[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24037-24039]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Tennessee 
(Mrs. Blackburn) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come 
before the body and also to talk with the American people a little bit 
this evening about what we as a House majority are doing.
  You know, I have been sitting here for the last few minutes listening 
to my colleagues talk about their plan and talk about what they were 
doing. And one of my colleagues was talking about we want this, we want 
that. I was beginning to think I was listening to one of my children 
name the Christmas list, got the we-wants.
  And I will remind the American people that the we-wants are going to 
take a lot of your money. And I did not hear one single word mentioned 
about fiscal responsibility and spending less.
  And I would encourage my colleagues to come and work with us, really 
to work with us on this issue, because we would appreciate having them 
choose to propose some spending cuts. They have been going through this 
process of trying to come up with a slogan for 2006.
  And it has been interesting to watch them talk about this slogan. I 
think they are going with something like We Can Do Better, Together We 
Can Do Better, or something of that nature.
  There again, we are not hearing anything about controlling spending 
and reining in government. I did a cable news show last week with a 
Member of the Democratic Party. He said, well, you know, they had not 
been invited to join in working on submitting spending reductions.
  Mr. Speaker, if they are waiting for an invitation, I hope they 
consider this the invitation. It is in that spirit that I wanted to 
come down to the floor tonight and talk a little bit about the 
Republican security agenda and invite the Democrats to join us, because 
we are living in uncertain times. We are facing significant challenges, 
and the Republican majority has a clear plan on how we move forward on 
this.
  We are focused on our national security, our economic security, our 
moral security, our retirement security. And we are going to talk a 
lot. We have been working already, the 108th, 109th Congress, and 
putting quite a bit of time and energy into continued tax relief, 
lowering energy costs, working toward affordable health care, and 
talking about preserving access to health care for all Americans.
  You know, I am just going to have to correct one of things that one 
of my colleagues said. They were talking about Medicaid spending and 
how we were going to cut Medicaid spending. And I was kind of 
scratching my head. We have been sitting in the Committee on Energy and 
Commerce since 3 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon now working on many of 
these issues.
  And all we are talking about doing is slowing the rate of growth of 
Medicaid from 7.3 percent a year to 7 percent a year.

                              {time}  1815

  I think a lot of my constituents in Tennessee have, they have kind of 
wised up to a lot of this Washington talk, and they know that any time 
you

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talk about reining in growth, any time you talk about bureaucrats and 
having to learn to live with less so that families in houses in 
communities can keep their money, that you are going to hear talk of a 
cut. You are going to hear talk of a cut. My people know and understand 
that.
  They also were saying a little bit about energy over there. I have 
got to make a comment there, too, and they were talking about how 
glorious the `90s were. We probably would not be talking so much about 
energy right now if President Clinton had not vetoed drilling in ANWR 
in 1995. He had the opportunity to do something bold and visionary, and 
he chose not to. Democrats chose not to. And I think we need to 
remember that as we talk about energy costs.
  When we talk about economic policies and the economic expansion, I 
think that my young colleague over there might do well to realize 
Ronald Reagan and his economic policies led to that economic expansion, 
and we fondly remember that President.
  As I said, we are talking about the security agenda. We are focused 
tonight on the economic security agenda and some of the things that we 
have been able to accomplish. As I said, spending reductions, we are 
working on across-the-board cuts, tax relief and tax reform, it has 
been a big, big part of that. The death tax repeal, marriage penalty 
relief, reducing marginal rates, all of those things; the child tax 
credit, marriage penalty relief, our colleagues want to talk all of the 
time and just say, oh, corporations are not paying their fair share. We 
need to tax corporations more. And that is all Republicans talk about 
in tax reform and tax relief. And they are just so wrong.
  They are just so wrong on that because thousands of families in my 
district appreciate having sales tax deductibility. They appreciate 
having the child tax credit. They appreciate having marriage penalty 
relief. And so many who have, they are trying to save family farms and 
small business that they have started, they want to make the death tax 
repeal permanent.
  We are going to continue talking about these as we move forward, and 
we are going to be continuing to work on these spending issues, because 
when government is taxing too much and spending too much, you stifle 
economic activity, and that does affect economic security of this 
Nation. Republicans are not willing to let government stifle economic 
activities.
  Jobs growth and jobs creation is something that needs to be 
happening. We have seen 3 million new jobs created. That has happened 
because of the correct economic steps. It has happened because of a 
push to reform government. We have 98 programs that are targeted for 
potential elimination, a good first step there.
  Our leadership is to be commended by taking these steps, and this is 
going to yield $4.3 billion in savings, the budget that we passed. And 
I will remind my colleagues across the aisle did not get a single 
Democratic vote on this budget. It reduced $35 billion in savings; $35 
billion dollars in that fiscal year 2006 budget, and now we are working 
to expand that. Not a single Democrat wanted to vote for that, but they 
wanted to spend more. And when they spend more, that is more money 
coming out of our taxpayers' pockets.
  And, Mr. Speaker, our majority believes that we can do better, and I 
would certainly hope that our colleagues across the aisle will start to 
work with us on these spending reductions. We have got a great group of 
Members who are sick of having the liberals in this body tell us that 
there is no room to cut, and not a single Democrat has agreed to 
support even a 1 percent reduction. And they do not believe there is 1 
percent of waste, fraud and abuse in government.
  In fact, they have opposed our effort to get to that $35 billion in 
savings. And I think that the people in my district know that you can 
find 1 percent of waste, fraud and abuse; and they are encouraging us 
to move forward and go maybe even more, find even greater savings.
  I have said many times that I think that government needs to be 
streamlined, and that it could stop behaving and spending like the 
overgrown, unproductive behemoth that it has become over 40 years of 
Democrat control with growing program after program after program, and 
it could start functioning a lot more like some of our Tennessee 
companies, maybe FedEx or Comdata or the Tractor Supply Company or any 
of the hundreds and thousands of small businesses and small business 
manufacturers that are located across our wonderful Seventh 
Congressional District.
  We have got agencies that spend without results and then do not want 
to tell us how they spend. We have got program after program that was 
created during the Great Society, and those programs put very little 
stock in achieving results. The Republicans in this House are working 
to reshape that, and we are going to continue putting our focus on 
spending reduction, reducing a little bit more and a little bit more 
every single year. And we hope that our Democrat colleagues across the 
aisle are going to join us and assist us with this.
  I am pleased to note also, Mr. Speaker, I will have to note this even 
though the Democrats do not want to join us with across-the-board 
spending and reducing even 1 percent out of spending, I am pleased to 
note that today the President expressed support for taking a look at 
across-the-board cuts.
  I was joined by two of my colleagues, the gentleman from Virginia 
(Mr. Cantor) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), in filing 
three bills, a 1 percent, a 2 percent, and a 5 percent across-the-board 
cuts. And also I will have to note that in our work to reduce what the 
Federal Government spends, Citizens Against Government Waste has sent a 
letter encouraging Members of Congress to support our across-the-board 
cuts because they know that as we work toward fiscal responsibility, as 
we work to achieve and continue economic security in this Nation, a big 
important part of this is looking at what the Federal Government 
spends.
  Mr. Speaker, I am joined by some of my colleagues tonight. And at 
this time I would like to recognize one of our colleagues from Texas 
who is our vice chairman of the Republican Study Committee and has been 
a leader in looking at the fiscal responsibility of this body and of 
the Federal Government. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) has 
taken a lead on this. He helped with our freshman class as waste, fraud 
and abuse became our class project. He came forward and helped found 
the Washington Waste Watchers so that we could begin to get inside 
these programs to target and look at specifically what was going on in 
these Federal programs, where the Federal Government spends its money, 
how it achieves its results.
  The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) has worked on this issue 
for 3 years. And at this time I would like to yield to him for his 
comment about spending control and budget control and operations 
offset, having the Federal Government be accountable to the 
constituents.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, well, I certainly thank the gentlewoman 
for yielding, and I certainly appreciate her leadership in this body 
and truly being one of the great leaders in trying to reform 
government, bring about accountability, and to help protect the family 
budget from the Federal budget.
  Obviously, many good points were made about fiscal responsibility and 
the fact that somehow the Democrats, those on the other side of the 
aisle that we tried to work with, tell us there is no room for reform 
in the Federal budget, no room whatsoever; that somehow we have to 
spend even more and more money. Mr. Speaker, it begs the question how 
much is enough?
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I mentioned 
that we were working on finding some appropriate levels of spending 
reduction in our Committee on Energy and Commerce, and I have been 
called back to this committee.
  So at this point I am going to briefly yield the time to the Chair, 
who will yield it to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) to 
control our hour of time.

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