Military Survivor Benefits Improvement Act of 2004

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chance to come before the body to debate yet again the budget for this next fiscal year. Before I start with that debate, let me compliment my ranking member and friend, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), on the way that we have moved this budget through committee and moved it to the floor. The gentleman from South Carolina will be offering a substitute budget tomorrow as part of this debate.

While people who are watching this are going to see us argue today, we are going to argue about priorities, we are going to argue about deficits, we are going to argue about taxes, we are going to argue about just about everything, it seems, but one thing we do not argue about is the importance of this process.

Those who are watching may wonder why it is we are going to be spending 6 hours of general debate over the budget. Let me tell you why. If you have ever built a house with your wife or your husband and you had to go visit the architect, you will discover very quickly why it is important you have a blueprint that you can agree on before the carpenters show up or the plumber or the heating and air conditioning people or the roofer or anybody else, because if the blueprint does not work, if it does not fit, if there is not agreement on that basic foundation, the rest of the process is not going to work very well. The carpenters show up to do their work, they do not have a blueprint, and what you have on your hands is a mess.

The reason that we have gone through this process since 1974, every year, is because we believe in the fundamental decision that is made as part of this budget for spending, for taxes, making so many decisions that flow from this process.

We are going to have some good-natured debate today. Democrats will be arguing with Republicans and Republicans will be arguing back. But when it comes right down to it, we believe in our country, but we believe that we need a blueprint, we believe in this process and as I said to start with, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for his partnership in working through the process even though we have not come to a bipartisan agreement.

I would also like to thank our staff. When you are going from the beginning of the Federal budget and $2.4 trillion line items here and there, you have got to count on some good people. I want to thank them for the work they do in getting us to this point because, just like any good architect, they need the engineers behind them to make sure that the structure is sound. I want to thank our staff on both sides for the work that they do.

Even before the end of last year, we kind of had an idea of what the must-do list would be in writing this year's budget. It was already becoming very clear that this budget has got to get spending under control, and it had to begin the work of reducing our deficit. I heard that message from every Member, from our President and from just about every constituent that I visited with back home in Iowa.

It really did not matter where you went. People said, out in Washington, you're spending way too much money. Even worse than that, you're wasting a lot of money. It did not matter, almost regardless of the topic, regardless of the department, regardless of the program, people said you have to control spending.

Even the administration was clearly hearing the exact same thing. As far back as last July, the President of the United States was proposing that cutting the deficit in half within the next 5 years would be one of the most important cornerstones of the budget that he presented to Congress this year.

We all know and we take pause at a time like this to remember the extraordinary circumstances of the past few years. Our country has hardly ever seen the kind of difficulty that we have had to face during these past few years. We had a growth deficit in the economy that produced a slowdown, a recession, of 2000 and 2001. The economy was not growing. We had a growth deficit.

We learned painfully, as well, that we had extensive deficits in our defense and our homeland security. We knew that we were not protected as well as we could be or should be as a Nation, and we made immediate plans to improve that.

We also had a Medicare deficit. A 40-year program that our Nation's seniors had depended on had really failed to keep up with the times, and as a result, we had a deficit in the way that that program was providing help to seniors across the country, particularly with regard to prescription drugs.

All of these were large and important problems and challenges, and I doubt that anyone on either side would have recommended that we ignore them. In fact, no one did. We all decided the economy was important. We all decided Medicare was important. We all decided that security and homeland security and national defense were important. But in addressing them, we took large initiatives and the result was a budget deficit. We made deliberate decisions that drove us to borrow money in order to meet these short-term challenges.

Correcting that budget deficit and getting us back on a path to balance is our next major challenge, and it is one that this budget tackles. We had a growth deficit, a security deficit and a health care deficit that we have dealt with. Now we have to deal with the Federal budget deficit.

At the same time, however, this was not a green-eye-shade exercise. It is not just a matter of getting a bunch of numbers to add up. The budget also has to support an agenda that reflects our principles of governing, which is to advance our Nation's strength, growth and opportunity. I will briefly review each of these principles and then turn it over to colleagues from my committee who will discuss these even further.

First is strength. Our country has to be strong. America is free and will remain free as long as we are strong. We have got to be strong enough to defend that freedom. We have got to be strong enough to defend it here at home and we have got to be able to take that fight to the people who want to ruin that freedom wherever they may be. That is what we are doing around the world right now. America is free and will remain free as long as we are strong enough to defend freedom at home and around the world.

Second is growth. To remain the world's most prosperous superpower nation, America's economy must continue to grow and create jobs. If the budget that is being debated around the kitchen tables of America today, right now as we speak, families are trying to balance their checkbook, they are trying to figure out how to make ends meet, send their kids to college, pay their bills on time, pay a Visa bill that seems to get bigger and larger all the time. If their budgets do not add up, it really does not matter what the rest of the country looks like. We are the sum of our parts and our parts have got to be strong. That is why growth in the economy is so vital.

Finally, opportunity. Strength, growth and opportunity, the third one. America's continued greatness comes from what I believe are the unlimited opportunities that our American freedom provides all of us. We must continue to encourage opportunities for a better life for every citizen in our country. Those are the guiding principles of this budget. The fundamentals for furthering those principles with this year's budget include the following. Let me just outline a few of them.

First is on taxes, and let me be very clear because this is one delineation between the parties and between all of the budgets that you are going to see today. This budget does not raise taxes, period. Our country does not need a tax increase today or tomorrow to meet the needs of our budget.

Our tax relief policies are working, finally. We are starting to see some of these have their effect on the economy. The last 6 months of our economy were the fastest growing 6 months in 20 years. It has been 20 years since we have seen that kind of growth.

Have the jobs been there? Not yet. They are coming, though, because that is the last indicator in economic development. It is what they call a lagging indicator. Economists call it lagging because it is one of the last things you see develop within the economic development, are the jobs being created.

And at exactly the time when small businesses in Manchester, Iowa, or across Iowa or wherever you might be, at the very time when they are starting to think, you know, the economy's starting to turn around, it might be time to add on another product line or maybe to hire another waiter or waitress or two or maybe to figure out another sales clerk that could maybe fill in during some of the times so that somebody can be off a little bit more of the time. At the very moment when they are ready to think about adding jobs, we cannot have a snapback, automatic, come-from-behind, hit-them-in-the-back-of-the-head tax increase that says, oh, by the way, we need that money, you shouldn't be able to spend it back home. That to me does not make any sense.

The tax relief packages are working and we will not allow a snapback of the tax, the 10 percent tax rate, the marriage penalty relief. We do not want to penalize married people in this country.

And we also believe that the tax credit should remain at its current level. So that is taxes.

The next is spending. We cannot begin to address reducing the current budget deficit without getting ahold of our current rate of spending growth. I am going to show the Members a chart because I think this illustrates the spending issue probably better than any others. I want to show the Members what we have been spending the last number of years. Did most of this go to necessary demands? Absolutely. I am not suggesting that the amount of money we have been spending in Washington has gone for naught. Of course it has been for many necessary demands. Can we suspend that rate of growth? I do not think we can suspend it, but we should not sustain that rate of growth over a long period of time.

Let me just show the Members this chart because I think this is important. This is our recent spending history. In the last 3 years, total spending growth has averaged 6 percent. The growth in the economy has not been that strong. I mean, we have not seen that kind of inflation. Why is it that we ask families to only grow possibly at the rate of inflation if they are lucky to even get that kind of a pay increase, but we ask them for more money so that we can increase government spending? Some of this growth has been necessary, as I said. Homeland security, war on terrorism, education, veterans spending. A lot of good spending has been in here, but we need to start going through this with a fine tooth comb so that we can start holding the line on spending, not wasting it and respecting the taxpayers who, I believe, use it much more wisely oftentimes than we do.

I have said many times before that everything in this budget should be on the table for consideration when it comes to controlling spending, and we have looked for ways to control spending throughout the entire budget. And we thought it was fair to start right here at home, right here in this House, by freezing our own congressional budgets. Before we look outside this Chamber and say to anyone else they have got to tighten their belt, it is time we do it right here first. And that is not only an issue of credibility, but it does save us some money. It does give us, I think, the standing to go to Departments and say they can live with just a little bit less, they can live with the amount that they had last year.

We have also called for holding the line on all nondefense discretionary spending and called for a reduction of \1/2\ of 1 percent from the President's requested increase of 9.7 percent of homeland security. What we are basically saying is that the President deserves to be able to continue to manage homeland security in a positive way to keep us safe at home, but remember too that when we formed the new Homeland Security Department, it was advertised both by Congress as well as the Department of Homeland Security that eventually they could help us save money by coordinating those services, and we have pumped a lot of money into homeland security. But I cannot name one constituent who has come up to me and told me that they have had an experience in the airport where they thought all that money was being spent wisely.

In fact, I get more letters and more conversations of people saying, You know what? I could tell you how the government could save some money. There is a lot of waste in the way that we manage this whole transportation security. Those are the things they see. There are many things that we do not see that we should constantly be looking at, and I know people will come down here saying we must not care about homeland security if we even want to look for any waste or any savings, and that is not fair. That is not fair because we should respect every dollar that is used in every Department for the intended purpose, but we should not waste one penny, and where we can even find a penny or a dollar or a hundred or even into the billions in some instances, we should work to do that.

We also called for a program of savings and elimination based on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in what we call our mandatory programs or entitlements. The reason we do that is because we have a lot of spending here in Congress and throughout the Federal Government that is automatic, that happens regardless of what we decide here today, unless we start to work to improve those programs and start rooting out waste within many of those programs. And there are so many examples. I mean, we work hard, and so does the bureaucracy of our government work hard to make sure that when we provide a benefit to somebody who needs help from the government, and so many of us believe that that is what government is for, to help people who cannot help themselves in many instances, every penny of that should make sure it gets to the people whom we intend to help, no one else. No one else should be taking advantage of those programs.

States should not be allowed to just maneuver those moneys around like a

shell game in order to make their budgets look good and then blame the Federal Government for not sending back the money. We have got to make sure that every penny is getting to the people it is intended to get to. Over all the confusion over what Chairman Allen Greenspan said last month to my committee concerning Social Security, there was a much bigger point that got lost, and that was the problem that he talked about in mandatory spending. Most entitlement spending is on auto pilot, and in other words, it just keeps growing year after year in most cases without ever undergoing oversight.

And what we do in this budget is we ask people, we ask our committees of jurisdiction, to begin going into the garden and pulling out the weeds, the places where we can find savings and make sure it is plowed back in to helping people who cannot help themselves. Truly, just about the only time we look at these programs is like last year with Medicare when we wanted to expand it, and we did find savings within that program. We need to do this every year.

This is a problem, and it is getting worse every year. In 1974, the year the Budget Act was adopted, mandatory spending accounted for only 41 percent of the total budget. This year, 30 years later, already over half of our spending is automatic that we cannot affect unless we change the law.

So let me be clear. I am not saying that mandatory programs in and of themselves are bad. No one is saying that. Many of them provide critical services, but I am saying that we had better get ahold of the growing wave of entitlement spending that we have created over the years before it crashes down around all of us, all of us here in Congress as well as all the families across our Nation that we ask to pay for these programs. To continue with our games of political rhetoric with regard to these programs, I believe, is foolish.

This is where I have got to give the little asterisks in attention for those who might be watching. This is where many people will run to the Chamber and say, oh, they are going to hurt the poor; oh, they are going to throw seniors out into the street; oh, they are going to kick a dog, or something like that.

I mean, my goodness, that is not what we are talking about. We had a hearing here where, believe it or not, the Department of Agriculture was proud of the fact that they had a 9 percent error rate in the food stamp program. There is not a business in our country that could survive with an error rate of 9 percent. In fact, CEOs and small businessmen and -women across our country would scour their books for days to find 1 percent if they thought that was in their budgets. We allow 9 percent to go on and say, well, gosh, that is an improvement because the year before it was 18 percent. That is ridiculous. So we are not saying that we should go in and be indiscriminate.

We want food stamps to go to people who are hungry. We do not want it to go in waste, fraud, and abuse to fund an underground economy where food stamps have been used as a currency. And that is wrong. We have got to get our arms around it. We are not suggesting it has to be done immediately today, but let us start the work. Let us not waste one penny that should go to people who are hungry around our country.

We proved last year that there are huge amounts of indefensible waste, fraud, and abuse within our mandatory programs. So in this budget we have begun the process of actually reducing or eliminating some of those most outrageous examples of waste.

Let me turn to spending control. We are calling for a few other spending controls or restraints, whatever the Members would like to call them, for Members of Congress. They are including, for instance, holding the line on our budget. We are calling for no increase in the legislative branch appropriations for Congress. We do not want any new entitlement spending until we go through the process of looking at our current entitlements and no nonwar emergency supplementals without spending offsets. From 1995 until about, I believe it was, 1998, we started a practice here that we should get back to and that is saying if we have an emergency come into our country, let us look to offset the costs of those emergencies by reducing or eliminating other lower priority items that can be put on the back burner for a period of time while we deal with that emergency. Obviously, that cannot happen in a war. That is obvious. I mean, when we are in a war, we are going to do what it takes. The President said that from right here at this podium, and just about every Member agrees with that as well; but we are talking about that with regard to nonwar.

We are also asking that we stop the practice of waiving the Budget Act or waiving the rules for the budget. A lot of people will come down here beating their chest about the budget or how we ought to change the budget process, and then they will vote for or encourage the adoption of waivers for the budget throughout the rest of the year. That has to stop if we want to continue to enforce the budget.

We should also freeze spending on programs that are unauthorized; and for the people who might be listening to this who are not familiar with this process, what Congress does is through some of our committees we determine that a program is needed and then we turn it over to the other side of the building where the appropriators sit, and we ask them to find the money to fund it. But oftentimes the appropriators are asked to fund programs that have never gone through the regular process. And so what we are saying here is if they have not gone through the regular order, if they not had their program authorized, they should be eligible to have their funding frozen for a period of time until we can make sure that their program is eligible, working correctly, not wasting any money, and continues to be a priority. There are too many things that have continued to receive funding throughout the years that have not been authorized.

One of my favorite examples is that we actually only recently ended the practice of funding the National Helium Reserve. That was an unauthorized program from the time of the dirigibles during World War I when we actually came up with this program. It made sense then. I mean, they have got to make sure the blimps are flying. That was national security back in World War I. But because that program had never been authorized and the appropriators continued to fund it, it was only recently that we were able to dig through the books and find out it was still being funded, and we were able to eliminate that funding.

Finally, with regard to war costs, the budget takes into account the funding for the ongoing war in Iraq. We know without question that there will be costs for the war while this budget that we are voting on today is in effect. Do we know the exact dollar amount? No. But we know it is not zero. And that was well said by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We support our troops. We want to make sure they know that money is going to be on the way. We want our partners to know that we are making this a priority, and we also want to know that it is included in the bottom line as part of getting to a balanced budget, respecting the need to identify all of our costs. So we had a choice. We could either sit here and wait for an emergency supplemental for the war, or we could do what I believe is the responsible thing, factor in those costs as we know them without question because we know that they are coming. So we have included $50 billion for funding the war in Iraq. It is a tough choice, certainly one that we would rather not face, I suppose; but one that we felt was the right thing to do and a budgeting priority.

Finally, with regard to fiscal responsibility, we get results with this budget, and it is results that matter. Now, this is clearly not the budget that I would write ideally if it were left to my own choices. But we have to come up with a compromise. And what we have tried to do is we have tried to meld all of the different needs of all of the different Members of Congress as part of this. Taking the initiative to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, doing a little more with a little less, actually restraining spending is a whole lot tougher than just signing off on some huge spending increase. We all know that families, businesses, States, local governments have had to actually go into their budget and cut it. We are not even doing that. We are not saying we have to cut the budget. There may be some who claim that that is what it

does, but we are not cutting the budget. We are just holding the line. There are some people who have actually had to make tougher choices than that. Do we have a list of wants that may go unfulfilled for a while? Sure. We are just asking them to go on the back burner.

We have to follow suit if we are going to get back on the right track.

So we are just asking to hold the line. If we can do that, if we adhere to those principles, this is what we expect to gain:

First, not to increase the deficit in the current year, which I believe is a reasonable goal;

Second, to cut the deficit in half as early as 4 years by both the factor of our economy as well as actual dollars;

Third, we get the ball rolling toward an effort of reigniting our oversight responsibilities to root out massive amounts of wasteful spending here in Washington;

Finally, we win the war, we balance the budget, and we can double the economy if we follow this kind of blueprint. I think that is a huge payoff for just a little bit of fiscal responsibility and restraint in this year. I think it is the least we can do.

This is a good budget. It is a good blueprint. It has come together over a lot of difficult conversations, because if you went to visit your architect to build a home, that would be a difficult conversation, too. They always are when you are making choices. But these choices are necessary at this crucial time in our history to get us on the right track.

I would urge Members to come speak about the budget, learn more about the budget, and vote for the budget when we have the chance.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), our majority leader.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), the very distinguished vice-chair of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, as I said before, strength, growth, and opportunity are the hallmarks of our budget. To speak about the strength portion of our budget, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), to talk about the second important pillar of our budget. Strength. The second is growth.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes to engage my colleague from California, the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, in a colloquy.

The gentleman from California is certainly one of Congress' most steadfast supporters of American's servicemen and -women. I understand he has a concern related to military housing and the privatization program.

I yield to the gentleman from California to engage in that colloquy.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would just say I appreciate my colleague's concerns. I strongly support the objectives of the DOD's military housing privatization initiatives. As we all know, the program, in existence since 1995, has leveraged the entrepreneurship of the private sector to build housing for our men and women in uniform much more efficiently than the government could do it itself.

As Members will recall, last year the Committee on the Budget, as well as the Committee on Armed Services, achieved consensus on this matter and raised the statutory cap on housing projects in the House legislation. As it happened, the potential cap increase did not occur. The other body opted not to move this program. I repeat, both the House Committee on the Budget and the House Committee on Armed Services were already engaged in housing privatization. It was the other body that chose not to engage.

We are all confronted again this year with the potential cap increase; and regrettably, DOD did not make a formal request on privatization when it submitted its budget in February. The Office of Management and Budget only cleared the privatization request for submission to Congress less than 2 weeks ago. DOD now believes that the cap limit will be reached by November of 2004.

As we move forward, the Committee on Armed Services will be examining the request, and drafting its own legislative provisions I am sure; and when the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services moves his bill, I commit to work through the Committee on the Budget aggressively with OMB and CBO to come to a consensus to appropriately score this privatization initiative. The committee will also engage the Committee on the Budget, as well in the other body as we move into conference, so that the program can move forward; and, again, I want to stress my support for the program and my commitment to seeing this important quality-of-life initiative for our men and women in uniform move forward.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), from the Committee on Armed Services, in order to talk briefly about our budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 12 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker), a member of the committee, to speak to our third most important pillar, growth, strength, and, now, opportunity.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond briefly and say that, using the exact same standard that the gentleman just used, he voted at 7:03 p.m. last Thursday against a $1.2 billion increase in veterans' spending. A $1.2 billion increase in veterans' spending the gentleman voted against in committee last week.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Ryun), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 20 seconds to respond briefly and say that the gentleman from Maryland may want to read his substitute. It is interesting what you find out when you read the substitute. He said that it would be immoral to use one penny of the Social Security trust fund over the next 5 years. Well, guess what? Your substitute spends it all.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner), a distinguished member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and just wonder, why all the yelling?

I would like to understand. We are cutting homeland security? The other side has had more than enough time to yell. I would like to have a little time just to set the record straight.

My goodness, all the yelling about cutting homeland security. Let me just tell you, folks, think about this. If you are listening to this debate, I want you to understand what a cut in Washington is. Here is a cut.

Here we go. Since September 11 of 2001, homeland security spending has more than doubled. Let us start with that. During the same period, nearly 61,000 staff people have been added to the Federal Government to protect the country. See, I can yell too. Sixty-one thousand people have been added, doubling the budget. But we are cutting?

Let us go on. The budget increases the 2005 discretionary spending 14 percent above the 2004 levels. A 14 percent increase, but we are cutting?

Let us go on. Significant one-time costs involving starting the Department of Health and Human Services were met during fiscal year 2003 and we funded those start-up costs. But we are cutting?

A $474 million increase, or an increase of 76 percent, for intelligence and warning; a $17 billion increase for transportation security; a 13 percent increase for domestic counterterrorism; a $14 billion increase for protection of critical infrastructure; a $3.4 billion increase for defense against catastrophic threats; and a 24 percent increase for emergency preparedness and response.

On top of all that, the President has asked us for a 9.6 percent increase, and we are funding it. And you say to us we are cutting it?

Now, just let me tell you something. I am a fireman. You can yell and scream about your firemen. I am a fireman. I was a volunteer fireman in my hometown. I know about local response, I know about EMS, I know about first responders, because I did it. I did not just come to the floor and yell about it.

And I have got to tell you something, they are prepared. They are going to be even more prepared. We are sending them the money. In fact, we are sending it so fast and it is stuck in the pipeline so well that they are not even getting the funds because the States cannot spend it fast enough. That is what we are saying.

So you can come and yell, we can yell, increases, decreases, cutting, gouging, all sorts of things. You want a political insurance policy, that is what you are buying, a political insurance policy for homeland security. We are governing. We are making sure it is getting to the people who need it, and we are going to pass a budget that accomplishes that.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes calmly to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) to talk about education, and get away from all of this bombastic discussion about cutting homeland security when we are increasing.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Just to start off the debate, we are obviously very interested in hearing what the Congressional Black Caucus has to offer. While we may disagree on the specifics, the caucus has almost every year provided its full alternative budget. As the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, I respect the fact that they would do so. I am going to oppose it, I respectfully oppose it; but I certainly appreciate the fact that the caucus would come forth with a full budget proposal. We look forward to hearing the debate as a proponent.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First and foremost, let me say that obviously we do not agree with some of the facts and figures laid out by my friends on the other side in their criticism of not only the Republican budget, which is the base bill here, but also the President's budget.

Mr. Chairman, be that as it may, in good comity with my colleagues, I ask unanimous consent to yield 10 minutes of my time to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) for a statement.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker), a member of the committee.

(Mr. WICKER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute just to respond.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, as I said in our opening, I respect the fact that we are putting our values on the table. I have enormous respect for that. But let me just at least respond to the gentleman with regard to what he just said about taxes.

Most provisions that they are talking about, that they talk about as being tax cuts for the rich or tax increases on the rich, we have to remember that the bracket they are talking about, 90 percent of small businesses, which are the job creators in my district, in Manchester, Iowa, and it is true for all small businesses; small businesses owned by women, small businesses owned by minorities, small businesses all together, are paying this top rate, and 80 percent of the increase on taxes on this top rate would be borne by small businesses. Two-thirds of the income tax filers in the top income tax bracket have small business income. If we want to create jobs, why would we tax the job creators? That is what we are talking about.

And I respect the fact my Democrat colleagues admit they are taxers and spenders, but do not tax the job creators.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I have no further speakers other than myself and I belive I have the right to close and so I am prepared to close when the gentleman is.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, first, as I did when I opened, I do very much respect the job that has been done by the Congressional Black Caucus in presenting a budget. It is very difficult to do that. I know that just because I have the responsibility of putting together the majority budget, and it is not an easy task. And so I appreciate the job that was done. We simply disagree, and we do so very respectfully.

The title of the budget is ``Investing in America,'' and we just happen to believe that the best investors in America are Americans, not the government. We believe that individuals and families make much better decisions about spending their money than the government can for them. And so the reason why we believe that increasing taxes would be wrong or increasing spending at this time and the dramatic way that you go about that in your budget would just not be the right recipe at this time or the right blueprint as we move forward.

A couple of things that I just want to point out to my colleagues who are coming over and getting ready to vote.

The first is that the substitute offered by the Congressional Black Caucus raises taxes. It raises $35 billion of

taxes in 2005 alone and $192 billion over 5 years. And the way that it raises taxes is on small business; and that is, in my estimation, the wrong recipe at the wrong time when our economy is just poised to begin job creation. Ninety percent of small businesses pay taxes at the rate that they want to increase. More than 80 percent of the increase in taxes on the top rate will be borne by small business. Two-thirds of the income tax filers in the top income tax rate have small business income.

Small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all the employers in this country. And at the exact moment when the economy is poised after 6 months of the largest growth in 20 years, we cannot allow a tax increase to occur on those small businesses because they are the risk- takers, the entrepreneurs, the innovators in America. It is not government.

The innovation is happening outside of Washington, D.C., not inside the Beltway. And we need to encourage that.

I also just want to mention that tax cuts are not to blame for everything. We have heard a lot of people come to the floor today claiming that tax cuts cause the deficit, that tax cuts are the bane of our existence. Let me remind you that tax cuts, as you can see here, represent this white area right above here. This white line. And tax cuts would not have gotten us into deficit. It is spending. It is spending. It is spending that gets us into deficit as well as a downturn in the economy.

So two things that we cannot do, kill the economy or continue increases in spending. Second thing is that I believe the substitute spends too much money. Let me tell you what I mean by that.

Even before you ask us to adopt your budget, look at the large increases of spending that we are talking about. So before anyone comes to the floor yet again today and says somehow that we are cutting this, we are cutting that, we are gouging this, we are gouging that, my goodness we are spending a lot of money out here. In fact, if you want to look at this a little different way, this is the bar chart way. In the last 3 years total growth has been 6 percent. That is enough. We have enough spending. We do not need new taxes.

Please reject, respectfully, the Congressional Black Caucus budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, it is interesting that the title of this budget is When You Are in a Hole, Stop Digging. Yes, they need to stop digging, stop digging in the pockets of families and small businesses and farmers and ranchers. They are digging and digging for more and more and more taxes. More taxes from farmers, more taxes from ranchers, more taxes from families, more taxes from married couples, more taxes that kill jobs and make it impossible for our economy to get back on its feet. When you are in a hole, stopping digging in the American people's pockets and start reducing spending around Washington which is wasteful.

This budget presented today raises taxes at a time when small businesses can least afford it. Ninety percent of small businesses pay at the individual rates. More than 80 percent in the increase in taxes for the top rate that they speak of will be borne by small businesses. Small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all employers, and they employ more than half of the private workforce.

When you are in a hole, stop digging in my pockets and pass the Republican plan that does not raise taxes.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute just to say there has been some discussion here on the floor about how honest this budget is. Let me just point out, we are having a chance to read this thing and it cuts Medicare. Maybe I am missing something, but we are actually going to ask people to vote to cut Medicare. Not only do you cut Medicare, a $156 billion cut to Medicare, but I have read your budget and there is no reconciliation instruction in here on how to cut Medicare or even if you are going to cut Medicare. No reconciliation, just a plugged number in here of $156 billion.

They are advertising that their budget somehow reduces the deficit more. It does not reduce the deficit more. They have got plugged numbers in this budget. Somebody has rushed this budget to the floor with plugged numbers. If you are in a hole, stop digging, huh? Well, you better have a real shovel and not just try and fill it in with fantasy. $156 billion of Medicare cuts. I want you to go home and explain to your seniors that issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute, just continuing to look at this interesting budget. The gentleman from Texas says that he is concerned about the numbers being more expensive for Medicare. How come, then, they adopted the CBO baseline? If they think the actuaries at OMB are so correct, why did they not have the integrity to put that into their baseline? Again, they accept CBO. We accept CBO, but they come to the floor, and they demagogue the issue and they say that OMB is wrong and that the actuary is somehow correct. Then have the guts to put it in here. Do not raise taxes on the American people. Cut Medicare which they do in this instance. And now we find that they also cut national defense, $2 billion this year alone. National defense is cut. Where are they going to come up with $2 billion in national defense this year? Where are they going to find that? There are troops in the field right now who need our support, and they are asking for $2 billion this year. We have got to find some more details before somebody can claim that this has the integrity and the honesty to come before us as a budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to just say, put your money where your mouth is. Your budget does not balance. You say balance the budget, but you do not balance the budget. So it is one thing to say balance the budget, and it is another thing to come to the floor without a balanced budget. So you say one thing, and unfortunately the budget says just another.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds.

I have got the figures right here, and there is a cut in defense of $2 billion in this year. I would suggest you need to read your own budget because there is a cut in defense, and I say that as respectfully as I can. I believe we can find savings in defense, but please do not come here advertising there are no cuts in defense when you put in this first year alone cuts in defense.

So those are the facts, and I believe that again you have got to look at your advertisements meeting the reality of the budget itself.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I do not need the time. I have got my own time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes.

First and foremost, let me say to the gentleman who is the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture, the choice will be the Committee on Agriculture's choice on where to find those savings, and I doubt seriously that the gentleman from Texas is going to be promoting opening up the farm bill. At least I would hope that he does not. That is not what the gentleman from Virginia, the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, is suggesting.

I would hope that the gentleman from Texas does not believe that we should open up the farm bill. There is certainly no one on this side of the aisle, or I should not say no one, but there is certainly no one who I am aware of who wants to open up the farm bill at this time. That is not where the savings would come from. So I hope the gentleman would allow his own committee to work its will and to work within that committee process.

He asks us to respect the committee process on the one hand, and yet he predisposes that on the other. And I have to tell the Members I do not believe the farm bill is where we ought to be looking.

Second of all, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot say on the one hand, we are going to raise taxes on the job creators, the small businesses, the farmers, the ranchers, we are going to raise taxes on those people, and accept the economic assumptions that the economy is going to continue to grow.

You are saying on the one hand, we are going to kill jobs, we are going to tax small business, we are going to tax farmers; and on the other hand, do not worry about the economy, it is going to continue to grow at the same baseline amount. So you accept our numbers on the economy, which are derived, in part, from the fact that the tax cuts are working and the economy, the last 6 months at least, has had the strongest growth in 20 years.

You are accepting all the good news. You are accepting all the cake. But you cannot at the same time say, oh, no, but we are going to raise taxes on those same people who are creating the jobs, who are providing all that economic development, who are helping to make sure that the economy is growing, who are spending their money, who are being productive; we are going to tax them, and we are going to accept the economic growth. You cannot have it on the one side and then take it back on the other.

So you need to change your economic factors if you are going to come to the floor with a budget that you are going to at least purport. That answers the question.

The very distinguished gentleman from Texas asked me a question. He said, Are our deficit numbers better or worse? The issue is, we do not know because you accept the good news of the economy that the tax cuts have given us, and yet on the other hand you take away the tax cuts.

So on the one hand you say, oh, yes, our deficits are going to get smaller because the economy is going to improve, because that is the same baseline that you have; and yet on the other hand, you take away the goose that is laying the golden egg, by taxing, by digging deeper into the pockets of the very people who are creating those jobs.

You cannot have it both ways.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let us just get back to this now. We were talking about the economy and, if this is doing so well, how come we are broke? All right. There are a lot of things that contribute to that.

First and foremost, let me say to my friend from Arkansas, you have not heard me blame the Democrats. I blame Osama bin Laden. I blame a lot of the challenges that we had from the natural downturn in the economy. I blame the dot-com bubble bursting. I blame the corporate scandals. I blame a lot of things. You have not heard me blame the Democrats because, no, you are not in charge.

I am not suggesting you are. Yes, you have stopped a few things from going through the other body. Yes, you have stopped a few things from coming through this body. But, no, I am not suggesting you are in charge.

But now we are talking about a plan to move forward. You want to debate history? You can debate history. Let me show you what we are doing moving forward. As I said, the last 6 months of growth in our economy has been at the fastest pace in 20 years, the fastest pace in 20 years. So when you say, if your plan is so good, where are you going, we are going nowhere but up. In fact, the most recent data that came out today said the economy continued to grow at 4 percent. That is the first thing, the economy is growing.

What have the tax cuts meant to jobs? All right, unemployment would have been higher without the tax relief package. It was at this point in time right there that we reduced taxes, and, as a result of reducing taxes, look what happened to unemployment. Unemployment went down as a result of the tax relief package from the line that it was on. In fact, we are at a lower point in unemployment than we were when Bill Clinton had his economic challenges back in 1993. We are reducing unemployment. We are getting people back to work. It is in part because of tax relief.

Last, but not least, let me just mention this: 2 million more jobs would have been lost without the tax relief package. Again, looking here, without tax cuts, we were losing jobs at a record pace. 2.1 million jobs have been created as a result of these new tax relief packages that have been put into place. We are creating jobs. The economy is turning around.

Quit blaming tax cuts for all the problems in the world. My goodness, that is not the case. And when you are in a hole, stop digging in the pockets of the American people for more money, more money, more money. Tax and spend, tax and spend. More spending in Washington, more wasteful Washington spending. My goodness, that is not what we need.

People are telling us they spend their money better than we do here in Washington. Let us allow them to do it by keeping the money in their pockets. Let us keep creating jobs; let us keep the economic growth going strong. This is not the time to raise taxes, as the Blue Dog budget does.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, first and foremost, let me say to my friend from Texas and all of the members of the caucus that I respect the fact that they put together a plan. I should have opened with that. It maybe would have helped take away some of the sting of the opposition that I have, because, as the gentleman knows, it is not easy to put together a plan. The fact that people are willing to put their plan on paper and let everybody see it and let everybody pick it apart, as I am trying to do and others will probably do to me and have been doing, I respect that. But I strongly oppose what the gentleman is offering, and I also strongly oppose some of the advertisement that the gentleman is offering.

The gentleman says, you know, when you are in a hole, stop digging. He is right. When you are in a hole, you ought to stop digging. Digging to me is spending. That is what is digging our hole deeper.

Unfortunately, what the Blue Dog budget does, it does not throw away the shovels. It keeps spending. It keeps growing. It keeps wasting money in Washington.

The gentleman said that we would have to open up the farm bill. First and foremost, we are not going to open up the farm bill. The gentleman knows that. That is a signal to the farmers out there, I have a few in Iowa, he has a number in Texas, that maybe they ought to start worrying about that. Maybe it is a code word to let them know they ought to start calling in and worrying about the farm bill. We are not looking at the farm bill.

Let me tell you what we are looking at. The Agriculture Department testified before the gentleman's committee, the Committee on Agriculture, as well as my committee, that they were proud of the fact that the error rate in food

stamps has gotten down to a fabulous level of 9 percent, meaning 9 cents on the dollar, or almost one dime out of every dollar, is wasted, is abused, goes to the wrong people, is used in an underground market or used as an underground currency, as has been testified. Nine percent is wasted.

All we are asking for is we are saying would you please look around your jurisdiction for some of this waste? It is unconscionable that we have people in this country that are starving, that are going hungry, that are going without food in their belly at a time when we have economic challenges; and the Agriculture Department under President Clinton, and it continues today, was wasting money.

Now, guess what? Do you know why they are proud of the fact it is only 9 percent? Because the error rate is down from 18 percent. They are proud of the fact that we are only wasting now 9 cents on the dollar, instead of 18 cents on the dollar. They are proud of that.

Only in Washington would you be proud of the fact that you are wasting 9 cents on the dollar. That is the only place in the world. There is not a small business in Iowa or anywhere across the country that would be proud of 9 cents of waste on every dollar that they have to deal with in their business. In fact, there is not a small businessman or -woman in this country who would not lock the door at five o'clock and spend the rest of the night, if they had to to figure out where that 9 cents went and why it was being wasted. You could just picture them locking the door and looking through every single one of their books to find that 9 cents.

And yet when it is wasted in Washington, it is defended. They say, well, that is good. We are improving; isn't that nice? And what we are saying in our budget is that it is darn time to look for some of this waste in the budget, and the Blue Dog budget does not do that.

The second thing, I just want to talk about tax cuts real quick. Tax cuts did not cause the deficit. There would be deficits without tax cuts.

As you can see from this chart, the taxes are in this blue area right here. But what is driving the budget into deficit is an economy that has been rocked, that has been hit in its gut by a number of issues, everything from 9/11 to the dot-com bubble bursting to corporate scandal, and we have got to get that economy back on its feet. More importantly, we have to get families earning again and creating jobs, along with small businesses.

It would be the wrong time, at a moment in our history when jobs are about to be created, to gut-punch them again, all those small business people, and say, yes, we need a little bit more for Washington. Before you create those jobs, we are going to fund some more of that waste out in Washington, so we need that money, and to do it and not even accomplish a balanced budget. They raise the taxes, but they do not even get to a balanced budget.

The other thing that I just wanted to say, last, but not least, is on spending. I respect the conservative Democrats, the Blue Dogs. They are probably our last hope when it comes to Members on the other side who have any concern about controlling spending. But they fail to do so in their budget, and it is compounded by such a large history of growth in spending.

This is not a time to increase spending. This is not a time when we need to have growth in government. This is a time to look around the garden and start pulling some weeds, the way every family does across our country, the way every small business person does across our country. They look for ways to tighten their belt. Sometimes it hurts when they tighten their belt.

We are not asking for pain; we are just saying level funding. States across our country are cutting budgets. Families across the country are making ends meet with less. Only the Federal Government, for some reason, believes you can raise taxes for more spending in Washington, D.C. and call that a success story.

That is why we believe the Republican budget is the way to go. It holds the line on spending; it funds our important priorities of strength, growth for the economy, and opportunity for the future. It deserves a vote.

Please vote against the Blue Dog budget.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment in the nature of a substitute, and claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that half of the time I have claimed in opposition be yielded to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for purposes of control.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of our time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to observe, get old people? That is kind of interesting.

The one program that seniors in our country depend on is Medicare. Are there any cuts in the Republican budget for Medicare? No. In fact, we funded a new drug benefit last year, and that is included in our budget. But, boy, it is interesting here, as I look at the Democrat substitute, look on the Medicare line, a cut in Medicare, is it possible that you could come to the floor with a cute little sign that says Get Old People and then cut Medicare and yell about it?

I can yell, too, I suppose, but yelling does not make it different. My colleagues get old people with a Medicare cut. Why is it that they would come to the floor with a sign that says one thing and present a budget that does something completely different? At a time when we are trying to modernize Medicare, provide providers with better reimbursements and help provide the first-ever prescription drug benefit under Medicare is not the time to cut Medicare. My colleagues should not have that in their budget.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 14 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, let me address the last remark made by my good friend, the Majority Leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), by saying that the budget resolution we will bring to the floor as a substitute for the House Republican resolution will generate a lower deficit, that is right, a lower deficit every year from 2005 through 2014. As a result, the resolution that we offer will accumulate $1.24 trillion less debt over a 10-year period of time, 2005 through 2014, than the President's budget.

Finally, and most importantly, our budget will go to balance, our budget will be in balance, in 8 years, in the year 2012. Lower deficits, less debt, a balanced budget by the year 2012. That is what we set out to do.

Because, you see, Mr. Chairman, we can remember where we were just 3 short years ago. We can remember that 3 short years ago we were in surplus in fiscal year 2001 by $127 billion. We were in surplus the year before, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton administration, by $236 billion, an unprecedented fiscal performance.

President Clinton inherited a deficit of over $290 billion, and every year over 8 years the bottom line of the budget got better, better and better, due to two different budget plans we adopted and imposed during the 1990s; and by the year 2000, we had an unprecedented surplus of $236 billion. We want to go back to where we were when we were running the budget in the black.

Three years have seen the budget decline from a surplus of $236 billion in 2000 to a deficit this year in 2004 equal to $521 billion. That is not my number, that is not my creation. Bush's Office of Management and Budget says that the deficit this year will be $521 billion. That means that last year, this year and next year, we will accumulate $1.2 trillion in national debt.

Just 3 years ago, with Washington surpluses, we had an uncommon task before us. We were so accustomed to dealing with deficits, we had to ask ourselves afresh, what do we do now that we have surpluses?

We had several choices: We could do what we said we could do seven, eight, nine times on the House floor, set up what is called a ``lockbox,'' a corny name for a substantive idea, namely that we would quit borrowing from the Social Security trust fund and henceforth only use the trust fund to buy up outstanding Treasury debt.

If we did that, we could pay off most of the Treasury debt held by the public over a period of 8 years, add $3.5 trillion to net national saving, drive down the cost of capital, make Treasury more solvent because it would have less debt to third parties to pay forever, and take the first stride toward making Social Security solvent, which is the most critical problem we face fiscally and domestically, because the baby boomers are on the doorstep of retirement in 2008, and when they retire, they will have a dramatic impact on our economy and on our budget.

Or we could take some of the surplus and fund priorities like education and defense, infrastructure and health care, that we had slighted during the 1990s as we bore down on spending in an effort to balance the budget.

Thirdly, we could take the surpluses that were projected, not proven, it was not money in the bank, we could take these projected surpluses and pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

As we pondered that decision, Mr. Chairman, President Bush took office, and he came to office with this big advantage that no President in modern history has enjoyed, a budget in surplus, big-time surplus. And his Office of Management and Budget looked out over 10 years and they said, We foresee $5.6 trillion in surpluses between 2002 and 2010.

The President paid little heed to these other options. He forsook the whole idea of the lockbox and saving Social Security. Oh, he paid lip service to it, but his primary, driving, compelling motive was to have the biggest tax cuts possible, and in effect, the Bush administration, as they passed those tax cuts, told us we could have it all, with surpluses this size, we could have it all. We could have tax reduction and debt reduction too. We could have more tax cuts and bigger defense as well.

Let me make the record clear. We were for tax cuts on this side, but we wanted more moderate tax cuts. We wanted to be cautious about over- relying on this forecasted surplus, we wanted to be careful not to make the tax cuts so big that they left no room for other priorities, and in particular, we wanted to stay out of Social Security, because we had sworn never again to dig into the Social Security trust fund now that we were out of deficit.

Those concerns were dismissed in the passage of a huge tax cut, and here you see the consequences. The $5.6 trillion surplus today, in accordance with the President's 2005 budget, is now a deficit of $2.928 trillion. That is a swing in the wrong direction of $8.5 trillion over the last 3 years, a phenomenally incredible fiscal performance over the last 3 years.

We warned that the forecast upon which the President's tax cuts were predicated could be off, could be wide of the mark, and sure enough, it was. The economists now tell us it was 55 percent overstated, misestimated.

As a consequence, there never really was a surplus sufficient to fund or offset the tax cuts that the President was proposing. Therefore, as a result of the tax cuts, the additional spending that we have had during this period of time, mainly for defense, homeland security and response to terrorism, that additional spending has driven the budget deeper into deficit than would have otherwise been the case.

The next chart will show you where we are right now and where we think we are headed if you take the President's budget 2005, if today or tomorrow the House votes for the President's budget.

This is where the Clinton administration started out with a deficit of $290 billion, this is where they took the budget, to a surplus of $237 billion, and this is what has happened under the auspices of the Bush administration on their watch. We have descended from $236 billion surplus to a $521 billion deficit.

Now, that deficit is bad enough. The administration would have you believe that they are going to cut that deficit in half over the next several years, over the next 5 years. We do not believe that forecast. When we make what we regard as realistic adjustments to their spending curve, this is what happens on this chart here over the next 10 years.

We get a bounce from the economy. The economy does help the deficit, no question about it. So we get a bounce in the early years. We go from a deficit of about $478 billion, and it bottoms out $200 billion to $300 billion for the rest of the time. As a consequence, we do not ever see this budget going into balance.

Now, we had to do this by what economists call extrapolation. Neither the Republicans in the House nor the Republicans in the Senate nor the Republicans in the White House have given us a 10-year extension of the budget so we can see the real implications over time of what they are proposing in the way of additional tax cuts and additional spending.

But we know, because the Congressional Budget Office takes what the President proposes, applies his policy to their baseline, we know where they are likely to end up. And what you see here is in time, over time, the deficit bottoms out close to $300 billion and goes nowhere.

To the contrary, look what happens on this blue line. All of a sudden, this blue line, which is the CBO baseline that does not factor in the President's policies, it assumes that the tax cuts, when they reach their expiration date, the sunset date that was written into them when they passed, this line assumes that beginning in the year 2008, the current services bottom line suddenly shoots upwards so that it goes from a deficit in 1 year of $153 billion to a surplus 2 years later of $98 billion.

Now, what happens, one might ask, to propel the budget out of deficit into surplus over that period of time. The tax cuts expire. And this chart says volumes about what the source of the deficit problem is. The expiration of the tax cuts passed in 2001 and in 2003, that alone is sufficient to move the budget out of a $153 billion deficit per CBO's projection to a surplus of $98 billion in 2 years.

So looking at this kind of study, we have tried to put together a balanced budget, balanced in the sense that the bottom line is black, that revenues are sufficient to cover expenditures; balanced in the sense that we are covering priorities that are essential and vital to the American people, including national defense.

Let me begin with that, just to tell my colleagues what we are presenting in our budget today. We have the same number for national defense as the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) has in his resolution; but in fact we have more, because we are adding $6 billion more than he provides for homeland defense, which many of us regard as the next and most dangerous battlefield for most Americans. We have middle-income tax cuts. Our resolution assumes that, for example, the marital tax penalty provisions will be extended and renewed. It assumes that the 10 percent bracket will be renewed and extended. It assumes that the welfare-to-work credits will be extended. In addition, we have extended the alternative minimum tax for a year. We have extended the research and experimentation tax for a year. We are not against all tax cuts. We want to see and we state explicitly in this budget resolution that our policy is to balance tax fairness and tax moderation for middle-income Americans with a balanced budget.

Now, having met the opposition in defense, what do we do in other areas that are priorities to the American people? In education, because we think it is a critical priority, we provide over 5 years $9.8 billion more than the House Republican resolution. We provide over 10 years for education $50 billion more than President Bush's budget calls for. We increase Pell grants. We provide more for the environment. By that I mean the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Land and Conservation Fund is fully funded. We provide veterans health care at the level that the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs said he would require, that the veterans health care system would require if we are going to meet our obligations and our promises.

We provide in the defense budget that the survivor benefit provisions be carried out. We provide needed budget authority so that family housing for military families can proceed apace. For science; for health; for the NSF, the National Science Foundation; and the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, we provide a budget that will at least protect them against inflation. We have gotten their funding level up; we do not want to see it whittled away due to inflation.

If my colleagues go down the list like this, they will see in good, solid categories where the need is clear and compelling, we have provided more than they. We have dealt with America's needs and will outline this more explicitly with different groups of Members as the day goes on. But we have done it within the framework where we bring the budget to balance by the year 2012, accumulate less debt, and move out of the mire that we are now in towards the days that we enjoyed just 3 years ago when this budget was in surplus.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. I would add to what the gentleman just said that we all voted by voice vote to increase veterans' health care by $1.2 billion in committee. It passed on a voice vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 45 seconds.

To complete what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes) was saying, it is significant and Members should understand that we have made special provision in our budget resolution to see to it that the contracting officers of the full military services have the budget authority backup needed to continue the privatization plan for expanding and improving military housing. Without the action we take, without the additional budget authority we provide these contracting officers, military housing will come to a trickle, if not a screeching halt. We provide that in our budget resolution.

In addition, I would say to the gentleman in the well just now talking about NASA that we provide $4.875 billion over 5 years more than the House budget resolution for the projects that he was just praising.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 16 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), and I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) to respond.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to the gentleman. In each of those items where the gentleman said, ``and they call that a cut,'' we do not call that a cut. We acknowledge that there is a substantial sum of money being put forth. But, in fact, this budget resolution reduces the President's request in nondefense homeland security items by $857 million. It is a matter of plain fact in the formulation of this budget resolution, and that is a cut. We provide $6 billion more than the budget resolution presented by the majority.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I yield for a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

(Mr. GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, for purposes of debate, I yield 15 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Chairman, as the designee of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill), I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The Blue Dog budget that we offer at this time is designed and based entirely on the simple philosophy that when you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is to quit digging.

Our country has a massive problem with fiscal deficits today. Our budget is built around the simple concept of pay as you go. If we want to pass a tax cut, cut spending to make room for it or raise some other tax to keep it from going to the bottom-line deficit.

In other words, we are suggesting taking the shovels away from Congress and the President. Our plan would cut the deficit in half in 2 years and put the budget on a path back towards budget surpluses in 2012 and balance in 2010. Our budget has $210 billion less debt over the next 5 years than the resolution reported by the Committee on the Budget.

The Blue Dog budget includes the pay-as-you-go rules that were adopted by a bipartisan vote in the Senate, as well as enforceable limits on discretionary spending. The Blue Dog budget adopts the tough spending limits by adopting the President's overall spending levels, but reallocates funding to put more resources into veterans, education, health care, and other priorities, and keeps from reopening the farm bill and also providing assistance to small businesses, manufacturers, firemen and policemen, the first responders in the war on terrorism.

We strongly support the President in the war on terrorism. Our budget provides the President with everything he requested for defense and homeland security and sets aside a reserve fund for additional funding for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we did last year.

Our budget provides tax relief for all taxpayers by extending the expansion of the 10 percent bracket, the marriage penalty relief, and the child tax credit. We also provide for immediate and permanent estate tax relief for small businesses, family farms and ranches. We offset the costs of extending tax relief, pay as you go, for middle- income families and pay for the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by asking those with incomes over $200,000 to have a little less of a tax cut until the costs of the war are paid and the budget is put back on a path towards balance.

Most importantly, our budget would reduce the debt tax that all American families, as well as our children and grandchildren would have to pay, in order to pay interest on our national debt.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, only 2 percent of the small businesses are affected by the tremendous rhetoric that the gentleman from Iowa just put forward on taxes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds to respond to my friend. I was getting my hopes up because he gave all the reasons why he should support the budget; but the idea of a slush fund, it is the same thing that is in the majority Budget Committee's report that comes before the House. We only say you can spend more if you pay for it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).

Mr. Chairman, that is a total misrepresentation of our budget and the gentleman knows it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond to the chairman. The cuts in Medicare that he mentioned are the advertising dollars that are being spent to justify the Medicare prescription drug bill that I was told by the same chairman and the Budget Committee was going to cost $400 billion. I was misled as everyone else in this body was misled because the cost was $530 billion. That is the cuts we are proposing. You do not need to advertise false numbers, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes.

I yield to the chairman for a simple request. Does the Blue Dog budget reduce the deficit more than the chairman's budget? Yes or no?

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Okay, Mr. Chairman. He does not want to respond. I was just asking him because I really dislike the kind of rejoinders that we are getting into now because it is ``he said, you said, I said,'' and it means nothing.

But since we are into this now, let me talk about the chairman's budget as it affects agriculture, both in mandatory and discretionary spending. And this is not about agriculture not being willing to take our share of the cuts, as the gentleman from Connecticut said yesterday. Agriculture has always been fiscally responsible and will continue to be. However, the Chairman's budget will result in a disproportionate amount of cuts from agriculture.

Keep in mind that in order to keep agriculture at last year's spending level, the appropriators will have to cut $650 million out of the farm bill as they did in the fiscal year 2004 appropriation. If we assume that in the chairman's budget the discretionary cuts will be proportionately divided among the appropriation bills, then this number will rise another $1.6 billion. That is correct. That is the chairman's budget.

And I want to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to read their own budget, what they are being asked to support today and how it is going to affect rural districts in conservation, water issues, rural development, environmental issues, research, because this is real.

And I commend the chairman because he honestly and sincerely is trying to do what his party has asked him to do. And it is real. His budget is real in what he proposes to do, including increasing the deficit $260 billion over the next 5 years. That is real. But he does it openly and honestly as he is defining it.

What I resent is his defining our budget as not being honest. His is honest. His will reopen the farm bill. Reopening the farm bill, which is what we will do under the reconciliation instructions that, if his budget passes, it will occur. And there are some on that side of the aisle and some on this side of the aisle that might want to do that. But I do not think a majority of this body want to go down that path.

So we want to talk about numbers, and we want to go through the little game we have been playing. Let us go through that little game.

This is not a game. In the agriculture function, this is real. The chairman is honest in bringing it to the floor and saying, this is what we will do if we pass their budget. Think about that before voting for this budget on final passage. Vote for the Blue Dog budget. It avoids that kind of a problem.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.

The Blue Dog budget assumes that we need a change. The gentleman's budget and economic game plan that he has been so proud of since 2001 has given us the largest deficits in the history of this country. We have borrowed $1 trillion in the last 2\1/2\ years. We are going to borrow another $1 trillion in the next 1\1/2\ years, and yet he comes and says his numbers are better than our numbers.

We simply propose a change, and it ought to be a bipartisan change and it ought to be one that adopts pay-as-you-go so that we get back on a fiscally responsible direction for this country. We thought we had a bipartisan support for that. It passed the Senate in a bipartisan way. What happened in this body?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me just say in the function 050 defense, the gentleman was correct in the spreadsheet that he looked at that in the resolution, we do not cut defense. We had an error in the numbers. We could not cut defense. We adopt the President's numbers on defense. That is the way our resolution states.

We also do not cut Medicare benefits for seniors by one dime. We use the CBO numbers for its prescription drug benefit, and all we say is if it turns out that that cuts, we are using the same numbers that the majority is saying. That is all.

It is factual to say, though, that this will reopen the farm bill, because I know that the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Goodlatte) and I recognize that if you are instructed to reconcile $2.2 billion out of discretionary spending, that is tough to do. What are you going to cut out? The Farm Service Agency, $1.4 billion? Agricultural research, $1.2 billion? Conservation spending? Where are you going to go? It will reopen the farm bill. If the majority succeeds in passing their budget, then we will do so; and it will not be pretty.

Everybody talks about taxes. We have been talking about the debt tax. In 2004, the average family will pay $4,391 in interest under the game plan that the chairman has just so eloquently defended. I have never heard anyone stand on this floor and defend losing jobs, as he just did. But $4,391 will go to $7,000 per year in a debt tax increase, and you cannot repeal that tax.

We have borrowed $1 trillion in the last 2\1/2\ years. We are going to borrow another $1 trillion in the next year and a half following the game plan that the chairman has eloquently defended at the behest of his leadership in this House.

We respectfully differ on this side of the aisle. We think it is time to quit digging. The budget plan that you have before you will not do it. The only one that will do that on the floor of the House today is the Blue Dog plan, and perhaps the Democratic alternative.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I place into the Record a statement concerning the majority's defense budget and also an article from The Washington Post that discusses the lack of armor for our troops in Iraq.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today with concerns about the Department of Defense budget proposal.

Last fall before my colleagues and I voted on the Iraq Supplemental, we were told that there was money included in the bill to provide all our troops with necessary life-saving equipment.

Several months after passing the supplemental, however, reports started coming back from Iraq that there were still troops serving in Iraq that did not have Kevlar vests, and there were still humvees that did not have armor to protect the troops riding in them from bullets or shrapnel.

Last week, one year after the war started, Houston's CBS affiliate KHOU reported that there are still a number humvees without bulletproof armor.

Then on Sunday, The Washington Post printed this article about Virginia Guard Units serving in Iraq that were wearing make-shift body armor their friends and family had sent them from home up until January of this year, 10 months after the start of the war.

I would like to submit this article for the Record.

Even more startling is the fact that these same troops are still driving around in humvees that have armor only because they were fortunate enough to have extra supplies at a machine shop on their base.

The safety of our troops should not depend on whether or not they have extra supplies on their base.

The Pentagon recently asked Congress to shift $190 million in FY04 money to pay for kits to armor humvees being used in Iraq, however this will not equip all the vehicles in Iraq and there is no money for this in the FY05 budget request.

I am troubled when I look over the Defense budget.

According to the 2005 Defense budget request there is money to double our investment in a missile defense system, but no money to armor the vehicles our troops drive in Iraq.

The defense budget states that a key part of the military's ability to meet its strategic goals is providing the best possible equipment to accompany any mission.

If this is the case, why did it take so long to provide body armor for our troops, and why are there still unarmored humvees driving around Iraq?

This administration says that there is no immediate need for a supplemental to fund operations in Iraq, but the budget leaves shortfalls in protecting our troops serving there.

Our troops are in a dangerous place, doing a dangerous job, and I hope the administration will correct these problems.

[From the Washington Post, Mar. 21, 2004]

2 Million Miles, Makeshift Armor and No Fatalities; A Virginia Guard

Unit Survives Iraq's Dangers

(By Karl Vick)

Of the many perilous things an American can do in Iraq, the

most perilous of all is driving a U.S. military vehicle in a

line of other U.S. military vehicles, up and down a highway,

day after day.

The men and women of the 1032nd Transportation Company, a

unit of the Virginia National Guard, have been doing just

that for almost a year, logging more miles than any other

unit in Iraq--about 2.3 million so far, almost all of them on

the potholed asphalt of the region north and west of Baghdad

known as the Sunni Triangle.

That the 1032nd came through the past 12 months without a

fatality is regarded as exceptional good fortune by its

members, a motley, good-natured group that includes truckers,

students and at least one police officer, one iron worker,

one cell biologist and one bartender.

``We get outside the gate, we keep it to the floor,'' said

Spec. Jeff Combs of Jonesville, in far southwest Virginia,

near the Kentucky and Tennessee lines. ``So far we've been

really, really fortunate.''

The absence of fatalities is all the more remarkable, the

truckers say, because for the first three-quarters of their

tour, the drivers, gunners and mechanics routinely traversed

the deadliest sections of Iraq without bulletproof vests.

When a gunman in a speeding black BMW fired an AK-47

assault rifle into the chest of Spec. Nathan Williams, the

slug was stopped by a steel plate Williams had purchased with

his own money and then fitted into a Kevlar vest designed to

stop only shrapnel. Otherwise, the high-velocity slug would

have entered his heart.

``They were $3 apiece,'' said Capt. Joe Breeding, hefting

one of the crudely cut, quarter-inch-thick steel plates a

colleague had sent from a workshop in Virginia.

The shortage of body armor for U.S. troops recently emerged

as an issue in the presidential campaign. Sen. John F. Kerry

of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has

cited the shortage as evidence that President Bush cares too

little about the welfare of the troops. Bush TV ads, in turn,

have accused Kerry of casting a vote that would have deprived

combat troops of body armor.

But it has been a matter of lively discussion for almost a

year in Iraq, especially among the Guard and Reserve units

that were called up to play support roles but found

themselves in the thick of a guerrilla war.

``It was disappointing to me to see units that just got

here had vest, and we had been here six months doing without

proper protection,'' said Spec. Rodney Pilson from

Stewart. ``Something like that makes you feel kind of

segregated.''

Breeding, the unit's commanding officer, said the 1032nd

arrived in Kuwait last year largely ignorant of the state of

the art in personal protection. The Kevlar vests they carried

from Virginia were designed to stop shrapnel or a low-

velocity slug from a handgun. But they lacked the specially

designed boron carbide ceramic plates that can absorb a

bullet from an assault rifle.

Too few had been ordered before the war, senior commanders

told congress last fall, and first priority was given to

dismounted infantry, the foot soldiers most vulnerable in a

battlefield setting.

But within weeks, war turned to occupation, and the most

basic assumptions were flipped upside down. ``When we got

here, it wasn't as bad. The war was still going on,'' said

Spec. Cliff Vance, the bartender, from Wise.

An enemy that seldom chose to stand and fight preyed mostly

on military vehicles, employing booby traps and ambushes

using small arms. Transportation outfits such as the 1032nd,

which made two runs a day through Baghdad to and from

Nasiriyah, found themselves on the new front line with

equipment designed for the rear.

``We realize they had a limited number'' of ceramic-

equipped vests, Breeding said. ``One thing I didn't think

they realized is how the transporters are on the front line,

too.''

Some things the truckers could change themselves. Makeshift

armor was cut from steel plates at the machine shops in the

sprawling base set up on a former Iraqi airfield outside

Balad, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Driver-side doors got

steel plating, later replaced by sheets of an alloy called

Armox. Kevlar-coated ballistic blankets were laid on cab

floors. Cargo Humvees became battle wagons, their back ends

enclosed in steel that protected the soldier manning the .50-

caliber machine gun mounted in the rear.

``You came here and basically you took care of yourself,''

said Spec. David Howard.

The improvised armor made the company, which is due to

leave Iraq this month, the envy of incoming units.

Sgt. 1st Class Kelvin Davenport, who will return to work as

a sniper on the police SWAT team in Bristol, said the

newcomers ask, ``When are you leaving? Can we get your

vehicles?''

There was a limit, however, to how much the truckers could

do to armor their own bodies. The Kevlar vests had no ceramic

plates, and there was no space between layers of Kevlar to

slip in an improvised plate.

Vests with slots to accommodate plates arrived in June, but

the boron carbide ceramic plates did not begin making their

way to the unit until November. The entire company was

finally outfitted in January.

``We got that stuff after we got off the road,'' said Sam

Stone, a mechanic and part-time driver, shaking her head.

The unit was in fact still driving in January, but by then

much of the military transport was being handled by a

civilian firm, Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., a subsidiary of

Halliburton. The 1032nd provided the armed escort, sending

its makeshift battle wagons ahead to scout for roadside

bombs--Davenport spotted more than 30 himself--and bringing

up the rear, still the most dangerous position.

``KBR was better equipped than we were,'' said Stone, a

student from Chatham. ``We used to joke about that. All their

drivers had actual bulletproof vests.''

Many of the unit's 105 drivers recount close calls. More

than a dozen of their trucks were

damaged by roadside explosives. But only five people were

wounded, and all five returned to duty.

Two of the wounded were hit not by roadside bombs but by

mortar attacks around the 1032nd's original quarters at the

corner of Texas and David Letterman Drive on the Balad base.

``I think that was scarier than driving,'' said Pilson,

idling with his fellow drivers in the shade of a eucalyptus

the other day. ``You wake up in the night to a boom, your

heart stops, man. You're supposed to feel safe here.''

The men beside him nodded and chuckled. National Guard

units grapple with a reputation as the military's second-

class citizens, frequently accorded less respect than

reservists. But the sense of family so often found in shared

adversity has a more familiar feeling in a unit where the

youngest member is 19 and the oldest 59. The only death in

the 1032nd this year was from cancer. It killed a man who had

survived Vietnam.

``We've been lucky,'' said Spec. Michael Bauman, 40, a

construction worker from Hillsville. ``I mean, you consider

over 2 million miles in this area, we've been lucky.

``It's the heat that kills you.''