[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23728-23729]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           BUSINESS AS USUAL

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it is business as usual after the election 
here in Washington. Right now they are writing a bill to finance the 
entire Federal Government, hundreds of billions of dollars, behind 
closed doors. It will be brought up with one vote, no amendments 
allowed, up or down. Why not? Maybe because we are borrowing $1 million 
a minute to run the Federal Government, $1 million a minute.
  Yesterday the Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund announced that its 
deficit has doubled to $24 billion. They are broke. They cannot 
guarantee pensions. Social Security will collect $163 billion more than 
it needs, but every penny will be borrowed and spent this year for 
current consumption. We hit the federal debt limit for the third time 
in 3 years, but the Federal Government is not in default because they 
are borrowing from Federal employees' pension savings.

[[Page 23729]]

  Is this not great? Nothing wrong with this picture. We do not need to 
change. The majority has a plan: more spending, more borrowing, more 
tax cuts, more dynamic scoring, which means we pretend none of this 
exists, and we pass the bill to our kids and grandkids.

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