[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23642-23649]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE FEDERAL BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Schmidt). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, it is interesting that tonight the 
American people will hear from both sides of the aisle on a very 
important topic. That topic has to do with how we are going to pay for 
all of the relief funds that are necessary for the hurricanes that have 
caused such damage and wreaked such havoc upon our gulf coast.
  What is very interesting for us to note tonight, and the American 
people need to know this, Madam Speaker, there are really only three 
different places that these funds can come from. Either, number one, in 
order to relieve human suffering along the gulf coast, we are going to 
pass debt on to our children, or we are going to raise taxes on the 
American people, or we can do what the Republicans on this side of the 
aisle want to do, and that is restrain the growth of government, ask

[[Page 23643]]

maybe the Federal budget to tighten its belt just a little bit so that 
families do not have to tighten their belt instead.
  Madam Speaker, everybody here wants to help relieve the human 
suffering along the gulf coast. We have seen the pictures. We have seen 
the devastation. I had family who live in New Orleans who were 
affected. They were among the lucky ones. They are alive. Their home is 
damaged, but standing. So all of us have felt in our hearts what has 
gone on there.
  But, Madam Speaker, we cannot take a great natural disaster of this 
generation and turn it into a great fiscal disaster for the next 
generation. For us to sit here and pass on $62 billion of additional 
debt to our children is simply, absolutely unconscionable. I cannot 
believe, Madam Speaker, that anybody would want to do that. Yet I know 
many in this body contemplate that.
  Madam Speaker, for anybody who heard the earlier discussion this 
evening led by the gentleman from South Carolina, the ranking member on 
the Committee on the Budget, one would think that there is only one 
other answer and that is to increase taxes yet again on the American 
people. To some extent all we heard was how we have massive budget 
deficits because of tax relief.
  Madam Speaker, as the Members will see developed this evening, tax 
relief has actually proven to be part of the deficit solution. It is 
tax relief that has created jobs. It is tax relief that has promoted 
economic growth. And yet those on that side of the aisle would take it 
all away from us. They have a plan. Whether or not they have owned up 
to it, they want to engage in the largest single tax increase in 
American history; and that, Madam Speaker, is not the right thing for 
America.
  So at first I think it is important that we deal with some of the 
facts.
  Not a particularly well kept secret is the fact that our entitlement 
spending today is absolutely out of control. We have Social Security 
growing at 5\1/2\ percent. We have Medicaid growing at 7.8 percent. We 
have Medicare growing at 9 percent. Every time we try to reform these 
programs that are far outstripping our ability to pay for them, the 
Democrats do everything they can to stymie this, and what we have 
discovered is that as time goes by, as these programs grow beyond our 
ability to pay for them, more and more massive tax increases are going 
to be necessary to pay for them. On this chart alone, if we start out 
at 2005, the average American family, in just less than one generation, 
is going to be faced with a $10,000 tax increase.
  The Government Accountability Office, the Office of Management and 
Budget, the House Committee on the Budget, anybody who has looked at 
this problem all have come to the same conclusion, and that is that 
within roughly 30 years, we are either going to have to double taxes on 
the American people just to balance the budget or the entirety of 
today's Federal budget will pay for Social Security, Medicare, and 
Medicaid; and there will be nothing else. There will be no Pentagon. 
There will be no VA benefits. There will be no student loans. There 
will be no other Federal Government.
  So as the Democrats work every day to say we cannot do anything to 
control spending, what they are really telling us, Madam Speaker, what 
they are telling the American people is they want to double taxes on 
our children. That is the program they have signed up for. That is 
their program, supposedly, of fiscal responsibility.
  But, Madam Speaker, that is not so; and we have a number of 
distinguished speakers here tonight to tell us about why that is not 
the fiscally responsible thing to do.
  I first yield to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), one 
of the great leaders in government reform and fiscal responsibility in 
this Congress.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for 
his excellent work on this issue. It is a pleasure for me to stand here 
tonight before this body and before the American people and associate 
myself with his good work and with his remarks.
  Madam Speaker, he was talking about looking at where we are now and 
going forward. I want to step back for just a moment, if I may. I am 
going to pick up on a phrase that our colleague from across the aisle 
had used when he was talking about policies, and he said those chickens 
are coming home to roost. Well, Madam Speaker, I will have to tell the 
Members chickens do come home to roost, and the Democrats spent 40 
years building program after program after program after program, just 
layering them up and creating a government that is very expensive. And 
he is right, after 40 years chickens do come home to roost.
  I know that is not the point that he was making there. He was trying 
to say that in a year or 2 years or 3 years they would come home to 
roost. But the point is the Democrats controlled this Chamber. They 
controlled the other Chamber. They had control of the White House, and 
they kept growing and growing and growing and growing government. And 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) is so right in showing this 
chart that shows what will happen and what the tax burden will be if we 
do not take the steps that are necessary to cut back on the spending, 
and how right he is in the remarks that he has made.
  History should be our guide, because 40 years of growing government 
has left us with many programs that have outlived their usefulness. We 
have got 234 different economic development programs in the Federal 
Government. For goodness sakes, would we not be better off with doing 
some streamlining?
  Another comment that was made from across the aisle, as our 
colleagues were talking, someone mentioned something about impeding tax 
cuts, doing some things that would impede tax cuts. Well, I hope that 
the American people hear this because they may want to impede tax cuts. 
They may want to take more money out of working families' pockets, and 
what we are doing is trying to put that focus back on having working 
families keep more of their hard-earned money. And the way we do it is 
not to take more money out of their pockets. The way we do it is to go 
in and say government does not have a revenue problem; government has a 
spending problem.
  Now, how do we address this? Step number one, let us look at where we 
are spending this money and decide, are we getting the appropriate 
outcome for the money that we are spending. Those are the steps that 
this majority is working to take in this House. We fully believe that 
bureaucrats need to be accountable to the taxpayers of this great 
Nation. And for some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
who are sadly misinformed on this issue, we would love to sit down and 
visit with them and be certain that they understand this issue.
  Tax reductions mean money in American families' pockets. It means 
control for individuals, and that is something that is very important. 
We are going to spend a lot of time, as the gentleman from Texas was 
saying, this week talking about what the steps are going to be that we 
are going to take to provide tax relief, to provide the right 
foundation for reducing what the Federal Government spends, to be 
certain that the Federal Government is prioritizing that budget.
  The gentleman from Texas has a great chart, tax relief versus the 5-
year Federal budget; and he is right on target with this.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I certainly thank 
the gentlewoman for her observations.
  Again, it is so interesting, as Democrat after Democrat speaks out 
against all the evils of tax relief and how somehow tax relief is the 
center of all fiscal irresponsibility, what they do not point out is 
that we have passed a 5-year 13.9 trillion, trillion with a ``t,'' 
budget, $13.9 trillion of spending versus less than $150 billion of tax 
relief.
  So say, for example, that tax relief did absolutely no good to our 
economy. Let us just say we took that money and just put it in a hole 
and buried it. It is less than 1 percent of the budget. So when we 
think about all these massive tax increases that are going to be 
necessary to pay for all of this spending that the Democrats want, how 
is

[[Page 23644]]

less than 1 percent of the Federal budget responsible for this? They 
are ignoring over 99 percent of the challenge. The challenge is on the 
spending side.
  And, by the way, Madam Speaker, we did not take this tax relief money 
and put it in a hole. We did something else with it far more 
productive. Madam Speaker, what we did was we took that money and we 
gave it back to small businesses. We gave it back to families. We gave 
it back to hard-working Americans, entrepreneurs, who rolled up their 
sleeves and created new jobs and went out and created new businesses. 
And guess what happened. We got in more tax revenue. We cut marginal 
tax rates and guess what. Our tax revenue went up in 2003 from almost 
$1.8 trillion to almost $1.9 trillion to now $2.1 trillion.
  Madam Speaker, they just do not seem to get it. Tax relief, again, is 
what is helping America's economic situation. Again, do not believe me. 
Look at the Treasury report. This is from the United States Treasury. 
Already we see that tax receipts are up 15 percent. Individual income 
tax receipts are up 14.6 percent. Corporate income taxes, our 
businesses, they are up 47 percent. So it is interesting that, instead 
of this item being called tax relief in the budget, if it was called 
the Agency for Widget Production Subsistence, every Democrat would want 
to double its budget. But somehow because it is tax relief for small 
businesses, for people to go out and create jobs, they deride it. They 
claim that it is part of our fiscal challenge. Instead, we see that it 
is absolutely critical to ensuring that our children do not bear 
further debt.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HENSARLING. I yield to the gentlewoman from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for 
yielding to me.
  I want to go back to the chart that he has so appropriately shown, 
and look what happens here.

                              {time}  2130

  In Tennessee, we have a State that is very much like the State of 
Texas. In Tennessee, we are a small-business, entrepreneurial-oriented 
state. Small business is our major employer. The largest growing sector 
of our small business sector is women-owned small businesses. Women are 
beginning to take the reins, and we have more women creating businesses 
than any other part of the sector. That is where we are seeing our job 
growth.
  What the chart shows to us is this: On those small businesses, when 
you lower those tax rates and you give them the opportunity to invest 
in their business, invest in their communities, invest in those great 
ideas that make American free enterprise what it is, which is what 
everybody in the world wants, look what happens. Faith, hope and 
opportunity come into play. Elbow grease, sweat equity, hard work, it 
goes to work, and people realize a big part of the American dream, 
which is owning their own business, and we know that. We realize that.
  You lower those rates, you allow people to get in there with lower 
taxes and less regulation and have their shot at creating the American 
dream. And look what happens. Your revenues will grow.
  Many times, Madam Speaker, and I know the gentleman from Texas has 
heard this, people have said, well, look, the economy has grown, 
revenues are up, and guess what? The deficit is lower than expected. It 
is amazing how free enterprise works. It is amazing how lower taxes 
work. It is good for this economy, it is good for the American people, 
because there is more money in their pocket, there is more money to 
invest in their businesses, and their families have more money to spend 
on children, on education, on the things that truly are the desires of 
their heart.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, again, I thank the 
gentlewoman for her leadership, and I thank her for her observations.
  Madam Speaker, we have now been joined by one of the great leaders on 
budget matters in this Congress, someone who has coauthored the Family 
Budget Protection Act, to try to enforce our budget, to try to bring 
some accountability into the government, to try to protect the family 
budget from the Federal budget, and I am very happy to yield to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola).
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, for 
his leadership on these matters and for bringing us together here 
tonight to discuss these important issues.
  Madam Speaker, I think we can probably find bipartisan agreement here 
tonight that the deficit is too big. Where we probably part ways is 
what do we do about it?
  I think it is important when we discuss what do we do about it to 
recognize the fact that the result of the deficit comes from one of two 
things: Either we spend too much, or we tax too little. I have to say 
that the people of the Second District of Indiana do not feel like they 
are taxed too little, and I do not think they are really any different 
from the people of every congressional district around this country.
  Unfortunately, too many times here in Washington we use as the only 
measurement of success how much we spend, not how well we spend. But I 
think it is clear to say that the Federal Government spends enough 
money. What we did do too little of is prioritize the spending and root 
out waste, fraud and abuse.
  Madam Speaker, tonight we have heard that we really cannot cut 
spending, it would just be an onerous thing to do. There is no way we 
can find savings or root out waste, fraud and abuse. We have also heard 
a little bit about the reconciliation process, where we are trying to 
find savings over future government growth. So the fact of the matter 
is, when it comes to reconciliation, we are not talking about cuts at 
all; we are simply talking about slowing down the future growth of 
government by a very small amount.
  As an example, we can find $100 billion in savings over the next 5 
years by simply slowing the growth of government by 3/10 of 1 percent. 
But, still, even with that marginal savings, we hear that there is just 
no way that we can even slow the growth of government. It would be 
simply impossible to do.
  Let us look at a few examples, Madam Speaker, on where we might find 
that money. As an example, as reported by the Social Security 
Administration inspector general in 2002, more than $31 million in 
Social Security payments had been made to dead people. Another example, 
in 2003, the food stamp program spent $1.1 billion in overpayments to 
program beneficiaries. Another example is that Medicare overpayments in 
2001, get this, totaled $12.1 billion. Let me repeat that, Madam 
Speaker: Medicare overpayments totaled $12.1 billion in 2001.
  The Federal Government cannot account for $17.3 billion spent in 
2001. They simply do not know where the money went. That does not 
include the $12.1 billion in Medicare I just mentioned, because we know 
where that money went, to overpayments. But there is another $17.3 
billion that the Federal Government simply does not know where it went, 
and that leads the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, to refuse 
to certify the government's own accounting books because the 
bookkeeping is so poor.
  Madam Speaker, no business could operate under those management 
practices; no family could operate under those management practices. In 
fact, if the Federal Government was a publicly traded company, there 
would be criminal charges brought for those management practices.
  Those that say we cannot find savings and slow down the future growth 
of government simply do not want to do the hard work of management and 
being good stewards of taxpayer dollars. The American people understand 
that spending money is easy and managing money is hard.
  I certainly believe that I was elected, and every Member of this body 
was elected, to do the hard things, to find a way to manage money 
better, to get a good return for taxpayer investment, and not fall back 
on the easy thing of

[[Page 23645]]

saying if we slow the growth of government, we are balancing the budget 
on the backs of those people that can least afford it.
  Madam Speaker, I ask, what is compassionate about wasting $12.1 
billion in Medicare? That is money that is not going to any 
beneficiaries, it is not providing health care to any senior. It is 
simply mismanagement and wasted money.
  Madam Speaker, I want to yield back to the gentleman from Texas, and 
I want to thank him again for his leadership on this issue. I certainly 
encourage all of my colleagues to do the hard work we are elected to do 
by providing better fiscal responsibility, better stewardship and 
better management on behalf of the people of this country.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the 
gentleman for his participation in this debate tonight. He brings up 
many good points.
  I think that once again we need to look at the facts of what we are 
speaking about. When Democrats talk about all of these massive cuts 
that are going to take place, first let us look at how much spending 
has already taken place.
  Madam Speaker, this is a chart that just talks about in the last 10 
years, what has happened to the family budget and what has happened to 
the Federal budget? As measured by median family income, the family 
budget has increased from roughly $45,000 for a family of four to 
$62,000. Yet look at this red line showing what has happened in the 
same 10-year period to the Federal budget. It has increased $1.5 
trillion to almost $2.5 trillion. In other words, the Federal budget is 
growing faster than the family budget by almost a full third. Madam 
Speaker, over the long term, that is unsustainable.
  Again, the Democrats are setting us up to either pass on 
unconscionable debt to our children or to engage in the largest tax 
increase in the history of America. We cannot sustain this kind of 
spending growth.
  They also tell us what heavy lifting it is to try to restrain the 
growth of government. Well, if we look at what we are trying to do 
here, the President so far has called for roughly $62 billion of 
hurricane relief for the victims on the gulf coast. That is to be 
contrasted with $13.9 trillion of other spending. So what we are trying 
to do here, Madam Speaker, is find roughly a half a cent on the dollar 
of savings, a half a cent.
  If you went to any American family or any small business and said, 
you know what, we have got an emergency here, we have hit some tough 
times, can you go back and take a look at your budget and find a half a 
cent on the dollar? Of course they could do it.
  Madam Speaker, they laugh at us when we say, oh, we cannot do this, 
we cannot find a half a penny of savings. And the truth is it is not 
even a cut. All we are doing is restraining the growth of government. 
What the Democrats do not want you to know is that even after we find 
these savings, government still is going to grow. It is still going to 
grow roughly 3 percent next year over this year.
  What we call mandatory spending, if we achieve this plan, without any 
help from the Democrats whatsoever, if we achieve this plan, what we 
call mandatory spending is going to grow at 6.3 percent instead of 6.4. 
That is the massive cut of which they have spoken.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding again. 
Just very quickly, I appreciate the facts that the gentleman is 
pointing out.
  Let me draw the gentleman's attention to a couple other facts. The 
Wall Street Journal last week had a very important editorial when they 
pointed out the fact that during the period of 2001 to 2005, inflation 
on a cumulative basis was 12 percent. The Federal spending in 
transportation increased 24 percent; employment benefits, 26 percent; 
general government spending, 32 percent; income security programs, 39 
percent; health spending, 42 percent; community development, 71 
percent; housing and commerce, 86 percent; international affairs, 94 
percent; education, 99 percent. Remember, inflation over that period of 
time was 12 percent.
  Before being elected to Congress, I ran a business. Every year we 
would go through a budget process. Every year all the general managers 
would come into my office, and we would talk about the next year's 
budget. In almost every case we would find ways to save over the last 
year in our spending budget.
  I will have to say, Madam Speaker, if I would have that meeting with 
general managers, and I would ask them to find \1/2\ of 1 percent 
savings next year, they would frankly laugh in my face. They would be 
very relieved, because they would have expected to hear 10 percent.
  Every American business and family has found ways to find substantial 
savings in their budget when they are faced with budget challenges. The 
Federal Government should be no different. There is no reason that we 
cannot find these savings, that we cannot act more responsibly on 
behalf of the American people and provide a good return and sound 
investment for the American taxpayer. Saying we cannot do it is simply 
shirking our responsibilities and not wanting to do the hard work of 
management. We are elected to do oversight and be good stewards of the 
taxpayer dollars.
  Again, I thank the gentleman for his leadership.
  Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman.
  Now, Madam Speaker, I am very happy that we have been joined by one 
of our colleagues, who is a great leader in our Operation Offset, to 
come forward and bring to the American people ideas about how we can 
find waste, fraud and abuse and duplication and lower priority spending 
in the Federal Government in order to help pay to relieve human 
suffering along the gulf coast. I am happy to yield to my fellow Texan, 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for organizing 
this important debate this evening.
  I think what has been pointed out is there are some very important 
challenges facing this Congress and facing this Nation. We are 
defending America in the war on terror, both abroad and domestically. 
We are grappling with rising energy prices. We are trying to figure out 
how to get a lid on health care in our country and how we are going to 
continue to grow this economy and provide jobs for American citizens, 
as well as how we are going to deal with this catastrophic loss of 
property that has been experienced by these hurricanes.
  There are those that want to say, well, we will just push that 
problem down the road for someone else; that this is just a little blip 
on the screen; that we do not need to pay for this relief. We will just 
borrow money. But those same people were the people that we are talking 
about that our deficits are rising at too fast a rate.
  So what does this call for? It calls for a sound fiscal policy. It is 
what the American voters sent us to Congress to do. They sent us here 
to make these difficult choices, to make policy that makes sense, to 
make policy that they have to live with at home, and that is we have a 
certain amount of money coming in, and we have a certain amount of 
money to spend.
  But what is interesting here, and it has been brought up tonight, and 
I want to reiterate it, is we do not have an income problem in our 
country, we have a spending problem. In fact, tax revenues, as the 
gentleman pointed out, have been increasing over the last few years, 
and, in fact, what we found is when we put more money back into the 
American taxpayers' pockets, they spent that. When the small businesses 
had more capital to invest in their businesses, they invested.

                              {time}  2145

  They created jobs and our economy is growing; and now, for that 
reason, our deficit this year is projected to be $80 billion to $100 
billion less than what was originally projected.
  But the problem is that our spending is growing faster than our 
economy. Currently, over the last 5 years, the Federal budget has been 
increasing at an annual rate of 6.3 percent. However,

[[Page 23646]]

our economy has only been growing at an annual rate of 2.75 percent. So 
you do not have to be an economist to figure out that if the government 
is growing at this rate and the economy is growing at this rate, that 
we are never going to be able to balance our budget. So what it causes 
is for the Republican-led Congress to take action and to begin to work 
on this spending problem.
  What you did not hear from the other side of the aisle tonight was 
any spending cuts, any program reform. What you heard is their solution 
is to continue to raise taxes for the American people and to take away 
the momentum that we have already given this economy by the fact that 
we are putting more money back in their pockets. What has happened 
because of these reductions in taxes is that the economy is now growing 
this year at 4.2 percent and that Federal tax revenues have risen $360 
billion since 2003 and that a 22 percent reduction in the Federal 
deficit has occurred since 2004.
  We have frozen nondefense discretionary spending. Now, I know we are 
using a lot of Washington kind of talk. So what is discretionary 
spending? That is the spending each year that Congress gets to vote on. 
So each year, the budget chairman brings before the Congress and the 
appropriations chairman, they bring a plan of how to spend the American 
taxpayers' money, and we get to vote on that, and we have made progress 
on that. But let me tell you where the real problem is in our country. 
The programs that were put in place many, many years ago are growing at 
such a fast rate, and these are programs that we do not get to vote on 
on an annual basis, so we go through this process called 
reconciliation.
  What is reconciliation? Well, really what that is is how we look into 
that budget and say, are these programs relevant today and should we or 
could we do something to stem the rate of growth. Now, the colleagues 
on the other side talked tonight about all the cutting we are doing. 
What we are doing is we are talking about slowing the accelerator down. 
We are talking about reducing the rate of increase, reducing the rate 
of government. That is why we are going to go through this process.
  What we are doing, just talking about over the next 5 years, is 
finding at least $35 billion, because as the gentleman made the point 
awhile ago, we are spending $7.257 trillion in 2006 alone. So how do we 
do that?
  Well, one of the things that I have proposed, as the gentleman 
alluded to, is to look at some ways to offset say some of the spending 
that we are going to have to do for those devastated areas in the gulf 
coast. By the way, I have been to the gulf coast, and I have seen that 
devastation and I have seen what has happened to the lives of those 
people down there; and, certainly, there is a role for the Federal 
Government, but there is also a role for the private sector down there. 
What we need to make sure of is that the Federal Government does not 
preempt the private sector's ability to go down and make sure that we 
begin to rebuild those communities.
  There is a little box that you checked when you did your tax return 
in April, and it says, I want to give $3 to the Presidential campaign. 
You know what? The American people less and less and less have thought 
it was a good idea to give money to Presidential campaigns and to their 
conventions. So I have introduced a bill that would allow the deletion 
of the payment to political campaigns and to the parties' conventions. 
Hey, let us spend that money for our efforts in Iraq. Let us spend that 
money for relief for Katrina, or maybe let us use that money to pay 
down debt, instead of putting monies into political campaigns. In fact, 
the campaigns themselves have started turning down that money because 
they feel like that leaves them at a disadvantage, and so many of the 
major campaigns over the last few years have not even used that money 
and turned it down.
  So we can save $200 million alone by just saying to the political 
parties, hey, go raise your own funds.
  So what we are talking about tonight is in that quest to balance the 
budget and not leave our future generations with a debt they cannot 
pay, we are talking about slowing down the rate of growth in our 
government. We are talking about getting the rate of growth of 
government to coincide with the rate of growth of our economy.
  As a small note, I started a little tradition a few years ago with my 
grandsons, and each evening when I come home, I put the change in a 
little coffee can, and when the coffee can gets full, we go down to the 
toy store, and we count how much money we have in the coffee can. So my 
2 grandsons, who are 5 and 7, we go into that toy store knowing how 
much money we have to spend. They are 5 and 7 and they already 
understand how much money they have to spend. So they ask what each 
item that they are looking for might cost, and they try to figure up, 
do they have enough money to buy that purchase. Some of those purchases 
are more than they have, so they cannot make that purchase.
  That is what the American taxpayers expect the United States Congress 
to do. It is a concept that 5- and 7-year-olds understand, and it is 
certainly a concept that Members of the United States Congress need to 
understand. We cannot afford not to have this debate. I welcome the 
other side to come up with some solutions and some ideas on how we can 
reduce this rate of growth of our government, because our future 
generations are depending on it.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his 
leadership in Operation Offset. It was an interesting story he told 
about how you take the change out of your pocket and put it in a jar to 
benefit your grandchildren. Recently, as my colleagues might have read, 
the Democrats have launched something called the Campaign For Change, 
and now I suddenly understand what it is all about. It is taking your 
grandchildren's change away from them to fund the massive government 
spending that they want to go to and continue to grow. They want to 
grow big government. They believe in more government and less freedom. 
We believe in less government and more freedom.
  And how much government is enough? How much spending does it take? 
Madam Speaker, as my colleagues can see from this chart, Washington is 
now spending $22,000 per household. This is a chart that starts in 
1990, goes to the present; and we see that spending has gone from over, 
roughly a little over $18,000 per family to now $22,000 per household. 
This is the highest spending in inflation-adjusted terms since World 
War II. It is one of the highest levels of spending in the entire 
history of America. Yet, it does not seem to be enough.
  In the last 10 years, again, median family income has grown about 38 
percent. Yet Federal spending on international affairs is up 57 
percent; space and technology, 46 percent; natural resources, 49 
percent; agricultural spending, 206 percent; commerce and housing 
credits, 74 percent; transportation, 95 percent; community and regional 
development, 83 percent. Madam Speaker, the list goes on and on and on.
  This is not a debate again about how much the American people and we 
as a society are going to spend on education, how much we are going to 
spend on housing, how much we are going to spend on nutrition. It is a 
debate about who is going to do the spending. The Democrats want 
government to do the spending. They want Big Government to take that 
money away from American families, throw it into a wasteful bureaucracy 
and have a few pennies come out on the other end. We want to empower 
the American family. We want to protect their budget. We want to help 
them realize their American Dream. We want them to be able to send 
their kids to college. We want them to be able to put a roof over their 
heads. That is really what this debate is all about.
  Now, Madam Speaker, I am very happy that we have been joined by a 
member of the Republican leadership team, a leader in helping put 
together Speaker Hastert's plan to help offset

[[Page 23647]]

this Katrina spending with lower priority spending, to help us start 
this process called reconciliation, which is Washington-speak for 
reform; someone who is very admired by the entire conference and 
Congress, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that generous 
introduction. I was looking around to see who he might be talking about 
for a while. Before the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer) leaves, I 
have a rhetorical question because I know the answer to it, but is it 
not true that the State of Texas is looking at privatizing part of its 
food stamp distribution program?
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. That is correct. The State of Texas is looking for 
innovative ways to make sure that we cut down on the waste, fraud, and 
abuse and also to deliver that service in the most cost-effective way.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And is it not also true that in doing that, you save 
the taxpayers money and actually have not hurt the food stamp 
participation level a bit?
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. The gentleman is correct. Because what happens is 
when we begin to think outside the box and be creative and innovative, 
what we actually do is we save the taxpayers money, but we also at the 
same time generate more program money for those people that really need 
those benefits.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, the reason why I asked that before the gentleman 
leaves is today, in agriculture appropriations, we had probably about a 
1- hour debate on the State of Texas's right to privatize part of its 
food stamp distribution. One of the things that is ridiculous about the 
proponents of this, and they are all the liberal Democrat faction, is 
that States should not be able to have the right to privatize something 
without permission of Congress, because I guess here in Washington 
people know more about Texas than the good folks down in Austin. I 
understand Pennsylvania, Florida, and New York are also looking at 
these privatization plans. It is just a distribution method which they 
found to be more effective.
  Madam Speaker, when I think about the private sector, which they fear 
so much, I think about companies like AOL and UPS and Home Depot and 
Cingular Wireless. When I think about the Federal Government, I think 
about the IRS, the Immigration Service, FEMA, and the post office. Yet 
here are these folks who are defending the Federal Government and 
saying that they should not get involved with the private sector. But 
that is just one amendment that we are fighting that saves taxpayers' 
dollars that we want to make sure that States have the right.
  But there are some other examples of savings that we are trying to 
get out of this budget. One of them was one that the gentleman from 
Texas and the gentlewoman from North Carolina supported, and that is 
the elimination of the mounted police unit here in Washington, D.C. The 
Capitol Police had horses for horse patrol. They were not patrolling 
parades or anything like this, but the horses were brought in from a 
60-mile round trip every day so that they could parade around, walk 
around the 95-acre Capitol campus. The cost of that not only was 
$200,000 just to bring them in, but it was $50,000 to clean up the 
manure that these horses left on the Capitol grounds. Now, any casual 
observer of Washington knows that we have our own manure around here 
and we do not need horses imported so we could have more of it, but 
that is an example of something we have eliminated.
  Another thing that we eliminated from the budget was the exchanges 
with the historic Whaling and Trading Partners program. It is a $9 
million program that was specialized for the folks in Hawaii, 
Massachusetts, and Alaska; and it was for competitive cultural grants 
to study the history of whaling, $9 million; and it was a competitive 
process, but it only went to three States, so there was not a heck of a 
lot of competition in it.
  Then another one is the Robert Byrd Scholarship program, $41 million. 
Now, the Byrd scholarship program on the surface, it sounds like a good 
idea, helps people go to school, it pays $1,500 for a college 
education. The only problem is we already have a Pell grant. Pell 
grants pay $4,100 to do the exact same thing.
  Then there is the Advanced Technology Program. The Advanced 
Technology Program was to spur research and development of technology 
in small businesses. Well, the only problem is, 35 percent of the 
money, and it is a $136 million program, by the way, 35 percent of the 
money went to Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, General Electric, and 
General Motors, hardly small business innovation. Then when the General 
Accounting Office investigated the whole Advanced Technology Program, 
they found that all the research dollars that were going on were 
already being done by the private sector, not costing the taxpayers any 
money, and the duplication was impossible to eliminate.
  I am going to yield back, because I know the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina wants to speak. But I want to say that in the appropriations 
process, the four programs that I have mentioned, we have eliminated 
approximately 90 such programs, duplicative, ridiculous, and 
unnecessary. We have fought back about $61 billion in the last 3 years 
of spending increases which the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), 
the ranking member, and the Democrats have rallied behind year after 
year, $61 billion; and these are from the people who tell us we are 
spending too much money. I agree we are spending too much money, but 
their solution is to spend $61 billion more than what we are doing.
  So there are a lot of things that are going on in the Committee on 
Appropriations. We want to offset the cost of Katrina. We think the fat 
is in the budget to do so, and we stand behind the good work of 
Operation Offset. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Hensarling) for giving me a few minutes.

                              {time}  2200

  Mr. HENSARLING. Well, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Kingston) for joining in this debate. He made so many excellent points. 
It reminds me of the title of a rock and roll song that I listened to 
in high school, Do Not Get Fooled Again.
  We should not get fooled again by the Democrats. We need to remember, 
these are the very same people who told us welfare reform would never 
work. They told us that families would fracture, and so the New 
Republic wrote.
  The Democrat leader at the time said a million children will be 
forced into poverty. One of the Democratic leaders in the Senate said 
that we will experience a national trauma we have not seen since the 
cholera epidemic. And guess what? We gave people incentives to go out 
and become educated. We gave people incentives to go out and work. And 
guess what, Mr. Speaker? They did just that.
  Welfare case loads dropped in half, and people found jobs, and they 
found hope, and they found opportunity. And millions went from welfare, 
from the dependency on a government check, to being able to feed their 
own children, to put a roof over their head, and to have pride in 
having their own job, and a job well done.
  Mr. KINGSTON. In 1996, when we passed welfare reform, there were 14 
million people on welfare. The number dropped to 5 million. Still too 
many, but that is 9 million people who are not taking from the 
government, but are contributing to the government, and they are able-
bodied people, who, as you said, found out working has it own rewards 
and have derived a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from holding a job.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, again it is not how much money 
Washington spends that counts, it is how the money is spent. That is 
what counts.
  With that, I would be very happy to yield to the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), who has been very outspoken in her 
commitment to fiscal responsibility, a great conservative leader in the 
freshman class.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be with you tonight. You have 
done

[[Page 23648]]

a great job of leading our conservative group to think about these 
issues, and to provide the facts and figures that we need. In fact, the 
little history lesson that you have just given about the cutback on 
welfare, I think, is a very timely lesson to have, because every time 
we talk about lowering the rate of increase, we are given all of these 
gloom and doom stories about what is going to happen. And yet we know 
very well that Government is not the answer to the problems that we 
have in this country, the individuals are, and as long as people look 
to the Government to solve their problems, the problems are going to 
mushroom instead of go away.
  These past few weeks have really tested our Nation's emergency 
response system, our compassion, and Congress's ability to set spending 
priorities. I think we are doing very well with Operation Offset and 
other things that we are working on in the Congress. But it is clear, 
as we go about this process, that Republicans are the Members who make 
up the party of fiscal responsibility.
  And that fiscal responsibility has helped grow the economy and 
bolster jobs. Some of these statistics I know have been given out by 
other speakers, but I think it bears repeating, that over the last 2 
years, our Nation has created millions of jobs. The unemployment level 
has dropped dramatically, and the economy has grown.
  If you listen to the mainstream media, you hear nothing but gloom and 
doom. All of the good news gets drowned out. But we are making tough 
decisions, and we are cutting back on spending, and that is what is 
going to be the other factor that is going to really help this economy 
grow.
  Earlier this year Republicans passed a budget that cut $100 billion 
from the deficit. And what did the Democrats do? They refused to vote 
for the budget. As my colleagues have said, Republicans have 
recommended 98 programs be terminated for a total savings of more than 
$4.3 billion.
  It is my understanding that later this week we will be voting on a 
bill to permanently deauthorize those programs. So many times a program 
is not funded, but the authorization is not taken away. We need to do 
that, too, and we are going to do that. The Republican leadership is 
going to put domestic discretionary spending on track to be below last 
year's levels.
  Now, the gentleman earlier gave a little lesson about the difference 
between discretionary and mandatory spending. As my colleagues know, I 
do not even like to use that term, ``mandatory spending.'' And every 
time that it comes up, I mention that I cannot find that word anywhere 
in the Constitution. And I want to encourage people to keep reading the 
Constitution to see if you can find the word ``mandatory spending.''
  But we are doing a lot with the Republican leadership to cut the 
growth of spending, and that is what we have to do. But what have the 
Democrats done? Over the last 3 years they have attempted to bust the 
discretionary budget in the appropriations process by more than $60 
billion. And the way they would finance this is raising taxes on small 
businesses. So it is not surprising that at a time when we must be 
watchful of taxpayer dollars, the Democrats have turned to their old 
playbook and called up one of their favorites, the old tax and spend.
  We think it is time for Democrats to come up with a new plan and join 
us in doing something important about spending. I am relived that they 
have not had their way with the Federal checkbook, or things would be 
much worse than they are. In fact, if they had their way with spending, 
a new report by the House Appropriations Committee shows they would 
have increased spending by more than $60 billion over the last 3 years.
  Before our Nation faced the challenges of recent hurricanes, we were 
on track to produce more, and our government was spending less. Last 
year we held nonsecurity discretionary spending to a 1 percent growth 
rate, far blow inflation and the previous 5-year average of 6 percent 
growth. Last year we held nonsecurity discretionary spending to a 1.4 
percent growth rate, less than inflation, and a major reduction from 
previous years.
  Democrats, on the other hand, have no plan to reduce the deficit. 
While they stand here and complain about budget deficits, they propose 
billions more in new spending. It is really frustrating to hear the two 
sides of their plan, knowing that there is no way for it to work, and 
the only way that it would work would be for them to raise taxes. But 
you never hear them talking about that.
  I am asking our Democratic colleagues to join us in the effort to 
restore fiscal sanity to this country. In 1997, the House passed a 
deficit reduction bill with 153 Democratic votes that saved billions of 
dollars. What we need now is Democrats to join us in a similar move. 
But in the meantime, we are looking to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Hensarling), those of us on the Republican side, to continue to bring 
up these issues, and again present the facts and help educate the 
American public as to what the real facts are, not the shell game that 
we keep seeing played out on the other side every night, but the real 
numbers so that they can see what Republicans have accomplished and 
what more we can do with the effort that we have been putting into it 
with Operation Offset and really knuckling down to being fiscally 
responsible.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for joining us 
for this debate. I appreciate her leadership in the freshman class. It 
is very interesting that you would use this metaphor of a shell game, 
because that is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do with the 
American people.
  Because again, the spending that it is going to take to relieve the 
human suffering on the gulf coast can only come from one of three 
places. Either we are going to pass debt on to our children; we are 
going to engage in massive tax increases on the American people; or we 
are going to ask the Federal budget not to grow quite as fast, to get 
rid of some of the fraud, to get rid of some of the waste, to get rid 
of the lower-priority spending.
  What they want to make sure in their shell game is that they never 
show the American people the massive tax increases they are planning. 
They have planted seeds in our so-called entitlement spending that 
American people are not going to be able to afford.
  Their tax plan just grows and grows and grows. Again, Mr. Speaker, 
what is going to happen for the next generation? For the Democrats to 
fund all of their programs, when they refuse to work with us, and we 
have invited them to work with us to help reform some of this 
entitlement spending, if they do not work with us, this is the future 
our children and grandchildren are facing, massive and massive tax 
increases. We will be on the verge of being perhaps the first 
generation to leave our children a lower standard of living. We are 
going to have to double taxes on the American people just to balance 
the budget in 30 years if we do not do something to restrain the growth 
of Government.
  And again, as I showed earlier, how much Government should we have? 
Already in just the last 10 years, we have seen that the Federal budget 
has outpaced the family budget by over a full third. Mr. Speaker, is 
there any reason why we should have the Federal budget outpace the 
family budget by over a third? Ultimately all of this spending has to 
be paid for.
  Mr. Speaker, all this spending is not created equal. I mean, too 
often we hear from those on the other side of the aisle that any time 
we try to restrain the growth of spending, that somehow we are hurting 
the poor. Well, I am here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, compassion for the 
poor is not measured by the number of government checks you send out, 
it is measured by the number of jobs you create so that the American 
people can go out and realize their American dream.
  And when we have had tax relief, not only, not only, Mr. Speaker, 
have we received greater tax revenues, the deficit has come down, but 
what we have also seen is millions and millions of Americans, 4 million 
new jobs created from tax relief.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, when we look at the Federal budget and we look at 
this

[[Page 23649]]

spending, sometimes many good things come from it: Kevlar vests for our 
brave men and women fighting in the war on terror, student loans for 
many needy folks who otherwise might not have an opportunity to go to 
college. But all too often we also see a Medicare who will pay five 
times as much for a wheelchair as the VA did simply because one would 
competitively bid, and the other would not. We see $800 spent on an 
outhouse in a national park, and the toilet does not even flush, 
$800,000. We see millions and millions of dollars spent for an indoor 
rain forest in the State of Iowa, and the list goes on and on and on.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people just do not believe there is not 
waste, fraud, abuse and duplication in the Federal budget. For example, 
we have 342 economic development programs. We have 130 programs serving 
the disabled, 90 early childhood early development programs. The list 
goes on and on. How much duplication do we need? And yet the Democrats 
want to raise taxes to pay for more of this.
  The Federal Government made at least $20 billion in overpayments in 
2001. The Department of Housing and Urban Development spent 3.3 
billion, 10 percent of their budget in 2001, on overpayments, yet 
Democrats want to raise our taxes to pay for more of this.
  The Advanced Technology Programs spends $150 million annually 
subsidizing private businesses, 40 percent of which goes to Fortune 500 
companies, and yet Democrats want to raise our taxes to pay for more of 
this.
  And there are so many reforms that we can institute in this body that 
could, for example, brings us greater health care at a cheaper cost. If 
we would pass meaningful medical liability reform, we would bring down 
the cost of health care 5 to 10 percent in America.

                              {time}  2215

  Medicaid could save $1.5 billion a year if they would base their drug 
payments on actual acquisition costs. They could save 2 to $3 billion a 
year if they would stop improper payments to States that use that money 
for purposes other than Medicaid, and the list goes on and on.
  We can find the reforms, but we must start this process of 
reconciliation, which, again, when we look at $62 billion of savings we 
are trying to find in a 5-year $13.9 trillion budget, that is a half a 
cent. That is one half of one penny, Mr. Speaker, that we are trying to 
find so that our children do not face massive tax increases as far as 
the eye can see, guaranteeing to lower their standard of living.
  Mr. Speaker, this really comes down to two visions for America: one 
helping empower people, helping them realize their American Dream, 
about them going out, starting new jobs. It is really about a vision of 
less government and more freedom. Yet our friends on the other side on 
the aisle who will not work with us on reconciliation, who will not 
work with us to root out this waste and this fraud and abuse, who only 
want to continue with more spending and more spending and more 
spending, they believe nothing good happens in America unless it comes 
from the Federal Government.
  Well, a lot of good things come from the American family. A lot of 
good things come from the free enterprise system. That is what we need 
to strengthen. In the days to come, Mr. Speaker, that is what this 
debate is all about, those who want to restrain the growth of the 
Federal budget so the family budget can expand and those who only want 
to grow government and impose massive tax increases on our children and 
grandchildren as far as the eye can see.
  Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that when the American people will 
look at this, ultimately they will chose less government and more 
freedom.

                          ____________________