[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3396-3397]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, finally, I have some grounds for agreement with 
the President, at least rhetorically. He says he is committed to 
balancing the budget by 2012. Unfortunately, after that statement, our 
disagreements begin.
  First and foremost, he forgets or neglects to tell the American 
people that he achieves this so-called balance by borrowing $1.2 
trillion of Social Security surplus, spending it and replacing it with 
IOUs.
  Remember, just last year, the President was shocked, shocked, when he 
went to Parkersburg, West Virginia, that the Social Security trust fund 
consisted of nothing but IOUs.
  Now, the Federal Government is pretty good for its debts unless you 
run up such a mountain of debt and you cut revenues so much with tax 
cuts for the wealthy that you can't afford to meet those obligations; 
you can't afford to cash in the bonds or the IOUs to Social Security. 
And I believe that is his long-

[[Page 3397]]

term plan, to bankrupt Social Security, Medicare and other New Deal 
programs that this administration viscerally hates because they don't 
encourage people to stand on their own. They say it would be a more 
productive society if we just didn't have all those social support 
programs or guarantees of Social Security.
  I think they give people an opportunity. They allow people to take 
chances during their life because they know, if they don't make it in 
that business or something else they are trying to do, at least they 
have got a foundation there for their later years. So we should not 
jeopardize Social Security; the President should not borrow and spend 
the entire Social Security surplus just before the baby boomers retire.
  But even after he does that, the President's budget does not achieve 
balance. Far from it. The President's budget assumes there will be no 
cost for the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan after 2009. I guess 
he has a withdrawal plan he has not told us about.
  What about the much vaunted war on terror? No money in the future 
budgets for that. He assumes all that goes away, you know, the 
incredible amounts of money we are spending there.
  He further assumes that if we cut taxes more for the wealthy, that 
the government will get more revenues. Now, isn't that a beautiful 
world? If we could just eliminate taxes for the wealthy, I guess we 
would go back to having surpluses for the Federal Government under the 
bizarre economic theories followed by these neoconservatives who thus 
far have been proven to be pretty wrong on a host of things, starting 
with Iraq and on down to their bizarre theories that, as you reduce 
revenues, your revenues increase. They don't.
  Plain and simple, the wealthiest among us have to start paying their 
fair share to support this country particularly in a time of crisis. 
Why shouldn't they sacrifice? Like the young men and women, many of 
whom are in the National Guard because they needed an income. Yes, they 
wanted to serve our country, but they also needed the income; many of 
whom are in the military, yes, because they want to serve our country 
but also because they hope to get those education benefits and some 
training to do better when they come out.
  But the wealthiest, they are given a total buy. They have been given 
tax cuts, the first tax cuts in a time of war in the history of the 
United States of America. But the President doesn't think we should ask 
anything of the wealthy, and he pretends that if we extend their tax 
breaks forever, if we eliminate taxes on estates worth over $5 million, 
then in fact the government will have more revenues. Unfortunately, it 
is not true. It will increase the deficit wildly beyond the numbers in 
his budget.
  So he borrows all of the Social Security surplus, robs the trust 
funds, spends the money, replaces it with IOUs, cuts taxes for the rich 
people. How else does he pretend to get the balance? By cutting 
Medicare.

                              {time}  1515

  That will help. $252 billion cut in Medicare, cutting Medicaid health 
care for poor people, that will get us to balance, would not want to 
ask the rich people.
  The tax cuts for the rich people so far exceed the cuts that he is 
making in Medicare and Medicaid, we could fully fund those programs and 
just ask to restore a fraction of the taxes on people who earn over 
$300,000 a year and have estates more than $5 million, but the 
President does not want to do that.
  He goes on through the entire budget slashing. Again, I agree with 
what he said. Unfortunately, he did not deliver. He said he would 
increase Pell Grants. His budget does not increase Pell Grants. It does 
not increase opportunity for young people to go to college. He does not 
take on the student loan programs where, if we converted from a bank 
subsidy program to a national direct student loan program, like I got 
when I went to college, we could give lower interest rates and make 
money for the taxpayers. No, he would rather give 17 cents of every 
dollar of every loan to the banks as profits and subsidies and take it 
out of the pockets of the students.
  This is not an opportunity budget, it is not an honest budget, and it 
will take this country further down the road toward bankruptcy. That 
will be George Bush's legacy.

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