[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10249-10250]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            BUDGET DEFICITS

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to assume the time 
of the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Tennessee is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, a few months ago, a columnist for the 
Scripps-Howard newspaper chain wrote a column saying that we were 
headed for a ``financial tsunami'' not long after the baby boomers 
start retiring in large numbers over the next few years. The reasons 
are really pretty simple.
  First, we are trying to do way too much for other countries. We have 
spent $300 billion in the last 3 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
probably over half of it is just pure foreign aid. We have every 
department and agency in the Federal Government doing operations 
overseas, spending several hundred billion a year over there.
  The liberals found out years ago that foreign aid was not popular so 
they will very falsely tell you that foreign aid is only 1 or 1\1/2\ 
percent of the budget. When we add up what all the departments and 
agencies are doing, it is just phenomenal how much we are spending in 
other countries.

[[Page 10250]]

  I heard a news report recently that said the FBI has more offices in 
other countries than we have in the U.S.
  Secondly, we have promised too much here at home in retirement and 
medical benefits.
  Thirdly, we will not reduce defense or homeland security spending 
even though there is waste in those departments, just like all the 
other departments, and there just simply is not enough money to pay for 
all of it.
  On January 26 of this year, the Congressional Budget Office said the 
Federal deficit for this fiscal year, which ends September 30, will be 
around $360 billion. Some people say it will be much higher than that, 
and similar amounts, $350 billion to $400 billion for each of the next 
10 or 11 years.

                              {time}  1945

  All of this comes on top of the national debt that is already $8.3 
trillion and headed up very quickly. Our government, in just a few 
years, will not be able to pay all of the military pensions, the civil 
service pensions, the Social Security, the Medicare, the Medicaid, and 
the new prescription drug benefit. We have guaranteed 44 million 
private pensions through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. We 
will just not be able to pay all those things with money that means 
anything.
  But what we will do, we will do what governments all over the world 
have done in similar situations, and we will simply begin printing more 
money. This will cause Social Security and all those government and 
private pension plans to buy less each year.
  It doesn't work. It is like a ball headed downhill. Its starts out 
slow and gathers speed. When this money supply gimmick does not do 
enough, pensions will have to be cut. Anyone who is relying just on 
Social Security for his or her retirement will face tremendous 
financial hardship.
  All of this could be avoided if the Congress would become much more 
fiscally conservative and do it now. However, because there are too 
many liberal big spenders in the Congress, and because it is unpopular 
to say ``no'' to anyone, the Congress could not even, late last year, 
pass a $50 billion slowdown in spending spread over the next 5 years. 
The overall reduction was reduced to $39.5 billion, with the bulk of 
the reductions put off until the fourth and fifth years. The plan that 
was passed did not cut spending, it simply slowed the rate of growth, 
barely. But, of course, even that very meager effort at fiscal 
restraint could be changed by the next Congress.
  Now, let me go to a totally different topic, Mr. Speaker, another 
concern.
  At the end of 1994, the conservative business magazine, Forbes, 
carried a lengthy article about the Justice Department. It said we had 
quadrupled the Justice Department since 1980, and that Federal 
prosecutors were falling all over themselves trying to find cases to 
prosecute. The article said people were being prosecuted for laws they 
didn't even know were in existence. And then the Congress, trying to 
prove it was tough on crime, has expanded the Department of Justice 
greatly since then.
  In addition to all this expansion, we then passed a so-called PATRIOT 
Act to try to show strong opposition to terrorism. This was such a 
great expansion of government power and such an overreach that now 
approximately 400 cities and counties and seven State legislatures have 
passed resolutions against this act. Those who love big government love 
the PATRIOT Act.
  The Federal Government, through the super-secret National Security 
Agency, in addition to the CIA, FBI, and about 12 other intelligence 
agencies, has more than enough power and ways and means to discover and 
prosecute terrorists. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, 
created in 1978, approved 18,742 warrants for wiretapping and physical 
surveillance by the end of 2004. In the 5 years from 2000 to 2004, the 
court received 6,650 requests from the government and approved 6,642.
  We will probably have another terrorist incident of some sort with or 
without the PATRIOT Act. We need to take reasonable precautions, but we 
also need to recognize that you are still hundreds of times more likely 
to be struck by lightning or to win a lottery than you are to be killed 
by a terrorist. Those in charge of all the many government programs 
which have sprung up to fight terrorism do not like to admit this 
because they want continual increases in funding. But, Mr. Speaker, we 
should not create some kind of a Federal police state in a huge 
overreaction to this threat.
  It is sad that conservatives, who have always been the main opponents 
of big government, have gone along with this huge expansion of 
government power just because the word ``terrorism'' is used by every 
government agency to get more money and power.

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