[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4740-4746]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  THE BUDGET, DEBT AND THE BLUE DOG'S IRAQ ACCOUNTABILITY LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, we are gathered here this evening 
to talk about the budget, to talk about the debt and to talk about the 
Blue Dogs' Iraqi accountability legislation. This is a very, very 
important time for us, and we hope that this hour will be illuminating 
and be very informative for everyone.
  We are accustomed having my good friend, Mike Ross, in this position. 
Mike Ross is from Arkansas, and, as we know, there was a tornado that 
went through there. Mike Ross and a group of us just came back 
yesterday from Europe. Mike Ross had to jump on a plane and go down to 
Arkansas to see about his constituents, and we want to make sure that 
we send our prayers down to the folks in Arkansas.
  Of course, Mike knows that we stand ready to help in every way we can 
to make sure that they get the services that they need. So we are here 
to carry on.
  We have a great lineup and array of Blue Dogs here tonight to carry 
on and to talk about the budget, we want to talk about the debt, we 
want to talk about our Iraq resolution that we have before us, and the 
whole issue of accountability.
  Mr. Speaker, as we get started, I want to call your attention to our 
chart. As you know, one of the hallmarks of the Blue Dogs is fiscal 
responsibility and accountability. Let's look at the national debt and 
what it is today.
  If we look at it correctly, it is now $8.773 trillion. The share for 
each individual in this Nation is $29,000, and it continues to go up. 
We want to talk about that tonight. The Blue Dogs have a plan. We want 
to talk about our 12-point plan to bring down this debt. It is one of 
the most horrendous areas that we have to deliberate on.
  We want to get started with some of our Blue Dogs that are here. 
First, I want to recognize our distinguished cochair from the great 
State of Tennessee, Representative Cooper. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Georgia. Mr. 
Scott does an outstanding job, not only representing his constituents, 
but also helping our Nation get on the right track.
  As the gentleman has mentioned, every single Blue Dog has that sign 
outside his or her office. It is a troubling sign, because it shows 
that in our 230-plus year history, our Nation has borrowed $8.7 
trillion. That is a lot of money. Sadly, $3 trillion-plus have come in 
the last several years. So we are on an accelerating borrowing pace. 
That means the interest bills, the interest we are putting on our kids 
and grandkids, is mounting very rapidly.
  Since that number is so hard for anyone to understand, it is 
important that you drill down and see what your individual share is. 
Every listener tonight, everyone in this Chamber and back home, their 
individual share, man, woman or child, even an infant in this country 
is born with a $29,000 debt before they are even able to breathe their 
first breath of air.
  But as troubling as that number is, I am worried that doesn't tell 
the whole story, because there is a Treasury document here that is 
called The Financial Report of the United States Government, put out by 
the U.S. Treasury. It says that using modern business-like accounting, 
unlike the accounting that the Federal Government traditionally uses, 
it says that according to modern accounting, our real debt burden isn't 
$8.7 trillion, as massive as that is, this document from the U.S. 
Treasury Department says the real debt burden is $50 trillion. That is 
our fiscal exposure.
  It goes on to say that our individual share of that massive debt is 
not $29,000. I wish it were that small. This document says that your 
individual share, even the moment you are born in this country, is 
$170,000. $170,000. That is a terrific burden.
  I hope that this accounting isn't right, but I am worried that this 
is the right accounting. Most Americans know already that today the 
U.S. stock market fell over 400 points. As a percent, that is not 
great. It is 3.3 percent. But it is still a worrisome fall. The Chinese 
stock market fell even more today. It fell at least 9 percent, or at 
least the Shanghai market.
  We live in an interconnected global economy. That means to me we need 
Blue Dog commonsense now more than ever, because the Blue Dogs are for 
a strong economy, we are for a growing economy, we are for sensibly 
living within our means and applying commonsensical economic principles 
to our budget and economic matters.
  So I want to congratulate the gentleman from Georgia for leading this 
Special Order and leading our Nation to a path of better prosperity for 
our kids and grandkids.

[[Page 4741]]


  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you much. Would the gentleman share with 
us that document, where it came from, who wrote it and what it means?
  Mr. COOPER. This is called The Financial Report of the United States 
Government. It is an official U.S. Government document. You can get it 
on the Web if you go to the U.S. Treasury Web site. It has an 
introductory letter by the Secretary of Treasury, who is now Henry 
Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker.
  This document interests me, if is not that long, it describes all the 
Federal document, but it is the only government document that uses 
modern, business-like accounting.
  Every business back home in our districts, every business with 
revenues over $5 million, is required by law to use this accounting. 
That is what businessmen and women and Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, 
Optimist Clubs all over America understand. And they are pretty shocked 
when they learn that the Federal Government doesn't abide by those 
accounting rules. We cook the books.
  We pretend that we can just use what is called cash accounting, which 
is very simplistic. Only the smallest businesses in America are even 
allowed to use that. But here the Federal Government with a budget of 
$3 trillion a year uses cash accounting.
  This is the President's budget. This is what it looks like. You can 
also get this on the Web. But it won't tell you anywhere in this 
document they are using simplistic cash accounting. They want you to 
believe that you are getting the true story.
  But even if you read this document, you will see that according to 
the President's numbers and, of course, they put it on the very last 
page here, it is on page 372, that the debt in the next 5 years, even 
though the President has promised us that he is going to balance the 
budget, this says the debt is going up $3 trillion more.
  So it won't be $8.7 trillion when Bush leaves office, when his 
successor is elected, it will be closer to $11 trillion or $12 
trillion. That is fundamentally irresponsible and it means that the 
burden on our kids and grandkids is going to be even more massive than 
we can imagine.
  So whether you use the President's budget or his own Secretary of 
Treasury's budget, we need to be focusing on these matters.

                              {time}  2015

  The Blue Dogs are the leading group in Congress to focus on this. No 
constituent passes our doors without seeing that sign and reminding 
them that the Federal Government is borrowing way too much money and 
putting way too much of an obligation on our kids and our grandkids.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. The gentleman mentioned what happened today in 
the stock market. It is very interesting to note that this whole change 
happened and started early in the morning in China. When you look at 
how much money we are borrowing from foreign governments, needless to 
say China with $360 billion in debt, the interconnectedness of this, 
and our liability to these other countries, make us so dependent on 
them. In some cases when they sneeze, we are getting a cold, which is 
what happened today.
  Mr. COOPER. The gentleman is exactly right. I believe the Chinese 
currently hold almost $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds. They are our 
fastest growing lender. They have aggressively purchased U.S. Treasury 
bonds, and that means increasingly we are paying interest to the 
Chinese. Our economies are interconnected. I worry that it is a 
national security issue. It is not just an economic issue anymore 
because when you get that beholden to another country, if they have any 
instability or problem or any reluctance to loan us more money, then we 
have a much bigger problem in this country.
  I hope that won't come to pass. I hope that we can get our Nation on 
a sounder footing. I wish the President had offered us a sounder budget 
when he gave us one just a few weeks ago in his State of the Union 
message. We need to work hard on this in the next several weeks to 
improve it and make sure our Nation is on a stronger course in the 
future.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. You 
brought some very significant wisdom, that our debt burden is $50 
trillion, and a very important piece of information from the Treasury 
Department which gave great expanse to what our burden is: $8.73 
trillion in national debt, and our share for each individual in this 
country is $29,000.
  I would like to call on a distinguished Blue Dog, one of our 
hardworking Blue Dogs, and one of my fellow travelers. We just returned 
from an extraordinary trip abroad with NATO, had some very interesting 
meetings there, Ben Chandler, a Representative from the great State of 
Kentucky.
  Mr. CHANDLER. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with Mr. Scott 
tonight, to be a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, and to hear the 
wonderful presentation by Mr. Cooper of Tennessee who does a tremendous 
job in this Congress, and who is one of the real consciences of the 
people here in Washington. Even though some of the news he has to 
relate to us is not the best of news, the people of this country need 
to hear the truth, and that is what Mr. Cooper so eloquently gives us 
on a regular basis.
  I very much enjoyed the opportunity to travel this past week with my 
fellow members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and there are 
several Blue Dogs who are represented on that very important task force 
that we have to try to foster cooperation in a very important alliance 
we have. The alliance that United States has with NATO and the other 25 
countries in NATO is extremely important to our national security. I 
don't think people realize how important it is.
  It was a pleasure to have an opportunity to travel with Mr. Scott, a 
newly appointed member to that commission, and Ms. Bean from Illinois 
who is also here with us tonight. I know she will have a few words to 
say in a little while. She was with us on that trip.
  You know, when we go abroad like that and we talk with our allies, we 
talk about a lot of things. On this particular occasion, of course, the 
subject continually came up of Iraq and Afghanistan. NATO is helping us 
in Afghanistan. We of course in Iraq don't have as many allies as we do 
in Afghanistan. Some of the countries in NATO have a different view 
about Iraq than they do about Afghanistan, but we are proud to have 
their help in Afghanistan. It is very, very important to us because 
that is an engagement there I think that most of the American people 
are united, that we have to have success, certainly in Afghanistan.
  But whatever anybody thinks about that war or about the war in Iraq, 
one thing I believe we can all agree upon is that the taxpayer money 
that is being used for those efforts needs to be used accountably. It 
needs to be accounted for. That certainly has not been the case.
  We in the Blue Dog Coalition came out with a plan not too long ago, a 
resolution that would require essentially accountability for the use of 
that money, would make an effort to try to stop the war profiteering 
that we believe is going on, certainly in Iraq. I hope we can set up a 
commission in this government, very much like the Truman Commission of 
World War II, which would look at the expenditure, would actually hold 
this administration accountable for the expenditures in Iraq.
  Now, the importance of that I think is pretty obvious for everybody. 
Every dollar that we misspend or waste in Iraq is a dollar that cannot 
be used efficiently to protect our troops, it cannot be used 
efficiently to get the job done over there, and it is also money taken 
away from needed programs and services right here in this country.
  I don't need to mention all of those programs one by one. We all know 
what they are, from education, health care, right on down the line. We 
need those dollars, and those dollars need to be spent appropriately.
  But we can even go so far, if you can believe this, to apply some of 
that wasted money on the national debt. That is what the Blue Dogs talk 
about all of the time, the national debt in this country.

[[Page 4742]]


  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentleman would yield, you bring up a 
very good point. The waste that has happened in Iraq with our military 
is just astounding. It is very important that the American people 
realize this is the trust of our legislation. We are going to support 
the troops. We are going to have a military and we are going to spend 
more on our military. We are going to enlarge our military. Under our 
Democratic leadership, we are going to make our military stronger.
  In order to do that, there are two important points, as the gentleman 
pointed out, in our legislation that will address and act as a catch to 
stop some of this waste, and that is under our legislation, we will 
require that the Inspector General in the Defense Department report to 
Congress quarterly on exactly how the money that Congress is allocating 
is being spent. And the Inspector General in Iraq for the 
Reconstruction of Iraq will also report to Congress on how that money 
is being spent.
  So our financial accountability act for Iraq accountability is very 
important, and I want to just take a minute to point those things out 
that address how we are going to respond to the concerns of waste and 
fraud that you have just spoken about.
  Mr. CHANDLER. Thank you, Mr. Scott. What those points bring to mind 
is it is the least we can do. As representatives of the people of the 
United States of America, I believe it is our job to spend their money 
efficiently. It is right at the top of the list of the important 
responsibilities that we have and that is what we are trying to do as 
Blue Dogs.
  Now I don't know about you, but I grew up going to church.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Oh, yes.
  Mr. CHANDLER. I suspect you did, too.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. You are absolutely right, my friend.
  Mr. CHANDLER. And during some of those church services, I would hear 
time and time again about the notion of stewardship. Is that a word 
that is familiar to you?
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. It is a word that is very familiar to me.
  Mr. CHANDLER. And that is what we are talking about here. We are 
talking plain and simple about stewardship, are we going to be good 
stewards of our country. All we have got is our country and the money, 
the hard work that our citizens do and the money that they contribute 
to our national government. The least we can do is make sure that the 
Federal Government spends it properly.
  I am concerned about this debt: $8.7 trillion. And what really is 
amazing is what Mr. Cooper told us a little earlier tonight, that not 
only is the debt $8.7 trillion, this is the debt that the government 
insiders are familiar with. The public I don't think is really aware of 
how dramatically large this debt is. But what Mr. Cooper told us was 
that this doesn't even warm it up. The real debt is more in the 
neighborhood of $50 trillion.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. And it comes directly from this 
administration's Treasury Department. That is why I wanted Mr. Cooper 
to make sure he pointed out the authorship. This is not our report to 
Mr. Cooper. This was put together by the Treasury Department.
  Mr. CHANDLER. The $50 trillion figure comes directly from this 
administration. What is unfortunate is that this administration has 
been a large part of the reason that the debt is that high. It is 
terribly unfortunate. One figure that I saw not too long ago, and you 
talked about it a little earlier, about our interrelatedness to China, 
well, we have that connection with many countries all over the world in 
one way or another, but the number that troubles me is the fact that 
the Bush administration has borrowed more money from foreign 
governments in the 6 years that this administration has been in office 
than all 42 previous administrations combined.
  Now, Mr. Scott, I don't know about you, but that is one of the more 
astonishing figures that I have been privy to since I have been in the 
United States Congress. I am shocked about that.
  What I hope we can accomplish as we go forward, and certainly in the 
effort that we are making tonight, is bring to light a little bit to 
the American people what kind of financial situation we have in this 
country and that we have got to get our act together. It is high time 
that we behave accountably to the American people, that we hold this 
administration accountable for how they have spent the money. That is 
what the Blue Dogs want to do. That is why I am proud to be a Blue Dog 
and proud to be here tonight.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Chandler, I want to make sure that the 
American people got what you just said. Now, just to make sure that 
they get it, what you said was that in the last 6 years under this 
administration this country has borrowed more money from foreign 
governments than all of the previous administrations going all of the 
way back to 1789, counting all of the wars, counting the Depression, 
World War I and World War II, all of the way up to now. From 1789 to 
2001, we didn't borrow as much money as we have borrowed in the last 6 
years. That is very important.
  And the other staggering point about that is just the interest that 
we are paying on this loan is the fastest growing segment of our 
budget, and just the interest that we are paying to these countries is 
more than we are collectively spending on our veterans, on homeland 
security, and on education. That is a remarkable state of financial 
irresponsibility; and the Blue Dogs are providing the leadership, have 
been for many years, and finally we got a first step into this process 
during the first 100 days under the leadership of Speaker  Nancy Pelosi 
in passing the PAYGO legislation.
  Mr. CHANDLER. I am just going to say one more thing and then allow 
some of my other fine colleagues to have a word on this subject.
  When I get ready to tell some of my constituents the nature of this 
spending problem and particularly the point about this administration 
borrowing more in 6 years than our country has borrowed in the entirety 
of its history previous to these 6 years, I advise them to please sit 
down before they hear this information because they are not going to 
believe it. It is that extraordinary. I can't believe it. I still can't 
really get my arms around the fact that we are doing that.

                              {time}  2030

  I think one of the most important points is, when you borrow to that 
extent and when you get yourself in debt to that extent, it makes you 
less secure. We are looking for security in this country. That is what 
the American people want. When you are deeply in debt, I would submit 
to you that you are, in fact, less secure, and that is what we are 
getting in this country.
  I thank you for the time.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you, and the gentleman brought up some 
very interesting points. We are going to talk a little bit more about 
that, but I know the Americans may be asking, well, what are the Blue 
Dogs going to do? What is their plan?
  We have a 12-point plan for budget reform. I want to briefly hit the 
points right quick. One, require a balanced budget; two, do not let 
Congress buy on credit; three, put a lid on spending; four, require 
agencies to put their fiscal house in order; five, make Congress tell 
taxpayers how much they are spending; six, set aside a rainy day fund; 
seven, do not hide votes to raise the debt limit; eight, justify 
spending for all projects; nine, ensure that Congress reads the bills 
that it is voting on; ten, require honest cost estimates for every bill 
that Congress votes on; eleven, make sure new bills fit the budget; and 
twelve, make Congress do a better job of keeping tabs on government 
programs.
  Now, I want to yield to my distinguished friend from Tennessee who is 
just one of the hardest working Members up here and a leader in the 
Blue Dogs, Congressman Lincoln Davis from Tennessee. I yield to the 
gentleman.
  Mr. LINCOLN DAVIS of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I can assure my good 
friend from Georgia that I will not bore the folks for 35 minutes in 
this House Chamber, nor will I bore you that

[[Page 4743]]

much, but it is certainly an honor to be with you here in this House 
Chamber, this historic Chamber.
  I asked one of the freshmen Members as we traveled from the Chamber 
after voting recently through the tunnel going to the Cannon Building, 
and I said, well, your first 6 weeks, how does it feel? He said, 
Lincoln, I want to be honest with you. He said, I never knew how it 
felt to work in a museum, but I do now.
  Working here in this Capitol, where those statues of the tremendous 
leaders of the past, inside the House Chamber where many decisions have 
been made, where on December 8 we declared war on Japan in 1941 and 
then two or 3 days later, after being declared war on by the Axis 
Nations, Germany and Italy, and that declaration occurred here, 
declaration of war, really the last declaration of war that has been 
held inside this House Chamber and declaration of war that only 
Congress, quite frankly, can declare.
  So, being here at this time of history and being on the floor with 
you and other members of the Blue Dogs certainly is an honor, not a 
privilege, but an honor that the folks back in my district have given 
me, and I believe that they expect us to come here and be bipartisan in 
our efforts, that we are not here to be demagoguing the other side or 
critical, but you have to try to work in a harmonious way to find 
solutions to whatever difficulties we have in this Nation.
  I had a Member ask me when I first came here, Lincoln, what did you 
want to change when you came up here? And I thought real hard, and it 
really did not take a lot of thought. My answer was I did not want to 
change America. No country in the world has reached the level of 
helping its citizens the way that this government of the United States 
of America has. I do not want to change it, but there are problems. We 
need to fix those, and we can do it by working together.
  So, for me, my challenge to my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle and colleagues here on this side of the aisle, let us start being 
a little more civil with each other.
  I left from this House Chamber after the debate we had on whether or 
not to agree with the President's plan for a surge in Iraq is something 
we wanted to do in this Chamber, and it got to the point where the 
questions of someone's patriotism became a part of that debate and 
dialogue. Of course, some may obviously follow suit with that, but we 
had a debate about whether or not we supported the troops. The 
resolution said we do. We had a debate about whether we agreed with the 
strategy, apparently the new strategy of this President to engage an 
additional numbers of troops in Iraq.
  Now I want to talk a moment about that budget we looked at and at the 
deficit. I remember I was elected in 1980 to the State House in 
Tennessee. As I was travelling from my home of Byrdstown in Pall Mall 
to Nashville to the State capital, it came across the radio that we had 
just increased the national debt ceiling to a trillion dollars. That 
frightened me. A trillion dollars in the early 1980s. I remember that 
as we talked about increasing that debt ceiling by $20 billion or $15 
billion how difficult it was in this House Chamber. Now we increase it 
by hundreds of billions of dollars without even really having an up-or-
down vote on that particular debt ceiling increase.
  I thought how ironic it was that in 1980 how difficult it was for a 
debt ceiling to be increased, and now it just seems to be as if a snap 
of the finger and all of the sudden, we reach that level.
  Then I watched for the next 8 years, the next 12 years, as that debt 
not gradually, but very rapidly rose in the 3 and 4 trillions of 
dollars. I am thinking in a 12-year period of time, how is that 
possible. If we look back basically almost 200 years, we reached a 
trillion, and suddenly we had doubled and quadrupled what we had in 
that period of time.
  Since 2001, even with the surpluses that were applied to reduce the 
debt that this country owed, for a period of almost 4 years, out 4 
years of surplus budgets where we had more than we spent, we took in 
more than we spent, and started paying down the debt, I am surprised 
that almost $3 trillion in the last 5 years has been added to that 
figure down there.
  I often hear people talk about the first thing a baby does--my chief 
of staff just recently had a newborn son in early December, and they 
nicknamed him Willis, a pretty little thing, handsome little fellow. He 
came to one of my open meetings with him. On Saturday, we had 24 
throughout the district. I represent 24 counties. The first thing 
little Willis did when he came to this earth, he started crying. I know 
now why he was crying. He realizes that this country, that these 
leaders in this Chamber, that this Nation has handed him a $29,000-plus 
debt, that he does not even have a job yet to pay off, and if we 
continue to go as we are going, before he gets his first job, he will 
owe more money than five times the first house cost me that I bought 
for our family in the late 1960s.
  I want to talk now about Iraq for a moment. I hear people in this 
Chamber talk about cut and run being the policy of Democrats and 
staying the course being the policy of the White House. Both of those 
are wrong. I do not think standing the course is going to get it done, 
and cut and run is something, quite frankly, that I go back in history, 
and I cannot find that example, except some folks might say Vietnam.
  But I saw Vice President Cheney in Japan early last week thanking our 
troops, and it dawned upon me that, let me say now we have troops in 
Japan after World War II. We have troops in Germany after World War II. 
I went back and looked at the tens of thousands of troops we have in 
Korea and South Korea after the Korean War; I go to Kosovo and in 
Bosnia and in Serbia and in the Balkans, and I realize that we have 
forces there from the late 1990s, although there were those in this 
Chamber on the other side of the aisle that called that Nation building 
and wanted to know when then-President Clinton was going to give us a 
time certain, even I think the presidential candidate at that time as 
well who later became the President in 2001, even he was talking about 
Nation building and a time certain that our troops should be pulled 
out.
  As we debate this issue, it is ironic to me that anyone would accuse 
someone else of asking for some of the same considerations that they 
asked for a certainty of. But we are still in Bosnia and Kosovo and, 
quite frankly, this President that is here now and this Congress saw 
fit to stay there, that we should keep the peace with our friends of 
NATO.
  But I look at other parts of the world. We are in Turkey. Our ally in 
NATO, the Turks, we still have bases there. But then I got to thinking, 
well, now, we had a war in the Middle East, a U.N.-sanctioned, totally 
supported, my understanding is we probably had three or four times the 
number of troops that went in 1991 to remove Saddam Hussein from his 
aggressive actions in Kuwait, and we forced him back into his country. 
Then we had north and south no-fly zones, had him pretty much 
contained. But we still have troops in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We still 
have troops in Kuwait. We still have troops in places like United Arab 
Emirates. Are we going to have troops in Iraq when this is over? This 
is never going to be over.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. You make a very good point, and I think it is 
tantamount and the American people have seen through and are seeing 
through the rhetoric of the Bush administration. They are not buying 
cut and run. The American people went to the polls in November and they 
did not go to the polls to cut and run. They went to the polls to 
change direction, a new direction.
  There is no question about the fact that we have a vital interest in 
the Middle East. We know that for the foreseeable future, clearly 45 
percent of all of the known oil reserves would be under that region and 
certainly under Iran alone. All of the geologists have pointed out that 
25 percent is under that region. There is a great responsibility for us 
all there. Nobody is talking about cut and run.
  We are talking about what is happening here is a civil war, and these

[[Page 4744]]

Iraqis have got to fight that out for themselves, just as surely as it 
would not have been right for Germany or France to come and plop a 
hundred or 200,000 troops in the middle of our civil war. That had to 
be settled by us. They have got to settle their civil war. We have got 
to contain the situation, and that is how this new direction needs to 
evolve.
  I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. LINCOLN DAVIS of Tennessee. I thank my friend from Georgia.
  I think, what my hope is, all of us become a little bit more civil in 
this debate that we are having and realize that this is about America. 
We want security and we want peace. We want the Iraqis to win. What we 
have done is destroyed an Army in Iraq and I agree with that, we have 
destroyed an Army in Iraq that was able to defend, or at least to 
resist the Iranian Army with three times the population they have for a 
period of over 10 years. We now have to be the Army for the Iraqis.
  It is our responsibility to defend Iraq. In essence, I think we have 
to put our troops along the Syrian and Iranian border to be sure that 
no one interferes with Iraq and let the Iraqis settle their own 
differences. Twelve million Iraqis voted in December of 2005. They 
established their government; it is there. Departments elected. It is 
time we let them govern themselves, but we must protect them.
  You have been very kind to allow me to be here participating in this 
Blue Dog conversation.
  Before I leave, one thing I want to say, one of the reasons we have 
been in the Middle East since shortly after World War II, quite 
frankly, we were there to keep Germany from getting all the oil that 
could have helped them delay the war much longer in World War II, maybe 
even have won some territories. Europe may have looked totally 
different if Hitler and his Nazis had been able to get control of the 
oil fields in the Middle East. We have been there and have been invited 
by governments in the Middle East for some time. Folks may or may not 
have agreed with us, but the leaders who were there invited us to help 
them. Quite frankly, there was fear in the Cold War that that might go 
to the Communist Nations of Russia and perhaps even China. So we have 
been there for a reason.
  We now are there we say to protect ourselves from terrorists. My 
opinion is that we have to stay there to protect the Iraqis from other 
aggressor Nations and let them solve their problems and then we can 
bring our troops home. We will be there for a long time. The American 
public understands that.
  Thank you for allowing me to speak.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Well, thank you. The gentleman from Tennessee 
brings a lot of depth to his thinking, and we appreciate his 
contribution tonight.
  Now I want to recognize and yield time to my distinguished friend 
from the great State of Ohio, the sixth district. He serves on the 
House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on 
Science and Technology, my good friend, Congressman Charlie Wilson. I 
yield to the gentleman.

                              {time}  2045

  Mr. WILSON of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I am here this evening to support 
the Blue Dog Coalition, and ask for a realistic and responsible budget 
as we move forward.
  I believe that for so long, we have been out of touch, and I believe 
that the debt that has been created by this administration has been 
overwhelming. And I know that more people in America need to understand 
what really has happened and how there has been wasteful spending, not 
accountability, difficulties that have just been swept away and we need 
to stop and look at it.
  So I am pleased as a new Member of Congress from Ohio to be a member 
of the Blue Dog Coalition. I believe that, as we take a closer look at 
what is going on with this budget that has been submitted to us, that 
we realize that there are not only numbers that don't add up, but there 
are assumptions that are made that really would go against any 
principle of gap accounting and any type of realistic obligations that 
we have to the American people to explain to them.
  The numbers show that while real fiscal responsibility is so sorely 
needed, this is not what we have in this budget. And it becomes 
important that we have people like the Blue Dogs who have, and I have 
my new sign outside my new door in the Cannon Building at 226, of which 
I am very proud to be a member of the Blue Dog Coalition to show that 
every man, woman, and child in this country is in debt $29,000 as of 
today. And that number may be realistically much lower than what it 
actually is.
  The numbers also show that we need accountability. In 2004 alone, the 
Federal Government spent $25 billion that cannot be accounted for. I 
have heard other rumors and other stories of money that just 
disappeared.
  This is not fair. It is not fair to the people, the taxpayers whose 
money it belongs to. It is not fair for the programs that we could be 
doing for our seniors, for the education of our children, the health 
care that we could provide, and to help those in middle America, the 
working families to help with opportunities for them.
  We were able in this new Congress, to move forward. And just 
yesterday, Congressman Scott, I did a TV interview in Youngstown, Ohio. 
And the person interviewing me asked why did we prohibit the other side 
from being able to amend and change in our first 100 hours. And I said, 
quite frankly, that I thought we needed to do that in order to be able 
to get the issues taken care of that we did. And it was with this kind 
of responsibility that we moved forward, and that I believe now we can 
work together and accomplish what needs to be accomplished, but 
certainly looking at the realism of what is going on with our national 
debt.
  We need to work together, not a Democrat or a Republican, but rather 
an American initiative, to make sure that every dollar we spend, every 
decision we make is for the betterment of our country.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield for a point. I 
think it is very important, you pointed out that in 2004, if I heard 
you correctly, $24 billion of Federal Government spending went 
absolutely unaccounted for. But the other point of that is that this 
Congress, or the Republican-controlled Congress during that time, did 
not hold the executive branch accountable for the omission. So not only 
was the money unaccounted for, there was no means of putting forward 
accountability by the executive branch.
  Mr. WILSON of Ohio. I thank you for that observation.
  I truly believe this is what the American people said in this 
November's election. They said: We need accountability. We need people 
to be responsible. And that is why the election turned the way it did. 
And I believe now that it is important for us to pursue every 
opportunity to make sure that we have fiscal responsibility, to make 
sure that we are doing the right things for the people, and keeping an 
eye on our national debt.
  Just last week, I received a graph in my office, and the amount of 
debt that we are paying to foreign countries is huge in comparison to 
what we are spending on education or health care for our seniors. That 
is the thing that is most difficult to understand about this, is how we 
can let the really important things go and spend all this money on 
interest. I know as a businessman, I could not run my business that 
way. As a person, I couldn't run my personal finances that way. And so 
there is no reason to think that we should run our government that way.
  Moving forward, I just think that we need to be sure that this 
Congress is responsible. And one of the primary ways of doing that, 
that the Blue Dogs are advocating, is PAYGO, and that is as we pay as 
we go, just like you and I do in our budgets at home. If we are going 
to buy a new car, we need to make a sacrifice of something else. If we 
are going to go on a vacation, there needs to be something traded for 
that. PAYGO, quite frankly, Mr. Scott, says that what we really have to 
do is to make sure, if we are going to pay forward, that we eliminate 
something

[[Page 4745]]

that we are doing now, and then we pay as we go.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. I certainly thank the gentleman for his 
observations. They have been very illuminating to us especially on the 
budget. We have a number of other Blue Dogs here we want to bring into 
this.
  I want to now recognize my good friend from Illinois and one of my 
fellow travelers. We just returned together from NATO, and she has some 
refreshing observations, I am sure, from that trip of how it relates. 
She is a good friend and one of the hard-working Blue Dogs who is 
making a great contribution to this Congress, and that is Ms. Melissa 
Bean of Illinois. I yield the young lady as much time as she may need.
  Ms. BEAN. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. It is 
always an honor to join you here on the floor as it was an honor to 
join you during the NATO parliamentary assembly that we attended 
together. And one thing that didn't come up that you mentioned earlier 
with Congressman Chandler was that, in addition to visiting NATO 
headquarters in Brussels, we also visited the Landstuhl Medical 
Facility in Germany where our returning wounded are coming from both 
Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was important to meet with them and hear 
from them their firsthand experiences and what brought them there, why 
they are fighting so hard, and their concern for those in the platoons 
that are still fighting. And one of the things I wanted to talk about 
is bringing some accountability to that process.
  And I will also mention that there has been a lot in the press 
recently about Walter Reed and some concerns about infrastructure and 
investment that I know we are working to address as we look at 
appropriations. But it was encouraging to see the medical 
professionals, their commitment to facilities and just the top-notch 
care that our returning men and women who have been wounded are getting 
and hear how pleased they were with the level of medical support they 
are getting.
  But the Iraqi War Cost Accountability Resolution which we in the Blue 
Dogs introduced is what I wanted to touch on, because several of my 
Blue Dog colleagues and yourself, Mr. Scott, have mentioned 
accountability, and I think it certainly what our constituents expect 
of us. And one of the reasons we supported this bill is it provides 
accountability across four different disciplines. It provides spending 
accountability; it enforces transparency, and requires the Department 
of Defense Inspector General to provide regular reports on exactly what 
spending has taken place, what spending hasn't taken place, what 
projects we are working on, what the status of those projects are, what 
the contracting process is. And also, not just what we in this country 
are providing, but also what are other countries that are allied with 
us are providing to what is going on there as well. It provides 
contracting accountability in addition to spending accountability, with 
a commission akin to the Truman Commission that was done in the past to 
oversee the contracting process, the policies, how they are being 
carried out, and whether those contractors are fulfilling their 
obligations as well. And it also puts sanctions in place for any kinds 
of fraud or abuse that can be happening.
  It also provides budget accountability. As you and I know, and we 
have talked about this in our Blue Dog meetings, there have been six 
emergency supplementals, and those emergency supplementals have all 
been for war spending. Given the number of years we have all been 
engaged in this process in Iraq, it is no longer an emergency. This is 
an unaccounted for spending; this isn't something that we are surprised 
by. And so what we are requiring in this bill is on budget war 
appropriations. And it also requires Iraqi accountability. So let me go 
through all four of those, and then I will describe what I mean by the 
Iraqi accountability.
  Spending accountability, contracting accountability, budgeting 
accountability, and Iraqi accountability.
  And that means that we need to hold accountable not only the Prime 
Minister al-Maliki, but the Iraqi government, to be accountable first 
and foremost to protecting themselves on a sovereign basis. And as you 
alluded to earlier, it is our job to help contain the situation from 
insurgents outside, but they need to, for their own security, be first 
and foremost in assuming a higher degree of responsibility, as many of 
us supported the President when he said, as the Iraqi people and the 
Iraqi military stand up, we can stand down. And so we have to hold them 
accountable to doing that so we can.
  I am going to lastly talk about the budget in general and why I am a 
Blue Dog. You have your sign up there, we all do, and it talks about 
the $9 trillion of debt that we are now at. And I think Congressman 
Cooper alluded to the fact that the foreign borrowing that we are doing 
is contributing to that. We are now borrowing, as a Nation, $7 billion 
to $8 billion per working day from foreign countries; $2 billion to $3 
billion of that is just the government alone. And at that rate, we are 
going to continue to exacerbate this debt and the individual share that 
we are passing on to every American.
  I think, as a parent, I often remind myself that tough love is 
important. It is not my job as a parent to tell my kids what they want 
to hear, but to tell them what they need to hear. And I think the Blue 
Dogs bring that same kind of tough love to our constituents and to our 
Nation, and hopefully to our Congress, because we need to be talking 
about what Americans need to hear, not what they want to hear. And so I 
am glad to be joining you tonight.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentlewoman would yield for a moment. I 
would like very much to engage you in the feeling of that trip. And it 
was so important to gather with representatives of those 26 other 
nations and 13 associate nations with NATO, because we have got to 
understand, we can't go it alone.
  Ms. BEAN. Absolutely.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. One of the fundamental charges I felt and 
responsibilities I felt going, and you did, too, we talked about it, 
was we have got to improve the image of working with other nations to 
move forward. But I think that the highlight to me and I think to you 
was that visit with the soldiers.
  Ms. BEAN. Very much so.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. And you and I have talked about that, and I 
just want to share for a moment the touching experience that we shared 
going and flying into Ramstein Air Base and going to Landstuhl to the 
medical center and going from room to room. We went and we talked with 
soldiers fresh off the battlefield in very serious conditions, and it 
was a remarkable experience. And I know you joined me in saying that on 
the floor, we salute those soldiers.
  Ms. BEAN. Absolutely we do.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. And we just want to say thank you personally to 
those soldiers for their sacrifice, for their service, and express to 
them a great gratitude for a very, very grateful Nation.
  Ms. BEAN. Our entire Nation.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We are so proud to do that.
  Ms. BEAN. I would agree. Our entire Nation is grateful to them, and 
to their families who were there supporting them through their 
injuries.
  And on that note I will yield back, because I know we have 
Congresswoman Sanchez, who is also anxious to speak.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We certainly thank you. And I hope you might 
hang around a little bit. We may get into a little soliloquy here.
  I would like very much to now recognize one of our longstanding Blue 
Dogs, certainly established as a leader in this Congress, one who 
befriended me, one who makes a sterling contribution as a leader of the 
United States Congress, the young lady from California, Ms. Loretta 
Sanchez. I yield the young lady as much time as she may need.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. I thank my colleague for putting 
together this hour to discuss what I think is something that is very 
important; that is, what the Blue Dogs

[[Page 4746]]

are thinking about in this Congress and what we have been trying to do.
  Now, I will tell you that I have been in the Congress for 11 years. 
This is my 11th year. I have been a Blue Dog the entire time. And that 
really comes from the fact that before I came to the Congress, I was an 
investment banker. I am an MBA, I have been in the international 
finance arena for 14 years before coming to this Congress.
  So people ask me, what is the thing that you worry about the most 
when you go to sleep at night? And the answer is always the same for 
me: The structural financial debt and deficit that we have in 
Washington, D.C., because most people have not looked and seen and 
realized what has been going on here in Washington, D.C., but I have 
seen it in the last 11 years.

                              {time}  2100

  That is why, as a Blue Dog, I also have that sign up that says what 
today's national debt is and how much of that $29,000, if every man, 
child, woman in America, would give us $29,000 today, we would be able 
to bring down the national debt. But the fact of the matter is, we 
don't. We don't, and the debt keeps climbing.
  So a few years ago, we were trying to think about, well, how is it 
that this has happened? Because when I came, it was in 1997. I had 4 
years under President Clinton, and at that time, the debt of this 
Nation, the interest payments on that, was 18 cents of every dollar 
that we collected, 18 cents.
  That means if we collect a dollar from you in taxes, 18 cents of it 
we don't spend because we are paying the interest cost on that. Imagine 
if you did that in your home for every dollar.
  So what did we do? We worked hard. We instituted PAYGO. What does 
that mean? Well, it means you don't make any new spending unless you 
are going to tax, put in an amount of money for it, or you are going to 
take it away from some other area you are already spending on in order 
to spend in your new priority area, much the way people do it at home 
when we have to decide among the priorities.
  Okay, well, this month, September, I have to get the shoes for the 
kids for school, so that means that there are going to be no days out 
of that month that we get to go out and eat at a restaurant. I mean, 
you just make up for it in one way or another.
  But the Congress and the United States do not do this. They keep 
spending, even when they give tax cuts. So that means if your boss told 
you we are going to give you a 70 percent cut in the amount of money 
you take home, and you go home and you tell your husband that, but he 
still keeps spending the same amount of money every month, he doesn't 
bring his expenses down.
  So it is a problem. So we spend, I would say, honestly, about 700 to 
$800 billion more a year than the monies we take in.
  Now, we will throw numbers around, to $143 billion, deficit, $400 
billion, deficit, $358 billion. No, no, no, no, no. The reality is that 
we are overspending by anywhere between 700 and $800 billion every 
year. That is why this number goes up, because we cannot get this under 
control.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentlelady would yield for a moment, I 
think it very important for us to realize, you also alluded to it, you 
might want to hit on it a little more, the unfairness of it all, the 
war being paid on borrowed money. Every dime we are spending in our 
government, for our services, on borrowed money, it is not going to 
last that long. Many civilizations and nations have gone down because 
of ballooning debt.
  If you look at all of them that have gone down, ballooning debt is 
what played such a great part, and the selfishness of the tax cuts, the 
war, whatever we are doing, and we are selfishly doing that and putting 
the burden, as you alluded to, on the backs of our children and our 
grandchildren. I think you make an excellent point there.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Absolutely. So I started in this 
Congress 11 years ago, and we spent 18 cents of every dollar just on 
paying interest on interest payments. Then we tightened our belts; we 
did PAYGO. President Clinton and others, we worked together, we brought 
it down. In the year 2000 when President Bush took over, we were paying 
11 cents of every dollar on interest. So we had brought it down.
  Then, of course, the President decided to give tax breaks to some of 
the wealthiest Americans. I know, because I got a tax break, but not 
everybody got a tax break. The real people who really needed the tax 
breaks, I think, did not receive them. That is why I didn't vote for 
it. I received it because the majority, the Republicans at that time 
voted it in, but I didn't vote for it because I know what fair is fair.
  If you get opportunity in this country and you work hard, and you get 
a few breaks and a little bit of luck along the way, that can happen in 
America for almost anybody. And some of it is luck, and you happen to 
make money. I think you should understand that to keep America full of 
opportunities, we need to pay our taxes.
  So I am willing to do that, but not this President, because he cut 
the taxes on the people who had lots of money and who were making lots 
of money. His own comptroller told us several years ago that 70 percent 
of the deficit every year in this country is due to the tax breaks that 
the President gave. In other words, we kept spending even though we 
didn't take in revenue. In fact, we returned back revenue.
  Then, of course, we have the $3 billion a week of money we spend in 
Iraq. I will not tell you the way I feel. This President went into Iraq 
on the cheap. He didn't think that Americans would really want to spend 
the kind of money it took to put in 200,000 or 300,000 troops to do the 
job the day we went in. So he told his Secretary of Defense, despite 
what the generals told him, Shinseki, who said we need at least 200,000 
or more troops in there, they did it at the level of 110, and now we 
are paying for it. Now we have been in a war much longer than we ever 
anticipated, much longer than the President ever anticipated.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Especially what was most disheartening was the 
buildup to that war, to use the credibility of General Colin Powell, 
and then to abandon what you refer to, with the huge number of troops, 
the Powell doctrine. You are going to go in, you go in with force.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. So we find ourselves there longer 
than we are supposed to be, and we ask ourselves, how much longer, $3 
billion a week on the credit card? Wait till America really figures out 
that they have not paid for this war. I think they are going to be very 
angry at that point. I see I have taken most of your time.
  Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. We thank the young lady from California for 
your excellent insight on this, and your commentary was certainly well 
received, and it helped to shed the light on the debt and the 
importance of it.
  So we appreciate this hour, the Blue Dog hour, as we continue each 
Tuesday night to talk about the budget, to talk about bringing fiscal 
responsibilities and being good stewards to the taxpayers' money. It 
has been a good evening.

                          ____________________