[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25018-25019]
[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 California (Mr. Cardoza) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, along with all 36 members of the fiscally 
conservative Blue Dog Coalition, I have a

[[Page 25019]]

sign in front of my office that is updated daily to reflect America's 
national debt. Just 2 weeks ago, I was deeply dismayed to see that the 
national debt had reached $8 trillion. That is $27,000 for every man, 
woman and child in America. How did we dig ourselves into such a deep 
hole? The truth is the Republican leadership has created a credit card 
Congress that is recklessly selling out the future of America, our 
children and our grandchildren, and President Bush is the most fiscally 
irresponsible President in the history of America. On his watch, we 
have run up record deficits and added nearly $2.5 trillion to our 
national debt. In just 5 years in office, President Bush has borrowed 
more money from foreign sources than all 42 previous Presidents 
combined. Put together, the first 42 American Presidents borrowed a 
total of $1.01 trillion from other countries. President Bush has now 
borrowed $1.05 trillion from overseas and he still has 3 years to go.
  I know that my Republican colleagues are as ashamed as I am that the 
United States is forced to borrow over $1 trillion from foreign nations 
to pay for our national priorities like reconstruction of the gulf 
coast and the war in Iraq. We owe it to the American people and future 
generations to roll up our sleeves and dig out of this mess now. So 
far, the Republican leadership has refused to reach across the aisle to 
fix this fiscal mess. The Republican reconciliation plan is a sham. It 
does nothing to fix the broken budget. In fact, it will make matters 
worse. By all accounts, the current proposal would add billions to the 
deficit in order to finance more reckless tax cuts for the most 
privileged Americans.
  Who in their right mind, I ask you, could look at an $8 trillion debt 
and put forward a plan to make it bigger? It is time for a real 
strategy for fiscal responsibility. The budget process is broken. 
Anyone can see that. The Blue Dog Coalition has asked the President to 
convene an emergency bipartisan summit to address America's fiscal 
crisis. We have put forward a comprehensive 12-step plan to put America 
back on the path to fiscal responsibility. The Blue Dog 12-step plan is 
the only serious proposal on the table that would fix our Nation's 
budget woes and return America to fiscal solvency. Our plan is based on 
common sense, not party ideology. The Blue Dog 12-step plan includes 
both Democratic and Republican ideas. When it comes to fixing the 
budget, the American people deserve cooperation and not partisanship.
  Our proposal includes commonsense reforms, such as reinstating the 
pay-as-you-go rules that we had here a few years ago and implementing 
discretionary spending caps. We have also urged for the establishment 
of a rainy day fund to cushion the financial blow of future national 
emergencies like we saw in the gulf coast recently. You just heard from 
my Blue Dog colleague, Mr. John Tanner from Tennessee, a leader in the 
fight for fiscal responsibility in Washington. He outlined for us all 
how bad the situation is. I strongly urge my colleagues in Congress to 
embrace real reform and to take immediate action to cure this national 
tragedy of the debt.

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