[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14300-14301]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ELECTION YEAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gingrey). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, you know, we are certainly in the 
campaign season of an election year; and I think everybody, Mr. 
Speaker, needs to be on guard for the talent to spin. And I am reminded 
of a cartoon that was in our paper recently. And there were four 
figures, and the first figure said, ``Gas prices are going up.'' And 
the next figure says, ``Yeah. That is President Bush trying to give his 
friends in the oil industry more income and more money.'' And the next 
figure said, ``Well, look, gas prices are coming down.'' And the next 
figure says, ``Yeah. That is President Bush trying to buy our votes.''
  So I just challenge, Mr. Speaker, everybody in America to brace 
themselves probably for the most television ads they are going to see 
ever in this election. And you know what is encouraging is people in 
this country have a lot of what I call common sense that sort of comes 
from the gut. So I suggest to everybody, size up the candidates. Do 
what is right for our future.
  You know, some people down here suggest that the way to have a 
balanced budget is to increase taxes. Some people suggest the way to 
balance the budget is to reduce spending. Whatever it is, I think we 
need to be very cognizant of what we are doing to future generations 
with overspending.
  This year, even with the job growth and the expanded economy that is 
going to result in an estimated $100 billion less overspending, less 
deficit spending than was earlier predicted, we are still leaving a 
huge mortgage to our children and our grandchildren. I want to talk 
about just two issues in that regard as we face the next several weeks 
of deciding how much we are going to spend in the appropriation bills, 
in the overspending and what it does to our kids, right now.
  And interest rates of course just went up a quarter of a percent last 
week. It looks like before the end of the year they are going to go up 
again a little bit. Fourteen percent of total Federal spending now goes 
towards servicing the debt. So here is 14 percent of the $2.3 trillion 
that is being spent this year being spent to pay interest on what we 
are borrowing to accommodate the overzealousness of this body, the 
Senate, and the White House for the last 25 years to spend more and 
more money, trying to solve more and more problems.
  That 14 percent of the total spending represents approximately $300 
billion a year; and if you realize that interest rates are going up and 
at the same time we are increasing the deficit, that means increasing 
the debt, that means increasing the interest that we are going to have 
to pay on that debt, it just leaves our kids with a huge 
responsibility, to the extent that their standard of living is going to 
be less than ours if we continue to do what we have been doing, and 
that is overspending.
  And I suggest increasing taxes is not the right way to accommodate 
that overspending. Right now businesses are charged 18 percent more 
than the industrial countries that we compete with.
  They pay 18 percent more in taxes in this country than other 
countries. So to simply say we are going to increase the taxes and put 
our businesses at a greater competitive disadvantage means that there 
is a greater likelihood that other countries are going to undersell us, 
that are going to produce those products. It means that companies in 
this country, to survive, are going to do more of their business 
overseas. Let us not solve our problems by increasing taxes.
  Let me finish, Mr. Speaker, by talking about overpromising. It is 
easy for a politician to go back home to their districts or their 
States and say, well, you have some problems; I am going to come back 
in Congress, and we are going to push to solve that problem

[[Page 14301]]

simply by increasing taxes to accommodate you, or maybe not even 
increasing taxes; maybe just making propositions.
  The economists use the words ``unfunded liabilities'' to describe how 
much we have promised over and above the revenues coming in to pay for 
those promises. I would ask people to guess how much unfunded 
liabilities are now projected by the Medicare and Social Security 
actuaries. The answer is $73.5 trillion. That means that we would have 
to have $73.5 trillion into a savings account, earning as much interest 
to accommodate inflation, to pay for what is not coming in in the 
payroll tax in future years. It is not fair. It is moving away from the 
principle of those that work hard, that try, that study and invest end 
up better off than those that do not.
  I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that it is important in 
this election year that the people of America size up their candidates.

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