[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 269]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                REVIEWING THE NATION'S LONG-TERM ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Yarmuth). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I have been concerned about the financial 
future of our country for some time and in 2006 introduced a bill to 
set up a national commission to review our Nation's long-term economy, 
including mandatory entitlement spending, discretionary spending and 
tax policy. It is bipartisan. We have well over 100 members from both 
sides of the aisle.

                              {time}  1400

  The bipartisan Cooper-Wolf SAFE proposal was similar to the 
commission proposal by Senator Conrad and Senator Judd Gregg of New 
Hampshire, would be bipartisan and a way to review entitlement spending 
and force the Congress to act. The commission has over 100 cosponsors 
during the last Congress.
  We've all read, Mr. Speaker, the stark figures of the 2008 Financial 
Report of the Federal Government. Even more telling is, during the 
month of October and November, for the first 2 months of this fiscal 
year, the Federal Government piled up $401 billion in red ink, and 
we're on a pace to surpass the fiscal year 2008 deficit of 455; in 2 
months almost we're going to rival that.
  And yesterday, President-elect Obama predicted a $1 trillion deficit, 
he said, ``for years to come.''
  Now, does anybody really care? It just seems that this institution 
continues to go and do what it's done in the past. In the past few 
days, numerous sources have reported that the economic stimulus is 
expected to cost $675 billion, and some are saying up to $1 trillion.
  Mr. Speaker, whatever package is voted on, Congress has the 
obligation to their children and their grandchildren and to their 
constituents to find a bipartisan way to address the Nation's looming 
financial crisis by including a mechanism to deal with the underlying 
problem, what is now on auto-pilot spending. If we don't do this in 
this Congress when we're doing the stimulus, I think both political 
parties in this Congress, the 111th Congress, will go down as the 
Congress that refused to deal with the fundamental issues that are 
facing this country.
  There's the Simon and Garfunkel song, The Boxer, that says ``Man 
hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.''
  This Congress disregards the overwhelming debt that we have faced in 
this Nation. I have here, Mr. Speaker, a bill issued by the Federal 
Reserve of Zimbabwe in July of last year. It's $100 billion. $100 
billion. It won't even buy a loaf of bread. Is this the future of our 
country?
  And if this Congress, and let me just say to my colleagues on this 
side, if our party doesn't deal with this issue, and they don't deal 
with this issue then, frankly, this Congress will go down in Congress' 
history as the Congress that's neglected to deal with these fundamental 
issues.
  So many say, why a short-term stimulus simultaneously with this? 
Well, it takes two legs to walk. If we can demonstrate that we are 
dealing with the entitlement issue now, that may very well get whatever 
short-term thing we're going to do to demonstrate that we have the 
commitment to make it work.
  Isabel Sawhill, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, has likened 
the situation in our country, she said, to ``termites in the woodwork, 
slowly eroding our strength as a nation.''
  I recently read a speech by Richard Fisher, President of the Federal 
Reserve Bank of Dallas; it's called Storms on the Horizon. It's a 
sobering account from a monetary policy point of view of why deficits 
matter. And it is frightening. I put it in the Congressional Record 
every day. I would hope Members of Congress could read it.
  But what he said is doing deficit math is a sobering exercise. It 
becomes an outright painful one when you apply your calculator to long-
term fiscal challenge posed by entitlement programs. Then he goes on to 
say that we are facing catastrophic conditions. Our children, our 
grandchildren, our constituents are facing a catastrophic condition if 
we don't act.
  Some people say we need regular order. Frankly, if we don't do this 
in a bipartisan way, 8 Republicans, 8 Democrats, similar to what we did 
on the Iraq Study Group, frankly, I think this Congress will not have 
the courage, the foresight, the ability to vote on these issues to deal 
with it.
  So what we are saying is a massive package up-or-down vote, 8 
Republicans, 8 Democrats, this bill was drafted by the Heritage 
Foundation, by the Brookings Institution, supported by David Walker, 
supported by David Broder, by David Brooks, by economists all over the 
country, and then it uses the language that is in the Base Closing 
Commission that requires, because if you don't require this institution 
to act it will not act. It will find all the reasons it can to neglect 
it. It will require it to act in 60 days.
  So I say to my colleagues on this side, if we're going to deal with 
this stimulus, we'd better have our own ideas and put up for a 
proposal, which I will do unless I'm tied and gagged, I will offer a 
motion here to force us to vote on this.
  And I say for the other side, I ask you to do the same thing so we 
could come together in a bipartisan way so when we leave this Congress 
we know that we have truly dealt with the entitlement issue and saved 
America for our children and our grandchildren and future generations.

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