[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8619]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       OUR NATION'S FISCAL CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today once again to express my 
disappointment with the lack of attention to our Nation's fiscal 
crisis. The system is broken, plain and simple. We need to focus our 
efforts on finding a cure for our addiction to deficit spending in this 
body.
  The Blue Dog Coalition, which I am a proud member of, has been a 
leading voice in Congress on fiscal responsibility for over a decade. 
Recently the Blue Dogs have posted signs in front of all of our offices 
that explain to everyone exactly how bad the fiscal crisis is, an 
example of which is on my right here.
  We update the numbers on these signs every day. The sad part is that 
our Nation's debt is increasing so fast that by the end of each day, 
these signs are inaccurate. As you can see from the sign, today the 
National debt is at $7,755,874,000 or $27,000-plus per person. Ladies 
and gentlemen, these numbers are appalling.
  The Blue Dogs are dedicated to fighting our Nation's ballooning 
national debt, and we will continue to lead the fight for fiscal sanity 
until Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle and the White 
House realize that we cannot continue to run our Nation deeper and 
deeper into the deficit hole.
  There is no secret that our National debt is out of control, as we 
are expected to run another $427 billion deficit in 2005, with more 
deficits projected into the future. We do not even have a firm grip, 
ladies and gentlemen, on where our money is going. At the Department of 
Defense, for example, only 6 of 63 departments are able to produce a 
clean audit. That is less than 10 percent.
  This budget we passed omits so many major expenses that frankly it is 
a sham. The administration essentially cooked the books using Enron-
style accounting and Congress is just blindly going along with the 
program.
  We all know as well that foreign holdings of U.S. debt is on the 
rise. Interest on the national debt is the fastest growing area of our 
budget. And the trade deficit is totally out of control as well.
  As this happens, what are we doing? Ladies and gentlemen, we are 
doing absolutely nothing. Recently the Blue Dogs introduced a 12-step 
reform program to cure our Nation's addiction to deficit spending. It 
requires a balanced budget, stops Congress from buying on credit, and 
puts a lid on spending.
  We have a provision in this plan that requires pay-as-you-go 
budgeting, so that when we have an increase in the budget, or we have a 
tax decrease, we have to offset them. The principles in this 12-step 
reform plan should be able to be agreed on by everyone. The plan 
injects a little common sense into the way Congress and the White House 
does business.
  I hope that some day this Congress will wake up and help us restore 
our fiscal responsibility as a Nation. The time to stop digging the 
hole deeper is now.

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