[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3174]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE FEDERAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about the 
Federal debt. Now, President Bush was going to be a fiscal conservative 
and we were going to have smaller government. We actually have larger 
government. He has, in his 5 short years in office, in concert with the 
Republican Congress, raised the entire debt of the United States of 
America by 45 percent in 5 short years.
  That is some accomplishment. That figures out to $27,730 per person 
in the United States. But that is not enough because, actually, with a 
debt limit of about $8.3 trillion, we bumped up against it yet again 
because of the profligate borrowing by this President and the 
Republican Congress. So Secretary Snow has requested a fourth increase 
in 5 years in the national debt limit by another $781 million, which he 
says will tide us over for about a year.
  Now, what is extraordinary is that right now the Government of the 
United States is teetering on the edge of default. In fact, the 
government has cashed in the retirement fund, the 401(k) of Federal 
employees, the G fund, in order to not exceed the debt limit set by 
Congress, because the leadership here doesn't want to admit to their 
profligacy. They will not allow a vote, an up-or-down vote here in the 
House, on raising the debt limit. So they are waiting for the Senate to 
sneak it into a really big bill on the Senate side, and then they can 
bring it back over here and pretend that they had nothing to do with 
it. I mean, who could have known the debt has gone up 45 percent in 5 
years?
  Well, it is time that they `fessed up to what they are doing here. 
The fastest growing part of the Federal budget is not the entitlements 
which we hear so much about. We hear about those darned student loans 
that we cut last month so we could finance tax cuts for rich people; 
and those darned poor people who need health care that we cut last 
month to help finance tax cuts for rich people. Actually, the fastest 
part of the Federal deficit and budget is interest on the debt. That is 
true, interest on the debt, which will be $247 billion next year. One 
quarter of $1 trillion.
  Now, that interest on the debt will not feed a single child. It will 
not help one young person get an education. It will not help one senior 
get a Medicare prescription drug benefit. It will not give one soldier 
help with needed equipment in the field. No, that $250 billion, a 
quarter of $1 trillion, will be paid out for profligacy and waste and 
debt.
  What is even worse is, guess what, a lot of that money is not even 
flowing to investors here in the United States of America. This 
President has yet another record. He has, in 5 short years, created 
more foreign debt than the 42 Presidents that preceded him in office.
  Now that is something. That is really something. One President, 
George Bush, has created more foreign debt than the 42 Presidents in 
more than 200 years that preceded him in office, this fiscal 
conservative, this small-government guy.
  How has he do done it? Well, he has done it with a combination of 
increases in spending, a lot of corporate welfare, and tax cuts for 
rich people and major corporations, and subsidies to big corporations 
like in the energy bill, because there is not enough incentive at $60 a 
barrel to drill for oil; we have to borrow money, the taxpayers do, 
give it to the oil companies and ask them to go out and look for oil. 
That was sort of the core of the Bush energy bill.
  Mr. Speaker, 48 percent of our public debt is now held overseas. 
Japan holds $687 billion, China is second and coming up fast at $300 
billion, and on down the list. This is something that puts the future 
of our country in jeopardy. Huge amounts of our debt washing around 
overseas in countries that might or might not have our best interests 
in mind long term, and might or might not want to continue to lend us 
money to help finance this profligacy.
  So now the President is saying that he is really serious. This time 
around he is really serious about it. He says we are going to address 
this. We are going to cut the debt in half in the next 4 years. What he 
does not tell people is that most of that so-called reduction of the 
debt is by borrowing all of the surplus that is supposed to flow into 
the Social Security trust fund and spending it and not counting it as 
part of the debt.
  So as the Social Security surplus grows, he says that he is moving us 
toward a balanced budget. Of course someday we are going to have to 
honor those bonds to pay future Social Security benefits. It is time 
for fiscal sanity here in Washington, D.C. We need a change in the 
Congress and the White House to get it.

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