Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to lay out now the basics of the motion to instruct conferees for the budget reconciliation bill going to conference.

First of all, we would move to preserve the safety net. This motion instructs the conferees to eliminate House provisions that would cut food stamps by $697 million and to reject

Medicaid cuts of even more, $11 to $12 billion in the House bill.

In addition, we would move to protect higher education. Because the budget bill as now written on the House side calls for substantial changes in interest rates and fees, by our calculation raising the cost of student loans by as much as $5,800.

Next we would support personal responsibility. The motion instructs the conferees to eliminate House cuts of $4.9 billion in Federal spending on child support enforcement programs that are run by the States but partially subsidized by the Federal Government. This is the most misguided fiscal savings in this whole bill.

This motion instructs the conferees to eliminate the House provision that would prevent hundreds of companies also that are hurt by unfair foreign trade known as dumping through the continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act which the budget reconciliation bill would eliminate.

This motion also instructs the House conferees to accept the Senate conferees' provisions that cut subsidies to Medicare private insurance plans by as much as 4.4 percent beginning January 1 and to prevent the planned 4.4 percent cut in physician payments by taking funds instead out of the Medicare Stabilization Program, the Medicare Stabilization Fund, which is part of the Medicare advantage and Medicare modernization bill which was the prescription drug-Medicare bill.

This motion instructs conferees to protect taxpayer-owned property as well and the environment by eliminating House provisions that would sell huge tracts of Federal land at below market value and expose them to purchase commercial and mining development.

These are the instructions we would give to our conferees going into this conference as to where the House should stand with respect to positions it has previously taken and with respect to positions the Senate has taken. I will say more about them later.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.

When the tax reconciliation bill with tax cuts is put side by side with the spending reconciliation bill, these two reconciliation bills add $52 billion to the deficit. That is the total outcome of the budget package that you are putting before us over the next 5 years; and that is not all, as I will show in a minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, what we are trying to prevent here is an abuse of process, because what has happened is the process known as reconciliation has been taken and stood on its head. The original process of reconciliation was to rein in the deficit, to have an end to the budget process by which Congress was compelled to revisit the goals it set earlier in the year and bring the budget in on the targets that it indicated were acceptable when the budget resolution was passed.

To that end, a budget reconciliation bill was given fast track capacity to go through the Senate so it would not be subject to filibuster, because its purpose was fiscal prudence. Its purpose was to rein in the deficit.

You can see from past history from this chart right here, you can see that in 1990 when we did the Bush budget summit, total reconciliation savings were $482 billion. In 1993 when we did the Clinton budget, total reconciliation savings over 5 years was $443 billion. In 1997 when we finally put the budget into balance for the first time in 30 years, the balanced budget agreement of 1997 provided for reconciliation of $118 billion.

What does this reconciliation bill do? Well, when you put it together, because it has been divorced, separated from the tax cuts in the other reconciliation bill, it increases the deficit. It does not decrease the deficit. It provides for, and we see $108 billion of additional tax cuts all together thus far. I will show you exactly how those add up right here.

One of the things that is going on here is that these fiscal actions get broken into many different fragments in the course of the year. As a consequence, it is hard to put all the small pieces together and figure out exactly what the tab is running up to.

Well, here is what it is running up to. If you just look at the tax cuts that have been taken over the last 6 months, keeping in mind that the budget resolution called for $70 billion in reconciled tax cuts and $106 billion in tax cuts all together, you will see we are on a path to accomplish just that under the budget resolution.

First of all, the transportation bill, $500 million. The Energy Policy Act, $6.9 billion tax cuts. The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act, $6.1 billion. The Stealth Tax Relief Act, $31.2 billion. That is the so-called alternative minimum tax, patching it for 1 year so it does not affect more taxpayers. Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act, that is the one that is before us in the other bill that I was referring to, the bill that is passing now in the reconciliation itself, and then, finally, $7.1 billion adapted just a week ago for the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act.

Add all of that together, you get $108 billion. But wait a minute. This only has a 1-year fix for the AMT. And we all know that we are fixing it this year for the same reason we will have to fix it next year and the following years and on into time until we finally adjust it so that it does not apply to middle-income taxpayers for whom it was never intended.

So when you recognize that fiscal reality and add to the total, tally a longer-term fix, a 5-year fix, on the AMT, the total amount of tax cuts adopted thus far over 5 years, the total amount is $301 billion, against which you are applying $50 billion in putative tax cuts and putative spending cuts, and how did you get those spending cuts? In the name of deficit reduction, which is a false claim, as can you see, because you are increasing the deficit.

How did you get those cuts, those putative cuts? You went to students

struggling to pay for their college education. You went to the poorest of the poor whose only resort to medical care is Medicaid and cut it by $11 billion. You went to child support enforcement, which is moneys used by the Federal Government to subsidy State efforts to see that parents who are not taking care of their children nevertheless have to pay something in child support and forces it, at $4.9 billion. CBO says it will deprive us of $25 billion for that most essential necessity. You went to foster care. You went to food stamps. You went to the pension insurance fund, PBGC, a false claim. You are claiming that these revenues generated for the PBGC can be applied against your tax cut. In truth, they are encumbered money; they will be needed to pay benefits before you know it.

And then, finally, let me speak up for the doctors. You have not done anything at all about the fact that there are doctors, on January 4, faced with a cut of 4.4 percent due to something called the sustainable growth rate factor. Unless we do something here tonight, this weekend, on the budget reconciliation bill, they are going to suffer that cut.

How do you think that is going to make them feel towards Medicare patients? Less willing than ever. So this is a bad bill. What we are trying to do with the motion to instruct is simply to take, as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) put it, the harshest and most hateful features out of it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentlewoman, if she does not believe that we should do something about the potential cut, getting nearer by the day, of 4.4 percent in physician's reimbursement and in paying for it, what is wrong with going into the so-called Medicare stabilization fund, which is really inducement money to get HMOs and insurance companies that do not otherwise want to participate in Medicare to participate?

The money is available. It comes out of the Medicare program. It would be given to physicians instead of insurance companies. But do you not think there will be adverse consequences if there is an across-the- board cut in physician's pay of 4.4 percent on January 1?

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. So the right answer is to fix the growth rate factor, no question about it. But that fix is not going to be accomplished in the next 2 weeks. So unless we do something adequate, you are going to have perfection be the enemy of the good; you are not going to get anything done.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I do not think the House bill has any money at all for physicians in it. That is the point.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, that is why we say this is the best opportunity we have got to send the conferees to conference, to sit down with the Senators to come up with a solution to this problem.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, it pains me to say it, but Republicans control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House, and they cannot escape responsibility for the dismal condition our budget is in.

Let me start with the simplest way I know to summarize the last 5 years. When the Bush administration brought us their budget in 2001, they said we will not need to raise the debt ceiling of the United States, the legal limit to which we can borrow, for another 6, 7 years. The next year they were back, hat in hand. They needed a $450 billion increase in the debt ceiling. The next year, just a year later, they came and asked for $984 billion, the biggest increase, single increase, in the national debt ever. As big as the total national debt when Ronald Reagan took office.

One would have thought $984 billion had long legs and would have taken us several years at least, but, no. Within a year they were back, Secretary Snow, hat in hand, saying, I need $800 billion. And in this year's budget resolution as it passed the House, buried in it is a conditional provision to increase the debt ceiling by another $781 billion. If we add all of those up, we come up with $3.015 trillion. That is the net addition to the legal debt of the United States over the last 5 years. That should temper everybody's understanding of the debate we have just been holding.

And look at this chart right here. Kind of complicated, but basically what we have done here is we have gone to the Congressional Budget Office and we have said, we have got your numbers for August and September, the update of the budget and the update of the economy. What you would like to do is make this politically realistic. Let us assume that the Bush administration's agenda is reaffirmed to us in July in the budget update; let us assume it is carried out. What will be the result? CBO came back to us, and they said the deficit of the United States last year, in 2004, in 2005, was $325 billion. That will grow to $640 billion under the assumptions you have given us. As for the debt service of the United States, it was $182 billion. It will grow to $548 billion over the next 10 years. That is the course we are on. And that is what we are discussing tonight. What do we do about it?

There is a process called reconciliation. When we find ourselves in dire straits like this, this is an extraordinary process, reconciliation, which gives special primacy to a bill for this purpose adopted in a budget resolution, and at every other time we have used it since it was invented, it was used to reduce the deficit by big numbers because a lot of the cost growth that has to be dealt with in deficit reduction is in the entitlement programs.

Look what we did in 1990 and 1993 and 1997: big, big reductions due to reconciliation. But what is being done here in the name of deficit reduction is deficit worsening. The deficit gets worse by at least $58 billion according to where the final cuts finally settle out. It gets worse by at least that amount, not better. And if we take a realistic view of what the likely revenue effects of all the tax cut legislation passed in the last 6 months have been, the deficit gets $300 billion worse.

They have taken reconciliation and stood it on its head. We would like to stand it back up, put some of the values back in it. We do not think we should balance the budget on the backs of small children, on the backs of Medicaid beneficiaries. And that is what the purpose of this motion to instruct is.

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

Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman who is the sponsor of this amendment, Mike McIntyre, and I all live in the same part of the country; and we have all seen this tragedy. Scott Gardner is from my hometown, York, South Carolina. I know his parents.

In addition to that, there was another incident in Lancaster County, someone driving drunk swerved across the road, killed the other person, got out on bail, jumped bail, and is gone. And then recently on the interstate, I-485 in Charlotte, another incident where someone got on the interstate, an illegal alien, and had a head-on collision with a car going in the wrong direction.

This is tough, one violation; but it is tough, too, when you see Scott Gardner's family. You understand the circumstances they have gone through, and they wonder how in the world someone can stay in this country with an illegal status and five DWIs.

This maybe goes a little far to the other extreme, but it begs the question, should we not hold everyone who is here to at least basic standards of behavior? And should we not apply that standard to illegal aliens?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Skelton motion to instruct. Two years ago, the image of the United States was tarnished by photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The photographs drew condemnation from members of Congress, the American people, and the world. At a time when we were professing American values, these photographs told a story of secrecy and disgusting abuse.

That's why the Washington Post's revelations about the CIA's clandestine detention facilities last month are so troubling. We all understand the difficult job our interrogators have in trying to pry useful intelligence from tough, hostile prisoners. We all believe that the vast majority of our interrogators perform their jobs admirably and within the rules, and the information they have obtained has served as the intelligence foundation of our War on Terror. But at a time when the wounds of Abu Ghraib have still not fully healed, fresh allegations of secrecy and questions about interrogation have the potential to reopen old issues of abuse that we have struggled for months to put to rest.

The President has said that ``we do not torture'' prisoners, and I take him at his word, but we have the right to ask for answers about clandestine facilities supplied, of course, in classified form.

The Skelton motion to instruct simply calls on the President to disclose to the Congress the nature, cost, location and operations of the detention facilities referenced by the Post, and the ultimate disposition of the detainees that are held there. This would in no way hinder the effectiveness of interrogations, but it would go a long way toward showing the world we are serious about preventing prisoner abuse. As Senator McCain so eloquently said, ``We are Americans. We hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people, no matter how evil or terrible they may be . . . The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don't deserve our sympathy. But this isn't about who they are; this is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies.'' I urge my colleagues to support the Skelton motion to instruct. All it seeks is information to which we are already entitled under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, and information we need to fulfill our duties under Article I, Clause 8 of the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, over the last few days we have seen a flurry of tax cuts on the House floor: three yesterday, another one, a big one, today. And over the last 6 months, four other bills have been enacted that have tax cuts and concessions built into them, for example, the Energy Policy Act.

By breaking all of those tax cuts into small pieces and by burying them in other bills, not tax bills, the audit trail very quickly becomes hard to follow. It is hard to see the forest for the trees. Hard to see in the aggregate how all of these different tax cuts add up.

So let us look at the revenue scorecard over the last 6 months, bearing in mind that every delay of revenues cut is a dollar added to the deficit. First of all, the highway bill: $500 million. The Energy Policy Act: $6.9 billion over 5 years. The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act: $6.1 billion over 5 years. The Stealth Tax Relief Act, the 1-year extension, or patch, to the AMT adopted yesterday: $31.2 billion. Today's bill: $56.1 billion. The bill we adopted yesterday, a miscellany of small tax cuts, but it adds up to $153 million. And finally the Gulf Opportunity Zone Tax Act which was passed yesterday: $7.1 billion.

The total amount of all of these tax cuts comes to $108 billion. So if you pass this bill today, the total impact that you will have taken with today's vote and recent votes comes to 108.

But wait, it is not over yet. Because there is a provision in this bill, a provision in our substitute, a provision in yesterday's bill that indicates something has got to be done about the alternative minimum tax. We are going to have to fix the alternative minimum tax. If you fix it for 5 years, not 1, the aggregate effect of this fix, of all of the other tax cuts along with it, comes to $301 billion over 5 years.

That is the sum total that these tax cuts will add to the deficit, $301 billion if you fix the AMT next year and the following years the same way we are fixing it this year. So the net effect on the deficit is $301 billion in all political reality.

So every Member here who is in earnest about the deficit should be on notice. You have a choice: you can vote for the underlying bill and add $301 billion to the deficit over the next 5 years, or you can vote for this bill and provide middle-income tax relief and not add a dime to the deficit.

Here, in effect, is what your choice is. We stand at a crossroads today that CBO has depicted as follows on this particular chart. You can take this path here with $319 billion, or you can take this path here, and by 2015, we can be nearly out of deficit.

On the other hand, you can take the path that this bill would take, and you will be $640 billion in deficit in 10 years. The Democratic substitute is morally and fiscally far and away the better choice, particularly if you want to balance the budget and eradicate the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, it is my sad responsibility as dean of the South Carolina delegation to advise the House, and especially those who served here in the 1980s, that Carroll Campbell, who served here from 1978 to 1986, died yesterday.

He served here for a period of nearly 10 years, went on to two successful terms as Governor of South Carolina, and died at the age of 65 after a long battle with Alzheimer's.

Those who served with him remember him as a very, very able friend, a wonderful Member of this institution, and someone of whom, as South Carolinians especially, we are all proud.

I know that everyone who knew him especially will want to send their prayers and best regards to his wife Iris and their two sons.

Mr. Speaker, we have three tax cut bills before us today, a large one coming up tomorrow, and here is the problem with doing business that way, especially under suspension.

When you break these tax cuts into so many small places, virtually fragments, we quickly lose the audit trail and do not appreciate in the aggregate how much they add up to. So let me try to reconstruct that audit trail on the back of this envelope right here and show you exactly what the summation of today and tomorrow will mean for the bottom line, i.e. the deficit.

If we take the transportation bill which we passed this year, is $1.1 billion over 10 years, about a billion dollars over 5 years.

The Energy Policy Act is about $6.9 billion in revenues lost over 5 years.

The Katrina Tax Relief of 2005 has a $6.1 billion price tag. That is its revenue impact.

The big bill tomorrow will be the Tax Extension Reconciliation Act, $56 billion in the House, $80 billion over 10 years.

We have just done the Stealth Tax Relief Act extending for 1 year the AMT at its existing level of application. The cost of that for 1 year over 5 years is $31 billion.

Then we have the Tax Revision Act of 2005 with small cuts in it which have not been scored, but it has a cost.

Finally, we have the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005. The revenue effect of it over 5 years is $7 billion.

Add all of those together, and the cost, the revenue impact, comes to nearly $100 billion which, goes straight to the bottom line and adds to the deficit.

And the reconciliation spending bill that you passed only offsets half of that amount.

That is not all. As we demonstrate today, the AMT will have to be fixed. It will be fixed this year, patched, patched next year, and patched into the future until we finally do something about its application to middle income families for whom it was never intended. If we do basically in future years what we have done today, the cost is going to be at least $30-40 billion a year.

If you assume in the next 4 years after 2006, we will also have fixes to the AMT, the cost of these tax bills we are doing today, and it is going to be close to $200 billion. All of it goes to the bottom line and adds to the budget deficit, and all of it supports what we have been saying that until you deal with this aspect of the budget deficit, the revenue side of the equation as well as the spending side, until you reinstate the pay-go rule and offset these costly provisions in the aggregate, you are going to have a huge deficit.

We would have offered, given the chance, on offset. And we will offer offsets tomorrow, given the chance, in the bill presented. We will offer a substitute that will offset the revenue impact on the bottom line. If we had that opportunity on the House floor and in committee, we would have done it again and we could have avoided the revenue impact and at least protected the deficit from being made any worse. It is a shame we will not have that opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I have served in this House for 22 years, all of them on the House Armed Services Committee, and my esteem for the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) and the wisdom he has accrued over defense and military matters has increased every year. He is a real American. He is a patriot. He is a marine. He is the best embodiment of Semper Fidelis that I have ever known.

He made a proposal yesterday that I, myself, do not fully agree, but I have profound respect for the man who made it, and I watched the pain that he experienced as he agonizingly laid out what the conclusions were that he had come to. To take this proposal and trash it, trivialize it is outrageous. To treat Jack Murtha this way, a great American, a wonderful patriot, is beneath contempt.

This resolution takes a profound issue we face, whether and when we wage war, and makes it another cheap pawn in the political process. You present a resolution that purports to be a facsimile or proxy of Jack Murtha's resolution when it is nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind, and then you dare to call it something it is not, a Democratic resolution.

This is outrageous, Mr. Speaker, and all I can say is, at long last, have you no shame?

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

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, this bill is a sham. This bill does not reduce the deficit. It increases the deficit by at least $7 billion, and it results from a budget resolution passed a few months ago that does not lower the deficit. It raises the deficit by over $100 million over the next 5 years.

Now, I know the supporters of this bill claim it is going to help for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, well, that is a phony claim, too. This bill has nothing to do with paying for Katrina. It has everything to do with facilitating further tax cuts. This bill comes out of a larger budget resolution for 2006 that calls for a total of $106 billion in new and additional tax cuts, $70 billion in reconciled tax cuts, $36 billion in unreconciled tax cuts. So the spending cuts in this bill are really just the first step in a three-step process.

Step number two will come tomorrow or soon thereafter when tax cuts are introduced in the form of another reconciliation bill. And when these two are put together, the result will be a bigger deficit. So this is not a deficit reduction bill. It does not lead to deficit reduction. And after the tax cuts are passed, there will not be a dime left to pay for Katrina and Rita, but there will be a bigger deficit. And that brings on the third step in this process and that is a $781 billion increase in the national debt of the United States of America. That is, this bill is part of the process that will require an increase in the national debt ceiling of $781 billion. As you can see, over the last 4 fiscal years, to accommodate the budgets of this administration and the leadership of this Congress, the Congress has raised the legal debt ceiling of the United States by $3 trillion 15 billion, of which $781 billion is included in this budget resolution, deemed approved when we pass the budget resolution.

Once upon a time, the purpose for reconciliation was to reduce the deficit, rein in the deficit. But the reconciliation bills for this year, this one and the tax bill to come, stand that purpose on its head. They actually raise the deficit for the reasons I have just mentioned. And this is our first reason for opposing the bill. In the end, it will not reduce or rein in the deficit. It will only make it worse.

Let me answer the gentleman's charge of where is our plan? We do not need a plan. We produced a plan as an alternate budget which they chose not to vote for just a few months ago. The budget resolution for 2006 which we brought to this House floor would have balanced the budget in the year 2012, and accumulated far less debt than their budget resolution in the process.

Where is the plan tonight? We do not need a plan because this plan tonight on the House floor is a plan to permit further tax cuts. It was our feeling that when you have a $412 billion deficit, and that is what it was in 2004, the first rule of holes is to quit digging. Do not make the deficit worse. So we did not propose further tax cuts that would have made the deficit worse, which we would have done and we are trying to mitigate with this particular bill. That is why we did not have a plan here. Our budget did not call for it. But our budget resolution would put the budget in the surplus again by the year 2012.

This bill calls itself ``The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005,'' but it does not live up to its name. This bill results from a budget resolution that does not lower the deficit. The bill raises the deficit by $100 billion over the next 5 years.

Supporters claim that this bill will help pay for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This too is a phoney claim. This bill has nothing to do with paying for Katrina; it has everything to do with facilitating further tax cuts. This bill comes out

of a larger budget resolution that calls for a total of $106 billion in new and additional tax cuts: $70 billion in reconciled tax cuts, along with $36 billion in unreconciled tax cuts.

The spending cuts in this bill are the first step in a three-step process. The second step will come tomorrow or soon thereafter in the form of tax cuts, and when these two steps are completed, the net result will be an increase in the deficit of around $7 billion. After the tax cuts are passed, there will not be a dime left to pay for Katrina and Rita. But there will be a bigger deficit, and so that brings in the third step in this process, a $781 billion increase in the government's debt ceiling. The budget resolution of 2006 already deems its approval by the House.

Once upon a time, the purpose of reconciliation was to rein in the deficit. The reconciliation bills for this year stand that purpose on its head. They will actually raise the deficit, for reasons I have just mentioned. This year's budget resolution called for $106 billion in new tax cuts over five years. $70 billion of that is assured a fast track through the Senate because these tax cuts are ``reconciled.'' The mandatory spending cuts, contained in this bill, will go to offset in part the revenues lost to tax cuts. Nothing goes toward deficit reduction or toward paying for Katrina, due to new and additional tax cuts.

This is our first reason for opposing this bill. In the end, it will not reduce or rein in the deficit; it will only make it worse.

Now, that outcome may not be immediately clear. That's because this reconciliation bill with spending cuts is being considered separately from a second reconciliation bill with tax cuts.

There is another reason for the hiatus between spending cuts and tax cuts. The spending cuts made by this bill will hit the young, the old, the sick, and the poor, and hit them hard. The savings realized from these spending cuts will go to offset, partially at least, tax cuts for taxpayers whose incomes are in the upper brackets. Our colleagues from across the aisle want to avoid that connection, so they have separated the two bills.

He may not buy the claim that this bill is ot pay for or partially offset the cost of Katrina. But we do believe that disaster relief is a form of shared sacrifice. So in paying for Katrina, we believe that the cost should be spread equitably over the entire country, and not just loaded on those least able to bear it. Yet that's exactly what this bill does. Who bears the brunt of the cuts made by this bill? Single mothers seeking child support from delinquent missing dads. Students struggling to pay loans for their college education. Foster children. The sick and poor whose only access to health care coverage is Medicaid, and families who depend on food stamps. Is this any way to pay for Hurricane Katrina? Or to pave the way for tax cuts?

There are $11.4 bilion in cuts to Medicaid, including cuts over $8 billion that fall upon beneficiaries through co-pays, premiums, and benefit reduction; -$14.3 billion in spending cuts to college student loan programs over 5-years, of which $7.8 billion is realized through increases in the interest rates and fees that students pay; -$4.9 billion in cuts to child support enforcement, which will cut back the state's capacity to enforce child support orders, -$577 million in foster care cuts; $732 million in SSI cuts.

Other provisions in this bill cut conservation by $504 million; cut deeply into rural development; and eliminate altogether the Byrd Amendment. The Byrd Amendment requires that duties paid by foreign firms, as a penalty for dumping their goods here at prices below cost, should be shared with U.S. firms damaged by import dumping.

This reconciliation package claims to offset the cost of Hurricane Katrina. That, like the title, is a false claim for two reasons. Rather than helping pay for Katrina, many of the services cut, such as Food Stamps and Medicaid, benefit the victims of these disasters, the people who have been uprooted and displaced.

I must say, we are mystified over this newfound interest in offsets. Since 2003, we have passed three huge supplementals to cover the cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. We supported all of them, because when we put troops in the field, we stand behind them. But any notion of offsetting those costs was dismissed out of hand.

As we have asked before, why is it that you insist on offsetting the cost of rebuilding Biloxi, but not the cost of rebuilding Baghdad or Basra? Will the next supplemental for Iraq be offset? There is $50 billion in ``bridge funding'' in the defense bill not offset.

If this bill reduced the deficit or helped pay for Katrina, as you claim, we would still have trouble with the cuts you have chosen. Many hurt those who need help most. Moreover, the savings are overstated, and some won't stand scrutiny. For example:

This bill includes $6.2 billion in increased PBGC premiums, but these premiums are entrusted to pay pension benefit guaranties, and in the near future, these additional premiums will be spent for that very purpose. You can claim these additional receipts as offsets to your tax cuts only because the federal government runs a cash-basis budget. If we accrue the liability for benefit guaranties, there would be no balance in this trust fund to use as an offset to tax cuts.

This bill makes crippling cuts to child support enforcement: $4.9 billion over five years. This will only shift the cost to the states, and if the states don't make up the difference, this reduction will result in a loss of more than $24 billion in child support over the next ten years. This is a flagrant case of false economy.

And as if the reduction in child support were not tough enough, this bill allows Medicaid to charge children co-pays, and to deny care if the cost-sharing is not paid. At $3 and up, the co-pays may not seem much to us, but they can be a birch well for someone living at or below the poverty line. The co-pays as such do not save much in total Medicaid spending. The way they save money is by discouraging low- income children and others from seeking medical care.

This bill also claims one-time receipts from spectrum auctions to offset the recurring loss of revenues to permanent tax cuts, and it overestimates the net receipts by assuming the cost of converter boxes at $1 billion, though the cost is likely to be about three times that amount.

This bill cuts $2.2 billion in mandatory spending to administer the student loan program. But these costs have to be paid. Guess where? Out of discretinary funds for education.

In short, there are many reasons that this bill does not live up to its title. It makes deep and painful cuts all right, but it paves the way for new and additional tax cuts, despite an enormous deficit, and the end result is a larger deficit. In this respect, today's legislation is like the budget resolution that set it in motion. This is one in a series of fiscal actions that will cause the debt ceiling of the United States to be raised by $3 trillion between 2002 and 2006.

So, not only is this bill a shame, it is also a sham.

When the Bush Administration took office in 2001, it inherited a surplus and blithely predicted that the surplus would endure, even if its trillion dollar tax cuts were adopted. The Bush budget was adopted, and in fiscal 2005, the bottom line was not a surplus of $269 billion as it once projected, but a deficit of $319 billion. Realistic estimates show that these deficits are structural and will get worse, not better, over the next ten years, and that when the Bush Administration's full agenda is factored in, deficits will climb to $640 billion by 2015; the national debt will double; and debt service will more than double. This legislation will make deep and painful cuts, but it will not avoid that budget outcome or lead to balance in any time frame.

So, we oppose this bill because it's not only a shame, but also a sham.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 12 minutes of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) for the purposes of control.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 12 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the dean of the House, and I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 20 seconds.

To respond to the gentleman, he may be too young to remember, but 5 years ago, we bequeathed the Bush administration a surplus of $236 billion. This is what has happened in the last 4 fiscal years. The statutory debt ceiling of the United States has been raised to accommodate the budgets of the Bush administration to the tune of $3 trillion.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman who said our budget is locked up, well, here it is. It is right here on the table. We introduced it several months ago. It will go to balance in the year 2012 and accumulate about $200 billion less debt than theirs.

As for tax and spend, his is tax and borrow, Mr. Speaker. For the last 4 years, the debt ceiling has been raised four times by $3.15 trillion under your administration and your watch.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 12 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and ask unanimous consent that he be permitted to control that time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished Whip of the Democratic Party.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of our time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 500, a resolution to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of the Navy's Flight 19 in the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945. Every schoolkid in America knows the Bermuda Triangle as a place of ghost stories and mystery--a place where whole ships and airplanes literally disappear without a trace. Rumors abound about the cause of these disappearances, ranging from mechanical failures to irregular magnetic field activity to extraterrestrial abduction. No mystery from the ``Devil's Triangle'' has more captured the attention or imagination of America than the ill-fated journey of Navy Flight 19.

At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, Flight 19, a squadron of five Navy Avenger TBM Torpedo Bombers, took off from Fort Lauderdale for a training run that took them into the heart of the Bermuda Triangle. The weather was cooperative and the water was calm, which was deemed lucky for a squadron where only one of the 14 airmen, Lt. Charles Taylor, had combat flight experience. Nonetheless, midway through the mission, Lt. Taylor became disoriented, claiming his compasses had stopped working, a curious phenomenon in an area known for erratic magnetic activity. Thinking himself over the Florida Keys, Lt. Taylor pointed his squadron Northeast in an attempt to return them to land. Unfortunately, the squadron was over the Bahamas to the east of Florida instead of over the Keys, so their continued northeasterly journey actually took them further out to sea. At 7:04 p.m., the last radio contact was made by Taylor, when he reportedly uttered ``everything is wrong . . . strange . . . the ocean doesn't look as it should'' and ``They look like they're from outer space--don't come after me.'' After this communication, Flight 19 was never heard from again.

This kicked off a massive search spanning 250,000 square miles of ocean. As part of this search, two additional aircraft known as Martin Mariners, were deployed by the Navy to patrol and look for wreckage. With no indication of difficulty, one of these Martin Mariners failed to meet at a scheduled rendezvous point, and was never heard from again. No sign of the Mariner or the Flight 19 Avengers has ever been found. Roger Allen from Sumter, South Carolina, in my district, was one crew member on the missing Mariner whose fate has yet to be discovered.

H. Res. 500 takes the laudable step of commemorating the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of Flight 19 and the naval Mariner rescue aircraft and honoring the memory of the 27 Navy airmen lost on these flights. It also acknowledges the continuing efforts to determine what caused these disappearances so we can provide answers and closure to the families of the airmen who were lost. I commend the fascinating and haunting tale of Flight 19 to anyone interested in the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, and I join Congressman Shaw in urging my colleagues to support H. Res. 500.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the upcoming special order.

Mr. Speaker, as we speak, there is a bill in the wings called the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, its fate yet to be determined because it is not at all clear that there are enough votes in this body to pass it.

Basically, this bill is part of the budget resolution for 2006, and what it anticipates is a three-step process except that those steps are treated very separately and in isolation. The first step is what the bill I am talking about proposes, that is, reductions in mandatory spending, so-called ``entitlement spending,'' of about $54 billion.

The second step to follow is a reduction in taxes in the amount of $106 billion. That is what the budget resolution calls for. As a consequence, this bill does not achieve its stated name, which is the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Instead, by cutting taxes by more than they cut spending, it leads to a deficit that is $52 billion bigger than would otherwise be the case. That is the second step.

And then there is a third step in this bill that is not much talked about, but it is written into the bill, written into the budget resolution for 2006, and that is an increase in the debt ceiling of the United States by $781 billion. That is what happens when you have tax cuts that are not adequately matched by spending cuts. The deficit gets worse, and the bottom line is, $781 billion will have to be added to the debt ceiling of the United States, the legal limit to which we bill because of the fiscal policies we have followed for the last 5 years.

Now, some supporters claim that this bill, the so-called Deficit Reduction

Act of 2005, will go to help pay for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In truth, this bill has nothing to do with paying for Katrina. It has everything to do, as I said, with facilitating further tax cuts.

This bill is part of a larger budget resolution that calls, as I have said, for a total of $106 billion in additional tax cuts yet to come, but nevertheless called for in the budget resolution. $70 billion will come in reconciled tax cuts, which means they will be on a fast track. They will go through the Senate without threat of filibuster. $36 billion are in unreconciled tax cuts. The total is $106 billion.

As I have said, this is a three-step process. The original purpose of reconciliation was to rein in the deficit. But the reconciliation bill this year, the one that is waiting in the wings, the one we are addressing today, only raises the deficits for the reasons I have just mentioned.

Now, if we do not acknowledge this, but if you take the position that these cuts are somehow going to facilitate the appropriations we have passed and will pass to pay for Hurricane Katrina and Rita, one would have to say that if we are going to do that--and I think we should somehow, over time, have a plan for paying the enormous sums we are borrowing to reconstruct the gulf coast--if we are going to do that, we should spread the cost equitably over our whole population. And that is what we want to address today, more than anything, and that is how the costs are being spread, how the costs are being allocated. Whether you take the attitude that this goes to pay for Katrina or goes to offset tax cuts, who bears the brunt? Will it be those who are able to bear the brunt or those who are vulnerable and least able to bear the brunt?

Unfortunately, and this is a point we will make again and again and demonstrate the facts to prove our case, unfortunately, the brunt of this bill will come to rest on the shoulders of those who are least able to bear it.

In that respect, I now recognize the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case) to discuss the implications of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).

The gentlewoman is not only right. She is forcefully correct. She is absolutely right, no question about it.

That is what we are doing now is alerting everyone to the contents of this reconciliation bill which is hanging in the wings, pretending under the name of ``deficit reduction'' to be about fiscal responsibility when it is anything but that.

I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I now yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement, and I now yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her presentation, and I yield now to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I yield now to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal), and I would remind the gentleman that we have about 6 minutes left. Is that correct, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, last week I came to the well of this House to express my concern along with the concern of others in the Committee on the Budget who joined us that night about the direction that a process we call reconciliation was taking.

This week my concerns have not been allayed. They have been aggravated because I see the course that reconciliation has taken, and it is coming home closer and closer to programs that matter to those that can least afford to take the hits that they are about to receive. As we speak, our colleagues, our Republican colleagues from across the aisle, are debating and considering and moving toward big cuts in Medicaid, student loans, child support enforcement, child foster care, and supplemental security income, farm conservation, the list goes on. About $50 billion in spending cuts spread over about a 5-year period of time.

They have offered up these spending cuts as a way to offset, partially at least, the spending increases that the responses to hurricanes Katrina and Rita will require; but in actuality, these spending cuts will not go to offset the costs of Hurricane Katrina because the Republican budget calls for $106 billion in additional tax cuts. And when these additional tax cuts are passed, the spending cuts that are also being proposed will simply go to make up for the revenue losses to some extent caused by the tax cuts they are proposing.

Since the spending cuts are $50 billion, as this chart here shows, and the tax cuts are $106 billion, none of the spending cuts will ever make it to the bottom line where they might otherwise be available and applied to the offset of the cost of Katrina and Rita.

So the first problem that we as Democrats have, with what our Republican colleagues are pushing and pushing hard this week, is that it is not what approximate purports to be. It is not what it claims to be. It is not a plan to pay for Hurricane Katrina. It is a plan to facilitate $106 billion in additional tax cuts, notwithstanding the fact that we have last year, just a few weeks ago, we closed the books, and the deficit for the preceding fiscal year was the third largest in history, $320 billion; $106 billion in additional tax cuts at a time when we have a $320 billion deficit that is only likely to get worse this year because of the cost of the hurricane.

The second problem that we as Democrats have with the plan that our colleagues are pushing is that we believe the cost to help one State sustain the catastrophic costs of a natural disaster, a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, should be borne by all the States and spread over the entire population, the whole country, but spread equitably, spread equitably. We do not believe that those least able to bear the costs should be burdened with the lion's share of the load, and yet that is exactly what is taking shape.

That is exactly what they are doing, pushing a plan to pay for the cost of Hurricane Katrina, at least under that pretext that will come down on the backs of college students borrowing to pay for their education; on the backs of the sick whose only access to care is Medicaid; and on the backs of the very poor who depend on food stamps and foster care and child support enforcement, all of these things. These are the programs and the bore sights of the plan that are about to be brought to the floor.

These are just some, a sampling of those on whom these cuts are going to fall.

So what we have coming before the House this week, if it does indeed come forth, is a plan for spending cuts that does not serve its stated purpose because it does not go to pay for the cost of Hurricane Katrina, not a dime of it. And the spending cuts it selects, whether to offset more tax cuts or to pay for Katrina, come down on those, as I have said, who are least able to bear them.

On our side we think it is fair to ask, Why this sudden interest in offsets? Why insist on offsets to pay for building or rebuilding Biloxi, but not insist on offsets for building or rebuilding or building back Baghdad for which we have appropriated so far more than $20 billion?

One reason that our colleagues have suddenly seized on this issue is that the evidence of bad budgeting, of fiscal failure, of endless deficits is mounting and spreading and becoming undeniable is too much to sweep under the rug. On their watch, the Federal budget has descended from a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton administration, to a deficit of $320 billion last year and $412 billion the year before.

The deficit will only be worse this year, as I have said, this fiscal year, 2006, because this year is when most of the spending to fix up and respond to Katrina is going to be paid out. Here is

one simple, back-of-the-envelope way of looking at the budgets that we have had and the impact of these budgets that bottom-line over the last 5 fiscal years.

Our Republican colleagues have had to come to the floor four times and raise the debt ceiling, the legal limit to which the United States can borrow, incur debt, in order to make room for the budgets of the Bush administration. As a consequence, in June 2002 they had to vote to raise the debt ceiling by $450 billion. In May, just a year later, they had to raise it again by a record amount, $984 billion. You would think that $984 billion would give you plenty of room for additional deficits to be accommodated, but no.

In November 2004, 15, 16 months later, $800 billion had to be added to the debt ceiling. In the budget resolution that will come to the floor this week, there is a contingent provision that when the Senate passes the provision, the debt ceiling will be raised one more time by $781 billion. Add up these four increases in the debt ceiling over the last 5 fiscal years, you get 3 trillion, 15 billion; $3 trillion, the amount by which they have had to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate their budget. That says it, as I said, on the back of the envelope, better than any way I could possibly put it.

When the Bush administration closed the books on fiscal year 2005, just 3 weeks ago, they announced a bit better deficit, no doubt about it, a deficit of $320 billion. But that is still the third largest deficit in our Nation's history. And it shows you how sad the State of our fiscal affairs have become when the White House boasts about and brags about a $320 billion deficit as being good.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

The year before it was 412, and the year before that it was 375. Those are the three worst over the last 3 years, three record deficits in a row.

Here is the hard part. It would be bad enough if that were behind us and we are now having to live with this $3 trillion increase in the debt ceiling of the United States, but the future looks even bleaker. This September, the Congressional Budget Office, which is neutral and nonpartisan, prepared for us, as they always do, it is their custom and I think it is required by law, an update of the economy and the budget and a projection of where the economy was going and a projection of where the budget was going with the economy. Here is what they came up with.

They predicted a deficit of $319 billion. That is about where we came out. Look at the red line here and you will see their continued projection shows that over the next 10 years the deficit will double. It will increase from 320 to $640 billion in the year 2015. That is CBO's projection per certain requests we made to them to adjust their baseline survey.

We said to CBO, take your baseline survey and assume four things in the President's budget: number one, that the tax cuts passed in 2001, 2002, and 2003 will all be renewed and extended when they expire at the end of 2010;

Number two, that the alternative tax will be fixed as we all know it must be so it does not affect middle-income taxpayers to whom it was never intended;

Number three, that we will eventually have a drawdown of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, principally Iraq, so that we have 20,000 in each theater. CBO has a model for estimating what the likely cost of that force is going to be;

Finally, the President gave us the numbers for implementing his Social Security privatization program for the last 2 years of his 5- year forecast. Pick up where he left off and carry it out 10 years. Make those changes, we said to CBO, and tell us what then. If you hit the highlights, carry out the basics of the Bush budget, what then happens to the budget? Here is what happens with the deficit: it goes from 320 to 640 in 10 years.

The debt of the United States held by the public, and in many cases held by foreigners, goes from $4.6 trillion in 2005 to $9.2 trillion in 2015. Debt service, this is obligatory, this is one thing in the budget that has to be paid or the credit of the United States will collapse, the debt service that we now pay, the interest we now pay on the national debt, net interest, will increase from $182 billion in 2005 to $458 billion in 2015. It will become one of biggest items in the budget. This is the sort of thing that breeds cynicism of our government, because people pay heavy taxes, yet they see nothing in return due to the fact that money is going to service the national debt.

One thing else, a lot of this is due to tax cuts that they keep making despite the bottom line, despite the fact that the original forecast showing $5.6 trillion in surpluses over a 10-year period of time no longer apply. However, those tax cuts eventually become a debt tax because that is what you see here. We have a debt tax, a tax that has to be laid on the people in order to pay the debt service, the interest on the national debt, which is truly obligatory.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

It is indeed. That is true. It has increased substantially.

That is true.

But it has to be paid. It is obligatory. There is no way around it. You have got to pay it, otherwise the bonds default and the country is in bankruptcy. We cannot let that happen.

Let me touch on the package that we expect to come to the floor to show what our concern is and why we are here at this hour of the day talking about the package that the Republicans are putting together to bring to the floor ostensibly to pay for some of the costs for Hurricane Katrina but truly, truly to offset additional tax cuts of $106 billion.

Originally, as the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) knows, because this is his committee and he can comment further upon it, the Higher Education Act had to be amended this year and was to be amended so that student loans would enjoy fixed rates, not variable rates which would go up as interest rates go up as they are likely to do in the near future.

That decision has been discarded. It is gone.

Next, origination fees. The front-end fees that students have to pay to take out a student loan were to be lowered. Not anymore, not with the latest cut. What we are looking at are the barest component parts of this bill called the reconciliation bill that is coming to the floor. It went directly from the Committee on the Budget to the committees of jurisdiction, like the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and they said cut so much money from programs in your jurisdiction. So where did the Committee on Education and the Workforce cut? They turned to student loans, the most significant part of their budget, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

These two tax provisions, called PEP and Pease, phase-out of the personal exemption and the phase-in limitation on itemized deductions, these two provisions were signed into law by the first President Bush.

When the second President Bush sent up his request for tax cuts, these provisions were not included in his package of proposed tax cuts. They were added by Members and pushed to the very end of the implementation period. They do not actually get cut out or cut back, phased out until the year 2007.

Nevertheless, as you are pointing out, these provisions, if they were simply left in place, would yield enough revenues over time to pay the cost of Katrina and leave a substantial amount of change on the table.

Mr. Speaker, let me return to student loans and yield back to the gentleman because he is far more conversant in student loans than I am.

It is curious that you would turn to student loans, to kids who are accumulating more debt than any generation in America to get a college education, and raise the cost of student loans in order to pay for the cost of Katrina. It just does not strike me as the kind of equitable loading that would support.

Because they are so devilishly difficult to understand all the fine details that go into the pricing of student loans and the renewability and consolidation. A lot of the details about the changes being proposed are not yet widely disseminated and widely understood. Nevertheless, the students are going to feel it and see it once they realize what the long-term cost of it is and the envelope they have to repay.

I looked the numbers up, and that is why I have got them available, but let me show you how the reconciliation process works so that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) can pick up from there.

Originally, when the Republicans decided in their budget resolution that they would cut $35 billion to facilitate $70 billion in tax cuts, it had nothing to do with Katrina. It was just one way of diminishing the impact of the tax cuts on the bottom line. Originally, when that $35 billion number was set as the reconciliation target, the amount that was reconciled to the Committee on Education and the Workforce was $12.6 billion.

That committee labored diligently. I do not think the gentleman voted for the final product, but it was still $10.6 billion, $2 billion less than what was reconciled. Now, all of the sudden comes a claim for an additional $5.5 billion. Where in the world will the $5.5 billion come from within the jurisdiction of your committee?

Already in the bill you have reported, which is $2 billion short of your targeted amount, and now it is going to be $5.5 billion more than either targeted amount, already you have reversed the decision to lower origination rates. Your committee has raised the rate effectively on student

loans. You have reversed the decision to increase the amount that students can borrow. You have changed the rates at which they could expect to consolidate their loans. How do you get the additional $5.5 billion after having done this much already to student loans?

Let us look at the Committee on Ways and Means. In the original budget resolution, the Committee on Ways and Means was largely spared, mainly because the cuts in Ways and Means would mostly fall on Medicare. It is the biggest entitlement within their jurisdiction except for Social Security, and that is not in the cards right now.

Only $1 billion was reconciled in the way of spending cuts to the Committee on Ways and Means, but now, in recent weeks, in the zeal to get the amount from $35 billion to $50 billion, which is reconciled, they have added to the directive for Ways and Means, or they will if this resolution gets passed this week, another $7 billion, $8 billion.

Very little of this actually comes out of Medicare because they do not want to touch Medicare for fear that they will have a fight in their own ranks, but this is where it comes from. This is astounding. It comes from child support enforcement. This is the money that we appropriate to match State money to enforce fathers who are not supporting their families to come up with the financial support for their own families. We let them know this program will be robustly funded. We have a national program so they cannot skip from one State to another. We have a State-by-State program so they cannot elude enforcement. They are going to take a reduction in child support enforcement of $3.8- to $4 billion in child support enforcement.

Foster care for children and families, foster care families, children not with their own biological families, a cut of $577 million.

And then Supplemental Security Income, the welfare program of last resort for people who are disabled and the elderly and have nothing else to fall back on. SSI is truly a safety net program. It will be cut by $732 million. Do you know how? They will say to people who have back claims for SSI, who qualify for SSI, go through a long process to prove it, and who have a claim settlement at the end of that process, we cannot pay you 100 percent of this. Despite the fact you have been living on next to nothing, we will pay you in installments, so $732 million out of SSI.

And then in the same bill we are told all of these things that are truly safety net programs, they turn to something called antidumping duties. We impose duties, antidumping duties, on foreign companies in foreign countries that ship goods to us, like steel, below its true market value in the country from which it comes. When we find that people are doing that in order to undercut our domestic industry, we impose antidumping duties on those industries. The law provides that the duties thus collected go to the American companies that are hurt by these illegal trade practices.

What they propose to do is repeal the Byrd amendment which provides for the money to go to these firms. That repeal will not save a dollar. To the contrary, it will cost Federal spending of $3.2 billion over a 5-year period of time. After squeezing money out of child support enforcement, foster care and SSI, they turn around and give up a $3.2 billion resource that goes to firms that have been hard hit by unfair foreign trade.

Madam Speaker, a lot of people say it is necessary for fiscal reasons. We have to balance the budget. They say to us as Democrats, What would you do? And that is fair enough.

Whenever anyone raises this issue, I think it is pertinent for us to point out this is what we did. Beginning in 1992, after President Clinton came to office, January 20, 1993, on February 17, 1993, the first piece of legislation he sent to the Congress was a 5-year budget to cut a deficit of $290 billion, he inherited that deficit, to cut it in half over the next 5 years. This is what happened. Every year thereafter, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, every year thereafter, the bottom line of the budget got better and better and better, to the point where in 1996 we had a deficit of about $120 billion. We convened again under his auspices, the President's auspices, and we passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. As a consequence of that, in 2 years the budget was not just in surplus, it was in a surplus of $236 billion.

So all of this is history. This is where we took the budget, and this is where we handed it off, at that point, with a surplus just below $200 billion. We handed the budget over to President Bush, and every year thereafter, except this year, the bottom line is that the budget got worse. It got marginally better this year, but as this chart shows, it is still $320 billion.

As I said, under the basics of the Bush administration's budget, the highlights of his budget, the things that he is pushing us to do, if we follow that course, CBO tells us we will incur a deficit in 10 years of $640 billion, twice today's deficit, and the debt service of the United States will go up threefold from $182 billion to $458 billion.

Madam Speaker, he vetoed those tax cuts.

Madam Speaker, this was not just serendipity or good luck. We had a good economy, but we also had a good set of budget policies and a good budget converging with a good economy.

One of the things that we did in 1991 under the first President Bush, we adopted a set of budget rules in the Budget Enforcement Act. One of these required every budget to be a 5-year budget.

Secondly, another rule required that we put a cap on discretionary spending. We cap and limit on a 5-year basis the money that we appropriate every year for discretionary programs. These are discretionary programs.

Thirdly, we adopted something called a pay-as-you-go rule. It was a very effective rule which simply provided if Members want to increase the benefits under an entitlement program, Medicare, Social Security, whatever it may be, you have to either pay for it or cut some other entitlement by an equal amount. By the same token, we said if you want to cut taxes when we have a huge deficit, you have to pay for those tax cuts, offset those tax cuts, either with a spending cut of equal amount or with a tax increase elsewhere in the Code of an equal amount so it is deficit-neutral, it does not impact and worsen the deficit. Those rules proved to be extremely helpful as we moved the budget from a $290 billion deficit in 1992 to a $236 billion surplus in the year 2000.

Madam Speaker, in 2001, 2002, PAYGO, the multiyear spending caps and the sequestration provision, all of the budget enforcement rules that we put in specially in 1991 that served us so well in the 1990s, were allowed to expire. Why? Because the PAYGO rule would have impeded further tax cuts when we had still big deficits.

Here is a good account. Defense, for reasons we all understand, has gone up substantially from the year 2000 to the year 2011. This is a projection. It will increase from about $300 billion to $600 billion over that period of time.

When the President talks about the increase in spending as if he is laying the blame on the Congress, and in truth most of it is coming in defense accounts, and all of it has been requested by the President of the United States. We have appropriated. I voted for it. I do not think you send troops in the field and give them a tough mission to do and not back them up. But let us be honest where the spending increases he decries are really coming from. They are coming from defense.

This layer right here was what was planned for defense in January 2001. This red layer is what the Bush administration added to it in the way of policy. It is mainly new equipment, personnel and things of that nature. This is the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and future war costs here; also, the cost of waging the war on terror, but it does not include homeland security. This is cost risk because the Pentagon typically has overruns in its programs. CBO said it is reasonable to assume they will miss their targets by at least this amount.

When you put all these layers together, you see a budget increase from $300 billion to $600 billion over a 10-year period of time. At the same time all of this is being done, more or less deliberately, stacked on top of each other, we are having substantial tax cuts. When you put together these two factors, the defense spending increases and the tax cut decreases, you begin to see the emergence of the deficits that we are struggling to deal with today.

It is a reaction to this curve right here, a recognition that the chickens are coming home to roost. All of the bad budget decisions and fiscal policy risks that have been taken are not breaking favorably, are beginning to accumulate, and we have increasing deficits that require dramatic action.

The problem is, and there is recognition of the problem finally, and that is good. There is reaction to it, and that is good, but the resolution that is before us, the reaction that is being taken, the substance of it, does not really address the problem. And, if anything, it worsens the problem because it adds to the deficit rather than diminishing the deficit.

That is why we are out here trying to explain this somewhat complicated fact in the face of what is posing to be, taken as a pretext to be, a fiscal responsibility initiative.

In the wrong direction.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Madam Speaker, as we gather here tonight to talk over the problems of the budget, our colleagues on this side of the aisle, the Republicans, are locked in a dispute over how to pay for Hurricane Katrina, the cost of which could fall between $100 and $200 billion, maybe even more, for the Federal Government alone.

Some, for the most part their most conservative Members, have proposed big cuts in programs that range from student loans, to Medicaid, to food stamps, about $50 billion in spending cuts spread over 5 years.

They present these spending cuts as a way to offset, partially at least, offset the spending increases that the response to Katrina and Rita are going to require. But in actuality these spending cuts will not go to offset Katrina, because the Republican budget, the budget resolution operative for the year 2006, the resolution to be brought to the floor to be amended, already calls for $106 billion in additional tax cuts, $106 billion in new tax cuts.

And when these new tax cuts are passed, the spending cuts proposed, ostensibly to offset the cost of Katrina, will instead go to make up for the loss of revenues due to the $106 billion in tax cuts. Since the spending cuts are $50 billion and the tax cuts are $106 billion, none of the spending cuts will ever make it to the bottom line where they might otherwise be available to offset the cost of Katrina.

So the first problem that we as Democrats have with what our Republican colleagues are pushing is that it is not what it purports to be. It is not a plan to pay for Katrina. It is a plan to facilitate $106 billion in additional tax cuts.

The second problem that we as Democrats have with their plan is that we believe the cost of helping one State sustain the catastrophic loss and cost of a natural disaster, a disaster like Katrina, Hurricane Rita, should be borne by all of us, by all of the States, should be a matter of shared sacrifice, has been in the past should be in future, it works and it is right.

But we do not believe that those least able to bear the costs should be saddled with the lion's share of the load. And yet that is exactly what their plan will do, because they are pushing a plan that will pay for the cost of Katrina by coming down hard and heavy on the backs of students borrowing to pay for their college education, on the sick whose only access to care is through Medicaid, and on the very poor who depend upon food stamps to feed their families.

This is just some of those on whom the cuts they are proposing will fall, and the reason we are proposing alternatives and opposing the plan that they are bringing to the House floor. What we have coming before the House is a plan for spending cuts that basically and simply does not achieve its stated purpose, because it does not go to cover the cost of Hurricane Katrina, and the spending cuts it does select, whether they are used to offset tax cuts or offset the costs of Katrina, as I have said, come down on some of these who are the least able to sustain and bear them.

It is fair to ask, I think, as we begin to consider such a program, why is it we are insisting upon offsets for rebuilding Biloxi or Bay St. Louis or New Orleans, but not insisting on offsets to pay for rebuilding Baghdad or Mosul or Basra.

Well, one of the reasons I believe that we are experiencing this newfound interest in offsets that might diminish the deficit is that the evidence of a swelling deficit that is not going away, it is a structural deficit, built into the budget, not a cyclical deficit deficit based on the ups and downs of the economy, one that is going to be with us for a long time to come because of fiscal decisions that were made in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, is becoming so obvious, so widespread, so obvious, so significant that it simply cannot be denied.

I mean, after all the basics are apparent and they are well known. As Yogi Berra used to love to say, you can look it up, it is a matter of record. Back in the year 2000, we had a surplus of $236 billion. Matter of record. The budget was in the black by $236 billion, unprecedented. That was a budget that was inherited by Mr. Bush.

Today, just a few weeks ago as a matter of fact, the administration closed the books on fiscal year 2005, and when they closed the books they finally declared the balance at $320 billion. And they took some credit because that deficit is actually smaller than the deficit in 2004, which was $412 billion. But a $320 billion deficit is nothing to crow about.

Look at what has happened over the last four fiscal years. The simplest way to show it to you on the back of an envelope is to look at how many times our Republican colleagues have had to vote to increase the debt ceiling of the United States, and what those total increases come to since 2002.

This chart shows it to you very, very clearly. It shows that in June of 2002, despite the administration's assurance that we would not have to increase the debt ceiling, the legal limit to which the United States can borrow for another 8 years, they were back a year later saying we need an increase this year of $450 billion.

Then in May of 2003 they came back and asked for an incredible amount, $984 billion. You would think that big an increase would take you at least several years. This request was approved on May 26, 2003. By the summer of 2004 the Bush administration was back, Secretary Snow came back hat in hand saying we have just about run through the $984 billion increase you allowed us last year, we need another $800 billion increase, and before we could leave for the winter break, last November, that had to be passed.

Finally this year, we had a budget resolution on the House floor, passed the Senate, has now been passed as a concurrent budget resolution. It calls for an increase of $781 billion in the year 2006.

If you add all of these debt ceiling increases together, you will see that to accommodate, to make room for the budgets of the Bush administration over the last four fiscal years, we have had to raise the debt ceiling of the United States by $3 trillion, 15 billion.

So why do we have this newfound interest in offsets? It is because the budget is becoming undeniably unsustainable.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Madam Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right. First of all, foreigners are picking up the lion's share of our debt for now. It cannot go on forever. We know that. No borrower can go back to his creditors continually and endlessly and ask to borrow more and more.

But it has had an effect. It has kept interest rates low, because foreigners are borrowing our debt. When they quit buying it in large shares, we are going to see a rise in interest rates, it is going to have a significant effect on our economy.

Let me just show you the path we are on right now, to illustrate why the word not on a ``sustainable'' path has become commonplace in Washington today. Our trade deficit, our budget deficit are simply not sustainable paths.

This September, just a month or so ago, CBO, by law, presented a budget update, economic update which they are required to present. We asked them to take this projection of the economy and the budget over the next 10 years and adjust it for assumptions that would capture the essence of the Bush budget.

For example, we said assume that the tax cuts passed in 2001, 2002 and 2003 will be extended when they expire in 2009, 2009 and 2010. We asked them to assume that we fix somehow the alternative minimum tax so it only affects the same number of taxpayers as it affects presently.

We asked them to assume that there will be a drawdown beginning next year, this year, in the troop levels in Afghanistan and Iraq to the point where there are about 20,000 in each theater, and there will be a steady state like that.

And we asked them to assume that the President's proposal for Social Security privatization is enacted. Factor all of these into the budget. Extend the budget out 10 years. And CBO, we said, tell us what the results are. And here are the results on this chart, and they are very stark.

The budget deficit for last year, 2005, was $319 billion. Under the assumptions I have just outlined, that deficit will go to $640 billion. It will double over the next 10 years. The debt of the United States held by the public and held by foreigners will increase from $4.6 trillion to $9.2 trillion. It too will double.

And debt service, the interest we pay on the national debt, net interest that we pay on the national debt held by the public will increase almost threefold, going from $182 billion to $458 billion.

That is why we say there is a debt tax implicit in this budget. There may be tax cuts today, but tomorrow if there is one thing obligatory in the budget, it is interest on the national debt.

It has to be paid or the credit of the United States will collapse. And look at what we are leaving our children, the burden we are leaving them to bear and the increase in debt service which buys nothing for the government, breeds cynicism of our government because when the citizens are paying $458 billion in interest on the national debt and seeing nothing in return for it except for the fact that the bond holders of America are getting interest payments, they get cynical for what government can do for them for charging such high taxes and doing so little in return.

The debt of the United States will increase from 37 percent to 46 percent of the GDP. That is the path we are on now, and that is the path everyone knows is not sustainable.

We had some resilience.

They are becoming so abundantly evidenced that they cannot be overlooked or denied any longer. That is the point I am trying to make.

Let me make two points before I yield again.

First of all, we all believe that disaster relief should be a program of

shared sacrifice. We should all want to pitch in and help the people of New Orleans and Bay St. Louis and the gulf coast. No question about it. But when you spread that burden across our whole country, and that is the way we should do it, it should be spread equitably and evenly and fairly.

The second problem we have with what is being proposed and pushed right now, is that the costs would not come down evenly and equitably, but they would come down heavily on, in many cases, those least able to bear the burden. We do not think that is the way it should be done. We are not saying it should not be paid for in some respect or stretched out over time. We are simply saying, when and if it is paid for it ought to be equitably distributed.

Let me make one other final point by saying that if you look at our charts here you will see that in the year 2015, way down here in the corner of this particular chart, the deficit will be $640 billion. That does not assume anything for Hurricane Katrina because it had not happened when these numbers were run.

If you factor Hurricane Katrina in at today's level expenditure in that year the deficit will be about $645 billion. So the problem in the outyears here is not Hurricane Katrina. It is budget and fiscal decisions that were made in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and are still being made today through 2010 with the insistence that all the tax cuts passed then have to be renewed. That is what is yielding you these outyear deficits. This budget that gets worse and worse by the year.

That is essentially on a linear graph, what we have here in a simple table. It shows a blip for Katrina but basically it adds very little to the outyear deficit.

Madam Speaker, I think the gentlewoman will agree that the essence of America's opportunity and the essence of opportunity is a good education, and what we are seeing in this budget is diminishing money every year for education. For example, the signature program of the Bush administration was No Child Left Behind and many voted for it on the assumption that there would be, yes, more accountability, higher standards but there would also be more money.

And now, 2006, the difference between what was authorized and expected to be committed to this program and what is actually being made available in this budget is about 8, $9 billion. The number the gentlewoman gave was a cumulative number since the adoption of the bill. In addition, in order to make what is provided for the additional Title I funding available, the Bush administration has proposed to cut or kill about 48 educational programs. A lot of them are small programs, but they are the Eisenhower Science and Math Program.

We just had a blue ribbon commission say we need to be investing more in science and math education if we are going to make it to the future and sustain our style of living.

So we see a faint hearted commitment in name, in slogan, No Child Left Behind, but the dollars do not follow the children to the extent that we all expected when we voted for the bill in the first place, no question about it.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his insight, and I now yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I yield now to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Madam speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I now yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Madam speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, these charts were compiled by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), and basically what he is trying to show here is that we have a robust program of rebuilding and restoration ongoing in Iraq to the extent they can maintain anything there in the midst of that insurgency.

For example, in terms of infrastructure, we have rehabilitated the Sweetwater Canal System, including repairs to the levees on the Tigris and Euphrates. On the other hand, we have cut $336 million from the Army Corps of Engineers, including funding for the levees on the Mississippi. We have rebuilt the Iraqi republican railway line. But in the United States there have been $2.5 billion in cuts in Amtrak, and the high-speed rail funding program has been eliminated. Community development, 3,120 community action projects completed in Iraq; $320 million cut from community services block grants in the United States.

$470 million for the construction of housing and public buildings and civic centers for Iraqi citizens; in this country $250 million has been cut from community development block grants; and the President's budget cuts for public housing, the capital fund, have been cut by 10 percent even though it is now already deficient to meet the needs of the program.

This chart shows the same thing. In Iraq, 110 primary health care centers built or renovated. In this country $10 billion has been cut or is being proposed to being cut from Medicaid.

I could go down the list, but the example is stark. We are not saying this should not be done in Iraq. We have got to help get that country back on its feet, and the sooner we can get out, the better. But in the meantime, we need to stabilize the country, and this is part of it, part of the economic reconstruction. But it stands in stark contrast to what we are willing to do in this country for infrastructure that we all acknowledge we need and see we need in a case like New Orleans when the levees break.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I made the point earlier that the cost of catastrophes like Katrina and Rita should be spread over the whole country, the whole population, but spread equitably. And it is not right to saddle that heavy burden on those least able to bear.

I thank our participants for their participation.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Madam Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett) for taking this initiative, and I want to join my other colleague from South Carolina in recognizing the South Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company on its 50th anniversary. Its motto is ``Helping you is what we do best,'' and as that motto suggests, the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company has provided a wide range of financial services, insurance services to the people of our State for nearly a half century now.

The South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company came along at a time when farmers in our State were looking for better options in the way of obtaining good insurance coverage that was also affordable. Recognizing that need, the organizers of the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation went to work and secured a charter from the South Carolina Secretary of State on December 1, 1955. The result, five decades later, is a company that supplies a whole diversity of insurance products to South Carolinians from all walks of life, not just farmers. Among some of the services they provide are auto insurance, homeowners insurance, life insurance, as well as financial services such as banking, individual retirement accounts and credit cards.

I was here in 1989, and I recall well the bedlam in our State after Hurricane Hugo struck in Charleston and then moved inward, coming all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina. The South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance faced probably the biggest natural disaster in the history of our State except for the Charleston earthquake, and it faced the test of its ability to handle such a massive amount of claims, but it rose to the occasion. It settled some 16,000 claims and paid out more than $71 million.

Then, in 1999, the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company was tested again. Hurricane Floyd struck our coast, and 90 percent of the reported claims were settled within 1 week, which would set a model, if not a record, for fast and expeditious claims management. It is no surprise then that this company has prospered and succeeded over the years.

Today, the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company has a presence in every county in our State, and that is one reason they are able to provide such timely and quality service. Theirs has become a name that folks trust and know and feel comfortable with. I am proud of their service to our State. I rise to salute them, and I wish them the best as they celebrate their 50th anniversary and look to the future.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to join my colleagues in recognizing the South Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, SCFBMIC, on its 50th Anniversary. As its motto--``Helping you is what we do best''--suggests, the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company has provided a wide range of financial services to the people of our state for half a century.

South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance came along at a time when South Carolina farmers were looking for better options in the way of obtaining good insurance coverage that was also affordable. Recognizing that need, the board members of the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation went to work and secured a charter from the South Carolina Secretary of State on December 1, 1955. The result, 5 decades later, is a company that supplies a diversity of insurance products to

South Carolinians from all walks of life. Among some of the services they now provide are, auto, home, and life insurance, as well as financial services such as banking, loans, IRA, and credit cards.

I recall the year 1989 when the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company faced one of the biggest natural disasters in the history of our state: Hurricane Hugo. The South Carolina Farm Bureau rose to the occasion. It settled some 16,000 claims and paid out more than $71 million. Then, in 1999, when Hurricane Floyd struck the coast, 90 percent of reported claims were settled within one week, setting a model, if not a record, for expeditious claims management.

Today, the South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company has a presence in every county in the State, which is one reason they are able to provide such timely and quality service. Theirs is a name that folks know and trust. I am proud of their service to our State, and wish them the best as they celebrate their 50th Anniversary and look to the future.