Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Indiana for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, there are so many issues that the Members of this House disagree upon, and I am talking about Members from the Democratic side disagreeing with the Members on the Republican side. Witness the bill that was just pulled by the majority leadership over the overtime regulation issue. And there are other issues that we disagree upon.

But, Mr. Speaker, there are many, many issues that we do agree upon, and I think what the American people want us to do is to isolate those issues that we can agree upon and then move forward with those particular issues.

I listened to my friend from Pennsylvania and my friend from Arizona earlier, whom I am not sure was reading the same motion to instruct that I have before me. But the motion to instruct that we have before us does two things, two things that I think every Member of this House would agree with, and certainly all of the American families would. There are three specific provisions. It extends the middle-income tax cut. Number one is the 10 percent tax bracket; two is the child tax credit; and, three, is the Marriage Penalty Relief Act. It extends those.

Now, my friend from Pennsylvania voted for those, but he voted earlier to end them, to sunset them, after 4 years. Now we face that sunset. We are asking that they be extended. That is the first part.

The second part says do not increase the size of the Federal budget deficit. These are two things we can agree upon.

Extend the tax cuts; that is, the 10 percent bracket, the child tax credit and, of course, the marriage penalty relief. Those are provisions which will affect every middle-income family in a positive way. Those are provisions which will, in the long run, increase the size of the middle class of America, and any good economic policy plan put in place by anyone should include provisions which try to increase the size of the middle class.

So, Mr. Speaker, we should not be confused by all the rhetoric here about raising taxes. This motion to instruct extends tax cuts. I would remind us to focus on those things again: The 10 percent tax bracket, the child tax credit and the marriage penalty relief, and doing it without increasing the size of the Federal budget deficit.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be here today to join my Blue Dog colleagues who have preceded me, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Indiana

(Mr. Hill), the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner), the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry), and also the gentlewoman from South Dakota (Ms. Herseth) who will follow.

We have worked together on this fiscal responsibility and budget issues. Mr. Speaker, I listened to what the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) said, and I just have the thought that most American families when they sit down to look at their finances and they consider that they have got a food bill and rent or a house payment, utilities, car payments, they have got to send their kids to school, they know that at the end of the day, at the end of the month, at the end of the year, they have to have had enough revenue come in to meet those expenses. This is a very simple principle. You have to have enough revenue coming in to meet your expenses.

I like to look at the history of this whole deficit situation, and let us just go back about 12 years. Mr. Speaker, in 1992 this Congress, this government was spending $290 billion more than it took in. In other words, there was an annual deficit of $290 billion. That was the largest at that time in the history of the Nation. It was stagnating the economy. The interest rates were higher than they should have been. The American people understood this because it was affecting them on a daily basis, and they spoke through the ballot box in 1992.

Starting in 1993 and for the next 5 years, the deficit went down every year. In 1998, for the first time since 1969, the Federal Government had a surplus. In 1998, for the first time in almost 30 years, the Federal Government had a surplus. Two years later, our Federal Government, for the first time since the 1950s, did not have to borrow from the Social Security fund to cover its yearly operating expenses. That was only 4 short years ago in fiscal year 2000. Since then, Mr. Speaker, this government has borrowed $1.7 trillion to pay its bills. We have put that into the economy.

We hear rhetoric every day about how the economy is improving. Mr. Speaker, if you cannot improve this economy by borrowing, the government borrowing $1.7 trillion and pumping it into the economy, I feel for you; $670 billion was borrowed during that same 3-year period from the trust funds, like Social Security. And as we heard the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) say, we borrowed over a trillion dollars from the public, mostly, about 70 percent of it coming from foreign countries like China and Japan.

Mr. Speaker, our government with respect to our budget and fiscal responsibility is headed in the wrong direction under the current leadership.

Let me say that again. The government and the budget, with regard to fiscal responsibility, is heading in the wrong direction under the current leadership.

This Congress and this administration have no discipline when it comes to fiscal responsibility. We are spending at record levels. It is absolutely running out of control, while there is no thought given to how we responsibly pay for that spending, and we are simply sending the bill to the children and the grandchildren. We will pay for it in our lifetime, and we will pay for it soon as we see those bills come due.

Mr. Speaker, the group that I work with, the Blue Dogs, have worked hard to return some sanity to the budgeting process. Just like any responsible American family that has to balance their own family budget or business budget, we believe that it is time for the Federal Government, the Congress, to dust off the deficit reduction tools that we used in the 1990s to get the budget under control.

We have heard them talk about this here tonight. We heard the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) talk about them. Strong PAYGO rules, that means pay-as-you-go. When you find yourselves in a hole, that is what you do.

Enforceable spending caps, that was an important component of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. We put caps in place for spending and we lived by it.

Most important of all and a simple step that this Congress and administration ought to be able to do is to enact a budget resolution that the House and Senate can use as a blueprint to establish its priorities and identify the resources to pay for those priorities.

Mr. Speaker, I think that pretty soon the American people will realize that annual deficit spending to the tune of a half a trillion dollars a year will come back to haunt us.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and unable to cast my vote on rollcall votes 620, 621, 622, 623, 624, 625, 626, 627, 628, 629, 630, 631, 632, 633. Had I been present I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall votes 620, 621, 622, 623, 624, 625, 626, 627, 631, 632, 633. In addition, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall votes 628, 629, and 630.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing this subject to the floor.

I think we all, as Americans, understand this prescription drug issue very well, and I think we understand the importance of Medicare to this Nation. I like to tell my constituents back home that since the advent of Medicare 40 years ago, there has been a significant decline in the level of folks below the level of poverty. Prior to the advent of Medicare, if you reached the age of 65 in this country, there was a greater than 50 percent chance that you would be below the poverty level. Today that figure is less than 10 percent. There is a dramatic drop in poverty in this country, and we think much of that can be credited to the successful Medicare and Social Security programs we have had in place.

I think everybody knows that we need a prescription drug component because of the changes in health care and technology in the last 30 to 40 years. We have to reform the Medicare program. We all understand that. It is absolutely going to break this country as we move into the retirement of the

baby boomers if we do not do something. This Congress, both sides of the aisle, have laid aside $400 billion to deal with this issue. I want to commend the leaders of this House, including the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) for his attempts to reform Medicare and bring those issues to the floor of the House and try to get a bill that we can get the President to sign.

The thing that I want to encourage, though, is that we have got to keep the provisions of the current Medicare system that work. One of the key components of the current Medicare system is that it is a defined benefit. When you reach eligibility age, everybody qualifies for it. I do not care what the situation is, if you live rural America, urban America, you qualify because it is a defined benefit, and everybody receives that. We have some Medicare+Choice-type programs within Medicare now that try to set up HMOs or insurance incentive programs to deliver prescription drugs to folks, and they do not work. They do not work in rural areas. My constituents do not get them because the insurance companies cannot make enough money on them, so they go to the larger communities, the urban communities, the big cities, where they can make money.

Mr. Speaker, I just would encourage us to keep those provisions that work, and one of them is the defined benefit, the fall-back provision which the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case) is stressing here.

The House bill fails to meet the needs of one-fourth of the Medicare beneficiaries of this country that live in rural areas. The Senate bill addresses this problem by establishing a guaranteed fall-back provision. Again, we need reform, but I would encourage the leadership and the conference committee to include the fall-back provision.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) has done an excellent job of outlining the process by which the administration has arrived at this proposal to outsource these archaeologists. I would like to remind Members that there are fewer than 100 archaeologists between Nebraska and Tallahassee that would be affected by this outsourcing. These archaeologists work with the help of volunteers, cooperative agreements, with universities and their own outsourcing to care for some 122 National Parks and 780 national landmarks in 22 States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

This amendment would prohibit any funds in the Interior bill from being used for a competitive sourcing study in the Midwest Archaeological Center in Nebraska or the Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee.

I think it is important to understand what the work of these centers are, and I will speak to the Tallahassee Center, since I know it best. This center is currently excavating an Indian burial mound at Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee while working around the graves of Civil War soldiers who were killed on the mound during the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 and buried on that spot.

The Southeast Center has also conducted archaeological excavations at the site of the Confederate Prison in Andersonville, Georgia, where they found new information on the architectural details and conditions at the prison.

This center has well over 30 years of archaeological experience and has been based on the campus of Florida State University since 1972. It shares a unique partnership with the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University where they share space, personnel, expertise and equipment. The center employs 26 permanent full-time personnel and a large host of part-time student appointments and other volunteers that boast some 300 years of combined archaeological experience. The center has completed over 200 projects since 1990, and the National Park Service recognizes these projects as cost-effective, timely, and of the highest quality.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Interior and Related Agencies.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I would conclude by saying that both of these centers are nonprofit-oriented, and they seek to do what is in the best interest of the public, not what is asked of them by some outside interest. These centers are understaffed and underfunded, but they make up for that through cooperative agreements with the universities that they are positioned at and also with a tremendous amount of volunteer work.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) and that he may control that time.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. I assume that the gentleman and Mr. Hill will keep track of the time, along with the Speaker.

I know that the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), my appropriator friend, has spoken about mandatory spending, which I think the American people know which is required spending by Congress unless there is a law change, and the gentleman very eloquently addressed that. Of course, that law could be changed by the majority party in the House and the Senate, which are Republicans, but they have chosen not to change that to bring in check some of this mandatory spending.

But let us talk about the discretionary spending side, because there have been some accusations made certainly by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) about the discretionary spending and how the real answer to solving this problem is to hold down discretionary spending. I do not think I could agree more, but I want to lay the facts on line.

Here are the facts in this chart. This chart starts in 1993 over on the left side with the blue bar graphs and ends up on the right side with the red bar graphs in 2003, a 10- or 11-year period. In 1993, we had a Democrat-controlled White House, Democrat-controlled Senate and House, and we see that discretionary spending, and these are raw numbers, raw numbers, went down 8.4 percent, 10.4, 11.2, .5. This is the year that we achieved the balanced budget agreement, working together. The Republicans had taken control of the House and the Senate in 1995. So then with achieving a balanced budget agreement, discretionary spending began to go up; still a Democrat administration, but a Republican-controlled House and Senate.

Here is what happened in 2001 when the new administration came in. Look at these numbers. These are the facts, Mr. Speaker. These are the raw numbers. Discretionary spending grew at a rate of 1.6 percent, I think, during this 8-, 9-year period. During this last 3-year period, I think that growth rate is in the neighborhood of 8 to 9 percent.

So I would say to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) that the old argument about the key is holding down spending, we agree with him. The problem is that since the Republicans have control of the White House, the House and the Senate, that the discretionary spending has began to skyrocket. So I think we ought to make sure that the public understands what the real numbers are here.

If we could, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner), would you like to jump in on that point?

If I might respond to my friend from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart), and, by the way, he and I served in the Florida legislative body for 15 years and he is my friend, I would say we are not here asking to have it both ways. We are here to set the record straight and show what the numbers are.

We are here so when someone gets up and says, oh, it was those liberals over

there that had the high spending numbers, we are here to show you that is not the case. In fact, quite the opposite was the case. The discretionary spending levels increased by an average of 1.6 percent for 8 years in the previous administration, and in this administration they have increased by 8-plus percent on an average basis.

I want to make one more point on the need to pay down the debt. I want to quote. It says: ``We also feel that we need to pay down the debt. We have a debt of $5.4 trillion, which costs the American families on average for a family of four about $2,000 a year. That is $2,000 for college tuition, for house payments, for a nice vacation, for a car, for whatever the need of the family is. Now it just goes to pay interest on the debt. It does not even pay down the principal.''

That was a statement by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) on March 3, 1999. Do you know what? I agree with the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) in that statement. That is the basis of the Blue Dog philosophy and theory, is that we ought to balance the budget and pay down the debt.

Mr. Speaker, I think the comments of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) comments were great, and I think there are some things that we can agree upon. The problem is, of course, that just us agreeing upon them does not make them happen. The majority party in the House and the Senate has to help make that happen. We cannot do it just because we agree upon it.

I will tell my colleagues that the basis of those agreements, I say to the gentleman from Michigan, I think are twofold. One is the chart I had up earlier. Or here is the statement here by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston). It says, I think we should preserve Social Security, we should protect it. We should put 100 percent of the surplus back where it belongs into Social Security. This was during the days of the lockbox vote, which the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) and others know a whole lot about. Probably the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz- Balart) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) know less because they were not here in the days when we were talking about the lockbox.

All of these guys, all of us guys voted for the lockbox, as you did. We would agree.

The other statement was one that we should pay down the debt. That is what Mr. Kingston said on March 3. We agree.

Now, the only thing we would ask is, you said those things, then let us figure out how to do them. And my Republican colleagues are in control, not us. Zero-based budgeting, a great idea, I say to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess). We cannot do that. Your party has to do it, as long as it is in the majority control of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I recall that in 1997 when the White House was controlled by a Democrat, and the Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, we sat down in a very thoughtful way, in a compromise way, everybody, and said, how do we do this? And we did it with spending caps, and we lived up to that.

So I yield.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) for his leadership in the Blue Dogs and his leadership on this important issue for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the question, have we lost our way? If the American people understood how this Congress and this administration were managing the United States Government's money, the American people's money, they would fire us all. It is absolutely unconscionable. We must have lost our way.

Let us go back in history a little bit.

Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago when the President proposed the tax cut that was put into place in 2001 of $1.34 trillion, we were looking at over the next 10 years from an economic forecast of about $5.6 trillion surplus over a 10-year period. The President claimed then that, even with these tax cuts, we could balance the budget and, even with the $1.34 trillion worth of tax cuts, we could pay off all of the publicly held debt by the year 2008.

Many of us opposed the bill, but there could be made a legitimate argument that if the economy, if it performed in a very positive way over the next 10-year period that things would have been all right. But things were not all right. The following year, as the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) said, Congress had to vote to increase the debt by $450 billion, that is billion with a ``B'', because of several factors, several things that came along.

Some of them were out of our control, such as the economic downturn and the attacks of September 11. But one thing that was under our control was the economic policy of this administration. All of those things contributed to the fact that now we had to go back a year after that $1.34 trillion tax cut and borrow $450 billion in additional money to run our government.

That $450 billion was supposed to get us through the next 2 years before we would have to go back to the well. That is what we were told then. Now, as we speak, let us fast forward to the present time, the House and the Senate are attempting to resolve their differences on another tax cut bill proposed by this administration which I think under his initial proposal was $726 billion. We have a House number of $550 billion, a Senate number of $350 billion, and so we are trying to resolve what that number should be.

I think we have lost our way, Mr. Speaker. Have we lost our sanity, all power of reason? As we debate how big the tax cut is going to be, the Senate is struggling with a debt limit increase, how they would do it, of $984 billion, almost $1 trillion, the largest debt ceiling increase in the history of this Nation.

These two events do not reconcile. They do not make any sense. No reasonable or prudent person would say you ought to do both. While you have to borrow $984 billion, you would go out and push through a tax cut of $500 billion or whatever.

Since 2001, Congress has been asked to increase the Federal debt limit by $1.43 trillion. The last 2 years, Congress has been asked to increase the debt limit ceiling of this Federal Government, asked the American taxpayer to borrow an additional $1.43 trillion to support this economic plan and run this government.

That plan so far, that economic plan, has consisted of two tax cuts that total $1.69 trillion, and we are asking the taxpayers to borrow and for their children to pay back in the future $1.43 trillion. I think we have lost our way.

We should be reasonable, and we should all come back to the table. It is time to take a deep breath and for the reasonable people of this body and this administration to sit down and start to work together. I think we ought to do three things:

Work together to make responsible fiscal policy, just like we did in 1997 when we did the Balanced Budget Act which got us into balance ultimately.

Secondly, we have to put our country back onto the path to a balanced budget. That is the only way in the long run that we can have strong economic growth, is when the consumer and the investor begin to have confidence that the United States Government is running their business in a fiscally responsible way.

That is the fiscally responsible path we should be on, instead of borrowing money to pay for our tax cuts.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to reiterate that if the American people truly understood what we are doing in managing our fiscal policy, they would fire all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I was not recorded on rollcall votes 146, 147, and 148. I was unavoidably detained and was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 146, 147, and 148.

Mr. Speaker, I was not recorded on rollcall votes 155, 156, 157 and 158. I was unavoidably detained and was not present to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 155, 156, and 158. I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote 157.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained on Tuesday May 6, 2003 and missed rollcall votes 159, 160, and 161. Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 159, 160, and 161.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall votes 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, and 126 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted: ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 119; ``No'' on rollcall vote 120; ``No'' on rollcall vote 121; ``No'' on rollcall vote 122; ``No'' on rollcall vote 123; ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 124; ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 125; and ``Aye'' on rollcall vote 126.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed the following votes. Had I been present for rollcall votes 105, 109, 110, and 111, I would have voted the following way: rollcall Vote No. 105: ``nay;'' rollcall Vote No. 109: ``yea;'' rollcall Vote No. 110: ``yea;'' rollcall Vote No. 111: ``yea.''

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my friend and colleague from California for yielding me the time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Republican budget and in support of the Blue Dog alternative. I would like to discuss three major problems with the Republican budget that we have before us.

First of all, I want to talk about Medicaid. I think most of my colleagues have seen this chart. These are reconciliation instructions included in the Republican budget which would require the Committee on Energy and Commerce to cut $107 billion, $107 billion over the next decade out of Medicaid.

I have talked to some of my hospital folks and began to ask questions about where these cuts may come from, and they believe that the major portion of those cuts will have to come out of an account we call the disproportionate share for hospitals, that is, DSH payments, which are payments made to our hospitals who are providing the major portion of indigent care.

There are 86 hospitals in Florida which receive DSH payments for a total of $221 million. Many of those are rural hospitals, 27 of them. All 27 of those rural hospitals in Florida, for the most part, are in financial trouble, and I believe and the hospitals believe that that account will have to be cut by some 80 percent to meet these reconciliation instructions.

If that is not bad enough, let us look at the farm bill that this Congress just enacted last year. We are telling farmers now and consumers, forget what we did last year, let the farm bill debate begin again. This budget requires the House Committee on Agriculture to cut about $18.6 billion out of programs that were enacted last year in the farm bill. What will be cut? Nutrition programs that provide food for those less fortunate, or will we cut it out of the record low margins that the farmers are getting in the marketplace now?

Mr. Chairman, we are trying hard in this country to keep a viable agricultural industry so we can produce our own food and fiber and not put ourselves in the situation that we are in with oil. That is what will happen if we abandon this farm bill.

Third, what we are doing to veterans is not acceptable. Many of my Republican colleagues have said we are just slowing down the growth. That is malarkey. That would be true if the number of people being treated in the veterans hospitals was not going to explode in the next decade, but we know it is. Today, within 24 hours of the time our troops have invaded Iraq, we are standing on the floor with a budget that cuts billions of dollars out of current veterans programs. It is unconscionable. I ask Members to reject the Republican budget and support the Blue Dog budget, which is responsible on the spending side and gets us into balance by 2009.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Indiana for yielding me this time. I will be very brief.

I have a great deal of admiration for the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), the chairman of the committee. He has brought a budget resolution to the floor that his leadership has allowed him to bring, and they think they can get 218 votes out of the Republican caucus. What is wrong with that? I will tell my colleagues what is wrong with that and what the American people will say is wrong with that, and that is that the American people expect this Congress to set its priorities and to pay for those priorities, and that is something that we have been unwilling to do in the last couple of years.

What do I mean by that? It means that we have to have discipline on the spending side. We had that in 1997 when we, in a bipartisan way, sat down with the administration, which was in Democratic hands, and we sat down with the Republican-controlled Senate and House and made an agreement to set spending caps, and we made an

agreement to get this budget into balance by 2003, and we did it 3 years ahead of schedule.

So I would encourage my colleagues to vote for the Blue Dog budget and reject the Republican budget.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I have been

watching from my office, and I came to the floor to tell him that I agree with everything he has said. And as a matter of fact, I and some others have control of the second hour, but I know the gentleman has some time left so I thought maybe before they get here he and I could talk.

I hope we can do that. Because the Social Security and the spending problems are the major problems that face our children and our grandchildren. We are hanging an albatross around their necks.

But I wanted to say to the gentleman from Michigan how pleased I was to hear the points that he has made. I did not realize he was a farmer from Michigan. I happen to be a farmer from Florida, as the gentleman may know; and I was very interested to hear the gentleman talk about the fact that as a farmer he knows that at the end of the day his revenues have to match his expenditures or he does not stay in business. I think all of the farmers around the country know that, and all of our small business people and even all of our constituents know that.

At the end of the day they have to have enough revenue to match their expenditures. And if they do not do that, they are bankrupt.

And I thank the gentleman for yielding. I could not agree with him more. I think that is why the gentleman will see, when the Blue Dogs, who are going to be here in the next hour to talk to the Nation, that the gentleman will find that our plan is to reduce spending too and to hold the line and defer the tax cuts until we get a handle on this thing.

But I just wanted to say that our constituents understand that if they cannot hold their spending down to a level that matches their revenue, that they are bankrupt. And they go to a court and they ask the court for relief. And the court will say, well, do you have a reorganization plan? And if they do not have a reorganization plan, the judge will require them to sell their house and their car and that new piece of property they bought, their stocks and so forth. And I think that is the situation we find ourselves in.

That would be. That would be terrible. We have to figure out how to discipline ourselves, to quench our thirst for having programs that we are not willing to pay for in our generation.

So I just want to commend the gentleman for his coming to the floor on his own, by himself, and saying what he has said. I think there is a lot of opportunity here for us to work together, and I hope that we can to solve this long-term fiscal problem.

Well, wherever we are, we need to work on it together.