[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23109-23110]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         U.S. DEBT CONTINUES TO RISE UNDER BUSH ADMINISTRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, congratulations are yet again in 
order to the Bush administration. They hit another milestone just last 
week. They ran up the 8 trillionth, trillionth dollar of debt in the 
name of the American people.
  The U.S. debt is up 60 percent under the Bush-Cheney watch with the 
Republicans in charge of Congress, a 60 percent increase in the Federal 
debt in 5 years. That took some doing. That means every American, from 
the tiniest baby to the oldest senior citizen, today owes about 
$27,000. That is a heck of a burden to carry.
  And then this year, they are touting the fact that they only have the 
third largest deficit in history at $312 billion. They are saying, big 
progress. Of course, they forget to tell you that that does not include 
borrowing every penny of this year's Social Security surplus of $180 
billion, which is only paid for by working people, not the rich who are 
favored by the tax cuts. Only people who earn less than $94,000 pay 
Social Security taxes. They are paying $180 billion more than is 
necessary for the program, with the idea it is being saved.
  It is not being saved. This administration is taking that money and 
spending it, part of it to finance tax cuts for rich people who do not 
pay Social Security taxes. A great noose on the taxpayers' money.
  But now they are born again, right here on the floor in front of us 
this week, as fiscal conservatives. They say they want to pay for the 
Katrina disaster, but there is only one way to do it. Cut the tax cuts 
for the rich people? Oh, no, no, no. Wasteful spending? No. How about, 
let us go to the programs that are important to average Americans. 
Health care for seniors: they want to cut Medicare and Medicaid for 
seniors. Education: kids are already struggling to go to school, but 
cut education. They would hit at food stamps so they will be more 
hungry, and maybe cut back on energy assistance in a time of huge price 
gouging by their friends in the oil, coal, and gas industries.
  Now, this is born again fiscal prudence on that side of the aisle. 
But what they are not telling people is not a penny of those cuts would 
go to pay for the Katrina disaster. No. In fact, they would, by 
implementing those cuts, still increase the deficit next year by a 
quarter of a billion dollars. Now, how can that be? I thought that 
money was going to pay for Katrina. No. They are going to borrow all 
the money to pay for Katrina. They are using those cuts to finance, 
guess what, more tax cuts for the richest among us. They want to make 
permanent the cuts in capital gains, dividends taxes, and a permanent 
exemption of all estates from all estate tax. That costs a lot of 
money.
  Now, why should we do this? Well, because they believe in trickle-
down economics. The way to stimulate our economy, the way to rebuild 
our economy is more trickle-down economics.

[[Page 23110]]

They even, one conservative over there had the gall to say poor people 
do not put people to work. No, that is right. Poor people and working 
people do the work. But they are saying we need to shower more money on 
the richest among us.
  During the last 2 years, 99 percent, this is from the Internal 
Revenue Service controlled by George Bush, their statistics, 99 percent 
of Americans saw real income reductions after inflation. One percent, 
those over $311,000, saw an increase; and one-tenth of 1 percent, those 
over $1.3 million, saw a huge increase in their income, mostly due to 
tax cuts paid for by working people and borrowing against our future. 
And now they have the gall to come to the floor of the House and say, 
if only the Republicans were in charge, this fiscal irresponsibility 
would stop. Excuse me. You control the White House, the House, the 
Senate, and the judiciary. You control everything. It is within your 
power. You want to pay for Katrina? Let us cut wasteful spending.

                              {time}  1630

  The President wants to borrow $1 trillion to go to Mars. They are 
already beginning to borrow $100 billion to go back to the Moon. Hey, 
JFK took us to the Moon for a fraction of the cost. Why do we need to 
borrow $100 billion to go back? That would pay for half of the Katrina 
disaster. Then we can talk about, guess what? Tax cuts for the wealthy.
  If we just did not make those tax cuts permanent, we could pay for 
Katrina a number of times over. But oh, that would mean that rich 
people would pay income taxes at the same rate as working people, and 
that does not fit into their trickle-down theories.
  There is a few other things that we could cut, agriculture subsidies. 
Let us say any farmer who earns over $100,000 a year will not get a 
taxpayer-financed subsidy where the money was borrowed, sometimes from 
Social Security, to subsidize that farm. That is pretty simple.
  But no, they cannot go there. Or maybe we can get rid of the silly 
star wars fiasco. The general in charge of Star Wars has spent $100 
billion on it so far, borrowed, taxpayer money, says it has a better 
than zero percent chance of working.
  Now is that not heartening? Let us have real fiscal responsibility, 
not more phony baloney.

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