed expand.
  Our friends would have you believe that Democrats want to raise 
taxes. That is not true. In fact, this party offered a number of 
constructive and responsible tax breaks. But what we do believe is we 
should not pass debt onto our kids.
  Let us look at the debt we are putting on. You hear about all of $400 
billion debt or $400 billion deficit or a $500 billion deficit, and the 
Republicans would have you believe, well, it is not so much. It is a 
percentage of gross domestic product. But the American people have more 
sense than that. The American people understand that even in 
Washington, D.C., $400 billion is a lot of money. And they also know 
that it adds up year after year after year.
  Look at this chart. This chart shows the cumulative effects of the 
Bush deficit and the Republican Congress deficit, because make no 
mistake about it, the fiscal policies in play in this country right now 
are solely, solely the responsibility of the Republican majority 
because they control the House of Representatives, the Senate of the 
United States, and the Presidency. And their deficit adds up to $7 
trillion more debt over the next 10 years. They will double, 
effectively double the debt in just 10 years. And that is a debt our 
children are going to have to pay. I would submit to you that this is 
not an economic policy. It is a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are 
outlawed because they do not work, because you promise people things 
that they cannot deliver, and that is what this budget does. They would 
have you believe it is going to recover magically. The growth fairy 
will come save us.
  I will state that in April I gave a speech, and I said we should be 
aware, and we should hope that the economy is going to recover because, 
quite frankly, if you give me 2 percent interest rates or any President 
2 percent interest rates for a period of a couple of years, and if you 
pump in a trillion dollars of deficit spending, just like if Disney 
dads whip out the credit cards and buy their kids all kinds of treats, 
you will think the economy has gotten better. But the long-term cost of 
that short-term celebration will be paid by our children and that is 
not responsible. That is not conservative and that is not 
compassionate.
  The American people deserve to know the truth. I applaud the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for being able to tell them 
the truth and my good friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) 
who has been a leader on this.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). The gentleman has 
approximately 30 minutes.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Stenholm).
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. 
I think it is particularly important to point out that the gentleman 
here is from South Carolina.
  A few weeks ago we had a hurricane called Isabel that was heading in 
on the East Coast, and the folks from South Carolina, North Carolina 
and Virginia began to plan for that hurricane because through modern 
technology, we can see it coming through, and we followed it. And there 
were a lot of homes that were boarded up. There were a lot of 
preparations made, a lot of batteries were bought and other supplies 
were bought preparing for what we could see coming.

[[Page 27082]]

  It is amazing to me that the majority party in this House refused to 
acknowledge the coming perfect storm. The perfect storm of fiscal 
deficit, now as far as the eye can see, of 400, $500 billion, trade 
deficits as far as the eye can see, $500 billion this year and growing, 
and these are the jobs that we are losing, the exporting of the jobs 
that are occurring.

                              {time}  2115

  That is happening under current policy and then the third component 
of this perfect storm, the upcoming baby boom generation that will 
begin retiring in 2011. We know that is going to hit all 50 States. It 
is not going to pick out Virginia or North Carolina. It is going to hit 
all 50 States, and what are we doing in this body to prepare for it 
today? Zero. In fact, worse than nothing we are doing. We are digging 
the hole deeper.
  Fiscal deficits now do not matter anymore, and it is amazing to me, 
someone who has been around here and used to vote with my friends on 
the other side for attempting to bring fiscal responsibility to this 
body, we are now told deficits do not matter anymore. Oh, they are 
tried to be explained away as a percent of gross domestic product. The 
last one we come in with was $374 billion deficit last year; and folks 
say, hey, good news, it is less than the 450 we projected last July. 
And we are supposed to rejoice? The 374 happens to be the biggest 
deficit in this history of our country. Amazing.
  Another little perspective perhaps that people might begin to pay 
attention in this body is who I am talking to. It took this country 204 
years to borrow the first $1 trillion. In the first 2\1/2\ years of 
this administration, we borrowed another $1 trillion. In the next year 
and a half, we are going to borrow another $1 trillion. I would hope 
with $1 trillion we could get one quarter of 7.2 percent gross domestic 
product increase. I would hope that because as we saw on my colleague's 
chart a moment ago, the math on this does not add up to being good 
business practices.
  Oh, when we start down this line, how many times have we heard 
somebody say, well, if only Congress would control spending. There are 
still a lot of folks out there, particularly on the talk radio shows, 
still blaming it on Democrats. Well, we have been in the minority for 8 
years in this body, and let me give my colleagues the record of the 
last 8 years of Republicans in the Congress.
  Spending went up 6.5 percent per year compared to an average 1.6 
percent in the previous 8 years. Now, I happen to agree that we have 
got to constrain spending. I have promised on this floor, and again, 
tonight, I will, to the best of my ability and knowledge, not vote for 
one penny more spending than President Bush asked us to spend, period; 
but let us stop blaming spending unless my colleagues are willing to 
control spending, and that means all spending. We cannot just pick out 
that which we like, because in the economy it is all spending.
  I happen to be personally of the opinion that it is worse policy to 
borrow and spend than it is to tax and spend; and I say that because 
when we tax and spend, the voters take it out on us; but when we borrow 
and spend, the voters are still in diapers, and they cannot take it out 
on us. Therefore, it is easy to borrow and spend to get through the 
next election; but then somebody's got to pay the piper, and boy, the 
hole we are digging is getting deeper and deeper.
  My friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle and Mr. 
President and this administration, the perfect storm is gathering. The 
idea that we can borrow at the rate we are borrowing and spend at the 
rate we are spending and not have somebody pay the piper is redefining 
basic economics.
  The trade deficit is the second leg of that perfect storm, and the 
baby boomers are going to begin retiring in 2011, guaranteed. What are 
we doing? Tax cut a week. Tax cut a month. New economics. Dig the hole 
deeper. Well, I do not know whether it was Confucius or Garfield that 
first uttered the words, When you find yourselves in a hole, the first 
rule is to quit digging.
  The second observation I make in closing tonight, in listening to my 
colleagues on this side earlier tonight, 5-minute speeches talking 
about waste, fraud and abuse, it is on my colleagues' watch. If we are 
spending too much, Mr. President, veto some bills because they do not 
spend or they spend too much.
  Also, I am reminded of the words of the late Will Rogers, ``It ain't 
ignorance that bothers me so much. It's them knowing so much that ain't 
so is the problem.''
  We listened to the debate tonight, we listened to some of the 
statements that were made earlier, and we look at charts that the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is showing. These are facts. 
What I have just said about the deficit are facts. They are not made 
up. They are not made up. But what are we doing about it? Not one 
cotton-picking thing except digging the hole deeper, until somebody 
starts paying attention.
  I thank the gentleman tonight for attempting to cause some of us, 
hopefully to get 218 of us, to start paying attention again and do 
something about the deficit and the approaching perfect storm before it 
is too late. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. I yield to 
the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross).
  Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for 
his leadership as ranking member of the House Committee on the Budget, 
and I am here tonight joining my friend from South Carolina and the 
gentleman from Texas and others because I am concerned about our 
country and its future.
  Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am one of 37 members of 
the fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog coalition. I am as sick 
and tired of all the partisan bickering as anyone else. I do not look 
at an idea and look at whether it is just a Democratic idea or 
Republican idea. I look at it, is it a commonsense idea? If it is, then 
I support it. But when it comes to the budget and when it comes to the 
tax cut that was passed earlier this year, the Republican leadership 
and this administration are dead wrong. Do not take my word for it; 
look at the numbers.
  Under this administration, 3.2 million people have lost their jobs. 
We now have 9 million people out of work, unable to provide for their 
families. People have lost $.6 trillion in the stock market, and much 
of that is retirement savings for so many working families. There are 
43.6 million people in America without health insurance. Ten million of 
them are children. Most of the rest of them work for a living. They are 
working the jobs with no benefits.
  Trade deficits have increased nearly $100 billion. We had a $5.6 
trillion projected surplus when President Bush took office. That has 
become a $3.5 trillion projected deficit over the same period of time. 
In fact, we have the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history; 374 
billion is what they want my colleagues to believe it is, but when we 
take Social Security out of it and not count Social Security, it is 
really a $535 billion deficit. Does it matter? Either way we cut it, it 
is the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history.
  The Republicans like to say the Democrats are the ones who spend the 
money. This is the first time in 50 years that the Republicans have 
controlled the White House, the House and the Senate; and they have 
given us the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history.
  The first bill I wrote as a Member of Congress was a bill to tell the 
politicians in Washington to keep their hands off the Social Security 
trust fund. The Republican leadership refused to give us a hearing or a 
vote on that bill, and now we know why. Because they were borrowing 
$374 billion from the Social Security trust fund to help fund this 
budget, the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history.
  Let us think back a moment from 1997 to 2001. We had a balanced 
budget. We were beginning to pay the debt down. Now we have a $7 
trillion debt. This country is spending $1 billion a day, $1 billion a 
day simply paying interest on the national debt. How much

[[Page 27083]]

is $1 billion? I put that number to a calculator and get a little E at 
the end.
  I will tell my colleagues how much $1 billion is. We could build 200 
brand-new elementary schools every single day in America just for the 
interest we are paying on the national debt. Better yet, we could 
provide 1 million senior citizens on Medicare prescription drug 
coverage for a year just with the interest that we are paying in 1 day 
on the national debt, $1 billion a day in interest payments on this $7 
trillion debt. We are not talking about principal payment; we are 
talking simply interest payments.
  What are we seeing from this administration? We are seeing cuts in 
education. It was President Bush who said his top priority was 
education reform in this No Child Left Behind business, and he is the 
one who told us how much it would take to implement this program. My 
colleagues know how it works in this body. If it had been my program 
and he was cutting it, that makes sense. We are talking about he cut 
his own program. Arkansas's cut, $87 million for next year. What does 
that say about our commitment to our children and their future?
  Veterans benefits are being cut left and right. What kind of message 
are we sending to the men and women in uniform serving us today in Iraq 
and Afghanistan and around the world when we are cutting the benefits 
for the veterans who came and served before them?
  These may be Republican priorities, but they are not American 
priorities. These may be Republican values, but these are not America's 
values. I believe it is time for us to get our fiscal house back in 
order, to restore common sense and fiscal discipline to our Nation's 
government.
  Finally, let me say that I raise these issues because I believe our 
priorities and values should be centered around our children ensuring 
they get the very best education possible, Head Start, after-school 
programs, providing our veterans with the help that they so desperately 
need. We need to be investing in infrastructure. That is how President 
Roosevelt got us out of the Depression, with the WPA program. I drove 
over bridges yesterday that were built as part of the WPA program. We 
are there folks. We are there. All 50 States collectively are faced 
with the largest shortfall they have seen since the Great Depression. 
We should be investing in our infrastructure, and we need to be 
investing in jobs.
  I raise these issues because my grandparents left this country better 
off than they found it for my parents, and my parents left this country 
better off than they found it for our generation, and I think we have 
got a duty and an obligation to leave this country a little better off 
than we found it for our children and grandchildren.
  I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Etheridge).
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from South Carolina 
(Mr. Spratt) for leading this Special Order. It is timely and so 
important, and it is really about the failure of the Republican regime 
here in Washington on the budget, at a time when the other side in the 
budget debate is engaging in, I think, deception and misinformation and 
sometimes down right dishonest figures.
  The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is not only an expert 
on the Federal budget, but he is engaging as a lone voice of truth and 
really what the facts are and I thank him for that. The American people 
need to know that.
  The truth of the matter is that the Republican economic record is in 
shambles and is leading this country in the wrong direction. This 
failed economic record has three main features: huge budget deficits, 
massive job losses, and festering domestic problems. The Bush 
administration and the congressional Republicans have sought to deny 
their budget calamity of the blown surplus and the return to huge 
deficits, and they are going to be there as far as the eye can see; but 
the Congressional Budget Office has determined that the budget would be 
balanced, as we have already heard, by 2006 if it were not for the 
administration's tax policies.

                              {time}  2130

  As bad as the budget situation is, as has been shared by my 
colleagues, the administration and the leadership in this Congress will 
not stop digging. The first thing to do, as our colleague from Texas 
said when you get in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. 
Well, they are going to bring more programs out that will dig the hole 
deeper.
  The economy has lost roughly 3.2 million private sector jobs, the 
worst record of any administration since Herbert Hoover and the Great 
Depression. My home State of North Carolina has seen devastating job 
losses. We are the second largest State with manufacturing job losses 
in the country. The national unemployment rate has gone from 4.1 
percent to 6.1 percent. North Carolina Statewide unemployment is 
roughly 6.6 percent, and I have counties in my congressional district 
where the unemployment rate is approaching 15 percent.
  For all their talk about appealing to the investor class, as we have 
heard this evening, Republicans have presided over the loss of $4.6 
trillion in stock market wealth, and a lot of that is income of 
retirees.
  The problem is made worse by the record deficits and massive national 
debt that is going to make it impossible for us to make the investments 
that we need to make in America's long-term economic prosperity. As has 
been shared this evening, we need to be investing right now, for 
example, just in education, the administration is proposing to 
shortchange its Leave No Child Behind by roughly $20 billion over 3 
years. I met on Monday with international business officers of this 
country, they know already because they are seeing the cuts, what this 
is going to be about is it is going to be unfunded mandates to local 
governments at a time when they are hurting. Critical needs at the 
local level are going unmet in a whole lot of areas, and problems are 
festering because the national debt crisis is getting worst.
  Just last week, WRAL-TV, the largest television station in the 
Raleigh market, talked about a school in North Carolina that is 
bursting at the seams with overcrowding; specifically, New Hope 
Elementary School in Wilson, where 135 students are going to classes in 
closets, literally in closets. That is wrong at a time when we could be 
doing better if we were doing the right thing about our budget.
  The Democrats had a plan to do it. We could get the economy going 
without massive debts. We have sponsored legislation to fund school 
construction, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will not 
let it happen. The administration and the Republican leadership in 
Congress refused to act because they have blown the budget surplus, so 
there is no money left.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, Democrats have a better idea to return to 
a balanced budget and return sanity and honesty to the Federal budget. 
I thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for leading this 
Special Order.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Scott).
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South 
Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for his leadership in this budget issue. We have 
seen a lot of charts, and I would like to remind the public of this 
chart right here which shows the deficit from the Johnson 
administration, Nixon, Ford, Carter, the deficit created during the 
Reagan and Bush years. And then when President Clinton came in, as 
noted, we passed a budget without a single Republican vote that created 
the momentum carrying up towards an actual surplus. We got ourselves 
out of the ditch into a surplus.
  Some have suggested that since the Republicans used this vote and 
took over the House and the Senate, that they ought to get some credit 
for this improvement. Unfortunately, they should not get the credit 
because as soon as they took over, they passed trillions of dollars in 
tax cuts, and

[[Page 27084]]

President Clinton vetoed those tax cuts. They threatened to shut the 
government down, he vetoed them again. They shut the government down, 
President Clinton stuck to his guns, vetoed it again, and as a result, 
this line continued up.
  Unfortunately, when President Bush came in, he signed those trillion 
dollar tax cuts, and we see what would have happened a long time ago 
had President Clinton not vetoed those budgets.
  Now, this goes down to an on-budget deficit of almost $700 billion. 
We have to put that into perspective and the fact of the line item 
individual income tax, how much revenue we get from individual income 
tax in the United States, less than $800 billion. In a couple of years, 
we are going to be almost $700 billion in on-budget deficit, spending 
almost $150-$200 billion in Social Security and Medicare, and then 
almost $700 billion in on-budget deficit.
  We cannot sustain this for very long. Let us see what this next chart 
shows, the height of fiscal irresponsibility, because this shows how 
much of their budget was paid for with borrowed money. Back in the 
depression in World War II, obviously, a substantial amount was paid 
for with borrowed money, but we are getting to numbers now, and this 
goes to 2010, we are getting to numbers now that we have not seen on a 
sustained basis since World War II. This year we are breaking the 
record. Since World War II, we have not seen almost a third of the 
budget being paid for with borrowed money. Of course, during the 
Clinton years, the amount paid for with borrowed money went down due to 
the fact that it was actually a surplus. And as soon as President Bush 
came in, we started paying for the budget with borrowed money, and we 
are up in a couple of years with almost a third of the budget being 
paid off in borrowed money, and it looks like it is not going to get 
any better in the future.
  How did we get there, we got there with tax cuts. And who got the tax 
cuts, the top 20 percent got most of the tax cuts. In fact, half of the 
tax cuts went to the upper 1 percent. Most people do not know how big 
the tax cut was because most people did not get very much. As we can 
see from the chart, the middle 20 percent did not get very much, and on 
down. By income, if the taxpayer made more than a million dollars, they 
would be off the chart, a $90,000 tax cut in 1 year. If all they made 
was $500,000 to $1 million, you got $13,000 in 2003. $200,000 to 
$500,000 on average got $2,000. And as we get down to $50,000 to 
$75,000 on average, the taxpayer hardly noticed what they got. Going 
down, we do not even need any red ink to show what they got. Most 
Americans do not know how big this tax cut was.
  But we were told we had to cut taxes to create jobs, and the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) told us how many jobs have 
been created. We, in fact, lost jobs. On a 4-year basis back to Truman, 
everybody is gaining jobs. Eisenhower in his two terms, almost two 
million jobs. Everybody is creating jobs until we get to this 
administration. We have lost 3.1, 3.2 million jobs already lost in this 
administration.
  We cannot blame this on 9/11 because going back to the Truman 
administration, and that includes the Korean War, coming forward it 
includes the Vietnam War, the hostages in Iran, Somalia, Grenada, the 
Cold War, everybody is still creating jobs, until we get to this 
administration.
  This is a complicated chart, but it shows what the Republican-led 
Joint Committee on Taxation thought about the tax cuts. Since they are 
done with borrowed money, there might be a short-term spike in jobs 
that we should expect, but depending on which model we use, we will be 
losing jobs, at best, and end up where we started in the fullness of 
time. So the Joint Committee on Taxation told us this was a job killer.
  When we run up deficits, we run up debt and interest on the national 
debt. This shows the interest on the national debt that has to be paid 
in cash. More actually has to be paid, because we have to pay interest 
on trust funds, but that is internal. This is what we need to come up 
with every year in terms of cash. By 2010, $300 billion every year just 
to pay interest on the national debt. This line here shows what we 
would have been paying had we not messed up the budget in 2001. The 
projection was that we would be paying no interest on the national debt 
by 2008, but instead because we messed up the budget, $300 billion a 
year.
  This is happening at a time when the Social Security trust fund 
becomes a challenge. We see in this chart the Social Security trust 
fund. The blue is the surplus that we are running now. We are bringing 
in more in Social Security than we are paying out. We ought to keep it 
in the lockbox which has been referenced because, obviously, we are 
going to need it shortly. But unfortunately, we are spending it all. 
This shows the deficit. By 2030, it is almost $900 billion a year in 
shortfall that we are going to have to come up with every year to pay 
Social Security as promised.
  Members may look at this chart and conclude maybe it was a lost 
cause, maybe we just could not pay Social Security, maybe it was just a 
matter of time before the thing went broke, but there is one little 
interesting fact. When we go back to this tax cut in 2001, this tax cut 
was so large that if we had taken what the top 1 percent got and 
instead of giving a tax cut to the upper 1 percent, if we put that 
money into the Social Security trust fund, just what the top 1 percent 
got, everybody else gets what they got, just the top 1 percent, put 
that into the Social Security trust fund, we would have built up the 
surplus enough to have paid benefits under Social Security without 
reducing benefits for 75 years. For 75 years, Social Security would 
have been secure, or tax cut for the upper 1 percent. Those are the 
kinds of choices we have been making and the reason we have been 
fighting for fiscal sanity. If we do not get this straight, we are 
going to lose Social Security.
  We cannot pay increasing interest on the national debt and this 
increasing deficit in Social Security without something having to go. 
By all likelihood, it is going to be the Social Security program unless 
we get things under control.
  So I would hope we can get the budget under control and people will 
follow the leadership of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) 
in maintaining fiscal discipline so we can have Social Security in the 
future for us and the next generation.
  This is a very challenging chart, but as I said, if we had allocated 
the same amount of money as we had for the upper 1 percent in tax cuts, 
just 2001, we could have had a secure Social Security program for 75 
years. Those are not the kinds of decisions we ought to be making. We 
have to reverse that direction, and that is why I am delighted to 
participate with the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) in this 
Special Order.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his contribution.

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