Spending Control Act of 2004

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

Mr. Chairman, the bill we have before us, H.R. 4663, the Spending Control Act of 2004, causes me to say to my friends across the aisle, and I cannot help but take a little jab at them, our Republican friends control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. Why can they not control spending? And will this bill make a difference?

I ask that question because there is a particular irony about this bill. This is a budget enforcement bill, but there is no budget to enforce. For the first time since 1974 when the Budget Act was first adopted, the party that controls both branches of the government, the Congress and the White House, is unable to get its act together and pass a budget. And now they propose new rules to the budget process if they cannot comply with the rules we have got.

This bill before us is hardly a consensus bill. There is a lot of dissension about it even as it comes to the floor. When it was filed, 28 amendments were filed with the Committee on Rules to change it. All but one of those amendments, which is my amendment, focused solely on spending as the source, the cause of the deficit that we are incurring today. We are supposed to have a deficit this year of over $521 billion. The prognosis has gotten a bit better, but it looks like it will be at least 430 to $450 billion, 1 year, a half trillion dollars. Only my substitute deals with the other side of the problem, and that is revenues.

Two rules of all the rules we will see today, two rules that stood the test of time, they have worked. They have helped us wipe out deficits. They did in the 1990s. One rule caps discretionary spending at fixed levels over the next 5 years. That was the rule that we put in effect in 1990, extended in 1993, and again in 1997; and it helped us balance the budget for the first time in 40 years. The other rule is what we call the pay-as-you-go rule, which requires us to pay as we go, that is, to offset new tax cuts and new entitlement increases by new revenues or by equal spending cuts so that they do not add to the deficit, pay-as-you-go, discretionary spending caps.

As I said, the base bill and all the amendments except mine focus entirely on spending and not at all on tax cuts as the source of the problem. Yet if we look at the period 2002 through 2011, the 10-year period that covers the first 4 years of the Bush administration, $2.3 trillion of our total fiscal reversal during that period has been caused by substantial tax cuts and related debt service; and that revenue deficit grows as tax cuts that expire are renewed and new tax cuts are adopted, as the Bush administration proposes and pushes for more.

This bill promises deficit reduction; but it ignores the elephant in the room, one of the chief causes now and well into the future, and that is the deficit in revenues.

Do we have a problem? You bet we have a problem. In the last 3 years of the Clinton administration, I remind everybody, we ran surpluses for the first time in 30 to 40 years. We paid off $400 billion in debt. In the first 4 years of the Bush administration, Congress has had to raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt three times, three times in 4 years, to accommodate President Bush's budget. Congress raised the ceiling by $450 billion in 2002; by $984 billion in 2003; and shortly, the process is already under way here, by $650 billion this year. In all of the last 4 years by $2.1 trillion in order to accommodate Mr. Bush's fiscal policy.

And these increases in the statutory debt ceiling are by no means over. They are part of a series. The Congressional Budget Office told us last March, when they examined the President's budget, that if we implemented, if we enacted that budget, the President's budget, we would have to raise the debt ceiling to $13.5 trillion in the year 2014. Not my number. It is the number of the Congressional Budget Office, which is a neutral, nonpartisan arm of the Congress.

So we have a problem; but this bill, unfortunately, does not deal with it. It takes off in pursuit of red herrings and Draconian solutions that will not work, if they were ever enacted; and I doubt they will be enacted. It trots out almost every budget process idea that has ever been thought of, but the two that have worked, the two rules that have worked so well that, as I said, we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998.

One is a double-edge PAYGO rule that requires both tax cuts and entitlement increases to be deficit neutral; and the other is discretionary spending caps over 5 years. They do not work unless you extend them out for some period of time. The caps in the base bill only go out for 2 years and are set to boot at unrealistically low levels. They are lower than the President's request, yet they provide more for transportation. I think the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will tell you if he talks about the appropriations bind he is in right now, he cannot take much more reduction in the allocation of discretionary spending than we have already given him.

So we have got here a set of proposals that simply do not address the problem at hand, which is a substantial problem, except for one particular provision. All I am calling for and all I would recommend the House would do, but it would be a good day's work if we did it, is go back and reinstate the PAYGO rule, which worked so well in the 1990s; reinstate the 5-year spending caps, which worked so well in the 1990s; and then we can get to work on balancing the budget.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 seconds it the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 seconds to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) to respond.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds to remind the gentleman that we have 1.3 million fewer jobs today than we had on March 1, 2001 at the beginning of the Bush administration. First amendment, first recession since the end of the Second World War with that result.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

(Mr. PRICE of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

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

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

(Mrs. CAPPS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of our time, 1\1/2\ minutes, to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, like a lot of Members, many of the provisions offered here are matters of first impression. I have not seen this bill before, so I would like to ask either of the cosponsors a question about a critical provision of the bill for their clarification.

It is my understanding that this amendment would require that after each commission completes its review of an agency every 12 years, that agency would be abolished automatically, would be extinguished unless, within a year, Congress reauthorized the agency. Is that correct? Am I reading it correctly?

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

You would have automatic abolition of an agency? It would simply sunset?

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I see the merit in having some sort of conscious, affirmative periodic review of the huge morass of agencies we have in the Federal Government; but I have some concern here that if a President disagreed with the Congress, you could have 289 Members of the House and 66 Members of the Senate who thought this agency should be reestablished, but the President could veto the bill that would reauthorize it; and, therefore, it would not come back into existence.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment, if adopted, would reduce the budget process to one page. And while the budget process has its flaws and has not worked well, it has certain advantages to it. First of all, it gives the House one of the few opportunities we have to make a judgment among competing priorities: how much money we will spend for education, versus how much money we will spend for housing, versus how much we will spend for defense.

Secondly, it gives us some kind of central mechanism where everybody can make a decision about whether or not we want to increase taxes and decrease taxes, and expedite the process for doing so by way of reconciliation. Or we may feel it is necessary that we reduce entitlement spending.

The committees of jurisdiction of those particular programs do not normally cotton to the idea of taking a cut out of the entitlement which falls under their jurisdiction. Once again, the reconciliation process in the budget helps us accomplish those ends.

And then, finally, one of the problems that I have, and I have served here 20 years, and I think many other Members would confess they have it too, is that everything we do is so broken up into so many different parcels and pieces that it is hard to get a picture of the whole. The budget resolution at least gives us a picture of the whole. It helps us keep a tab on spending, and it also allows us to know whether or not aggregate spending estimates and aggregate revenue estimates are accurate.

If you reduce spending to one total for discretionary spending, for example, you can claim that spending can be shrunk. But unless you have 20 different functions to show how that shrinkage will take place, how those reductions would be achieved and affected, then nobody can judge whether or not, or will not be able to judge as well whether or not, that spending reduction, which you are claiming is reasonable and pragmatic and achievable, is indeed that.

If you have to break it up into 20 different functions, it is one way the House gets together early in a session, expresses its priorities about those different functions; but it is also a way that we can tell whether or not that is realistic. On the other hand, if individual functions, whether it is defense or housing or health care or whatever, are understated well before this year's level, we may say that is not politically realistic, or that is not something I would like to see us do. And the budget resolution gives us an opportunity to vote on that as a House, one of the rare opportunities we get to express ourselves collectively.

That is why I would strenuously oppose the notion of reducing the budget process to this summary kind of process.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to simply say again, how do we know if the spending amounts that are provided for in the budget resolution in the aggregate are reasonable or attainable unless you break it down into their component parts and can see what is provided for defense and nondefense programs from entitlements and for discretionary programs alike?

This is not a good idea. It is a bad idea. It decimates the budget process, and I hope the House will reject it.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I would simply say if the object of what we are doing tonight is to try to put some starch into the budget process, put some structure into it so we can get our hands around spending, get our hands around revenues, this is the opposite direction we should go.

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

Mr. Chairman, once again, if we want to make the budget process opaque, more opaque, less transparent, then this will be the way to do it, but if you think we need more visibility, the House should assert more control, then we should have the kind of numbers we need to make honest judgments about the budget. We should stick at least with the process we have got. It is flawed, but this would be a travesty. This would destroy the budget process as it has existed since 1974.

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

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

I wish there were some procedure in the House where we could give a hand signal or maybe use a code word and incorporate by reference all of our comments previously made on the same subject. I have to repeat myself because this amendment is, to some extent, the same as the amendment previously offered. This amendment would eliminate the requirement that the annual budget resolution include 20 budget functions. Once again, this is one of the opportunities we have as a House collectively, all of us, to have a debate in-depth about our priorities, whether we want to spend more for education or whether we need to spend more for defense or highways, priorities that are big functions of our budget. It takes away that opportunity. It also takes away our perception into the budget to see whether or not it is adequate to provide for the many things we want to do.

Secondly, as I have said, there are a lot of centrifugal forces in this House. There is a lot of fragmentation of what we do. It is very hard in this House and in the Congress to keep a picture of the whole, of what is happening altogether. The budget resolution gives us the ability to keep the puzzle kind of together, so we can get a perception into what is happening altogether. This particular budget resolution would not even require that discretionary spending allocations be split between defense and nondefense.

It would simply call for a total of all new budget authority and outlays. So the House would forgo the opportunity to say we want to do more for defense while we are going to do less for nondefense in order to pay for the additional commitment to defense. It calls for an aggregate statement of revenues, but nothing with respect to the House's expression to the Committee on Ways and Means as to what those revenues might be, no reconciliation instructions, so a key function of the Committee on the Budget, a key means of exerting discipline and control in the institution, would be lost, and then a simple statement of the surplus or deficit.

To me this is letting the reins go, giving up what little control and structure we have got, what little ability we have got to keep a picture of the whole composed at all times. I think it is a bad idea.

If we want to do away with the budget resolution, let us just repeal it altogether because what this leaves in place is practically useless.

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

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

I am just suggesting to my good friend and someone for whom I have great respect that he gives so much flexibility to it that it is limp when we get through with it. There is nothing left. It is a process without any teeth, without any structure, without any starch to it. It is almost meaningless. It is the last rites for the budget process. If we are going to do this we may as well just not do it at all.

A couple of speakers have noted that the functions that we designate in the budget resolution do not correspond to the 302(b) allocation made by the members of the Committee on Appropriations. That is true. That is an old, old compromise. If we dared back away from that compromise, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) would be on his feet, I am sure, protesting vigorously that usurpation of their authority on the Committee on Appropriations. But it is an opportunity.

When the Committee on the Budget and one party or the other party wants to propose new initiatives in certain areas, it might be education, it might be NIH in health care, it might be defense, it gives us an opportunity to make that proposal, to show what the consequences are for the bottom line and for trade-offs against other programmatic areas and then allows us to have a debate on that subject on the House floor.

These aggregate numbers do not signify anything. They do not really tell you what is going to be cut and what is going to be increased, and that is the problem I have. We do not get the process started with that sort of message and direction that the budget resolution now gives to the process and the opportunity it gives to the House as a whole to make a statement of priorities and have something of a debate on programmatic priorities for the next 1 to 5 fiscal years.

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

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

This would be making a distinction between defense and nondefense spending. This gives you one big aggregate for all discretionary spending. That is how far back it takes us and how little definition it leaves to what we end up doing. We come up with three or four big numbers and that is the end of the budget. The gentleman is suggesting we could do something much more elaborate, but this would be the only

statutory prerogative we would have which would mean that pretty soon we would probably not be doing any function allocations at all. It would not have any statutory basis. I am not saying they get great deference from the Committee on Appropriations today, but once we reduce the budget process to this, I doubt the Committee on the Budget would get any deference from the appropriators.

I yield to the gentleman from Delaware.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this bill would set an arbitrary cap on some of the most important spending in the Federal budget, the spending that supports Medicare, on which millions depend for their health care; the spending that supports Medicaid. All kinds of spending falls under the rubric of category of direct spending or mandatory spending, including debt service, the interest we pay on our national debt. So we fix a level that corresponds to the existing level of expenditure, and then every year it increases.

The gentleman does allow for the spending level to increase with the rate of inflation measured by the CPI. As everyone in this room knows, the cost of health care every year, for as long as I have known it, goes up substantially more than the consumer price index so that over time in holding Medicare to no more than the rate of growth of the CPI, while the rest of health care spending is going up at a substantially higher rate, this is going to erode away spending authority for Medicare. It is going to result in automatic cuts in Medicare and other programs, affected programs. If the cuts are not taken out of Medicare, they will have to come all the more out of other programs.

Secondly, since debt service, the interest we pay on the national debt, is included, we could have this anomaly: we could have a huge tax cut that would result in a substantial deficit, requiring us to borrow large sums of money. Interest on the principal for the additional debt would go up, and that increment over and above the entitlement cap would have to be taken out of other spending programs like the Medicaid or children's health insurance or TRICARE for Life, trade adjustment assistance. All of these programs fall under that category and would be subject to automatic cuts if we had any anomalous action like that.

So this is not a good idea. Certainly these are not programs we want to put in that kind of jeopardy. We would like to exercise some control over their growth, and we have from time to time in the past voted to reduce rates of expenditure to curb the growth in Medicare and Medicaid and these other programs. But to do it automatically, to do it mindlessly, to do it with a meat cleaver is not the way to go on these programs on which so many people depend.

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

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

In response to the gentleman's statement, it is still my understanding that child care, direct student loans, farm price supports, TRICARE for Life, military health care benefits, and trade adjustment assistance, among other things, would be subject to these automatic cuts. If there was some sort of growth over and above the cap that he has imposed, all of these things would get whacked unless Congress somehow intervened and saved them from being cut by administering cuts elsewhere in the budget.

It is not a good idea. It is not a workable idea. And I continue to oppose the amendment.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, the caps that are being proposed here could create shortfalls of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, triggering huge cuts. And let me tell the Members the programs that would be cut: veterans compensation, veterans pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, children's health insurance, childcare, direct student loans, farm

price supports, TRICARE for Life, military benefits, and trade adjustment assistance among others.

This is not a good plan. We do not need to put those in jeopardy of automatic cuts, and I oppose the amendment and urge others to do so also.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, this particular amendment could have a perverse and unintended result, and that is it could lower, lessen the incentive for Congress to get its work done, knowing that if we could not come together and pass appropriation bills, all 13 of them, if we could not get them on the President's desk in time, why, it would be automatic. This continuing resolution would just automatically kick into effect.

Anyone bent upon sort of disrupting the process and preventing an appropriations bill that he thought was maybe too much or maybe too little could manipulate this result, manipulate the situation if this rule were in place. So I do not think it helps the process at all.

I think when we have to pass a continuing resolution, it is a bit embarrassing that we have to get up and say to the country and the public, as well as the President, we have not gotten our work done yet, so keep on spending money at the existing level. It gives us a strong incentive to go ahead and finally come to those final compromises that help us close the appropriations process.

So this would probably complicate, prolong the process, and lead to situations where we did not even pass appropriation bills because there would be an automatic reversion to the prior year's spending level.

It is not a good idea. It has been debated before, debated more thoroughly than it has been debated tonight, and there is a good reason it has never become law, it is not a workable or viable idea.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, the most important job of the House Committee on the Budget which I have the honor of being the Chair is really twofold. First is to put together and pass in the House a responsible, realistic blueprint to guide the spending and revenue decisions for the Federal Government. We did that. We completed a budget over a month ago when this Chamber adopted the conference report for the budget for fiscal year 2005. Getting a budget is difficult enough. Now comes the second part of the job and that is to ensure that you stick to it. Getting the budget means that you have been able to get a majority of Members to agree on the levels for spending, on the levels for revenues and to bring together those very different ideas because, trust me, there is no such thing as a perfect budget by any stretch of the imagination. My good friend from Florida reminds me of that every once in a while.

But we do get a document that tries to mold and shape the hopes and

dreams and the budget priorities for the Nation in a document, and then we work to stick to it.

Since the gentleman from Florida came on the floor, the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, let me say something about the House and our ability to stick to that plan. We have passed budgets in years past that have been difficult. We have dealt with terrorist attacks. We have dealt with a downturn in the economy. We have dealt with the need to borrow resources to deal with emergencies we never managed. We had to deal with new priorities no one had ever heard of, new Departments like Homeland Security; and new initiatives such as a global war on terrorism, a war in Iraq, and a war in Afghanistan. And I have to tell the Members that in each one of those turns, committees have worked together in order to accomplish that. There is no doubt that once in a while committees will have difficulty coming to agreement on certain priorities and ideas; but once we do it, there is general agreement and effort to stick to it. And when we talk about sticking to it, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and his committee have done an excellent job of sticking to it.

We have increased spending over the last number of years at a rate that has been unprecedented, in many respects because we have had unprecedented need, particularly in homeland security, national defense, intelligence, and emergencies that we have had to deal with. But even the nondefense or nonsecurity accounts have increased at an alarming rate, twice the rate of inflation. And so it is no wonder that Members will come to the floor from time to time, we saw that debate earlier today, and say, look, spending is out of control.

Unfortunately, we often focus far too much attention and energy on just what we call the discretionary appropriation accounts, the 13 bills that the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations has to shepherd not only through the House floor but also through the Senate and to final passage. That process has been difficult. We are behind in that process, and I have no doubt the chairman will remind me that having this discussion probably puts us even further behind.

But we are having this debate, nonetheless, because once we have a budget, we also want to make sure we stick to it. And that is why an enforcement bill has come to the floor.

I will definitely report to my colleagues that I would much rather have this debate after the other body had passed the conference report, but they are tied in knots over there across the rotunda on the other side of the Capitol. Politics, Presidential elections, all sorts of things are tying up all sorts of items in the other body, going to make it very difficult for us to pass budgets, appropriations, get judges confirmed, all sorts of a myriad of issues that make that difficult.

As a result of having some difficulty in spending and having difficulty in getting a budget through the other body, the third item which I want to bring up is huge increases in what we call mandatory spending through our Federal Government. Mandatory spending, as most of my colleagues know, are those spending initiatives which are on auto pilot, meaning we have passed a law to fund a program, and unless we change the law, the funding continues. Medicare is probably one of the best examples of that. We just had a huge change in Medicare to provide a first-ever prescription drug benefit for seniors. It costs a lot of money, though, and that has grown much faster as a result than even many of the discretionary accounts.

So as a result, there are Members who come to the floor frustrated by the increases in spending, frustrated because there are times when the budget is not followed, and thinking that if we change the process on how we achieve the budget or if we change the process on how we discuss appropriation bills, that will solve everything. And I am part of that camp from time to time.

But I must remind all of us before we start this debate that when everything is said and done here today, it still comes down to how we vote. One can blame the process. One can blame the budget. One can blame the Committee on Appropriations. One can blame individual Members. One can blame past administrations. One can blame current administrations. But no matter what one blames, they had better look in the mirror today before they come down here to vote on anything and realize that spending increases when Members vote to increase spending.

And already the appropriation bills that we have seen cross this floor have had huge majorities, huge majorities, for very valid increases, in defense and intelligence, other issues that have come before our body. Why? Because the need is there. So those Members who come to the floor today and say let us blame the process or let us blame the procedure or let us blame another committee also need to take their fair share of the responsibility for how the process runs.

I believe that we need discipline, and we need enforcement of a budget once we get it. That requires what we used to have in this body, and that is caps in PAYGO. Caps in PAYGO, statutory caps in PAYGO, I believe, are necessary because it gives the force of law to what we have done. It makes sure that all three entities, the President; the Senate, the other body; and the House, are all together when the discussion occurs on spending, when the discussion occurs on taxes, when the discussion occurs on mandatory or entitlement increases. It ensures that everybody is there because we are all in this together. We cannot do one without the other. We cannot say it is only the Congress's prerogative because the President has to sign the check, he has got to sign the bill if, in fact, that is what he agrees to.

But it starts here in a process called the budget, called the appropriations process, and called the authorization process. So in order for us to deal with this, we are asking that the body today consider capping spending at the rate we just passed in the budget resolution, and just for 2 years, do not bind another Congress, just for these 2 years, and to also for really the first time address mandatory spending and its out-of-control nature by applying what we used to apply and that is pay-as-you-go to entitlements or mandatory spending. We believe this will help us. It will not be the be all and end all because there are still emergencies; there are still other ways that Congress spends money outside of that process. But this is one of the ways that we found in the 1990s to help ensure that spending control could occur.

Members are going to come to the floor with different opinions, and I respect those opinions. There is no question that people have a variety of ideas on how we should do this. But I would ask each and every one of them to remember that this is about each and every one of us, as Members, what our priorities are and how we vote. We cannot give that to another process. Nothing we do here today given to another process will, in and of itself, stop the madness of increases in spending that have been what many Members believe are out of control. The only way, when everything is said and done, is to cast our vote to control spending, and that is done in the individual processes of the bills that we consider here on the floor.

So we believe this is a work product worth consideration. There will be amendments to consider changes in the budget process and the appropriations process in order to help get a handle on spending concerns and on mandatory spending. But as I say, when everything is said and done, we have got to have a budget, we have got to enforce it, and we have got to vote that way on each and every bill in order for spending to be controlled.

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

Announcement by the Chairman Pro Tempore

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman from Ohio 10 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, for the purpose of a colloquy.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the chairman is correct. This will, in no way, limit the decision of the conferees for H.R. 3550, the level of highway and transit firewalls. It will be determined consistent with the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution and the contingency procedure contained therein in the conference report on H.R. 3550.

In either case, this is consistent with the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution, and it allows not as a ceiling but a floor to that conference report.

Mr. Chairman, I support the gentleman's amendment.

More than anything else, I just want to make an observation: There has been a lot of coming to the floor and saying the budget process is broken. Part of the reason that this amendment is being offered is because it is the appropriations process that cannot get done on time.

We have had so many years when appropriations do not get done on time, and, because of that, the threat hangs over for government shutdown. It is the reason why we are looking, grappling for a way to make sure that does not happen. But it is because of the appropriations process that with the budget process and other processes around here have some challenges.

So do not come down and just talk about the budget. It is also the appropriations process that has challenges.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

This is an important debate, Mr. Speaker, so I hope that Members are paying attention. The real power of the purse rests with us here, in the people's House. I am proud of what we did through most of the 1990s. When we came here, when I was elected in 1994 and came here in the spring of 1995, I remember we had some meetings with some of the economists and people from the Congressional Budget Office. And we have to go back and remember what was happening in America. We were running deficits every year of $250 billion and more, and we can all point fingers and blame this and blame that; but at the end of the day, we were spending more than the taxpayers were sending in, and America wanted us to do something about this.

At one of the meetings we were at, we had some economists saying, if Congress does not get serious about balancing the Federal budget, that by the time my children got to be my age they would be paying an effective tax rate to the Federal Government of over 80 percent, just to pay the interest on the national debt.

Now, I come from a rural district, and I think most folks from rural communities understand this, because it really has been part of the rural ethic, particularly those who are farm families, to pay off the mortgage and leave the kids the farm. What we have been doing is we were literally selling the farm and leaving our kids the mortgage. We knew that it was not just bad public policy; it was fundamentally immoral.

So what we did is we began to limit the growth in Federal spending, and I am proud to report that from 1995 until the year 2000, the Federal budget was growing at a slower rate than the average family budget. That, combined with a fairly strong economy, we literally went from a $250 billion shortfall every year to a $250 billion surplus.

In fact, just 3 years ago, the Congressional Budget Office told us that we could look forward to surpluses in the Federal Treasury over the next 10 years of $5.4 trillion. Now, that same Congressional Budget Office today is telling us that we can look forward to deficits of $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The only thing we can really say about the Congressional Budget Office's forecasts is that they are both wrong.

What we do know that is right is that over the last several years we have allowed Federal spending to grow at a rate double what it grew through most of the 1990s. And part of the reason that happened is we allowed some of the budgetary rules to expire, the things that control the growth in Federal spending.

There was a farmer who told me several years ago, we were talking about the deficit, and he said, you know, the problem with you guys in Washington

is you do not quite get it. The problem is not that we are not sending enough money to Washington. The problem is you spend it faster than we send it in. He probably expressed it more accurately and more simply than any of us would like to admit.

What we want to do today, and this is an important event and these are important votes, we want to bring back some of the rules that controlled Congress with regard to spending. One of them is PAYGO. That means if you want to have a new program, you have to figure out a way to pay for it. And I do not think that is too much to ask. The other is setting up some spending caps.

Let me give some ideas why I think that is important. Over the last several years, we have passed some pretty good budgets, some very tough budgets here in the House of Representatives. Back in fiscal year 2002, for example, our budget resolution which we passed here in the House called for spending $661 billion in what we call discretionary spending. But by the time we were done negotiating with the Senate, we ended up spending $734.6 billion. Well, in the next year we said in the House budget resolution that we would agree to spend $759 billion in discretionary spending. But before the year was over, we actually spent $849 billion. Last year, our budget resolution called for spending $784.5 billion. But when all the numbers were in and the spending was done and the conference committees at last had concluded, the number actually was $873 billion.

Pogo was right. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

I think there was a certain amount of hubris that, well, we have done a pretty good job of balancing the budget over the 5- or 6-year period. We had actually paid down over a half trillion dollars of publicly held debt, and I think we began to think we did not need these budget rules any more. I am here to say that I think we were wrong, and we have to get back to some of those rules.

This is a very important debate. I support this rule. I know there will be people who will say, well, we did not get to offer our amendment, or this amendment was not made in order. But I think we are going to have a very vigorous debate over the next several hours on the rule and the bill. Mr. Speaker, I hope later I will have a chance to visit more about the rule and the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to some of the things that our colleague the gentleman from South Carolina has just said. Much of what he said, I do not disagree with. But there is something I think we need to clarify for all of the Members. Even if we had a balanced budget last year and this year, we would have to raise the debt ceiling. That is something I think it is hard for many Members and frankly I think most Americans. They wonder how in the world can that be. It is kind of a complicated thing to explain but even in a very strong economy with surpluses, we would probably have to raise the debt ceiling. The reason is this. When money comes into the Social Security trust fund, there are only two things they can do. They can either pay benefits or they can buy government bonds. When they buy government bonds they in effect drive up the debt. I know that is hard for people to understand, so yes, we are going to have to raise the debt ceiling, but even if we were balancing the budget we would have to do that.

I would also like to at least remind Members that things did change a lot in this country on September 11, 2001. I think we all know that. We all have to be cognizant of that and it has changed the priorities of how we spend money. Is that an excuse to allow other Federal spending to be going up? No. And have we been a little too profligate with the Defense Department and homeland security? My opinion would be yes. We have allowed our emotions to get the better of us and we have just said, we will spend more money and maybe we will be safer. I am not sure that is the answer. I am not sure that having 50 guards at every airport entrance makes us all that much safer and that is an argument and a debate we should have.

The debate today is how much are we going to allow Federal spending to go up, and is there really a good reason to allow the Federal budget to grow at a rate twice the rate of the average family budget?

The numbers we were talking about, from 1995 until 2000, the Federal budget went up at an average rate of about 3.2 percent. Since that time, we have allowed the Federal budget to grow at a rate of 6.4 percent. That assumes that we will enforce the numbers that we passed in this year's House budget resolution and that is really what we are debating today; that is, it is one thing to pass a budget, it is another thing to make certain that we enforce the budget.

There will be two great issues we are going to discuss today that I think are important. First of all, are we going to enforce the budgets that we pass here in the House of Representatives? We are the keepers of the public purse. I think we ought to enforce that budget. The second thing we are going to debate today is changing the process by which we derive a budget. The process today all leans towards more spending. In fact, I think the Wall Street Journal did a beautiful editorial last week which really underscored that point. Everything we do here, and frankly that is what we do, is we spend the public's money, but all of the rules today tend to make it easier to spend more money. What we want to do is level the rules so that at least we have a counterbalance to all of that pressure to spend more money.

I might just say this. We all have different reasons, and some say it is the tax cuts, but I would remind people that we cut taxes in almost every year during the 1990s, and we did it under PAYGO and spending cap rules. It can be done. We just have to find offsets for those. And we did. In fact, most of the supplemental spending bills that we passed we found offsets for those. It can be done. It means making some tough choices, but I always remind my colleagues, our constituents did not send us here just to make the easy choices. They sent us here to make tough choices. We are going to make some tough choices today in terms of whether we really mean what we say about holding the line on Federal spending and whether or not we are going to level the playing field in terms of the rules by which we make our budgets. This is an important debate.

The debate about raising the debt ceiling is clearly an important debate, but I think we have to be clear. Even if we had a balanced budget, because of the surpluses coming in in the Social Security trust fund, we would still have to raise the debt ceiling.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to some of the things that were just said.

First of all, I happen to believe that PAYGO rules ought to apply to tax cuts, too. But this is all about the politics of the possible, and we cannot get that done this year. So we can take this step this year, this day to begin to constrain Federal spending.

Let me also respond to something else. Our friends on the left cannot have it both ways. They cannot say, well, we need to invest in this program and that program and this program for people, and if we put more money into education, the argument is we will get it back ten- fold, but we do not want to pay any interest on that money. We cannot have it both ways. Fifty-five percent of what we will spend this year will be for what are called entitlement programs, and many of those entitlement programs were sold as investments in people. Now we are being told, but we get no return on that investment. This is just an expenditure, and it is lost forever.

So as we debate this, I know that people are going to come at this from different perspectives, but let us try to at least be honest with ourselves. We have a system right now, and the rules and the way the system works encourages more and more spending.

The debate today simply is about this: are we going to enforce the budgets that we pass here in the House and are we going to change the rules to give the taxpayers an even break? That is what the debate is about today. We can debate all of those other issues some other day. But we need support on both sides of the aisle to make certain that the American people understand that we are going to enforce the budgets we pass in the House.

We are the keepers of the public purse. We are going to enforce those budgets, and we are going to begin to amend the rules to make it more difficult to spend more than we take in.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, early this morning the Committee on Rules passed a lopsided rule packed with Republican amendments. It is shocking that of the 19 amendments made in order, only one Democrat amendment and one bipartisan amendment are in order. Senior Democrats were shut out, while the rule makes the amendments of junior Members in order on the Republican side. The rule provides for one-sided debate on H.R. 4663. The House will be allowed to discuss and vote on Republican amendments, but Democratic ideas and amendments have been virtually excluded in the important debate on budget process reform.

Mr. Speaker, the question before us is whether or not the current budget process creates a product that embodies our budget policies and our priorities. The Federal Government has gone from having historic surpluses of $5.26 trillion to having historic deficits of $2.3 trillion. If we are unsatisfied with a budget, are policies or the budget process to blame? Should the budget process enforcement mechanism be policy neutral or should the process force or enable Congress to make policy decisions?

Earlier this spring, the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process of the Committee on Rules held a series of hearings on these questions. The message that came out of the hearings seemed to be, I thought, that the budget process is not at fault. Its structural flaws in the budget process did not produce Federal budgets with massive debt. Instead, the budgets are products of policy choices. The issue is not the mechanisms we employ. The real issue is that people are now unhappy with policy choices made over the last 3\1/2\ years. This concern is bubbling up as criticism over the budget process, turning process, not policy, into the villain.

Since the adoption of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, many reforms have been proposed and tried. Biannual budget, joint budget resolution, sequestration, caps on discretionary spending, caps on entitlement spending, pay-as-you-go requirements, constitutional amendments, and other ideas were part of previous discussions, and part, again, of the current budget reform debate. We all know that caps on discretionary spending and PAYGO requirements on mandatory spending and tax cuts, which is an important point, worked well in the 1990s.

The underlying legislation is fatally flawed in that it leaves future tax cuts unchecked and applies PAYGO only to mandatory spending. The historic deficits are in large part the product of the tax cuts, which primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. The Congressional Budget Office has said that the $2.3 trillion deficit has been caused by the tax cuts and the associated debt services.

During the second subcommittee hearing, budget expert Stan Collender offered this advice: enacting a new budget process without first developing the consensus necessary to make it work will be perpetuating a political hoax. You will be promising results the process cannot possibly deliver, allowing the process to be used to justify policy changes that will not otherwise seem appropriate and allowing policymakers to hide behind both procedural votes that, at best, will be confusing and, at worst, completely indecipherable.

The body is sharply divided, Mr. Speaker; and there is no consensus on budget reform. This debate is not an academic exercise. Changes to the process will affect millions of Americans. Caps on mandatory spending will dramatically choke vital programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and student loans. I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule so that all ideas, not just the majority suggestions, may be considered and debated.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), who is the ranking member on the Committee on the Budget.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

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

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to vote on an important substitute amendment that was not allowed under the rule.

This substitute by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson), the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill), the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) would reinstate for 2 years the provisions of the Budget Enforcement Act.

It also provides for pay-as-you-go rules for legislation that increases the deficit, sets discretionary spending limits, and calls for a separate vote to consider legislation that would increase those discretionary spending limits or waive the PAYGO requirement.

It is certainly worthy of discussion and a vote in this debate on the House budget process. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership blocked this amendment, and it was voted down in the Committee on Rules early this morning on a straight party-line vote.

When asked why so few or no Democrat amendments were allowed, the Chair of the Committee on Rules said, Because we are the majority.

Mr. Speaker, there are few Members in this House who have worked as hard and long to improve the budget process and control the deficit, as has the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm); yet he was denied an opportunity after his thoughtful and responsible substitute. Three Republican substitutes were made in order under the rule and 15 other amendments, but the amendment of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) was arbitrarily denied.

It seems that every time we get on the floor to do a rule, the other side talks about how fair and balanced their rule is. Well, there is nothing fair and balanced about shutting out of the budget reform debate one of the House's experts on this matter. If one does not support the Stenholm substitute, one does not have to vote for it, but at least let it come before the House for a debate in an up-or-down vote.

I urge Members on both sides of the aisle to vote ``no'' on the previous question. Let me make it clear that a ``no'' vote will not stop the House from taking up the Spending Control Act and will not prevent any of the amendments made in order by the rule from being offered. However, a ``yes'' vote will preclude the House from consideration of the Stenholm substitute, a substitute that would add greatly to this process.

So do the right thing, please vote ``no'' on the previous question. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment into the Congressional Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, again, vote ``no'' on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Chairman, let me just suggest to the gentleman from Maryland who raised the question about 1997, there is a big difference between imposing PAYGO on the revenue side in 1997 versus doing so today, and the big difference is doing it in 1997 did not result necessarily in a big tax increase. Doing it today, as the minority party would like to do, would absolutely result in a huge tax increase because of the provisions in the Senate. That is a big difference. A huge tax increase versus not having a huge tax increase is a big difference.

Let me just say, I congratulate our chairman and the members of the committee who got this bill to this point on the floor. It is so important that we find a way to control and limit the growth in spending for a number of reasons, as this bill does, but I think that one of the main reasons is it is just so fundamentally important and incumbent upon us to be adopting policies that allow the American people to maximize economic growth and prosperity, opportunity for themselves, for their wages to grow and their standard of living to improve. That is what we ought to be all about.

Well, the empirical evidence is very clear that one of the greatest threats to that kind of prosperity comes from excessive government intervention in the economy. The government intervenes and threatens economic growth in lots of ways, but the two biggest ways that the government does that is through excessive government spending and excessive taxes.

On the spending side, I think we ought to acknowledge that on the margin, excessive growth spending results in less economic growth. That is what happens. It is because the government essentially misallocates capital.

Let us face it. When we are here in Washington spending money, what we are doing is allocating capital based on political needs. Members of Congress tend to vote to spend money on that which they think will help them get reelected. That does not make us bad people. That is the natural tendency of a represented body. That is what governments do. But what it means, this political self-preservation, what it ends up meaning is that the excess spending of other people's money, by the way, might maximize incumbent retention, but it certainly does not maximize economic growth. And I think that is what we ought to be all about here.

In fact, the tendency is forever more government spending. We see that now we are spending over 20 percent of GDP; whereas, just 3 years ago it was only 18 percent. We have got larger deficits now. The government is growing faster than the economy. All the things point in the same direction. We need some limits on spending growth. That is what this is all about.

Let us keep in mind that the caps that we have on discretionary spending in this bill, the PAYGO provision that we have on mandatory spending, there is no spending cuts. Nothing is cut. Frankly, I would like to cut some spending. I wish there were, but there is not.

And we all know that there is no guarantee that the caps will even hold. If we could get them passed and signed into law, you know, Congress usually has a way of busting the caps, but what they do and the important role that they can play is they help on the margin to provide a break on the rate of growth of spending, and that is what is so important.

I mentioned the other big way in which government intervention harms economic growth, and that is excessive taxes. And there is just no question. The evidence is overwhelming. And the good news is that when we have taken the measures of lowering the tax burden as we did, if we can make those tax cuts permanent, we can continue to enjoy the tremendous economic growth that is underway right now.

So I urge my colleagues to reject the Democratic substitute and support this underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time, and I commend him for this amendment.

If we are serious about getting spending under control, we simply have to address the mandatory side. It is as simple as that. In 1963 mandatory spending was 25 percent of the Federal budget. Today it is over 60 percent; and it is on its way up in absolute terms, as a percentage term. It is growing faster than any reasonable measure. And to allow, as this amendment does, for it to grow at the sum of the rate of growth of the population and inflation, allows us to maintain the level of benefits. It just puts a break on the out-of-control spending.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, this is, I think, just a matter of responsible government. This is a very good amendment. It is responsible because the status quo is not. It is not responsible to have the threat of a government shutdown looming over this process. It is not responsible to have the American people wondering whether or not government services are going to be suspended, whether or not important functions are going to be disrupted. That is what is irresponsible.

What is responsible is to say if we are unable to come to a resolution and pass a new appropriation bill, then we will, by an act of Congress, continue under the previously enacted appropriation bill.

Contrary to my good friend and a colleague I respect, the gentleman from Florida, I do not see any constitutional problem with this whatsoever. It still is an exercise in Congressional authority in establishing the level of appropriations, but it happens to do so at the previous year's level. There is nothing in the Constitution that says we have to change the level of spending from one year to the next, so I tend to disagree with that.

The other problem I have with the status quo and the reason that I like this amendment so much is that in the absence of an automatic continuing CR, let us face it, we know what happens. There is a big game of political chicken that happens.

If we do not have an agreement, there is a big tension, a big question about which side is going to get the blame if there is a government shutdown. If one side thinks there is political gain to be had from precipitating a shutdown, it has an incentive to precipitate one, to cause it. That goes back to the issue of responsible government. That is not the way we ought to be running this place. So that is a second thing.

Here is a third reason why I think this makes a lot of sense, and some of my colleagues do not like this reason. But the fact is sometimes we have operated for months on end with a continuing resolution, continuing spending at the previous year's level. And do you know what we discovered? No huge outcry. No great catastrophe. American society did not collapse, it was not the end of the world. We discovered that basically freezing spending at the previous year's level in many areas was no big deal.

Now, if you are interested in more spending, that is a problem. But if you are interested in getting spending under control, this is a very good amendment, and I urge my colleagues to support it.