[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25017-25018]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    FEDERAL SPENDING AND THE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I came over here this morning because I am 
very concerned about our country. I am concerned about it because we 
are in a financial morass around here. I don't think that the powers 
that be in this town are leveling with the American people about just 
how bad the budget deficit and the debt of our country has become and 
how rapidly it has deteriorated from the 1990s when we had, arguably, a 
surplus, and we were digging ourselves out of previous debt.
  I do not mean this to be political, because we are all Americans 
first and Democrats and Republicans second, and this is our country's 
balance sheet, it is not the Republican balance sheet, it is not the 
Democratic balance sheet, it is all of our balance sheet, particularly 
our children. In the last 4 years, our country has borrowed over $1.3 
trillion. If that is not bad enough, it might interest you to know that 
85 percent of that has come from foreign governments, foreigners, who 
are investing in the bills, notes and bonds of our country.

[[Page 25018]]

  China now owns almost $300 billion of our paper, and the Japanese own 
almost $700 billion. In Asia alone, we owe almost $1 trillion.
  What does this mean to us? Well, it means that we are mortgaging our 
country to people who may not see the world as we see it. We are giving 
those countries leverage over us in the financial markets, so that we 
are potentially in danger of losing our economic freedom to people who 
own our debt and who can therefore dictate the value of the dollar and 
all the things that go with that.
  That said, this is an American problem. This is not the Republican's 
balance sheet, it is not the Democrat's balance sheet, it is all of our 
balance sheets.
  In 2004, to put this in some kind of a context, our government 
borrowed $13,300 a second. Staggering. In the last 4 years, this 
administration and this Congress have borrowed more money from foreign 
interests than all 42 presidents in our history up to 2001. Can you 
imagine that? We have borrowed more money from foreigners in the last 4 
years than all 42 presidents of this country up to 2001. We cannot 
continue to do what we are doing here without jeopardizing our economic 
freedom.
  In a few minutes, you are going to hear from another Blue Dog, Dennis 
Cardoza, about our plan to try to stop this.
  This whole budget process is broken. You are going to hear a lot of 
stuff this week about the reconciliation of the budget, and what they 
are going to say is we are cutting spending. But if you look at it, the 
reconciliation process will actually increase the deficit, not decrease 
it.
  Until the leadership of this country, both here in Congress and the 
administration, levels with all of us and comes to the American people 
and says we have got a problem, and we have got to fix it and you have 
got to help, until they do that, it is just one Congressman saying A 
and another Congressman saying B, and people lose sight of what is 
going on here and think it is just another political argument.
  Well, I am here this morning to tell you it is not a political 
argument. It is a dire necessity that we face up to the fact that we 
have a structural, continuing deficit. The President of the United 
States himself said we hope to cut the deficit in half in 5 years. That 
is like saying a doctor telling you I have got good news for you, I 
thought you were going to bleed to death in 6 months. It will take you 
1\1/2\ years to bleed to death.
  That is no solution to our problem. We have a structural deficit 
problem. We go in the red every year around here. We have got to 
completely, in my judgment and in the Blue Dog's judgment, take another 
look at the whole budget process and almost start from scratch, because 
I can tell you, folks, we are not doing any good the way we are going 
right now.

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