[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 571]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    LET'S GET REAL ABOUT THE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, by all accounts we're finally going to get serious 
about the mountain of debt that's been built up over the last 10 years 
that we're going to leave for our kids and grandkids--nearly $14 
trillion, a number that's hard to actually understand.
  Now, I'm hopeful it will really be a serious discussion, but it can't 
be as long as the Republican rules stand. The Republicans have said 
that if you reduce income to the government that that doesn't count 
toward the debt or the deficit. You have to borrow the money--probably 
from China--and it goes on the debt for our kids and grandkids. But 
they don't count that because it's your money. We're giving it back to 
you. Except, of course, we're still spending more than is coming in.
  Now, I'm all for looking at the expenditure side, and there are a lot 
of places I'd like to cut. Republicans have put some of them off-
limits.
  We can't look anywhere in the Pentagon who is still acquiring through 
cost-plus contracts weapons that were designed to fight during the 
Soviet era. We're wasting a fair amount of money over there. It's well 
documented.
  The Pentagon is the only agency of the Federal Government that can't 
be audited. Every other agency is audited. Most of them get good 
grades. The Pentagon, they say maybe within 5 years they will have an 
accounting system that could be audited. Come on. And we're going to 
exempt them from scrutiny and review and cuts?
  The war in Afghanistan, they've exempted that from cuts. They want to 
spend about $200 billion this year on the wind-down in Iraq and the war 
in Afghanistan. But that's off the table as far as Republicans are 
concerned.
  And Social Security they say is off the table, and that's good. 
Medicare is off the table. They just added to the costs of Medicare 
with legislation they passed last week, but that doesn't count either. 
That was exempt.
  So what's left? Well, we're going to have, because of the tax cuts 
adopted in December, a $1.6 trillion 1-year deficit. Now, if we were 
only going to get to a balanced budget this year with cuts, that would 
mean eliminating the entire government of the United States of America. 
We'd still make our Social Security payments. And we wouldn't be able 
to exempt the Pentagon, which they want to do, if we wanted to really 
get to $1.6 trillion.
  No more Border Patrol. No more Homeland Security. No more Coast 
Guard. No more Postal Service. No more Centers for Disease Control. 
Department of Education, gone. They wouldn't care much about that. Park 
Service I guess would probably sell off the parks to the highest 
bidder. I don't know.
  So you can't be serious and stand here and say we're going to put 
this hand and tie it behind our back, which is the revenue side. Oh, 
and by the way, if we give millionaires and billionaires tax cuts and 
reduce our income, that doesn't count. If we allow corporations to 
continue to use overseas tax loopholes to avoid paying a responsible 
level of taxes here in the United States, that doesn't count. Can't 
close any loopholes. That would be bad. No. They just say we're going 
to do it all in cuts. It's an impossible task.
  But I worry even though they say they've exempted Social Security 
that that's not really their game plan. Because for the first time this 
year, we will borrow money to put into Social Security. Never been done 
since the program was created. It's always been funded by its own tax.
  But this year, the Republicans cooked up an idea--which President 
Obama bought into lock, stock, and barrel--to reduce the Social 
Security tax under the guise of giving people back their money and 
putting people to work. Every Member of Congress will get over $2,000 
in tax breaks this year because of that one provision. Every 
millionaire and billionaire will get over $2,000 in tax breaks. Working 
people will get a tax break, too--and they can use a tax break--but 
there are better ways to do it, less costly ways to do it, and ways to 
do it without jeopardizing the future of Social Security.
  So part of the borrowing this year, a couple of hundred billion 
dollars of that borrowing this year is going to be from China, the 
government will borrow, to reinject into the Social Security trust 
fund.
  So I fear the Republicans are going to say, ``Well, wait a minute. We 
can't subsidize that Social Security thing. And oh, by the way, you 
can't restore the taxes and run Social Security on its own income.'' So 
they're creating some impossible scenarios here.
  I'm hopeful the President will chart a better path, one that doesn't 
go after Social Security. Social Security didn't create, until this 
year, one penny of the debt of the United States but this year it will 
create $200 billion of debt for the United States. A very bad precedent 
set by a bipartisan problem--the Republicans and President Obama and 
some few Democrats.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Let's get real about the deficit.

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