[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1628-1630]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I am pleased to hear our Budget 
chairman stand up and talk about real fiscal

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responsibility. I am also very pleased to see that we have a President 
who continues to provide the kind of strong leadership Americans 
demand.
  In 1994, when I was elected to the House of Representatives, I 
campaigned long and hard on the fact that we needed to move the Federal 
Government back to the same type of fiscal responsibility we ask every 
single American to make every month when they sit around their kitchen 
table; that is, not spend more money than we take in. Thank goodness, 
due to the economy thriving and surging ahead and due to fiscal 
responsibility on the part of Republicans and Democrats in the 1990s, 
we were able to not only balance the budget but achieve surpluses. Then 
along comes September 11, 2001. Since that point in time, we have 
operated in a deficit situation for a number of reasons.
  First, revenues have been declining from the projected increases we 
thought we would have. But most significantly, we have seen an increase 
in Federal spending both in defense and nondefense areas, but also in 
homeland security-related areas irrespective of whether it is defense 
or nondefense. Therefore, we have seen ourselves projected back into a 
deficit-spending situation.
  But we have a President who has made a commitment to the American 
people. He made it during the course of the campaign, and he is living 
up to what he talked about during the campaign; that is, we need to 
return to more of a balanced budget scenario so our children and 
grandchildren can see us operating in the black in the future, and we 
can tell them that we were fiscally responsible and that we will turn 
this country over to them with a new, sound fiscal condition.
  Unless we have somebody who is as bold as this President is with this 
budget which he has come forward with, that is never going to happen. I 
am very pleased to see the President is leading us in the right way 
from a fiscally responsible standpoint.
  That having been said, there are a number of programs in the 
President's budget that he has proposed eliminating. I think there are 
some 150 programs. In last year's budget that came from the White 
House, we saw a proposal to eliminate some 61 or 71 Federal programs 
that were not performing up to the standards at which they should be 
performing. Therefore, the President was proposing to eliminate those, 
very much like what he has done this time.
  The problem is when those proposals reach Capitol Hill, we tend to 
look at those programs and then somebody has some parochial interest in 
those programs and they never get eliminated. I don't know what the 
programs are this time. I have not looked at the budget in that kind of 
detail. But I do hope--and I know under the leadership of Senator Gregg 
as well as Senator Conrad, who is very fiscally minded always--that we 
look at these programs which the President is suggesting, that we look 
at eliminating them, and that we give them serious consideration 
relative to their efficiency, to whether they are performing at the 
standard we have always anticipated they perform at, and if they are 
not performing, then we ought to consider eliminating them.
  There are two areas of the budget I do have some concerns about. 
First of all, we are seeing an increase of about 5 percent in defense 
spending. I know the President is like me. He is very strong minded 
when it comes to defense issues. We have a very difficult situation, a 
very complex situation on our hands right now, relative to Iraq. We are 
still in the midst of a war. It is imperative that we continue to spend 
the money necessary to make sure America's military forces are the best 
trained, the best equipped fighting forces in the world. We need to 
make sure they have in their possession the latest, most 
technologically advanced weapons systems that are made anywhere in the 
world so they can protect freedom and democracy around the world; that 
they can accomplish what is being accomplished in Iraq today; that is, 
the liberation of the Iraqi people; that we are giving hope and 
opportunity to the people of Iraq in making sure they live in a free, 
open, and democratic society, in a country where freedom does reign; 
where they have an opportunity to provide a better quality of life for 
themselves and their children, unlike the society in which they have 
lived for the past 30 years under Saddam Hussein.
  In order to do that, it is imperative we look at the weapon systems 
we are going to be purchasing over the next decade, over the next two 
decades, and into the future, because we not only have this conflict to 
consider, but we must also keep in mind there will be future conflicts 
out there. We need to make sure our men and women will continue to have 
the best weapon systems available to them to continue the fight for 
freedom around the world when freedom calls us.
  In that regard, there are two particular weapon systems that are 
proposed to be eliminated in this budget that I have serious questions 
about: the FA-22--not that we are eliminating it, but the number we are 
going to buy--and also the C-130, which is a great weapon system, a 
weapon system that has been in our inventory for at least four decades, 
and we are into the fifth decade. Any time you turn on the TV, whether 
you see the Baghdad International Airport or whether you see the 
tsunami relief effort, you see C-130s flying the flag of America as 
well as other countries participating in national security issues.
  It is critically important that we review the proposals relative to 
these two weapon systems. The C-130 is proposed to be eliminated, and 
the FA-22, we are thinking in terms of not buying as many as we 
originally thought we would buy.
  I was in a meeting this morning at the Pentagon that the President 
happened to be in, and we had a very good discussion, a frank 
discussion with the Secretary of Defense and his colleagues relative 
not just to this issue but to the overall issues relative to Iraq, as 
well as the budget. I was pleased to hear they are going to continue to 
look at these two weapon systems, and hopefully we will make some 
changes from the budget that are more realistic, more reasonable, and 
decisions that are a lot more correct than the decisions contained 
within the budget.
  The second area I will talk about that concerns me relative to this 
budget is the proposal to reduce the budget of the Department of 
Agriculture by some $5.7 billion over 10 years. In 2002, we wrote the 
latest farm bill. That farm bill was a controversial farm bill. It has 
been criticized by conservatives. It has been criticized by liberals. 
It has been applauded by both sides as well. I happen to think it is 
the right kind of farm bill that allows our consumers in America to go 
to the grocery store and be able to continue to buy the most reasonable 
food products of any industrialized country in the world. We spend less 
money per dollar on food products in this country than any other 
industrialized country in the world. We have a guarantee that those 
products are safe and secure, and at the same time we provide the 
research that allows our farmers to produce the highest quality and the 
largest yields of agriculture products of anyone in the world.
  All of that happens for one simple reason; that is, the action this 
body, as well as the House of Representatives, takes when we write a 
farm bill. That is exactly the result that happened from the 2002 farm 
bill.
  This budget seeks to rewrite that farm bill and to reduce the amount 
of funding under that farm bill. That is wrong. We have to look at the 
proposals and make sure farmers and ranchers participate in the deficit 
reduction, which they have always been willing to do. They are the 
greatest people in America, even though they are small in number these 
days. They are hard-working, dedicated men and women who have made 
plans under the current farm bill for 6 years, which is the length of 
that farm bill. They made financial commitments, they leased land. They 
have their crop rotations planned out for 6 years. We are in the middle 
of that. We are in the third year of that.
  Those who wrote the farm bill told the Members of the House of 
Representatives and the Members of the

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Senate as well as the farm community that when we wrote that bill we 
were changing it philosophically to a farm bill that would extend a 
helping hand to our agriculture community in times of low yields and 
low prices, but when prices were good and yields were good the Federal 
Government was not going to be there in the way of commodity payments; 
that is exactly what happened.
  It was projected by the CBO that we would spend for the first 3 years 
$52 billion. The fact is, we have spent $37.9 billion. The reason is, 
for 2 of those years, we have had good yields and we have had good 
prices, so payments have been down.
  While I applaud the President and I applaud his administration for 
being fiscally responsible and coming forward with a budget that does 
meet his goal of cutting the deficit in half during the next 4 years, 
we have to be careful and make sure we do not throw the baby out with 
the bath water and that we make sure we approach this budget for the 
next 5 years in a sound and sensible manner, in a manner that makes 
sure our defense community is looked after and makes sure that all of 
America is looked after when it comes to our agriculture production and 
our ability to buy safe and secure products in the grocery store.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

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