Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, we are here because the Secretary of the Treasury has warned us that he has run out of tricks. Five times he has written the leadership of the Congress and told us that he was approaching the legal limit which Congress has imposed by law on how much debt the United States can incur. We call it the debt ceiling. Now he has told us that he is out of tricks and he is having to do things he does not regard as prudent unless we increase the debt ceiling. So it is right that we are here to do just that.

But it is also right that we take an hour or two to ponder what brings us to this juncture, to raise the debt ceiling again by $800 billion, when we have already raised it twice in the last 3 years.

Let us go back to January 1, 2001. The Bush administration takes office, and the fruits of our labor in the last two administrations of the Clinton years are laid before him. They look out and see surpluses of $5.6 trillion and decide that this warrants huge tax cuts. We warned them against buying into a blue-sky projection which might not be obtained, and surely enough, that happened.

They told us, nevertheless, that even if we adopted their tax cuts, they would not have to be back to request an increase in the debt ceiling due to the fantastic surpluses they foresaw, until the year 2008. In truth, they were back in 2002 asking for $450 billion. And then on May 26, 2003, just 18 months ago, the second request from the Bush administration was passed raising the debt ceiling by $984 billion. And now we have the third debt ceiling increase in 3 years, equal to $800 billion, before us.

Let me just take a minute to go through some charts which will explain more graphically why it is we are here and what it is we need to do at this point in time.

This was the debt ceiling when Mr. Bush came to office in January 2001, $5.950 trillion. This first increase took it to $6.4 trillion. The next, where we are today, $7.384 trillion. That was a $984 billion increase just 18 months ago. Today, they would like to take that up another $800 billion because they have rung up $984 billion in debt in the last 18 months.

Just consider that. Every 18 months the government of the United States under the Bush administration is incurring $1 trillion in additional debt. Every 18 months. That is the rate at which we are running right now. This next increase will take the debt ceiling to $8.2 trillion, up from $5.950 trillion. That is quite a statement about the fiscal policies of this administration.

Now, the administration assured us that they would not need to come back until 2008; that we could cut taxes by immense amounts not only in 2001, but 2002 and 2003, because there have been three tax cuts, and even more, and still enjoy an increase in revenues. This was the path they plotted when they sold their tax cuts to the Congress of the United States showing that tax revenues would rise from a little over $1 trillion to $1.118 trillion, individual and corporate income taxes.

Instead, the revenues of this country have followed this descending path here, and we can see the gaping hole, the difference of $300 billion today between what they predicted and where we actually are. This is an underlying cause.

In addition to that, there have been things that have taken their toll on the budget: defense. Much larger than anybody anticipated in 2001. Homeland Security. We did not even have a heading called Homeland Security 3 years ago. And the 9/11 response. But the increases in spending that have affected the bottom line of the budget have all been sought by the Bush administration. Ninety percent of the increases in spending over and above current services have been things they have sought and we have appropriated because they were urgently needed.

So where are we? A $450 billion increase in the debt ceiling in 2002. In 2003, we had a $984 billion increase in the debt ceiling. And today, an $800 billion increase in the debt ceiling. That means this administration has had to come to Congress and ask for the debt ceiling to be raised by $2.234 trillion. Let me say that again. It is so fantastic: $2.234 trillion to accommodate its budgets over the last 4 years. That is the bottom line. It is inescapable.

And how much is $984 billion, the last increase we had 18 months ago? Well, $984 billion is more than the entire debt of the United States in the year 1980-81 when Ronald Reagan came to Congress. The last increase 18 months ago exceeded it.

Let me just wrap up by saying that this calls for action. Sure, the ceiling has to be increased, but we should not just increase the ceiling and leave the problem unattended. The very least we can do is reinstate the PAYGO rules which have worked so well and put the budget in surplus for the first time in 30 years in the 1990s. That is what we ask today, an opportunity to put up an amendment that would at least take one solid step towards stopping this head-long descent deeper and deeper into debt.

Mr. Speaker, I have 2 minutes and three or four charts that I think I can tell the whole story with.

The year 2001. The President saw, looking out 10 years, surpluses of $4.6 trillion, and he said we can have it all, tax cuts and surpluses too. So he sent us a budget with enormous tax cuts. We warned against buying into those projections, but it was not heeded. They told us at the time that we could pass these tax cuts and we would not even have to consider an increase in the debt ceiling until the year 2008. That promise lasted 1 year.

The next year, in 2002, there was a $450 billion request for another hike in the debt ceiling. The following year, 2003, there was a request for an increase in the debt ceiling of $984 billion, the single largest increase in history, a bigger amount than the entire national debt in 1981 when Ronald Reagan came to office.

Add those three together and they tell you a lot: $450 billion, plus $984 billion, plus tonight's request, $800 billion, comes to $2.234 trillion. $2.234 trillion. That is the amount by which we have had to increase the debt ceiling of the United States in order to accommodate the budgets and fiscal policies of the Bush administration: $2.234 trillion.

Now, that is bad enough, but we asked CBO last September to take its latest economic forecast and to project the Bush budget 10 years, through the year 2014, and tell us how much debt would be accumulated in that period of time if we stayed on this course. This is what is to come. Tonight is only the beginning. This is what is to come if we follow those policies for the next 10 years. We will accumulate a national debt of $14.545 trillion.

And here, the final chart tells it all. Our debt is increasing twice as fast as our GDP, or income. This cannot be sustained, and that is why we do not believe this bill in its present form should be adopted.

Madam Speaker, 4 years ago, the Bush administration was just getting started. They sent us their first budget, then told us, based upon a projected $5.6 trillion in surpluses over the next 10 years, that there could be huge tax cuts, between a trillion five and $2 trillion, huge tax cuts and still a budget surplus, and that they would not have to even come back to Congress to ask again for an increase in what we call the debt ceiling until the year 2008, 7 years later.

The debt ceiling is a statutory limit, a limit that we impose by law on the total amount of debt that the United States of America can incur. It currently stands at a level of $7.384 trillion.

We did not buy into this argument. We did not vote for the tax cuts, and we on this side of the aisle were not surprised, disappointed, bitterly disappointed, because we had strived mightily to put the budget in surplus for the first time in 30 years during the 1990s. We did not vote for it, but we were not surprised when in the year 2002, not 2008 as predicted, but in the year 2002, the Bush administration came back to Congress and said that the statutory debt ceiling is about to be hit. In other words, we have run up so much debt that we are right at the ceiling of the total amount of debt that the government of the United States can incur, and, therefore, we need a $450 billion increase in the debt this year, 2002.

The next year they were back asking for more, and now they are back asking for still more, this time $800 billion. It is phenomenal when you consider that the last increase occurred 18 months ago and amounted to $984 billion. That was the largest increase at any one given time in the fiscal history of this country. As a matter of fact, $984 billion, the amount by which the debt ceiling was increased in May of 2003, $984 billion is more than the total indebtedness of the United States when Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981, and how long has it lasted, this $984 billion increase in the debt service? Eighteen months.

In fact, right now, this administration, under its fiscal policy of the budgets passed by the Republican majorities in this House and the Senate, has

run up a debt of $1 trillion over the last 18 months. That is a rate at which we are accumulating debt right now, $1 trillion every 18 months.

If we add together the increases to date since 2001, it was $450 billion in 2002; $984 billion, May 26, 2003; and then a request which must come to the floor sometime this week in one form or another, because the Treasury Department tells us they cannot continue to incur debt or meet their obligations unless we raise the debt ceiling, allowing them to borrow still more money, $800 billion will have to be passed some time this week. Those three increases for the last 4 fiscal years total $2.234 trillion. That is the amount of indebtedness that has to be accommodated by increases in the debt ceiling in order to allow room for the Bush budgets over the last 3 fiscal years.

We think at the very least an increase of this magnitude, $800 billion, requires an unambiguous yes or no vote, a straight up and down vote under a clean bill that only deals with the debt ceiling, with one exception. We believe that it is unconscionable to continue incurring debt at this rate, $2.3 trillion over 4 years, without doing something to stop this juggernaut, this headlong descent into debt.

So we propose that at least we be offered an amendment on the House floor to amend the debt ceiling increase to reinstate something we call the pay-as-you-go rule. The pay-as-you-go rule provides, quite simply, that if you want to increase an entitlement, liberalize an entitlement payment, you have to identify new revenues to pay for the increase or decrease another entitlement by a commensurate amount. On the other hand, if you want to cut taxes, you have to raise revenues elsewhere or cut an entitlement by the same amount so that the effect is neutral, has no effect on the bottom line of the deficit.

That rule was in play in this House for at least 12 years during the 1990s, and it accounted for a phenomenal effect upon other measures we took up and the deficit of the United States.

As this chart shows, when President Clinton came to office in 1993, the deficit the previous year was $290 billion. We passed a Deficit Reduction Act here sent to us by the President on February 17, passed it within 3 months. Every year thereafter the bottom line of the budget got better, until the year 2000 when we had a surplus of $236 billion. Four short years ago, we had a surplus of $236 billion.

Every year since the onset of the Bush administration, the bottom line of the budget has gotten worse and worse, to the point where in the year 2002 we were back in deficit by $158 billion, and the year 2003 we had a record deficit, $377 billion, and this past year, which ended September 30, 2004, we booked a deficit of $413 billion in the Federal budget, $413 billion.

Now, what happened? I mentioned earlier the big tax cuts passed by the Bush administration passed in 2001. There were more in 2002, still more in 2003.

And instead of having a rebounding effect, a sort of supply-side effect so that the pick-up in the economy resulting from the tax cuts sort of replenished the lost revenues, instead of that happening, as projected, this was the curve that was projected, that there would be barely any loss of revenues, instead taxes have followed this particular actual curve, dropping from $1.73 trillion back in the year 2001 to $811 billion this year.

Now, there are other sources of the problem. Terrorism is taking its toll on the budget. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost over $150 billion thus far. No question they have had an effect on the bottom line. But the tax cuts, based on this miscalculation, have had a substantial impact, and this is a course that was chosen by those who voted for it.

Here is where we were in the year 2001 when President Bush came to office. This was the statutory debt ceiling, the limit on the total indebtedness the government could incur, $5.950 trillion. It was raised to $6.4 trillion, then raised again May 2003 to $7.384 trillion. It will now be raised again to $8.200 trillion, by $800 billion. And, folks, that is not the end of it. That is the hard part of it. That is what has happened thus far.

Let me just summarize, though, where we are right now with the debt ceiling increases that have had to be adopted to accommodate the fiscal policies of this administration. Here we see it. In the year 2002, $450 billion, the next year $984 billion, now $800 billion, it comes to an increase, the amount I mentioned just a while ago, $2.234 trillion. That is the amount in 4 years by which the debt ceiling of the United States has had to be raised in order to accommodate the budgets and fiscal policy of this administration.

As I said, the last increase, $985 billion, was the largest in our history. Not only that, that amount, $984 billion, exceeded the total indebtedness of the United States in 1980-81, when Ronald Reagan came to office. The total debt of the United States then was $908 billion. We had one increase that has lasted 18 months, that is all. We have already run through $984 billion on the watch and under the policies of this administration.

As I said, it does not stop here. It would be bad enough if it did, but it does not stop here. This is what we really have to be concerned about and why we think at the very least there should be one single solid step taken in this debt ceiling increase to slow down this head- long descent into debt. This is the level of the debt ceiling in 2001 when President Bush came to office.

The Congressional Budget Office, at our request on the Committee on the Budget last year, projected the Bush budget through the year 2014, from 2005 through 2014, for 10 years, and came back and told us if we follow this course, by 2014 the United States will have accumulated $14.545 trillion in debt. This is where the Bush administration started, this is where they would end in 2014, projecting forward on a current services basis, the tax cuts and other policies that they have.

Let me make one final observation about this. As serious as it is, and anyone can look at this and realize the gravity of it, everybody understands the economics, everybody understands the fiscal effects, but the real issue here is the moral question. Is this the kind of legacy we are going to leave our children: $14.545 trillion? Because that is the course we are on right now.

And let me give one other aspect with this second poster here. One other aspect of this problem, before turning to my colleagues, that everybody knows simply cannot be sustained. This lower line, the black line, is the gross domestic product of the United States from 1980 through 2014, slowly rising, growing every year. That is the GDP. This is the debt of the United States during the same period of time. And you can see that the debt of the United States is growing faster than our income.

Everybody, every household, every business, and every government, State, Federal, or local, knows that you simply cannot sustain that kind of increase in your debt over and above your annual income for a prolonged period of time. But that is the course we are on right now.

Madam Speaker, I wish to recognize at this point the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Ways and Means, who will be our floor person on this issue when and if the debt ceiling increase comes to the floor.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for eloquently expressing the moral dimensions of a swelling debt, $8 trillion today, growing to $14 trillion in just 10 years.

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

I thank the gentlewoman from New York.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

There are certain items in the budget that are obligatory. Clearly, one of those obligatory items is interest on the national debt. We have a sovereign responsibility to pay it, and if we do not pay it or if we ever default in payment of it, the cost of credit for the United States of America would skyrocket. Consequently, that comes first, has to be paid, and when it has to be paid, then other things have to yield to it, education, the environment, the basic operation of the government. These other things have to yield to the payment of interest. Obviously, the more debt you stack on top of debt, the more interest we will have to pay.

Surely. If the principal is going up, your interest is going up.

It narrows our options, that is for sure. If we put too much pressure on them at the WTO, for example, trying to get them to unpeg their currency so that their exports are much more fairly priced vis-a-vis our imports, then they could get stroppy. They could simply retaliate by not buying any more debt and by making it difficult for us to sell our debt at a higher price.

Let me yield to the gentleman from Tennessee because he is bringing us back to this whole question of principal accumulation, how much debt in a short period of time this administration has amassed.

The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me just wrap up by saying that this is our concern: $2.2 trillion of additional debt in 3 fiscal years, and what is waiting in the wings is a reform in Social Security which is likely to propose that a person not on Social Security can take 2 percentage points or 3 percentage points off his payroll tax and put it in a private account. If that happens, that will increase the debt by another trillion dollars over the next 10 years, and that is

our great concern that this will be followed with policies that will actually worsen rather, than improve, this.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis).

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, on the weekend before Labor Day, some four hundred alumni of Jefferson High School gathered for their first reunion since Jefferson closed more than thirty years ago.

Jefferson got its start in a frame school house built for African- American students next to Wesley United Methodist Church on West Jefferson Street in York, South Carolina. From there, Jefferson graduated to a Rosenwald school and became the African-American public school in a racially segregated system Although the system was called ``separate but equal,'' Jefferson never had facilities or teaching materials equal to its counterparts, the white schools that I attended. Used books were passed on from white students, dated and worn. The school district built a new high school for white students in 1950, but left black students to make the best of their old one. The students, teachers, and administrators at Jefferson did just that. They made the most of their circumstances. The students who came back for this Reunion did not dwell on what they lacked at Jefferson High School. They saluted teachers who took a personal interest, believed in them, and encouraged them to excel. They recalled their formidable teams in football and basketball and the musical talent they produced. They recognized the values instilled in them for a lifetime.

When the alumni sat down for a banquet the last night of their reunion, the pride they felt at being ``Jeffersonians'' was easily felt and well-founded. Among the four hundred attending the dinner, there were graduates who had risen to the highest levels of the Civil Service and become department heads in state government; Ph.D.'s in the sciences and liberal arts; college professors; school teachers, successful entrepreneurs, attorneys; and many more who had distinguished themselves. The banquet speaker, Roberta Wright, symbolized their success. She finished Jefferson and went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk University and the University of Michigan School of Law. She made a stirring speech, challenging everyone to do more for the common good.

With the onset of integration in the early 1970s, Jefferson High School came to an end. But the three-day reunion made clear that Jefferson lives on in the lives it made better. Hundreds of the alumni attending attested to better, more productive lives because of what they learned at Jefferson under teachers who cared, encouraged, and challenged.

Mr. Speaker, on the weekend before Labor Day, some 400 alumni of Jefferson High School gathered for their first reunion since Jefferson closed more than 30 years ago.

Jefferson got its start in a frame school house built for African- American students next to Wesley United Methodist Church on West Jefferson Street in York, South Carolina. From there, Jefferson graduated to a Rosenwald school and became the African-American public school in a racially segregated system. Although the system was called ``separate but equal,'' Jefferson never had facilities or teaching materials equal to its counterparts, the white schools that I attended. Used books were passed on from white students, dated and worn. The school district built a new high school for white students in 1950, but left black students to make the best of their old one. The students, teachers and administrators at Jefferson did just that. They made the most of their circumstances. The students who came back for this reunion did not dwell on what they lacked at Jefferson High School. They saluted teachers who took a personal interest, believed in them, and encouraged them to excel. They recalled their formidable teams in football and basketball and the musical talent they produced. They recognized the values instilled in them for a lifetime.

When the alumni sat down for a banquet the last night of their reunion, the pride they felt at being ``Jeffersonians'' was easily felt and well-founded. Among the 400 attending the dinner, there were graduates who had risen to the highest levels of the Civil Service and become department heads in state government; Ph.D.'s in the sciences and liberal arts; college professors; school teachers; successful entrepreneurs; attorneys; and many more who had distinguished themselves. The banquet speaker, Roberta Wright, symbolized their success. She finished Jefferson and went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk University and the University of Michigan School of Law. She made a stirring speech, challenging everyone to do more for the common good.

With the onset of integration in the early 1970s, Jefferson High School came to an end. But the 3-day Reunion made clear that Jefferson lives on in the lives it made better. Hundreds of the alumni attending attested to better, more productive lives because of what they learned at Jefferson under teachers who cared, encouraged, and challenged.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4200 and commend my colleagues, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), for bringing this conference to a very successful conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to engage the chairman in a colloquy.

Mr. Speaker, the Conferees' Report in section 3303 contains a provision on the release of ferromanganese from the strategic stockpile, which is critical to steel production in the United States. Section 3303 contains a requirement that to release more than 50,000 tons of ferromanganese, the Secretary of Defense, among other requirements, must certify that the disposal will not cause undue disruption to the usual markets of producers and processors of ferromanganese in the United States. This could be considered a certification about future events regarding markets, and one could question whether the

certification of future events is possible.

I ask the chairman if the conferees' intent in the meaning of this provision is that certification in this instance is the Secretary's best judgment about future market conditions and events.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I thank the gentleman for that clarification.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4200 and commend my good friends, Chairman Hunter and Mr. Skelton, for concluding this conference report.

Everyday our armed forces make great sacrifices to ensure that we are safe, secure, and free. In return, this bill provides a 3.5 percent across-the-board pay raise. It stops short of targeted pay raises for NCOs and warrant officers, which I supported, but it helps bridge the gap with the civilian workforce; makes permanent increases in imminent danger pay from $150 to $225 and family separation pay from $100 to $250 per month (these are initiatives I championed a year ago--I'm glad to see them finally be adopted); provides $10 billion in military construction funds--keeping the Military Housing Privatization Program on track, and eliminating the program's funding ceiling.

The reserve component is being used in an unprecedented way and at an unprecedented rate. The Guard and Reserve make up approximately 40 percent of the force in Iraq, and others are stationed in Afghanistan and other critical locations at home and abroad. More than 173,000 have been mobilized for active duty service. Their service must be matched with meaningful benefits.

This bill provides enhanced TRICARE for reservists. It is not the full measure recommended by the Senate, but it is an improvement over current law. We can and should build on this beginning.

This bill also offers improved tuition assistance benefits.

In addition, this bill ends an injustice to the survivors of military retirees. H.R. 4200 phases out from October 2005 to March 2008 the current offset under the Survivor Benefit Plan, and increases the annuities paid to survivors of military retirees who are 62 years or older.

Recognizing the good efforts of my colleagues, Mr. Skelton and Ms. Tauscher, this bill increases active Army and Marine Corps troop levels by 30,000 and 9,000 respectively. The Pentagon fought us every step of the way on this end-strength increase, but this is the minimum we can do to reduce the stress on our forces and ensure that we can meet military commitments in the future.

This bill also provides $25 billion for the war in Iraq--enough to get through March of next year. We expect another supplemental request early next year of $50 billion--taking the total cost of the Iraq war well over $200 billion.

The bill is not without shortcomings. The President, Senator Kerry and the 9/11 commission all agree that the gravest threat facing the Nation is nuclear terror. H.R. 4200 continues the Administration's pattern of under funding CTR programs. This bill authorizes $10 billion for missile defense, but only $409 million to help combat the gravest threat facing our country. How can we justify spending $10 billion on an unproven system developed to combat a relatively non-existent threat and only spend 4 percent of that amount on consensus greatest threat to the security of the American people.

The Conference Report does impose some welcome disciplines on that ballistic missile defense (BMD) program. The Pentagon's Office of Testing and Evaluation regains an oversight role. It is tasked with devising a realistic test regimen for BMD. In addition, each block of BMD will be subject to Selected Acquisition Report requirements. This means that each block will have baselines for cost, schedule, and performance, against which actual results can be measured. These are steps forward, and steps long overdue in a program of this magnitude.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez).

Mr. Chairman, the first time I saw H.R. 10, the base bill, was 5 minutes before markup. As I leafed through all 609 pages of it to see what was in it, I quickly saw there were two glaring deficiencies. The first is the National Intelligence Director. Oh, there is an NID in the base bill, but it

is an NID in name only. This bill does not have the superpowers the 9/ 11 Commission considered necessary to pull together the 16 component parts of the intelligence community to fuse foreign and domestic intelligence.

This NID is clearly lacking in those powers, and let me give two examples why I say that. One is the power of the purse, the power to make the budget. There is an old adage in the Defense Department called the golden rule, he who has the gold, makes the rules. Well, the NID in this bill does not have the gold, so he will not be making the rules that really matter. He does not have the power to set priorities or to make programmatic budget decisions. He is basically a facilitator; a coordinator.

The same diminished powers apply to personnel, the hiring, firing, and promoting; putting the team together that can get the job done. He is not a CEO. He is not even a coach or a quarterback. He simply does not have the power the Commission conceived necessary. The prime mover in the 9/11 Commission report in this bill has a name but he does not have substantive powers, which begs the question: Can the NID ``effect'' real change, radical change, without real power? I doubt it.

The other missing piece is nuclear nonproliferation. The other night the President and Senator Kerry agreed on one thing, that nuclear terrorism is the gravest threat facing this country. So what does this bill do about the gravest threat facing this country? Next to nothing. Oh, it calls for a study, but we have had countless studies. Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler, you do not get more high powered than that in this town, did the last study and they called for us to triple the amount of money we spend on nuclear nonproliferation. It has not happened.

So the base bill slights the single most significant reform, the NID, and it ignores the gravest threat facing the country. That is why the White House, the Senate, and the 9/11 Commission support the substitute, and why I will support it and urge others to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, in less than 10 days we will close the books on fiscal year 2004, and what a year it has been. A few days after that we will declare a deficit of $422 billion. You got it, $422 billion.

Now, there will be all sorts of spin to make that shortfall seem a lot less serious than it really is. But here are the hard facts. At $422 billion, this year's gift will set an all-time record, $47 billion more than last year, which itself last year was the worst deficit on record. And at $422 billion this deficit is bad enough; but if you back out the surplus in Social Security, as you should, 15 years ago we adopted a law and said Social Security shall not be included in the regular budget of the United States. It is, after all, a trust fund. The money is incumbent for the beneficiaries.

So if you back out those trust funds and the surplus they incur this year, the deficit in the regular budget of the United States is $574 billion for fiscal year 2004, $574 billion, more than a half trillion dollars in debt.

Now, the President keeps telling us that this economy is on the mend. Usually when the economy gets better, the bottom line of the budget gets better, but not now. This year's deficit, you see, is not going away. It is not even going down by much. Even if the economy improves, it will still be about where it is, 4 to $500 billion for the next 10 years. What we have got, what we are stuck with for the time being until we do something about it is what economists call a structural deficit. It is built into the texture of the budget itself.

On the House Committee on the Budget, our Democratic staff has taken the latest projection of the deficit and the economy given to us just a few days ago by the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, our neutral, nonpartisan budget shop. We have taken their forecast, and we have made what we regard as political readjustments to it. We

have actually decreased the war of Afghanistan and Iraq that they have included because we do not think and do not hope, certainly, it will continue at existing levels. We have assumed that the alternative minimum tax will be fixed, as politically it must be fixed over the next several years; and we have assumed that the President's tax cuts will be made permanent as he earnestly seeks. He will get his way.

When you do that, you see what happens on this bottom red line which starts in 2004 at $422 billion, that is this year's deficit, because from 422 to 360, yes, it gets a bit better, we hope, but then it bombs out in that range. And by the time you get to the end of this 10-year period in 2014, the deficit is $503 billion.

As I said, the deficit does not go away and it does not go down by much; and at the end of the 10-year period it is bigger than it is today and we have accumulated a mountain of debt. By our calculation, using CBO's forecast, the Federal Government will incur $6,816,000,000 in additional debt between now and 2014. And when that $6.8 trillion in new debt is added to our old debt, which is $7 trillion or thereabouts, the total debt of the United States will come to $14,890,000,000 in that year.

If we follow the fiscal course the President has laid down, keep implementing his policies, do not make any changes in this budget, we are adopting basically his budgetary assumption, that is where we will be: $15 trillion in debt by the year 2014. That is the legacy that we are leaving our children.

If this burden were not enough, we always have to remember that out there, looming on the horizon, beginning in the year 2008, it is a phenomenon called the baby boomers, 77 million of them are marching to their retirement as I speak tonight. They have already been born. They have already qualified for their retirement benefits, and in 2008 they will start drawing their Social Security. In 2011 they will start drawing their Medicare. In 20 years they will double the number of beneficiaries on Medicare and Social Security. And what should we do to prepare for this unprecedented demographic event, the doubling of the number of people on retirement?

We should be saving money now, no question about it; in this period of time we should be saving money. Instead, we are doing just the opposite. We are building up mountains of debt as this chart shows.

The blue line on the top is the path plotted by the Bush administration in 2001 when they brought us their first budget. They said, this is the path that we expect to follow. This was the basic baseline of the budget, before the Bush policies that were projected back in 2001. That is how good things looked. This is how bad things are now 3 short years later.

Well, I said what we should be doing is saving, paying down our debt, not building up our debt.

Now, some may discover that, some might say, when did the United States Government ever pay down any debt? Well, in case you do not know it, in 1993, when President Clinton came to office, the deficit was right there, $290 billion, a record deficit under the last President Bush, $290 billion in 1992. That was the deficit situation President Clinton inherited.

We passed in this House, in the mid-spring of 1993, a deficit reduction act that the President sent to us. We passed that bill by one vote here in the House and by one vote in the Senate. As a consequence, every year after that for the next 8 years, the bottom line of the budget got better and better and better to the point where in the year 2000 we had a surplus of $236 billion. All of that happened on the watch and under the administration of the Clinton administration because of two major multi-year budgets that we adopted in those years, hard votes, probably cost the Democrats control of the House, but we did the right thing and there was a payoff, a budget and surplus by an unprecedented $236 billion in the year 2000.

As Yogi Berra likes to say, If you do not believe it, you can look it up. It is a matter of national record.

Well, what has happened since then? This is when President Bush came to office. He inherited a surplus. The budget there, midfiscal year 2001 was in surplus by $127 billion, but every year thereafter the bottom line of the budget has gotten worse and worse to the point where it is $422 billion in debt today.

Now, let me show you what those surpluses in the Clinton years meant, which was also unprecedented. In those 3 years from 1997 to the year 2000, that 3-year period of time, the debt of the United States held by the public outside the Government went from $3,772,000,000 to $3,409,000,000. We paid off in those 3 years $362 billion of debt. If you take what was paid off in the year 2001 when President Bush came to office and inherited the budget of the previous administration, it is over $400 billion in debt reduction.

By contrast, this administration told us when they came to office in 2001, their own economists at OMB, Office of Management and Budget and CBO both, they told us if you stay this budgetary course, you can pay off the debt held by the public; keep doing what the Clinton administration has been doing, you can pay off the debt held by the public by 2010, 2008 as early as that. But in the foreseeable future, if you stick to this budget course, to these fiscal policies, you can pay off the debts of the United States and lay the basis of the solvency of Social Security, the first big step you can take towards making Social Security and Medicare solvent for a long time to come.

We know the story. The Bush administration did not choose to stay that budgetary course. They chose their own budgetary course, which called for deep tax cuts, very significant tax cuts; and when the budget forecasts did not materialize as expected, those budget cuts, those budget tax cuts ate even more deeply into the deficit of the United States.

As a consequence, in the year 2002 instead of paying down more debt, we had to increase the national debt of the United States. We had to raise the statutory ceiling. There is a statutory limit on the debts that we can incur. We had to raise it by $450 billion in the year 2002. Next year, having raised it $450 billion, the very next year we had to raise the debt ceiling again by $984 billion. Let me tell you something, $984 billion is more than the entire debt of the United States in 1981 when President Reagan came to office. But we had to raise the debt ceiling by that amount in 2004 in order to accommodate the increases in debt.

When you add all of these together, you will see what I have cited earlier, the phenomenal increase in debt under this administration. If we stay the course we will be going to $14,890,000,000. But already with the two debt-ceiling increases passed of 450 plus 984, plus one that is pending right now, which is $650 billion, when those three debt-ceiling increases are passed, it will come to $2.1 trillion. That is the fiscal record of this administration. Compare it to the last 3 years of the Clinton administration which I have just shown you where we paid off $362 billion.

Mr. Speaker, we are one million jobs short to the number of jobs we had on March 1, 2001, when the last recession started. It was over in November. And we are still a million jobs short of that despite the supposed economic stimulus which obviously did not stimulate the economy by nearly enough.

That is why we are not seeing the results in jobs.

I thank the gentleman, and let me just wrap up and now turn to my other colleagues and yield to them, first by saying or asking, how does this administration respond to these dismal results? Nobody can put a pretty face on numbers like these, a deficit of $420 billion, a fiscal course that has led us to nearly $15 trillion in debt. Some legacy to leave to our children. In just 10 years, that is the course we are on according to CBO, even OMB. How do they respond to it?

Last July when the administration issued, as required by law, its so- called mid-session review of the budget they actually resolved this. When they issued that, they went through the numbers as they projected them, put the best face they possibly could on them, and came to the conclusion that these deficits were indeed unwelcome. That was the strongest word they could muster, that these deficits were unwelcome. Did they offer a plan? No. Did they hold out any prospect that this deficit would be reduced and that the country would be put back on a path of fiscal stability? Not on your life. There is no plan, no prospect of it, no shock, no shame and no solution.

We want to tell you more about the situation we find ourselves in, and now I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for that purpose.

Four hundred twenty billion.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) for his eloquent remarks. That is the reason we took advantage of this Special Order, to call attention to this problem. It should be a problem of national concern, a call to action.

Here we are 9 days before the end of the fiscal year, and we do not even have a budget for next year, much less a multi-year budget like those we adopted in 1990, 1993 and 1997 and finally brought the deficit to heel. We do not have any of the implements in place to deal with this monumental problem, even though we proved in the 1990s that those implements, like the PAYGO rule, the discretionary spending ceiling and sequestration were useful tools and could actually turn the budget around from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998. That actually happened, and it can happen again if there is leadership coupled with the right process and procedures in this House, and we do not have them at all.

We do not even have enough consensus under the Republican leadership of this House and Senate to develop a budget for next year, much less a budget for the next 5 years. We will never do it. If there is anything learned from the 1990s, we will never do it ad hoc. Indeed, the biggest enemy I have often said of deficit reduction is something we call disaggregation, breaking the process up into so many pieces that nobody ever gets a full picture of what is happening even though it is a monumental process.

So here I stand, 9 days before the end of the fiscal year. We thought it was an appropriate time to call attention to the record of this year, the record debt, and to the fact there is no prospect for dealing with this in 2005 at all.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, to wrap it up, looking back, we started off talking about the deficit and accumulation of debt. Here is what we have accomplished, this Congress and this administration, in 3 years:

The first year, instead of paying down the debt as the Clinton administration had done for 3 years in a row, they raised the debt ceiling by $450 billion. That was good for just 1 year. The next year, 2003, they raised the debt ceiling again by $984 billion, the biggest increase ever; and it has lasted for 15 months. Waiting in the wings right now is another debt ceiling increase of $690 billion; and what it is waiting on is a bill to which it can be attached, a vehicle that can carry it to passage with as few fingerprints on it as possible because nobody wants to be responsible for passing that kind of debt ceiling increase.

So the Treasury is reduced to engaging in a lot of gimmicks with Federal retirement funds, for example, in order that we can tie things over until finally that debt-ceiling increase can be passed. In 3 years we will have raised the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. Compare that to the previous 8 years, and it is a phenomenal and depressing reversal.

I thank the gentleman for his participation and his eloquent comments.

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for my colleague, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), and I understand the position he has taken; but let me suggest that this is a case where an exception should be made and to explain why, let me go quickly through the history of this program.

The Military Housing Privatization Program was established in 1996 and 1997. OMB established how the program should be scored, how it would reflect the cost to the government.

From 1997 until and through this year, OMB has stood by that methodology. If we follow that methodology, we would not be having this debate. In 1996, the committee established a cap of $850 million to make sure that the program worked as intended, and the program has worked as intended. It has exceeded the expectations.

The cap, $850 million cap, was based on OMB's method of scoring. And, once again, if we used that method of scoring, we would have no problem today.

In 2002, we asked OMB and DOD to reaffirm the methodology, and OMB and DOD came back and reaffirmed the methodology. CBO only changed its notion of how these scorings should be done in this year, midstream.

November of this year, the cap we set several years ago will be reached. In the Committee on Armed Services we abided by this fact, and using the revised CBO scoring, we provided an offset of $6.5 billion. The problem is, that will not kick until 2006. Over 2005 and 2006, the DOD has planned to build 50,000 units. If we cannot do what the bill does today, or would do today, that will leave 24,000 military families out in the cold because of an arcane scoring difference between OMB and

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I further thank him for scheduling this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, our Armed Forces won an impressive victory in Iraq, but the Pentagon was poorly prepared for the aftermath. Three big assumptions proved wrong: one, that the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators; two, that oil would soon pay for Iraqi's rebuilding; and, three, that we have plenty of troops, weapons, and equipment for the postwar situation.

American troops were left to tackle tasks that they were not trained to handle, but let me tell my colleagues, they rose to the challenge. While the situation is still ours to win or lose, it would be far, far worse if it were not for their can-do attitudes and their courage. They are doing their best and have been doing their best to stabilize a God- forsaken country and put Iraq back in working order, and they are doing it under extremely difficult circumstances with all too little credit or attention given to their successes.

No one in the Bush administration thought that now, nearly 14 months after the end of major hostilities in Iraq, that we would have 161,600 U.S. troops deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, 130,800 in Iraq, and 21,800 in Kuwait. We are about to embark on the third rotation of troops for the war in Iraq, which so far has involved the movement of 277,000 troops. Currently, Guardsmen and Reservists account for 40 percent of the Iraqi Freedom force; and following the upcoming rotation, the Reserve component will make up 43 percent. These are men and women who leave their jobs and businesses, their farms, not to mention their families, and serve tours longer than any of them ever expected.

In the first Persian Gulf War, the question was whether the total force would work, whether active and Reserve forces could fight and maneuver side by side. In this war, there is no question. Without the Guard and Reserve, our active duty troops could hardly deploy.

Whether active duty or Reserve, our troops face a daunting challenge. Security in Iraq is so bad that thousands of troops unfortunately, but probably, will have to stay for a long time to come to prevent this country from falling into a fractious, bloody civil war.

How did this happen? Poor assumptions, poor vision, poor planning. Ignoring State Department warnings, the Iraqi army was disbanded in May of 2003. With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.

The Army's Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, warned us that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to police post-war Iraq. What did he base that upon? Firsthand experience as the commander in chief of our multilateral force in Bosnia and Kosovo, several hundred thousand troops. Pentagon officials dismissed it the next day as wildly off the mark, fixing the figure closer to a hundred thousand. General Shinseki has been vindicated by what has happened.

Last August, our troops began training a new Iraqi army, a light infantry force of about 40,000 to be ready by this October, 2004. As of today, 7,000 to 9,000 have been trained, and when these troops are trained, it will still be far, far short of what is needed to maintain Iraqi security.

The situation in Iraq, unfortunately, differs dramatically from the rosy picture that was painted for us by expatriates before the war. During an interview with Meet the Press March 16, 2003, our Vice President, Mr. Cheney, insisted that our troops would be welcomed as liberators. When asked what if we are viewed as conquerors instead, he said, ``Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.''

What was his source? Well, he said, ``I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them over to the White House.'' While some Iraqis did greet our troops as liberators with open arms, many did not, and aliens like Abu Musab Zarqawi took advantage of open borders and infiltrated Iraq to begin waging guerilla war.

Since the Pentagon underestimated the number of troops required after the end of hostilities, we were not prepared to prevent looting or to guard hundreds of weapons dumps spread throughout the country. So the looting destroyed key components of the Iraqi infrastructure, and stolen munitions are being used today in attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.

Because this violence was not anticipated, thousands of troops were sent to Iraq without adequate body armor and without up-armored vehicles. They were to be greeted as liberators, but, in

Iraq, 882 have been killed so far, and 5,394 have been wounded. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, 130 have been killed, 332 have been wounded.

Our troops are the best-trained, the best-equipped, the best professionals, the finest fighting force the world has ever seen. More than 300,000 of them have served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and over 40,000 have taken part in the conflict in Afghanistan, and despite blunders from above, the can-do determination of our men and our women in uniform never ceases to amaze me.

I traveled to Iraq late last summer, and I met with the Coalition Provisional Authority, with the Iraqi Governing Council, with U.S. commanders and with our troops. North of Baghdad in Mosul, the 101st Airborne Division was in charge. Its able commander, General Petraeus, calls this region the most viable region in Iraq, and he never missed a chance to salute his own troops.

He told us privately, ``I've seen our young soldiers endure tremendous hardship, overcome huge challenges, fight a tenacious, determined and even suicidal enemy, and demonstrate incredible innovativeness and compassion. It's just extraordinary,'' General Petraeus said.

The first 30 days of an occupation, everybody knows, are critical. General Petraeus spent the first 30 days training local security forces, fueling the economy by use of his commander's funds to create local jobs and to befriend Iraqis. In the 101st, troops were often dual-hatted as warfighters and peacekeepers, carrying a rifle in one hand and a wrench in the other, putting down insurgency on one front and winning hearts and minds on the other.

Let me give you another snapshot. Consider the 1st Infantry Division. Soldiers from the 1st Division delivered medical supplies, textbooks and journals to the Tikrit Hospital, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, and Tikrit University Medical School in particular. They delivered 150 boxes of textbooks donated by medical schools and medical students in the United States.

Prior to this restocking, the university has had to use photocopies from medical students and medical texts. Our contribution raised the library at that school to 50,000 volumes.

Another snapshot. Let me read a portion of an article by James Lacey, and I read it because there has been so much copy devoted to what is going wrong there, so much copy about the violence there and about the hopelessness of the situation, we really do need to look from time to time at the success stories and at the remarkable and aspiring examples of our troops.

Here is what Lacey, who was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, wrote. ``Bravery inspires men, but brains and quick thinking win wars. In one particularly tense moment, a company of U.S. soldiers were preparing to guard the Mosque of Ali, one of the most sacred Muslim sites, when agitators in what had been a friendly crowd started shouting that they were going to storm the mosque. In an instant, the Iraqis began to chant and a riot seemed imminent. A couple of nervous soldiers slid their weapons into fire mode, and I thought we were only moments away from a slaughter. These soldiers had just fought an all- night battle. They were exhausted, tense, and prepared to crush any riot with violence of their own. But they were also professionals, and so when their battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Hughes, ordered them to take a knee, point their weapons to the ground and start smiling, that is exactly what they did. Calm returned. By placing his men in the most nonthreatening posture possible, Hughes had sapped the crowd of its aggression. Quick thinking and iron discipline reversed an ugly situation and averted disaster.''

Since then, Lacey writes, I have often wondered how we created an army of men who could fight with ruthless savagery all night and then respond so easily to an order to smile and relax your weapons.

Mr. Speaker, pride in our troops is not a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans alike support our military personnel. For our troops, this is tough, dangerous duty. And though morale is satisfactory, as General Cody acknowledged in the New York Times just a week ago, the Army, among others, because they are doing most of the heavy lifting now, is absolutely stretched thin. That is why when the supplemental providing $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan came before Congress, I proposed a package for the troops. Surely we could find a niche somewhere in an $87 supplemental for the troops and their families.

I proposed that we increase imminent danger pay, separation pay, that we give them R&R tickets that would take them all the way home and not to their last duty base. I proposed extra funding for family assistance, because it is grossly underfunded.

I am sorry to say it, but the Republican leaders of the House would not let my package be offered on the House floor. Parts of it, fortunately, ended up in the conference report.

In May, when we had the defense authorization bill before us, I offered another amendment to that bill to ensure that every sailor, every soldier, every airman and marine in the combat zone has $250,000 minimum life insurance paid for by the government itself and to fund several force protection measures, including the test and evaluation of new technologies that would neutralize these horrible devices called improvised electronic devices, roadside bombs, that have killed and maimed so many, I offered some money to boost that particular research. Once again, my amendment was not even made in order to be debated, at least debated on the House floor.

As costs mount, in lives and dollars, it is natural to second guess, but one lesson I hope we have learned is that the U.S. cannot go it alone in a policy that leaves American troops taking all the risk and American taxpayers paying all of the costs.

Our country, the United States of America, may be the world's largest economy and the world's only superpower, but we stretch ourselves dangerously thin by taking on commitments like Iraq with only a motley band of allies to share the burden.

The cost of the first Gulf War came to $80 billion in today's money. Our allies picked up $60 billion through cash contributions. $16 billion was provided us in kind, petroleum and food and other things, mainly by Persian Gulf countries. That left us $4 billion out of pocket for an $80 billion war. This war so far has cost us $125 billion and counting, because largely we decided to do it on our own, with only the United Kingdom as a paying, fully participating partner.

I may disagree with the administration over aspects of this war, and particularly going it alone, not building a broad-based coalition to support whatever we have done, but I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that I stand second to none in supporting our troops.

Because of that and because I recognize how stretched we are, I am all for an increase in Army end strength of at least 30,000 and in Marine end strength at least by 9,000.

But, you know, Mr. Chairman, the test of our support is not what we see but whether or not we pass legislation that backs up what we say, that gives our troops the tools they need to execute their mission successfully and gives their families the resources they need to have peace of mind and security. We owe them no less, for they make this country the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to recognize the career of an extraordinary South Carolinian, United States Army Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Billy Tention. Following 30 years of distinguished service and after reaching the Army's highest enlisted rank, CSM Tention will retire from active duty on July 9, 2004. The significance of this milestone is matched only by his devoted service.

General George C. Marshall once said, ``There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.'' This defines the military career of CSM Tention.

Born in September 1953, in Camden, South Carolina, he entered the Army in September 1974, after graduating from Ashwood Central High School. He underwent basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and received his Advanced Training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. CSM Tention then excelled at every rung up the leadership ladder. From his early days as non-commissioned officer in charge of the Services Branch at Eisenhower Army Medical Center to Hospital Command Sergeant Major at Fort Leonard Wood, CSM Tention has demonstrated the Army's core values: selfless service, loyalty, honor, and integrity.

His dedicated 30-year commitment to the Army speaks of his loyalty, loyalty to his country, the Army, and most importantly, his fellow soldiers. ``Do your duty in all things,'' General Robert E. Lee once said. ``You can never do more. You should never wish to do less.'' CSM Tention did his duty through service in numerous assignments including war-fighting during the first Persian Gulf War and other overseas duty in Europe and Asia. There's an old Army saying: ``Take care of your people,

and they'll take care of you.'' CSM Tention has been taking care of his people for 30 years. Whether it's exceeding recruitment/retention goals, yielding the highest Expert Field Medical Badge graduation rate, or spearheading Dining In's and ethnic recognition programs, CSM Tention's actions reflect the highest respect and honor among seniors, peers, and subordinates alike.

CSM Tention's awards and decorations include two Legions of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, two Meritorious Service Medals, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, 10 Good Conduct Medals, the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia), the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait), the Expert Field Medical Badge, the Air Assault Badge, and the Recruiter Badge with 3 Gold Stars.

CSM Tention earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia College in 2004 and is working towards a Master's degree in Human Resource Management from Webster University.

I am proud to represent all South Carolinians in thanking CSM Tention and his family for their dedication, commitment to country, and service. CSM Tention is a credit to the United States Army and to the United States of America. I wish him all the best as he makes the transition to civilian life.

Mr. Speaker, this is called the Spending Control Act of 2004. The last time I looked, the Republicans control the House, Republicans control the Senate, and Republicans control the White House. So it begs the question, why can they not control spending? Why do we need this piece of legislation to control spending?

As one looks at the bill and asks that question, another question arises: Why does this bill have nothing to do with revenues? Basically what this bill would do is affect discretionary spending for 2 years, not 5, and put in place a PAYGO rule, a pay as you go rule which applied to mandatory spending, entitlement spending increases but not to tax reductions.

Do we disagree on the problem before us? Absolutely not. We have got a problem. The best evidence of the problem was signaled this week when we had a defense appropriations bill in which was buried a provision that will increase the debt ceiling over the next several years by a substantial sum of money.

Let us look first at what has happened over the last several years on the watch of the Bush administration with respect to the debt that we have accumulated, the mountainous debt that we are building up now. The best indicator of that is where does the debt ceiling stand? There is a statutory ceiling on the amount of debt we can incur. When President Bush came to office, it was $5.95 trillion. Within a year, he had to increase that by $450 billion. Last year he had to increase it by, get this, $984 billion. The other day they increased it by $650 billion, to $8.74 trillion once it finally passes the Congress.

That is the record of the last 4 years, three increases in the debt ceiling in 4 years, from $5.9 trillion to $8 trillion and this is the bad news: It does not stop here. The Congressional Budget Office tells us looking at the President's budget out over the next 10 years, as they are required by law to do, that if we follow the policies laid down by the Bush administration, the debt of this country will grow in 2014 to $13.6 trillion. That is where the debt ceiling will have to be taken in order to accommodate their fiscal policies.

What does this bill propose with respect to this problem? As it turns out, very, very little. Before going any further, it is worth reminding everybody what happened in the 1990s. It can be done. If you put your shoulder to the wheel and the President supports it and the leadership of the Congress supports it, we can bring the deficit to heel. We did it in the 1990s. We went from a deficit of $290 billion at the end of fiscal year 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998. Just as a reminder from 1997 to 2000 on the watch of the Clinton administration, we reduced the debt of this country by $362 billion. If you added fiscal year 2001, which was basically the Clinton budget, we reduced the debt by more than $400 billion. What a fiscal reversal we have seen in the last 4 years.

What does this bill propose to do? Essentially it proposes to clamp down on that wedge of the budget called domestic non-homeland discretionary spending. That is, discretionary spending from which we have backed out international spending and from which we have backed out homeland security, because in both of those categories, they foresee substantial increases, but they are going to bring all the force of their efforts to bear on this wedge of the budget which constitutes 16 percent of the budget.

Let us ask the question, is this where the problem arises, in this segment called domestic non-homeland discretionary spending? This is what has happened over the last three fiscal years to that particular account: $383 billion in 2002, $382 billion in 2003, $383 billion in 2004. The problem does not arise here. But this is where they go for a solution. On the other hand, look what the solution is. The President proposes to take domestic non-homeland security resources down to $376 in 2005. That is a reduction of $7 billion. Actually it is hard to do but in truth, we have got a deficit this year of between $400 billion and $500 billion, you have only dented the problem once you have done it.

This is where the problem lies. If you want to look at spending, which this bill does not do, over the last 4 fiscal years, 90 to 95 percent of the increase in discretionary spending has occurred in defense, homeland security and our response to 9/11. But this bill ignores that particular aspect of the problem. And where is the rest of the problem? When the Bush administration held their tax cuts out to us and when they were passed, they told us this is the path that revenues will follow, between $1 trillion and $1.1 trillion. This is where revenues, income taxes, have actually gone over that period of time, largely responsible to their tax cuts.

And this is what has happened to spending generally. Spending generally has gone up in the Bush administration. Revenues have gone down. Spending, however, is still as we can see from this chart below the historic norm for the last 25 years. Revenues, on the other hand, are at an all-time low. Personal income taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since the early 1950s. So revenues are low, spending is high, and this bill unfortunately

does nothing about the problem at hand.

Mr. Speaker, we have sat here for 3 or 4 years and watched tax cuts erode away the surplus and then, after the surplus was gone, watched tax cuts add to the budget deficit. We have asked ourselves where are we headed? What is the point of all of this? And we have suspected, long suspected, that the next step was to take us to the stage we are in now where we will hear increasingly, we just don't have the funds to meet our obligations for veterans' health care, we don't have the funds to fund education at the level we promised when we passed the Leave No Child Behind bill, and the pitch will be that all of this has been forced upon us by some outside events and we can't help it, we simply have to conform the budget to fiscal reality.

Well, we do have a choice and this bill today shows us in one clear illustration what that choice is. We have a choice. It is not inevitable that we cut veterans' health care. It is not inevitable that we do not fully fund education or health care generally. We have a choice. We can move around, just a little bit, $18.9 billion and do a world of good. Where does the money come from? From those making over $1 million. How much do we take? $18.9 billion and still leave them a tax cut. And where does it go? $4.7 billion goes to deficit reduction. $14.2 billion goes to various selected needs.

Let me give my colleagues just a few examples. Veterans' health care. Our own Veterans' Committee tells us we have funded veterans' health care at $1.3 billion below what is needed to meet our obligations. We have promises to keep and surely this is one we could keep, should keep, to our veterans. Selected pay increases for junior officers and senior NCOs. We did not fund it this year. We could fund it with this bill.

Education. We passed a bill called Leave No Child Behind. We set a high level because we were imposing mandates on school districts across this country. We promised them money. We are $8.8 billion below the level that we set for ourselves in passing Leave No Child Behind.

Homeland security. There are a host of unmet needs here. We are skating on thin ice. One is port security, funded at all of $124 million in this year's bill. That is twice what the administration requested. The Coast Guard tells us they need $5.8 billion over the next 10 years. We are not on that track. We can at least provide more for needs like that, glaring needs in that particular area.

After 9/11, one of the questions quickly raised was what about the fire next time? What if this had been a radiological attack or a biological attack? A number of Members went down to CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta. They were really troubled when they saw those facilities and security at that facility in particular. So what do we do with CDC this year? The budget request from the President called for a $410 million cut in CDC. This amount of money would allow us to plus it up.

Allied health care professions. We all know there are acute shortages of nurses coming up. The President's request this year cuts allied health care professions by 64 percent. Will this money be used better? Will it do more good for more people if we take some away from those whose AGI, adjusted gross income, is above $1 million and put it to these pressing needs? You better believe it will. That is why we should vote for this bill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

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

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

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I yield to the gentleman from Delaware.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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