Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I certainly have no objection to the gentleman's withdrawing the amendment.

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

As I was just informing the House, Mr. Chairman, I have, obviously, no objection to what the gentleman wishes to do. I understand all of his sentiments. This process needs to be fixed.

If the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will remember, we had a conference in 1997 when we did the balanced budget agreement of 1997. Most of the budget principles, when they were affected, the subcommittee chairmen of the Committee on Appropriations came. It would be good if we could get together again, something like that, where you do have interest from all of the House, and we could sit down and I would hope in a nonpartisan way try to come up with a better process than we have right now, because the process we have now is in the ditch.

I would still have problems with the gentleman's amendment because it does not provide for the full double-edged PAYGO. It has now a provision in it that changes the fiscal year to November 1. I do not quite understand why the gentleman would want to do that.

But, nevertheless, it is a moot point now. We appreciate the gentleman's removing it from consideration. There are some ideas in there I do agree with. For example, the gentleman would tell CBO not to assume that expiring tax provisions are not going to be renewed. They are most likely going to be renewed, and that is the way the projection ought to be carried out, I think. And so I agree with a number of those provisions like that in the gentleman's proposal.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition. I should claim it before the gentleman completely commits me to the support of his amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have no great objection to it, it is true, simply because I think CBO already does this. You get every year the economic forecast and budget outlook. You get one in January. You get the President's budget again. There will be one coming up in August. The levels of entitlement spending are there. It may not be in quite the format you anticipate here, but if you want to go back to the previous year's volume and lay out what spending was that year, you can find projected levels in the baseline. It can be done.

Mr. Chairman, I will not object to this. I will accept it. But I honestly think it is redundant to what CBO is already doing and already providing.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, that is an excellent idea. The three of us can sit down with CBO and our staff and come up with the information the gentleman wants, and we will not be bound by statutory language, but by a good-faith commitment to get it done.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

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

Mr. Chairman, we have heard some eloquent statements from members of the Committee on Appropriations, largely Republican members of the Committee on Appropriations, to the effect that the President already has, as they put it, three bites at the apple. This gives the President a fourth bite, and, believe me, a big bite.

This clearly is a shift of leverage from the House and the Senate, the Congress, to the Presidency. The President would emerge from this kind of deal with much, much greater authority in dictating what the budget is going to be. You have heard it more eloquently from members of the Committee on Appropriations, what the results would be in determining priorities. This definitely would be a big shift.

Now, would it make the budget process any stronger, any more effective? My concern is, contrary to the belief that it might streamline the process by elevating the status of the budget resolution, I think it would probably prolong the process, protract the process. As a result, we would find ourselves with less time to do appropriation bills because it would take a much longer time to get the budget resolution done, because not only would we have to agree among ourselves, from party to party, we would have to agree with the White House.

There is some advantage to that, trying to bring us together; but I think there is a lot of disadvantage, and there is a lot of room for chicanery. There is a lot of room for manipulating the process if we do it, and it could result in a protracted budget process, such that every year we will be, as we are now, in the heart of the summer, trying to pass appropriation bills before the fiscal year ends.

This has been around the track a number of times. It has a certain appeal to it, until you begin considering all the ramifications and the transfer of power that it would effect, a very subtle transfer, but a real one.

I would suggest this is an idea that we should not adopt.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond to that.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know what bill the gentleman is referring to, but the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) proposed this idea some time ago. I never did support this idea. I never have.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

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

Mr. Chairman, I honestly fail to see what we will accomplish, except protracting the process; what we will accomplish positively by making this concurrent resolution a joint resolution that has the effect of law. I really do not know what will be different from what we have right now, except we would have to come to some agreement with the White House much, much sooner in the year than we otherwise have to.

What is going to be different? The statutory? What would be different about it?

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

But that is done already under existing law.

Sure. We would waive them again, put it in a bill, send it to the White House, the President would sign it.

Well, I am convinced it will prolong the process, complicate the process, and lead to less results rather than better results. It is something we can long argue about.

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, like many of the amendments that were offered to this base bill, I have only had the chance to peruse quickly this one. This is an idea that has been around the track before. In the late 1980s, early 1990s, we were searching for ways to get our hands around the problem. This is one of the things that was proposed by several different people in several different variations.

Anyone who tried to implement this and have legislative counsel draw it in a form that would be truly enforceable ran into multiple complications. It is maddeningly complicated, as the gentleman can tell from reading the bill. The bill takes it a step further than any version of this idea I have ever read before, and it taxed all my concentration here on the House Floor to make it from the first page to the last page, and I am in a maze. I do not really know how it works.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, keep in mind that other body called the Senate moves in a separate orbit from this body, and somebody over there is going to have a different idea, and there is going to be an entry under a different program. When we go to conference, the conferees are going to have a different idea, and the bookkeepers around here are going to be switching credits from account to account, taking back credits as the money that was saved is now spent. The project that was going to be killed or cut is now restored, and it becomes a nightmare.

That is why this idea has had all of the longevity of a lead balloon. It has never gotten off the ground.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, if one could keep the trail of it, and that is the problem.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the core idea is basically an appealing idea and lots of Members around here have had the experience where they have found something that they thought could be a legitimate saving, they have offered the amendment and prevailed, only to see the money is spent somewhere else. I disagree with the gentleman when he said a little while ago, and I think it was in a moment of zealousness, that if the savings were taken out of, say, the Cleveland Rock and Roll Museum, it would have to be spent somewhere else. It does not have to be spent somewhere else; it can be saved, and this mechanism was a way on to sort of lock box money, so that it could not be used again.

But there are so many moving pieces. We have an authorization bill, an appropriation bill; a House and a Senate conference committee, and any time anybody makes any kind of change or different entry, there has to be an adjustment. This is a $2.2 trillion budget, and I think the bookkeepers, their minds would be boggled trying to keep account of this, as mine was when I was trying to read the gentleman's bill.

So I do not discredit the idea, it is just the mechanism for enforcing it and truly making it work is so complicated, I think it collapses upon itself.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, to close I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, but I may not oppose the bill. I simply claim the time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I have actually sponsored legislation like this in the past. I have voted for it and argued for it on the House floor. When we had the vote on the line item veto, I came over here and tried to offer an alternate amendment to it and argued to the House, the other side principally, that if they would adopt this, and the Supreme Court did what I predicted they would do and held it unconstitutional, then this would be in place as the alternative. We would have it by now if that had been attempted, the bill passed. And that was not put in it.

There was a strong suspicion on my colleagues' side that if we put that in, the Senate would take out the line item veto and pass the rescission provisions. In truth, there are certain Senators who are probably laying in wait for this rescission provision already.

We did add some features to it that I would recommend for your consideration. One is when it came through the Committee on Government Reform we added a provision that would not only allow spending to be treated this way, but also targeted tax cuts. Because these targeted tax cuts are often tax expenditures and they were defined as tax cuts which had a beneficiary class, a few of them. I thought it was a good idea and a good improvement on the bill.

We bring these tax bills over here to the floor, they are not amendable. We vote on them up or down. At least on the appropriations bill, if one wants to, they have an opportunity to go after individual items. Instead, the tax bills have all kinds of provisions.

We also had some provisions in it about how you could break out for separate treatment all or certain parts of the package if one could get a petition with so many Members. This is an idea that has been around and around the track, and it is actually an idea that has been embellished and improved as it went around the track. I am not quite sure how many of those ideas there are in this particular version of it, but I recommend those for my colleagues' consideration.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

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

Mr. Chairman, this substitute would extend the so-called PAYGO rule

through September 30, 2009, to require that both the cost of all net direct, mandatory or entitlement spending increases and all tax cuts both, this is two-edged, double-edged PAYGO, enacted during a session be fully offset. In other words, this amendment would reinstate the rules that expired two years ago, the rule that is applicable to entitlement increases, the rule that is applicable to tax cuts known as the PAYGO rule.

In addition, this amendment would set total discretionary spending limits for 2005 and 2006 equal to the levels in the Democratic budget resolution which we offered on the House floor a few months ago. There are no total funding caps for other years.

Like H.R. 4663, it specifies that annual mass transit and highway funding for each year through 2009 will be set at the levels also included in the House-passed transportation reauthorization bill, known as TEA-LU.

Mr. Chairman, in the 1980s and 1990s, as we have struggled with deficits and as the effects of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings fizzled out, various rules, some of which have been surfaced on the House floor tonight, were proposed and tried. Two, however, emerged as meritorious and were included in what became the Budget Enforcement Act of 1991. It was a spin-off from the Bush Budget Summit in the year 1990. These were the disciplinary tools to implement the Bush Budget Summit Agreement, which really has not gotten the credit it is due for laying the foundation for what we accomplished in the 1990s. Neither have these rules gotten the full credit of their due, but they got a nice accolade from a source who admitted that he was a cynic, if not a skeptic, at that time, Chairman Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve.

He told our committee, the Committee on the Budget, just a few weeks ago when we asked him about the renewal of these rules, if he thought from his observation as an outside observer of the budget that these were worthwhile tools. He said, you know, I was a skeptic. I did not think they would work. I thought they were diversionary tactic, but I have been proven wrong. They were remarkably effective.

And when we questioned him and asked him, he said, I would reinstate both rules, both the discretionary spending caps, and I would reinstate the pay-as-you-go rule, which provides that if you want to have a tax cut when you have got a deficit, then you have to make it deficit neutral; you have to have an offset. You either cut entitlement spending one place in the budget, or you increase revenues as an offset in another place.

And by the same token, if you want to enhance an entitlement, you have got to identify a revenue stream to pay for it, or you have to have a commensurate cut and another entitlement program elsewhere in the budget so that in all respects, they are deficit neutral at the end of the session.

These two rules, the PAYGO rule, the double-edged PAYGO rule and the statutory spending caps on discretionary spending, are the heart and soul of this particular substitute that I am offering here. This cuts to the very core.

Rather than go through all of these convoluted rules, let us go back to two rules that work. Let us be pragmatic. Let us pick from the past experience that we have had those rules that contributed the most to our success in the 1990s, and after all, we moved the budget from a $290 deficit to a $236 surplus in six fiscal years, and these two rules helped us do it.

They have both expired now. We could do a world of good for the budget process, for the budget, for the deficit, by reinstating these two rules, and really, it is all we need to do that and fixing realistically discretionary spending caps.

Let me say, we proposed 5 years of spending caps. The chairman has reduced his effort to just 2 years. In an effort to get something that he could possibly pass over there, he went with two years. I really do not think we have effective discretionary spending limits unless we have longer terms than that. So we have a 5-year spending limitation on discretionary spending, and I should acknowledge that we have set this a bit above current service, a bit above the CBO baseline. Why did we do that? Because we fully accommodated the President's defense request, nondefense discretionary, and our cap is pretty close to baseline, pretty close to current services, just a bit over.

Total discretionary is somewhat more in excess of the CBO baseline because we followed the President's defense members. We put in the $50 billion this year for the Iraq and Afghanistan and supplemental expenses. That is realistic, and there is one rule that we learned in the 1990s we should apply here, too. It applies to the 1997 budget which was uniquely successful when we set the statutory caps on discretionary spending at a very, very tight and unrealistic level.

When we got to the ideas, we fudged on them substantially and that is primarily because partly because we set them too tight to start with. Here, we have set them realistically. We have got two rules that work. They have proved their worth.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve says I do not see why you would not reinstate them and make the PAYGO rule in particular applicable to tax cuts as well as entitlement increases. I submit to the House, if we want to do something tonight, if we want some concrete, valuable outcome for all of our efforts, these two things would do a world of good, and we could leave here feeling that we had done something good for the budget and something successful tonight.

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

Could the Chair please advise me how much time I have?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, once again what we are trying to do here is to cut through all the rhetoric, go through all of these complicated rules, sometimes convoluted rules, and come up with two basic rules, two pragmatic rules that have proven themselves over a period of 10 years to work and work well. Indeed, they were part of the success we enjoyed in the 1990s when we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000.

First of all, we would impose a statutory cap on discretionary spending at a level that we think is realistic. And what do we mean by that? We take current services, basically treading water, with inflationary adjustment, and we add to it the Bush defense budget. But we want to make a point here, and that is this is the totality of domestic nonhomeland discretionary spending in the budget. This is one- sixth of the budget. Wipe it all out, you do not have an FBI, you do not have a court system, you do not have a Park Service, you do not have highways; but you still have a deficit, notwithstanding the fact you have wiped the whole thing out.

If you look back over the last 4 years, what is the source of this spending that everybody is decrying tonight? What you find is it certainly is not domestic nonhomeland security; 383, 382, 383. Now, Mr. Bush said he would like to cut it down to $376 billion. Well and good. This is one of the reasons the appropriators are out here tonight. They are struggling with the attainment of that goal. That saves $7 billion on a deficit that is estimated at over $400 billion next year. That is how much blood you can squeeze out of this turnip.

Where then have the cost increases come from? This chart tells it all. These bar charts show 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and they show that 90 to 95 percent of the increase in spending in those four fiscal years occurred in defense, homeland security, and the response to 9/11, not in what we call domestic nondefense discretionary spending. Therefore, the cap will have an effect, but not a great effect.

Basically, what we have done is we have capped nondefense discretionary spending at a current services level. We provided, as I said, realistically for the Bush defense budget for the other half of discretionary spending in the cap we have set.

Complicated chart. It says one thing in particular. When Bush came to office, when the President came to office several years ago, the Bush defense budget, the defense budget for the next 10 years was $3.6 trillion. Today, by our calculation, it is more like $5 trillion. We have seen defense spending go up over that time frame by $1.4 trillion.

And what about revenues? This is where the Bush administration told us revenues would go if we had tax cuts as we did in 2001, 2002 and 2003; that they would follow this blue dotted line. They have not followed the blue dotted line. They have taken a precipitous decline downward over this period of time from over $1 trillion to less than $800 billion in a period of about 3 or 4 fiscal years.

So if you want to solve the problem, you have to get to the source of the problem. You have to go to the budget and look at where the problem exists, and you cannot rule out revenues and expect to resolve a $521 billion estimate. That was the last official estimate we got from OMB of a deficit for this year.

That is why we have, number one, spending caps on discretionary spending at realistic levels that accommodate for defense. Get real. We are not going to be reining in those accounts by any substantial amount in the near future, given our obligations that are still being worked out.

And, secondly, we have acknowledged that revenues are a significant part of the problem. Indeed, when we resolved the problem of the deficit in the 1990s, and CBO looked back on it, they said 48 percent of your success was due to the fact that you were able to enhance revenues, 52 percent was due to the fact you curbed spending. Those two together produced the phenomenal results we enjoyed in the 1950s.

Here it is right here. It can be done. The Clinton administration came to office and outlays were 22 percent of GDP. When he left office, outlays had been reduced to about 18 percent of GDP. Revenues were about 17 to 18 percent of GDP. They were taken up over 20 percent of GDP. And there is the measure of the success in the Clinton administration right there, the $200 billion surplus we have been talking about.

And here is what happened with the Bush administration. Revenues have plummeted and spending outlays have gone up. But outlays are still below historic norms. Revenues, however, are pretty close to historic levels. Income taxes, as a percent of GDP, are about where they were in 1950.

So you have to do all these things to have a successful budget process package, and that is why we suggest to you we have got before you now in this substitute a package of two simple and basic rules which we say to you pragmatically worked, worked phenomenally well, and ought to be reinstated so we can tackle this difficult problem and approach it and try to begin working down the deficit.

I would suggest to the House that this would be the simplest way and the best way to resolve this whole debate. Adopt this substitute and wrap it up by reinstating the PAYGO rule with a double edge applicable to tax cuts and spending increases alike.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

For those who have voted against the previous amendments dealing with automatic extension of continuing resolutions, dealing with expedited rescission, for various other reasons they should be aware that this budget reincorporates all of those other provisions which they found onerous and objectionable in the past and would instate them in a bigger bill.

The chief feature of this bill which is objectionable is the effort it makes to put a cap on entitlement spending. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if enacted, this particular provision would trigger the most severe budget cuts in modern history, calculation by which it would require entitlement cuts of $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years.

There are a couple of things to be aware of. When they say they are capping entitlement, they are capping not only entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid; they are also capping interest on the national debt. So one can have a result that certain Members would seek to have a large tax cut and succeed, which would increase the deficit and, therefore, increase the national debt and result in higher interest payments. And those interest payments would then have to be accommodated within the cap that will be imposed on entitlement spending.

Take also the level at which the cap is set and how it treats the Medicare program. The cost of the new Medicare drug benefit enacted last year to real spending occurs until the year 2006. The cap will be set at 2005 spending levels. So there will be a substantial amount of additional spending for Medicare which will have to be recouped from cuts in entitlements like Medicare.

This bill is full of anomalies that could have disastrous effect upon the programs in this country upon which people depend.

I will come back and explain further why this bill should be defeated soundly.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to correct the record. Earlier I said that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had done an analysis of this proposal and found that it would cut entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicare and TRICARE for Life by $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. They have done a revised study. It was correct. They have revised that study and their revised study shows that the cut will only be $1.551 trillion. That is in entitlement programs. It comes out of child nutrition, its comes out of TRICARE for Life, it comes out of veterans benefits. Across the board people will be hurt.

I did not mention earlier the discretionary spending. Discretionary spending in the Hensarling proposal would increase each year at 2.1 percent a year. At the end of the 10-year period of time, because they take it out of the full 10-year time frame, this substitute would limit discretionary spending to $220 billion below what the President has recommended. And one of the reasons we do not have a budget right now is we are still struggling with the numbers the President has prepared, trying to bring it within the framework of what he has recommended.

So this would have severe consequences; and it would have severe consequences upon, in the words of the AARP, the health and economic security of millions of vulnerable Americans.

Finally, to remind everyone, if you voted against the automatic continuing resolution, if you voted against the joint budget resolution making the budget resolution a law signed by the President, if you are opposed to biennial budgeting, if you voted against expedited rescission, this bill reinstates all of those, and is an additional reason to oppose it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, the Kirk substitute is Hensarling light, just as objectionable for most of the same reasons, only less so.

He just put up his sign over there which said it would save $445 billion and which could be spent on Medicare and Social Security. That is the estimated savings produced by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) just said they are wrong, and yet he was holding up a sign indicating that the savings that he would accomplish are just what they indicated they would be.

So he saves $445 billion for Medicare but he gets it by taking $175 billion out of Medicaid, $50 billion out of Federal civil service retirement and disability, $28 billion out of military retirement, $22 billion out of veterans' benefits, on down the list. That is how that $445 billion adds up. He limits the safety net programs to 2 percent. It is true, he picks out some programs that are sensitive, we might call them safety net programs, and he provides they will not be cut more than 2 percent, another difference between him and the gentleman from Texas.

But this provision means that other programs are not deemed to be sensitive and they include child care payments, price supports, farm price supports, crop insurance, TRICARE military health benefits, among others; these face unlimited cuts, larger cuts because the other programs are shielded. These cuts could reach 43 percent by 2014 based on current projections according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

So this particular substitute is just as bad, only not in dollar terms quite as great, it is just as flawed, has just as many anomalies in it, and for the same reason should be rejected by everyone in this House.

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

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. Moran).

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

My good friend, the gentleman from Illinois, comes to the floor and he acknowledges, he touts this amendment as requiring cuts that equal $445 billion over the next 10 years in entitlement programs, except for Social Security and Medicare, but they come out of Medicaid and Federal civil service retirement and military retirement and family support and TRICARE for life.

The list goes on and on. He acknowledges that these programs will be cut by $445 billion. But he holds up the sign and says, but look, this money can be used to shore up Medicare and Social Security. But I defy you to read this substitute and find in it one line, one word, anything that will say that these savings must go to Social Security or Medicare. More likely than not, they will be used to offset tax cuts, maybe to offset the deficit but unlikely they will go to Social Security and Medicare. So what we have here is an across-the-board entitlement cap proposal that by the author's own acknowledgment will cut key programs by a substantial amount. It does protect some, limiting the cuts to 2 percent. But by limiting the cuts in some to 2 percent, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes it clear that this provision means that other programs, child care payments, farm price supports, crop insurance, TRICARE military benefits, face unlimited cuts that could reach 43 percent by 2014.

Unless you want to vote for this kind of Draconian budget, vote against the Kirk amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have seen it all. When it comes to the deficit, I have seen this House duck, and I have seen this House dodge; but this rule takes the cake. They pull out at a must-pass bill, Defense appropriations, and deep within the rule they bury some vague language on our national debt. Later, when the doors are shut, the conference is started, the cigars are lit, this language will be transformed into a $690 billion increase in the ceiling of our national debt. No audit trail, no fingerprints, no responsibility.

Our Republican friends cut taxes, they raise spending, they run up the debt; and if that were not bad enough, now they want to escape responsibility for the actions they have taken.

Let me say to our children and grandchildren, when they ask who left us with this mountainous debt, on President Clinton's watch in the years 1998, 1999 and 2000, we ran a surplus in 1998 of $236 billion, a surplus in each of those years and we paid off debt. We paid off $362 billion of debt on his watch.

In 2001, when President Bush came to office, he inherited a budget in surplus; and he predicted that under his policies there would be no need for a debt ceiling increase, that was the President's prediction, until 2008. That was a prediction of what the debt would be in 2008. He also predicted in this book called a ``Blueprint For New Beginnings,'' page 201, Table S-16, that in the year 2011 there would be no statutory debt of the United States left. It would all be paid off.

Well, here we are in 2004, and the Bush administration has had to raise the debt ceiling two times already. One to go. Three increases in 4 years that total $2.124. Three increases in 4 years that total $2.124 trillion. And if you take the Congressional Budget Office's projection of the President's budget, done last March, you will see this is another in a series of debt ceiling increases; not by any means the last.

In fact, CBO projects that the President's budgets will require the Federal Government to incur, get this, $5.571 trillion of additional debt between now and 2014. As a result, this will bring our total debt, these numbers are too hard to even imagine, to $13.645 trillion. That is the course this administration has put us on.

This is some legacy to leave our children. And it is a cruel irony that it comes to us wrapped in the flag, buried inside a defense bill, to which it has no relation, provided we pass this rule and put it there. And we should not pass this rule. This rule is a travesty. We should not pass it. There is no difference between this rule and the off-balance sheet financing that Enron did to hide its liabilities.

If we want to stand up for the House, stand up for the process, stand up for self-respect in this institution, we should start by voting down this rule. Be on notice, however, if you vote for this rule, this rule, make no mistake about it, will raise the debt ceiling of the United States to $8.074 trillion. Remove the smoke, remove the mirrors, and that is what this rule will do. It will increase the statutory debt ceiling by $690 billion. Vote against the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of H. Con. Res. 417, the Tuskegee Airmen Recognition Resolution. Books and movies both document the historic achievements of the Tuskegee Airmen. Today, I urge my colleagues to pass this resolution confirming the renown of these World War II heroes. Despite racial segregation and discrimination, the Tuskegee Airmen lived up to the words of General MacArthur, years before he spoke them: ``Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory . . . the very obsession of your public service must be duty, honor, country.''

The Tuskegee Airmen were dedicated young men who became America's first African-American airmen, defying the many people who thought they lacked the intelligence, skill, courage, and patriotism to fly. Training for the first aviation class began in July 1941 and ended 9 months later in May 1942 with the successful graduation of five of the 13 original cadets. From 1942 until 1946, the Tuskegee Experiment produced nearly 1,000 pilots, with 450 serving overseas in the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group. The 332nd flew 1,578 missions which involved nearly 16,000 sorties and accumulated 111 kills (plus one destroyer sunk using a plane's machine gun).

The feats of the Tuskegee Airmen weren't limited to its aviators. For every mission flown, there were scores of men and women who performed ground-support duty as aircraft and engine mechanics, armament specialists, radio repairmen, parachute riggers, control tower operators, military policemen, and administrative clerks. Their achievements represented a true team effort. The unit was highly decorated, earning 150 Distinguished Flying

Crosses, 744 Air Medals, 8 Purple Hearts and 14 Bronze Stars. But their most important achievement was never losing a single bomber to enemy aircraft--the only escort unit to earn that record.

The impact of the Tuskegee Airmen was felt well beyond the skies of Europe and North Africa. Their actions spearheaded and influenced social changes back home, and resulted in the integration of our Armed Forces. In 1948, President Harry Truman enacted Executive Order Number 9981 which directed equality of treatment and opportunity in all of the United States Armed Services. This order not only led to the end of racial segregation in the military; it was also a long step towards racial integration in the United States.

I proudly salute the Tuskegee Airmen and ask my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I have served in the House for more than half of the 40 years that Charlie Johnson has served as Parliamentarian. As a matter of fact, I had just become a Member of the House with no more than 3 weeks of experience when I wandered onto the floor one day, having mistaken the bells and thought there was about to be a vote.

Before I could get off the floor and go back about my business, Charlie beckoned me to the chair; and the next thing I knew I was wielding the gavel, presiding over the House, never having done that before in my life. I was never more thankful to have someone who knew what he was doing sitting behind me whispering instructions, and I have been thankful ever since that Charlie Johnson was in that position.

For all those 22 years that I have known him, his chair behind the Speaker, his office across the hall have been sources of civility in a House that is often contentious, sometimes bitter and pugnacious and embattled. For all those years, the Parliamentarian has been an authority that everyone in this House, both sides of the aisle, have recognized and respected because his rulings and his advice and his good judgment have always been based on precedent and on sound thinking.

His office made him powerful. Anyone who became the Parliamentarian of the House would be powerful inherently, but his knowledge, his ability and his manner made him authoritative. The House could not be the House that the Framers intended us to be, the people's House, without sometimes passionate, hard-hitting debate; but the House could not operate in that mode, sometimes pushing the envelope of civility, without a referee that everybody trusted and respected. For a long, long time, Charlie has been such a referee.

My respect for Charlie Johnson on our side, the Democratic side of the aisle, was established over the years and well-founded, but his great ability, his inherent decent fairness, was recognized to his credit and theirs when our Republican colleagues moved into the majority and made him their Parliamentarian, too. He proved his fairness, his basic inherent fairness, by serving both parties without ever breaking stride. I do not think anyone in the years that I have served here has ever accused him of bending with partisan winds. Charlie Johnson has called them the way he saw them for the last 40 years.

The House of Representatives is losing, we should not fool ourselves, a huge amount of institutional memory with the loss and retirement of Charlie Johnson. Four decades in the Parliamentarian's office, 10 years as Chief Parliamentarian, and during all those 40 years he has embodied those qualities that we need most in a parliamentarian: erudition and evenhandedness, great authority and great good humor, too, and overall a keen understanding of this great institution of the Republic.

He has made the people's House deserve its name. He has helped us make this complex system that we call democracy work and work well.

Though he is leaving, he leaves behind him a legacy that will inform the proceedings of this House for a long time to come, and he is leaving a well-trained staff of Parliamentarians.

Mr. Speaker, I remember when John Sullivan was first appointed and moved from the House Committee on Armed Services. The day after he took his office as the Deputy Parliamentarian, the staff on the House Committee on Armed Services concocted a convoluted parliamentary problem, which I presented to him as an innocent junior Member of the House, which John was immediately stumped by before he realized that it was all a hoax. Today, if we presented him that Gordian knot, I think he could probably cut it.

Charlie, you have taught us not just the procedures of the House and taught us well, but you have taught us the reasons that those rules must prevail. That is a legacy that will last for a long, long time. I think the brooding omnipresence of Charlie Johnson will loom over this House for a long time to come.

Thank you for everything you have done for us and this great institution.

Mr. Chairman, let me just pick up on where we left off. We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence. This weapon is not necessary. It is not only unnecessary, it is counterproductive at a time when we are trying to get countries like Iran and North Korea and countless other want-to-be nuclear countries to give up their nuclear ambition.

And it raises a fundamental question: How long can we move the world in one direction while we move in another direction, and do we want to backslide into an era that we finally emerged from where we had a nuclear weapon for every tactical mission?

They are not practical, they are not necessary, and this weapon will not come close to destroying or hardening up the hardened, deep geological targets for which they are reputedly available. To the extent we want to go after a target like that, we have bombs for that effect, and you can dial a yield. In addition, we have conventional weapons that serve this purpose.

This is not necessary. And anyone who thinks this is a minor item, the justification indicates that $480 million needs to be spent for this particular program over the next 5 years. This is a major item in the defense budget.

This amendment should be adopted.

Mr. Chairman, among the amendments included in the en bloc is an amendment known as the Hastings amendment.

The Department of Energy requested $350 million for accelerated clean-up of defense sites, old nuclear weapons production sites, where some of the world's most radioactive nuclear waste is stored.

The chairman's mark authorizes 250 of the $350 million that DOE asks for. I am glad to see us go close to at least 300. I wish we could have gone to 350. But the amendment before us does leave out the fence or the conditions or the limitations that DOE would have imposed.

Both of these provisions, both the additional money taking us to $300 million and the lack of any fence of conditions are steps in the right direction, and I commend the gentleman for his amendment and urge everyone to support it.

Mr. Speaker, at 6:20 a.m. this morning, this budget resolution, the conference report, so-called, was filed. At 7:15 a.m., it was before the Committee on Rules. No one outside the actual drafters of the legislation had had any time to look at its contents.

It only applies to $2.3 trillion of spending authority. Some way to run a railroad.

And now, when the bill comes before the House, it comes because the rules of the House require a 1-day layover for a rule, so that we have a little time at least and not get surprised with provisions that we did not see on quick notice. That was overturned by meeting early this morning, adjourning and meeting again and deeming 1 day to have expired. So this budget resolution comes to us under sham circumstances.

You have to ask why? Why should something of this gravity, of this importance to the fiscal policy of this country come to us under these circumstances? And there is only one answer I can give you. It will not stand scrutiny. It simply will not stand scrutiny.

The Budget Act calls for spending in major functions of the budget, about 19 all together, and it calls for revenues, and it calls for those expenditures and revenues to be taken function by function and spread out, projected out over a period of 5 years. This budget resolution has real numbers for only 1 year. It is not extended out with real numbers. It has plugged numbers, but not real numbers. For only 1 year are there real numbers.

For the first time in 20 years, we will take up today, if this rule passes, a budget resolution that does not contain a 5-year run-out of the spending levels that we are approving.

In addition, when we set out with this budget, it was recognized that there were some budget process rules we adopted in the 1990s that worked and had a profound effect on our ability to move the budget from a deficit of $290 billion to a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000. One of those rules was the so-called PAYGO rule which says, if you want to cut taxes and you have a deficit, you have to offset the cut in taxes with an increase elsewhere, or at least with a cut in entitlement spending that is commensurate to your tax revenue cut.

That rule no longer applies because it has legislatively expired. We have tried and tried to restore that rule so that we can put some discipline, some starch into the process here in the House, and we have not succeeded because of opposition on the other side.

What we now get in this so-called budget resolution is an extension of the PAYGO bill, the PAYGO rule for 1 year that applies in one House. It will not apply here in the House of Representatives. That means all sorts of tax cuts can still originate in the House of Representatives, will not be subject to a PAYGO point of order, can be sent to the Senate; there they may be defeated on 60-vote PAYGO point of order, but otherwise we have a crippled, broken-down PAYGO rule that applies for only 1 year.

When you read this bill, this resolution, and see what little it contains, you have to ask yourself, why bring it up at all? If you are not going to comply with the Budget Act, if you are not going to give 5-year extensions, if you are not going to use real numbers, if you are not going to extend PAYGO, why bring it up at all? Well, it does a couple of things. It allows you to claim that you are doing a budget resolution without doing the single most important objective in a budget resolution, and that is laying down a plan for erasing this huge deficit we have.

Members should understand that if they vote for this budget resolution, they will be voting to have a deficit next year of $367 billion by the calculation of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That includes an offset in Social Security. If they wipe out the offset in Social Security, the total deficit would be $541 billion.

And guess what, because of deficits we have sustained every year, we are right up against the statutory ceiling for the national debt. It has to be raised and raised soon, or we will bump the ceiling again. And guess what, if Members vote for this resolution, buried under all of these plug numbers, these phony numbers, buried under them is a critically important feature and that is it will indirectly trigger an increase in the debt ceiling. At least with respect to the House of Representatives, we will be deemed to have voted for an increase in the debt ceiling of $690 billion. I am putting Members on notice of that.

So Members who vote for this resolution should know there is a critical working component of it and Members will vote to raise the debt ceiling by $690 billion to $8.1 trillion.

So in a thumbnail, here is what you will be voting for when you vote for this sham resolution: First, Members will vote to raise the deficit to $541 billion without Social Security, for $367 billion including Social Security, add $25 billion more in supplementals for defense, and we are right back up to a $400 billion deficit.

Members will not be voting for any plan in process, any solution to the deficit, but will be putting us on a path, according to the Congressional Budget Office, of accumulating, and this is their number, $5.132 trillion over the next 10 fiscal years.

That is what Members will be voting for if they vote for this resolution. It would be better that we vote down this resolution, send the conferees back to conference and tell them to do what the Budget Act requires them to do and tell them to get a handle on the deficit and put our fiscal house in order. Vote against the rule.

Mr. Speaker, let me just make Members painfully aware of what this rule will entail, since they have only had minutes to even acquaint themselves with the fact that it was coming before them today.

If Members vote for this rule, they will vote to make in order a budget resolution with the following consequences for our deficit and our national debt. Per the calculation in this budget resolution, the deficit for 2005 will be $367 billion. That is probably the best dated sum they can come up with. There will undoubtedly be some more defense supplementals, probably another $25 billion, before 2005 is out. That will take the deficit to $392 billion. If we take Social Security out of the calculation, as we should, we should not include it, the non- Social Security deficit, the deficit in the basic accounts of the Federal budget in 2005 if Members vote for this resolution will be $566 billion, which will necessitate another increase in the debt ceiling.

If Members vote for this resolution, they will, make no mistake about it, be

voting to raise the statutory debt ceiling by $690 billion. That is the first in a series of raises, because if you read CBO's report on the President's budget which is essentially embodied in this resolution and run that budget out over 10 years between 2005 and 2014, according to CBO, we will cumulatively incur a debt of $5.132 trillion.

Vote for this rule and you will be voting against any plan or any process to come to terms with this enormous, record-breaking deficit. There is no plan. There is no solution. Do not fool yourself in this resolution. Vote for it and you vote to tread water while the problem gets worse. You vote to kick the can down the road. If you want to deal with the deficit, deal with this debt, vote against this resolution, and send the conferees back to the conference. If you want to dodge the issue for another year while it gets worse, vote for this resolution. I would suggest we vote against it.

Mr. Speaker, I have served here for 22 years and served all those years on the House Committee on Armed Services, and today I am the recognize second ranking Democrat on that committee; and if there is any comity left in this institution, surely I should have the right to offer one well-considered, carefully crafted, very serious amendment. That is what I proposed. That is what I offered.

I knew that the Committee on Rules had been narrowing down the debate for years and years, so I went prepared to the Committee on Rules and asked for simply one amendment.

Now, I do not stand here in personal pique because my amendment has not been made in order. Far from it. It is not that this rule shuts me out or shuts out the people I represent in South Carolina. It shuts out our troops. It shuts out our sergeants and warrant officers. It denies every trooper who goes into combat the opportunity to have $250,000 of group life insurance at Uncle Sam's expense. That is what it does.

The amendment that I proposed would take $414 million out of ballistic missile defense and move it, first of all, $300 million for targeted pay increases for noncommissioned officers, NCOs, who bear the burden of fighting, who are the backbone of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. These personnel, grades E-5 through E-9, are the troops we need most to keep. If they vote with their feet and leave the Army, we will have a broken Army.

What I proposed is what the Quadrennial Review proposed 3 years ago, what we have voted up twice in the last 2 fiscal years, but do not in this budget, is a targeted increase for these troops.

In addition, I proposed we take 25 to $50 million and say to every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine going into harm's way, into combat, once you draw imminent danger pay, the Government of the United States of America will pick up the premium, we will provide you with $250,000 in group life insurance, SGLI, a great idea.

It is the least we can do for these troops. After all, we did, and I think rightly, $1.4 million in average benefits for the victims of 9/ 11. Can we not guarantee our troops in combat at least $250,000 in light of that?

So what they have denied me with this rule is the opportunity to have a hearty, healthy debate on our priorities. Can we take a little bit out of a program that is slated to increase by $1.2 billion, take $400 million out of it and move it around, put it into a pay raise for our NCOs and our warrant officers, put it into a life insurance premium for our troops? And then take a little bit of it and deal with some problems in ballistic missile defense, which this budget, for all it does for BMD, does not do, for example to Patriot-3s. It took out a Tornado, it took out an F/A-18. We need to put more money into IFF, Identification Friend Or Foe.

Roadside bombs, IEDs, we need to put more money in that. Look at the Marine Corps' unfunded requirement list. You will find it at the top of their list.

These are the things that I, if I had the opportunity, would propose that we do with cuts that would not impede or in any way affect the progress of ballistic missile defense.

Give me that opportunity. Vote down the previous question. Vote down the rule. And let us have a full fair and serious debate on national defense.

Mr. Speaker, I think it should be obvious to everybody that we have a huge agenda of meritorious issues that will not be brought to the well of the House. We will not have today a free market of ideas as we deal with and debate one of the most important bills we will bring up.

So when I emphasize to every Member that if you want to have a free and full and serious debate, then you should vote against this rule and you should vote first against the motion to move the previous question. That will open up the process so that we can offer amendments.

And before concluding, I would like to ask the gentlewoman, given the amendment I am proposing that would deal with the needs of our NCOs and an incipient problem, and that is retention and recruitment, will the gentlewoman allow me to make a unanimous consent request to put in order amendment No. 89, which would increase the targeted pay increase for senior enlisted personnel and warrant officers and use, as an offset, a partial reduction in the big increase in the ballistic missile program.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for the approval of my amendment, amendment No. 89.

Mr. Speaker, I humbly suggest that if we want to make the poppy in our lapels more than a mere gesture, we should vote ``no'' on the previous question on the rule that will make in order the defense authorization bill. Because by voting ``no,'' we will make in order the consideration of an amendment that I have offered which contains two key elements that go to the very heart of what it is we are discussing here right now.

We would take a little bit of money out of a huge increase in ballistic missile defense and put it in a place where it will do a lot of good, namely, in targeted pay increases to our enlisted personnel, particularly our NCOs and our junior warrant officers. It costs $300 million. It is not something I pulled out of the air. It was recommended 3 years ago by the last quadrennial review. For 2 fiscal years we have done it; this year we have not in the bill before us. We can rectify that by voting ``no'' and then voting for the amendment.

In addition, we do something else in the amendment that I would offer, that is, we say to every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine going into combat, into harm's way, Uncle Sam is going to see to it that you get the maximum in servicemen's life insurance, group life insurance, $250,000. The premium will be paid by an increase in your imminent danger pay, two things that will say volumes to our soldiers about how much we appreciate what they are doing for today, the risks they are taking; two things that we can say that will make more than just this mere gesture a sincere commitment to those who have gone in harm's way and laid their life on the line to make this the home of the free and the land of the brave.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, I commend my good friend, the chairman. We do not agree about everything; nevertheless, I hope that is not a sign of what is about to come. He does a wonderful job of chairing the committee, and he has brought to the floor a good piece of legislation. We thought it could be better. I wish there were more amendments in order, but I do not want to diminish the significance of what is in the bill.

Mr. Chairman, with troops in the field being bombed and shot at, we cannot be stinting about what we provide our troops. We have got to give them the resources they need to do the tough tasks that they have taken on. But with the defense bill before us running at a level of $422 billion, that is an increase of $125 billion in 3 years, and with the costs of our operations in Iraq alone approaching $200 billion by the end of next year, military and economic reconstruction, Congress also cannot relax its oversight responsibilities and we should not rubber-stamp what the administration sends us.

That is why I thought more of the 100-odd amendments we offered should have been made in order. We could have a good, full debate on the House floor about priorities. That is why I wanted to take the ballistic missile defense account, which the administration wants to increase by $1.2 billion, to make it twice as big as any other program in the procurement and R&D accounts; why I wanted to take just a little bit, $400 million off the top of that, leaving an increase of $800 million; take a little off the top of that and then spread it to someplace else in the budget where I think it would do a lot more good, and that is in compensating the backbone of our military services, our NCOs and warrant officers, with a pay raise above the level provided other troops, at least in the rate of increase.

In addition, I wanted to provide $25 million to $50 million, that is all, so we could say to every troop we send into combat, Uncle Sam will pick up the premium and we will see to it that every one of you has $250,000 of group life insurance.

Now, there are some good things in this bill, as I said. I want to congratulate the chairman for leaning on DoD to send us a supplemental, because we were sailing into the next year under the artificial representation that we had enough money and we could move it around and we could get to the next calendar year. We cannot do it.

But I do not think we should give the administration a blank check, and, to a great extent, we have not done that; and I commend the chairman for that. We have provided some line item specificity in title 15 of this bill. We have also, in response to the administration's request for transfer authority, we said to them you can have transfer authority for $3 billion, but not for $25 billion. All of that is an improvement over the request.

But nobody should think that $25 billion is going to get us through the year. We will be lucky if it takes us to March. That is because we are spending $4 billion to $5 billion easily every month in Iraq; it is not likely to go down. We are spending $700 million to $900 million every month in Afghanistan; it is not likely to go down. We are spending $500 million a month for Noble Eagle, United States air defense and other things like that. It is close to $6 billion a month.

The arithmetic is easy, even on the back of an envelope. $6 billion times 12 months is $72 billion. We have only provided $25 billion of it. We could easily have another supplemental coming in 2005 of $50 billion.

That is why I want to remind everybody of the budget. It just so happens we are going to have the defense bill back to back with the budget; and let us keep in mind when the administration talks about runaway spending, the increase in spending in the budget, that much of it is occurring in the defense accounts. That is not to diminish or damn the amount of money that is being spent there; it is essential. But it also gets added into the calculation, and it is having an impact.

If you look at current services for everything in the discretionary budget and look at the spikes that are really standing out, what you will find is that 90 to 95 percent of the increase in discretionary spending over the last 4 fiscal years, every year has either been defense, homeland security, and our response to 9/11.

Quickly, let me show you a chart that is almost too much to read from this perspective. Basically, what we show here is the FYDP, the Future Years Defense Program, run out of 10 years, when Mr. Bush came to office was about $3.6 trillion in 2001. If you include what he has added, plus the costs just through this year of Iraq, it is about $4.6 trillion. If you go back and make some reasonable adjustments for policy changes in procurement and also add in the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan after 2005, you are easily up to a $1.5 trillion increase in spending.

Mr. Chairman, what I am saying is that we cannot forget the budget; we cannot forget the deficit. It has a huge impact on the economy. The economy is the first instrument of our national defense.

Secondly, sooner or later, if these costs keep running at this level, we have got to turn to the American people and ask more than our troops to share the sacrifice; we have to ask the American people to pick up some of the

costs that we are running here for our defense and homeland security. The bill has to be paid sooner or later, the day of reckoning is coming, and we are only postponing it with the budget we will take up after this bill is considered today.

Mr. Speaker I yield myself 4\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, my good friend, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) and I work together well, and I have the greatest regard for him, but let me put it the way it is. He is trying to put the best face on a bad situation.

What we have got here is a new high for the budget deficit and a new low for the budget process. For the first time in 20 years, for the first time since the 1980s we have a budget that only goes out 1 year. Ever since the Budget Act was adopted, the principle has been that you will run out your numbers 5 years so that we can see the implications of tax cuts and tax increases, spending cuts and spending increases, spread over a reasonable period of time. Not in this budget: 1 year for the first time in 20 years.

Now, what does that allow you to do? It allows you to dodge the deficit. It keeps you from having to show on a multiyear basis how you will get from a $300-$400 billion deficit to something that is half that size to a respectable, sustainable number.

If you only take it out 1 year, there is no way in the world that we will ever get our arms around the deficit in that period of time. So it exonerates you from presenting any kind of process or plan to get where we all know where we have got to go, and that is to a much lower deficit.

Another thing: When you do not put real numbers in the outyears, in 2006, 2007, 2008, it allows you to reduce the President's request and not acknowledge what you are actually doing. By our calculations, when we look at the numbers that are on the chart contained in this budget resolution, this budget resolution provides $122 billion less for defense than the President requests or projects for himself over that same period of time.

This much is clear: Vote for this and you are voting for a huge deficit by the acknowledgment of the drastic $367 billion. And while they have included $50 billion for supplemental spending in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, I think that is at least $25 billion short of where we will really be. Add that 25 to the 367; you get to 392. Take out the Social Security surplus because it should not be included, and the deficit in the basic budget is $552 billion.

That is what you are voting for if you vote for this budget resolution, a deficit of $552 billion.

Now, when you run a deficit like that, you stack up debt, and once again we will have to raise the debt ceiling; and one of the key provisions of this bill buried beneath all of the line items is a provision which would automatically spin off an increase in the debt ceiling of $690 million--$690 billion. It will take the debt of the United States up to $8.1 trillion.

It is hard to get my tongue around those numbers.

When Mr. Bush came to office, the statutory debt ceiling of the United States was $5.9 trillion. Adopt this budget resolution and we will raise that ceiling by $2.2 trillion to $8.1 trillion. That is how much we have had to increase the debt ceiling, $2 trillion in order to accommodate the fiscal policies of the Bush administration.

Now, we have got record deficits. We have record debt. That is bad enough, but even worse, even worse in this budget resolution, there is no plan, no process and no prospect, not even a PAYGO rule for balancing the budget or anyone issuing the deficit over a period of time. All we have here, after a lot of huffing and puffing, is a puny version of the PAYGO rule that House Democrats and House Republican on two occasions in the 1990s adopted to apply to both tax cuts and spending increases on the entitlement side. All we have got here is a 1-year extension that applies only in the Senate, no application whatsoever in the House. That is all we have got.

The gentleman says if you do not vote for this, it could impair the recovery. Well, let me say, Mr. Greenspan warned us only a week or two ago that this recovery we are beginning to enjoy may be short lived unless we come to grips with this critical problem, and that is mounting, never-ending deficits that these budgets are producing.

So the thing that is incumbent upon us now is not to kick the can down the road, is not just to pass something for the sake of saying we passed the budget resolution, we fixed the 302(a) number. We can go ahead with our appropriation bills. We need a plan; we need a process. We need to deal with this deficit now, and this budget resolution does not do it. That is why we should defeat it, send it back to conference and do it right.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) for the purposes of a unanimous consent request.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire of the Chair how much time is left on this side.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

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

Mr. Speaker, could the Chair tell me how much time is left?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond to the gentleman.

The gentleman said jobs are coming back, and the recent job growth is a welcome development, but, Mr. Speaker, we are still 2.2 million jobs below the level of jobs existing in the economy in March of 2001 when the last recession began. We have never seen such a jobless recovery as we have seen now.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, let me make a couple of points clear because they have been brought up repeatedly throughout this debate.

First of all, how much have we reaped in the way of jobs as a result of these enormous tax cuts mainly benefiting wealthy Americans? What has been the pay-off in jobs?

This economy went into a recession in March 2001. If we take the level of jobs in the private sector at that point in time and compare it to today, we are short. There are 2.2 million fewer jobs today, notwithstanding the enormous stimulus of all these tax cuts, 2.2 million fewer jobs. For the first time since President Hoover, we have a recovery where we have not recovered the jobs even though we are 15 months, 18 months out from the trough of the recession. Actually, it is longer than that.

It has also been said that revenues have been rising, and they have taken an up-tick recently; but this chart shows when President Bush proposed his tax cuts, and we said, Mr. Bush, you are betting the budget on a blue-sky forecast; you are betting it for everything it may be able to sustain, this was the course of revenues that he projected, OMB projected with the tax cuts. With the $3.5 trillion worth of tax cuts that was enacted in 2001, the Bush administration nevertheless projected that revenues would rise and stabilize at that level.

Here is the actual level. The broken blue line is the projected level, the red line which descends precipitously is the actual level of revenues, and the difference between these revenues here, which is about $1.1 trillion and this level here, which is below $750 billion, is at least $250 billion. Revenues have not risen; taxes have not rebounded. We have not had the supply-side phenomenon now, as we did not have in 1981. This is the actual record.

Let me show Members the situation we find ourselves in which makes it absolutely essential for us to use the budget resolution, the one tool that we have which deals in the aggregate with everything we have spent and everything we take in by way of taxes.

This is the curve on which we were proceeding in 2001 when Mr. Bush came to office. He inherited an advantage that no President in modern times has had, a budget in surplus. He was in surplus by $236 billion in fiscal year 2000, and this was the course that was projected by his economists at the Office of Management and Budget. This is the course that we have determined we are on today. If you are just for what Iraq is likely to cost and what Afghanistan is likely to cost, if you assume that all of the tax cuts are going to be renewed, which is a politically likely assumption, this is where we are. We get a little up-tick from the economy, but the bottom line shows that having risen a bit from a projected deficit of $521 billion this year, we go up a little bit over $324 billion, but 10 years from now we are right where we started: $502 billion. We tread water. We do nothing. We accumulate debt, and that is why we are having in this resolution to raise the debt ceiling by $690 billion, because year after year we are stacking debt on top of debt. That is the result of this budget, and this resolution does nothing on the revenue side or the spending side.

We have heard a lot of talk about how we have this runaway spending, but let me show where the spending is occurring. If we look at all of the spending in the Federal budget and you take these spikes in the budget where spending in certain accounts is faster than current services, guess what those accounts are: defense, homeland security, the response to 9/11, accounts for 4 fiscal years accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all of the increase in spending over and above current services.

There are two points Members can draw from this. First of all, the President has requested this. We provided it. We had to spend it.

Secondly, the likelihood this is going to be reined in significantly, defense, it goes up to $422 billion. That is without including the supplementals. This is not going to be reined in significantly. So to talk about accounts where spending is growing, we cannot expect in the near term any significant cuts in that area.

What we continually hear talk about is the sector of the budget called domestic nonhomeland security, domestic discretionary spending. That is it right there. That is one-sixth of the budget. It is about $384 billion. The budget deficit is bigger than that. Clearly, this has the FBI, the National Park Service, the court service, the whole operation of the government in it. Clearly, we cannot squeeze enough blood out of that turnip to begin to get rid of this enormous deficit.

Let me show Members one final chart just to show it can be done. This budget resolution does not do it, but it can be done. When President Clinton came to office in January 1992, we had just recorded our biggest deficit in history, $290 billion at the end of fiscal year 1992. He came into office in 1993. Spending was at 22.5 percent of GDP. We did it by lowering spending and raising revenues. It can be done again, but this budget resolution does not do it. Let us vote it down and send them back to conference and start over again.

Mr. Speaker, the Budget Resolution Conference Report marks the end of a long, arduous process, during which our staff do most of the work and get little of the credit they are due. I would like to thank my excellent staff for their expertise and energy and tireless work. They are as follows: Tom Kahn, Sarah Abernathy, Arthur Burris, Linda Bywaters, Dan Ezrow, Jennifer Friedman, Jason Lumia, Sheila McDowell, Diana Meredith, Joe Minarik, Kimberly Overbeek, Scott Russell, Andy Smullian, Lisa Venus, Andrea Weathers, and Jesse Contario.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Lula Bell Houston of Davidson, North Carolina. Ms. Houston retired in May 2004 from Davidson College, my alma mater, after 57 years of service in the college laundry. The significance of this milestone in the Davidson community is matched only by the devotion that Ms. Houston has brought to her job everyday for over half a century.

Born in 1923 (just three years after the current laundry building was constructed), Ms. Houston worked for a year in Davidson's dining service from 1943-44. She spent the next few years raising a family, but returned in 1947 to work at the college laundry. She has been there ever since, waking up every weekday morning at 4:15 a.m., to ensure that she would be there for the 6:30 a.m. start of the work day. Ms. Houston originally took the job as a means of supporting herself and her two young children after her first husband left them, but the students have kept her here long after her children have grown up and had kids of their own.

The biggest legacy that Ms. Houston leaves the college and the town of Davidson is her warm personality and loving nature. She was always ready with a hug and a smile to all who came to drop off their laundry. Student after student shared stories and memories about Ms. Houston and all spoke of the genuine love in her voice when she greets them and how she has been like a grandmother to them all. The college has figured that she has cared for the laundry of all but 1,226 of the college's 19,731 living alumni--a lot of surrogate grandchildren.

Davidson College honored Ms. Houston in the best way possible, naming the laundry building after her. The Town of Davidson commemorated that sunny day of April 29, 2004 by declaring it ``Lula Bell Houston Day.'' At Spring Convocation the day before, the Omicron Delta Kappa honorary leadership fraternity presented Ms. Houston with its Staff Appreciation Award, and in 2002, the SAE fraternity presented Ms. Houston with $500, a dozen roses, and a trophy recognizing her as ``The Spirit of Davidson.''

As an article featured on the college's ywebsite puts it, ``Few retirees in local history have been so royally heralded.'' Ms. Houston deserves every bit of that recognition for her long and tireless service to the college and her part in the lives of thousands of Davidson students over the years. I join my fellow Davidson alumni and other members of the Davidson community past and present in commending Ms. Lula Bell Houston and celebrating her achievement.

I submit for the Record a news article with more about Ms. Houston.

[From the Davidson, Apr. 30, 2004]

Campus Honors Retirement of ``Spirit of Davidson'' in Laundry's New

Name

(By Leslie Hempson)

As if fifty-seven years of work weren't enough, in a sense

Lula Bell Houston will never leave her job now. That's

because the college on Thursday afternoon affixed her name

forever to the laundry building, naming it in her honor.

Hundreds of well-wishers turned out to honor the eighty-

year-old Houston at her retirement party, and cheered when

President Robert Vagt made the surprise announcement of the

building's new name. In praising her loyalty to Davidson and

irrepressible good cheer, Vagt called her ``a biological

mother to four children, but a mom to all who needed her.''

``This is a grand moment in the history of Davidson

College,'' he said.

When asked to respond, Houston could find few words. ``What

can I say? What can I say?'' she asked. ``I just want to

thank everyone for being here, for letting me see your

beautiful faces. I love all of you.''

Few retirees in local history have been so royally

heralded. In a whirlwind twenty-four hours that capped her

long career sorting student clothes and folding sheets,

President Vagt also read a proclamation from the Town of

Davidson declaring ``Lula Bell Houston Day,'' and the student

membership of the Omicron Delta Kappa honorary campus

leadership fraternity presented her with its Staff

Appreciation Award at Spring Convocation.

Alumni and current students turned out at the retirement

party to honor the woman who greeted them with a smile on

their regular trips to the laundry. Joey Harris '02, former

student body president, took a day off his job in a

Congressional office and drove from Washington to attend. ``I

couldn't miss it,'' he said. ``Ms. Lula Bell has been a good

friend over the years, and we still keep in touch. There's no

other place I'd rather be right now than here.''

McKinley Glover '04 said, ``I've known Ms. Houston since I

was a freshman, and she's always shown a genuine interest in

people's feelings. She's about the sweetest lady I've ever

met.''

Born in 1923, Houston worked for year in Davidson's dining

service in 1943-44. She spent the next few years in New York

City and Washington, but The Lula Bell Houston Laundry has

been her home-away-from-home since 1948. She has cared for

the clothing of all but 1,226 of the college's 19,731 living

alumni. Even more valuable than her laundry services, Houston

has bestowed grace and affection on students, offering them

that same comfort of being in a home-away-from-home.

A retirement tribute to her stated, ``Lula Bell has been

greeting anyone and everyone with a warm smile and a kind

word and a hug. Students drop off their dirty clothes, and

leave with their spirits lifted and a reminder that there's

more to life than their next test or paper. They know someone

is working tirelessly and without complaint to take care of

them, someone who doesn't care what their grades are, whether

or not they won their last game, or how their love life is

going. They know Miss Lula Bell's unconditional love.''

One former Davidson student, lonely and discouraged far

away from his home in Nicaragua, wrote her a letter thanking

her for her kindness. Even though he graduated years ago, he

still keeps in touch, and called her a few weeks ago to wish

her a happy Easter.

Another former student, Matthew Arbuckle `02, organized his

SAE fraternity brothers two years ago to show their

appreciation by giving her $500, a dozen roses and a trophy

recognizing her as ``The Spirit of Davidson.'' That trophy is

proudly displayed in front of the cubby in which she keeps

her keys and papers, next to a few small seashells and a list

of laundry employees that dates back to the 1950s.

What few students know is that Houston's work has provided

a refuge in a life that has not been easy.

Houston began working in a time when racial discrimination

was still prevalent in the South, and a black woman had very

limited job prospects. After her first husband left her in

1947, she took the $12 a week job at the laundry to

support herself and two young children. Houston had

watched her mother, Rosa Potts, provide for a family

without the help of a husband, and knew what to do. Her

mother had risen at the crack of dawn to milk the cow,

clean the house, and prepare breakfast for her two

children before going off to a day job. Houston was

determined to work just as hard.

She has always waked at 4:15 and arrived at the laundry by

6 a.m., assuring that she would be on time for the 6:30 a.m.

start of the work day. When her children were young, she

brought them to the laundry with her. They played amidst the

washers and driers with children of other workers until it

was time to go home. Davidson's laundry has always encouraged

that feeling of family, and Houston's association with

generations of students has reinforced it. ``The sense of

being family makes the time fly by,'' she said. ``My family

gets bigger with the bunches of clothes coming in. Students

come in with smiles on their faces and hope in their eyes.''

In 1959 she married Arthur Houston, with whom she raised

two more children. She continued to work at the laundry, and

he worked at two jobs, until 1988 when Arthur died of a heart

attack. She has suffered more losses recently, with the death

of a brother from Lou Gehrig's Disease five or six years ago,

and the death of her mother three years ago.

It was hard for Houston to keep going after the deaths of

her brother and mother, but work has always been a salve for

her wounds. She likes the predictability of her laundry

duties, her co-workers, and the students. Church, and

particularly church music, has also been a constant solace.

She has been a member of Gethsemane Baptist Church for

seventy-eight years, attending services and Sunday school

every weekend, and spending three hours on Saturday mornings

practicing with the church choir. In addition to the choir,

she is a member of the Gethsemane Baptist Church Gospel

Singers, a group that performs at churches all across the

region and has even appeared on television a couple of times.

Houston said her immediate plans for retirement are to

finish thoroughly cleaning her house. She said she might also

take a little break to visit relatives in Las Vegas and

Baltimore, and maybe take a trip back to New York. She has

also always wanted to learn how to play the piano.

Co-workers have been urging her to retire for years. They

tell her to hurry up and leave so that she'll have a chance

to enjoy some of her life before it's too late. But even as

she planned her retirement, Houston was already talking about

returning to work part-time at the laundry. She insists, ``I

am enjoying what I'm doing. I am enjoying my life.''

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing we hold in trust more sacred than the good name of America, and the good name of our great country is at stake. We have been defiled, maligned, if not damaged irreparably in some parts of the world; and we cannot diminish the consequences.

Just as the world has been fixated on those revolting photographs, the world is watching now to see what America will do, not what we will say, but how we will respond in fact. We should first of all rise up in indignation and outrage and condemn these atrocities and not diminish them. I do not care whether six soldiers or 600 were involved. We should make it unmistakably clear that this is conduct that Americans will not tolerate, we will not diminish, we will not excuse, and we will punish with severity.

But our response cannot end with just indignation or even an abject apology. We must make every effort to find out what was involved in these atrocities, who was involved in these atrocities, directly involved, and involved in a supervisory capacity up the chain of command and down the chain of command, wherever it leads; and we must punish everybody who is culpable in a way that makes clear this is despicable conduct which we will not abide in the United States of America.

That quest for facts must ask candidly, painfully whether or not these were isolated acts, these atrocities were isolated acts of poorly trained, undisciplined reservists, or whether they arise out of a culture that permitted and allowed interrogation techniques that call for hoods, sleep deprivation, and incessant questioning.

These are hard questions. We have got to ask them. Was this military intelligence, military police, or was it both? Where did the system break down?

In the committee room of the Committee on Armed Services, Mr. Speaker, we have cast in bronze a plaque with article 1 clause 8 of the Constitution which gives Congress the power to raise and support an Army, a Navy, and provide for their regulation. This was the way that the Parliament in the 17th century gained control of the government by gaining control of the military, among other things, by keeping on a short leash the law that permitted courts martial.

The Department of Defense is and ought to be conducting its own investigation; but if we are worth our salt, if we are up to the powers the Constitution vests in us, we must conduct our own investigation.

Woodrow Wilson once said that our greatest power is the power to investigate, to inform, to check the Commander-in-Chief, to notify, to make the American people understand what is happening in their government. So this is not a matter that we can delegate. This is not a matter that we can trust anyone else. This is a matter where we must not take the role of outsiders looking in. We should launch our own investigation. And one of the places where this resolution stops short, I would say to my good friend, the chairman of the committee, is that it does not emphatically call for our own independent investigation to lead wherever the facts may take us. We should do it because it is our duty. We should do it because of the trust we hold. We should do it for the sake of the soldiers, the vast majority of soldiers, who have are served honorably, who have served and sacrificed and secured the interests of our country.

But here, as in many places, this resolution pulls its punch. I support it. I will vote for it, but I think it should be more emphatic, more outraged, and I think it should be more of a beginning to our effort than an end, to the constitutional trust that we all hold, to find the facts, to ask why we are so late ourselves in being informed, and to see that the truth and the whole truth comes out.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the gentleman, and he and I served together, as he will recall, on one investigative panel that looked into what happened in Beirut in 1983. We had both been there a month before, both talked about what happened, and that was an investigation that really did unearth new facts. And it is a good illustration of why we need to have a similar investigation here where our committee has searched its constitutional authority and gets to the bottom of this matter.

Madam Speaker, there is nothing wrong with this bill as far as it goes. What we are trying to argue here is we need to go further, particularly at this point in time. The gentleman mentioned the Committee on Armed Services. When we had the last supplemental appropriation on the floor, $87 billion, I offered a package of benefits that went to family assistance, family separation pay, imminent danger pay, Tricare for reservists, a number of different things that we could and probably will have to do because of recruitment and retention problems that we will face down the road, but should do out of gratitude for our troops and particularly our Reserve and Guard components.

So I hope we can get the cooperation of both sides of the aisle in crafting a package for the upcoming mark of the defense authorization bill which will address many areas here where things can be done positively that go far beyond this bill.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 1779 amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow penalty-free retirement account withdrawals for national guardsmen and reservists called to active duty for an extended, and further authorizes a 2-year period to reimburse their accounts up to the amount withdrawn. I think you would be hard pressed to find a Member of Congress who opposes this low cost bill to benefit our troops. My only question is: Shouldn't we do more? The answer is clearly yes. I agree in spirit with this bill, but when I compare it with what the troops truly deserve, I'm reminded of the commercial, ``Where's the beef?'' come up short. The mere fact that we are considering legislation that allows guardsmen and reservists to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts indicates the problem. A solution for this problem must include more ``beef'' than simply allowing our service members to borrow from their long term savings to meet their short term obligations. A true solution lies in the form of better benefits.

Our troops, both active and reserve need and deserve better family separation and imminent danger pay. Reservists serving in Afghanistan and Iraq need TRICARE military health coverage. Retirees deserve better survivor benefits for military widows and our military families deserve better housing.

Recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq highlight the perils of war. In the FY03 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, imminent danger pay, additional compensation provided to servicemen and women in combat zones, was raised to $225 from $150 a month. The family separation allowance, which goes to help military families pay rent, child care or other expenses while service members are away, was raised from $100 to $250 a month. Congress should act now to make these increases permanent. This will show our troops that we are aware of the hardships they face not only in the field, but also at home.

The Supplemental Appropriations bill also provided limited and temporary TRICARE benefits for Reservists. It stopped short of providing expanded health care benefits to members of the selected reserve and certain members of the Individual Ready Reserve and their families.

Representative Jeff Miller's bill to end the survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) widow's tax has 303 co-sponsors, but may never make it to the floor for a vote. Congress should act on this important legislation.

We have thousands of service members and their families living in substandard housing. The Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) was passed to remedy this injustice. A spending cap was set as a safeguard. We anticipate reaching the spending cap by November 2004, and the problem has not been solved. We must raise or eliminate this cap in order to continue this necessary program.

Instead of rewarding our troops and retirees with tangible benefits, the legislation we are debating today simply permits select Reserve Component members to borrow their own money in the short term at the expense of their long term goal of a comfortable retirement. While H.R. 1779 allows a two year period to replace the withdrawn funds, I am doubtful that a financial strain that would require tapping one's retirement savings would permit complete reimbursement within 2 years. We can do better for the men and women of the world's greatest military. Rather than simply removing the 10 percent penalty for early retirement account withdrawal, I urge my colleagues to support a permanent increase in imminent danger pay and the family separation allowance, provide adequate funding to include reservists in TRICARE, eliminate the SBP widow's tax, and raise or eliminate the MHPI spending cap.

H.R. 1779 is a low cost morale booster for our troops in the field, and I urge its passage today. However, the mere fact that we are considering this measure highlights a bigger and more lasting problem for our troops. Mr. Speaker, I will vote yes on this bill, but I urge my colleagues, especially the Republican Majority to follow up H.R. 1779 with the more meaningful and substantive legislation I have outlined, which is specifically spelled out in the ``Military Benefits Proposal,'' which I am attaching and submitting for the Record. This list contains benefits I proposed when the $87 billion Supplemental Appropriation was offered last year. Unfortunately, the Rules Committee did not make my proposal in order as an amendment. I intend to offer many of these benefits again when the Defense Authorization Bill is marked up in Committee and considered here on the floor.

Military Benefits Proposals

Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay: Makes increase from $225

per month to $250 per month permanent.

Family Separation Allowance: Makes increase to $250 per

month permanent.

Hardship Duty Pay: Increases from $300 per month to up to

$600 per month during FY2004.

Eliminate Out-of-Pocket Housing Costs: Accelerates from

2005 to 2004 the final year of the bipartisan effort to

increase the Basic Allowance for Housing to completely cover

average out-of-pocket housing costs for military families

living off base.

Family Assistance Centers: Provides $48 million for

increased demand on family assistance centers for National

Guard and Reserve to assist with problems related to

increased deployments.

Transition Assistance for Disabled Servicemembers: Provides

$50 million to enhance DOD-VA transition programs for

disabled servicemembers.

Deployment Notification to Reservists: Directs DOD to

provide maximum advance notice to mobilized Guard and Reserve

personnel on the timing and duration of their duty.

Small Business Loans for Reservists: Provides $25 million

for loans or loan guarantees for reservists whose small

businesses have been disrupted by their mobilization.

Vocation Development for Reservists: Provides $25 million

for SBA grants for vocational or technical training for

reserve-owned small businesses.

Mr. Speaker, as we meet tonight, this country, our government, is headed towards a deficit of $521 billion. That is not my estimate, that is the estimate of the Office of Management and Budget, the President's own budget shop. We have watched the initial returns from April 15 come in to see if there might be a revenue surprise, a bounce that will alleviate this problem, and thus far there is no early indication that there are any surprises coming. We are stuck with a $521 billion deficit this year.

Now, that would be bad by itself, $521 billion is a record deficit, but it is worse when you put it in context. Our budget, the budget of the United States, was in surplus by the amount of $236 billion as recently as the year 2000; in surplus by $127 billion in the year 2001, when Mr. Bush came to office. Indeed, he inherited a fiscal situation unlike any President who has taken office in recent years, yet now we find ourselves, 3 to 4 years later, in deficit by $521 billion.

The administration portrays itself as the hapless victim of circumstance. In truth, it is a victim of policies that it itself has chosen. It is a victim of the consequences of these policies which it has freely put in place against the warnings which they failed to heed on all sides. What we have had to witness here is painful for those of us who have

committed our careers in the Congress, and I have been here for nearly 22 years, to putting the budget in balance and institutionalizing conservative fiscal policy. We have been forced to witness 15 years of fiscal discipline, 15 years during which we took a deficit of $290 billion and moved it into surplus, become this huge deficit in just the last 3 years.

As Yogi Berra used to like to say, you can look it up. This is a matter of historic record. Every year during the Clinton administration, for 8 straight years, the bottom line of the budget got better. It moved out of deficit into surplus. Every year for 8 straight years it got better. Every year, for the last 4 years, the bottom line of the Bush administration's budget has gotten worse and worse and worse, until we now find ourselves with a budget deficit of over $520 billion this year.

The Congressional Budget Office took the President's budget in February of this year, as they are required to do, and in March they sent us their analysis of that budget. They told the Congress that if we adopt and implement the President's budget as he has proposed it, then over the next 10 years the Federal Government will accumulate $5.132 trillion of additional debt to be added to the $7.4 trillion of debt we already have, and in which case we will leave our children a negative legacy of unheralded, unprecedented proportion. We will be $13 trillion in debt on top of a Social Security program that is underfunded and on top of a Medicare program which is even more underfunded.

Now, just as a preface to other remarks that other Members are going to make, let me give a quick summary of where we are. This was the surplus that was projected for this year, $397 billion, only 3 years ago. This is what CBO says it is going to be: $477 billion. If you want to see a roller coaster ride, here it is: $290 billion. That is the deficit the Clinton administration inherited. They turned it, through 8 years of fiscal discipline and unrelenting attention to the deficit, which is one of the top priorities of the government, to a surplus of $236 billion, the largest in the Nation's history.

This is what has happened since Mr. Bush came to office: A precipitous decline from a surplus of $236 billion to a deficit of $477 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And here is the dire prediction for the future: There will be a little bounce, a little uptick due to the economy, but the prediction of the Congressional Budget Office is that these numbers will only deteriorate over time.

We developed during the 1990s a series of budget process rules that helped us bring to heel these deficits, diminishing every year and moving the budget so into surplus. They were embodied in an act called the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. A lot of people scoffed at this. I was here. They said Congress is dodging the problem again. They are coming up with procedural rules instead of substantive changes in the budget. But two of the rules we adopted were of signal success. One was a rule called PAYGO, which I will come back to in just a minute. The other was a rule called discretionary spending caps.

In effect, what we did was impose a numeric or dollar cap every year for 5 successive fiscal years on discretionary spending, the amount of money that we appropriate every year in 13 different appropriation bills. That is different from entitlement spending, which is mandatory spending and is not changed annually. The discretionary spending caps were imposed in 1990 in an agreement we made with the current President Bush's father and reimposed in 1993. When President Clinton came in, a new set of numbers was imposed as our targets, or mandatory ceiling on spending, and then finally in 1997 they were extended once again. They worked.

But there was another rule that worked even more significantly, and that was the PAYGO rule. The PAYGO rule simply stipulated this: It provided that if any Member of the House or any committee wanted to increase an entitlement, then it had to be paid for. That simple. It had to be paid for, or another entitlement had to be cut by a commensurate amount so that the effect of that enhancement in benefits was neutral upon the deficit, the bottom line of the budget.

By the same token, the PAYGO rule applied to taxes, and tax cuts in particular. And what it provided was that if you want to bring a tax cut to the floor of the House while we have a budget deep in deficit, then it cannot have an impact upon the deficit and make the deficit worsen. You must do one of two things: You must either identify another tax increase to offset your tax decrease, or take some permanent spending, entitlement spending, and cut it by an amount over 5 years equal to the amount of our revenue reduction affected by the tax cut. That was the so-called PAYGO spending rule.

We are going to talk about that tonight, because one of the bones of contention right now in the budget resolution conference, which is ongoing, is whether or not we should take those rules, which were developed and successfully employed in the 1990s, to the extent that we put the budget back in surplus, take them in the form that they were proposed and used in the past, or whether we will take some faint facsimile of those rules and impose it.

In particular, when the House passed the Republican resolution several weeks ago, they included in it the recommendation that a PAYGO rule be reinstated, but it was a one-edge PAYGO rule. It applied only to entitlement increases. It did not apply to tax cuts. Even though an entitlement increase has the same impact as a tax cut upon the bottom line of the budget, the tax cut aspect was left out. So it is half a loaf, half a bill, and half a rule.

One of the reasons that the budget resolution is stuck in conference right now is that there are others in the other body who disagree with that position, who realize that we have an intractable problem on our hands, and apt to get worse unless we do something dramatic and develop a plan to deal with it. For starters, we have two proven rules, rules that worked in the 1990s, a PAYGO rule being one of them, and there are lots of us who would like to impose those rules again so we can begin attacking this horrendous problem.

And not just for our generation. No, the real problem of the deficits occurring today are for our children and grandchildren, because we are shoving off onto them the debt with a budget that we will not fully fund ourselves.

Mr. Speaker, I would like now to yield to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley) for comments along the lines of the PAYGO rule and other aspects of the budget.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, this is a bit difficult to follow, but once you understand it, it is a very graphic chart.

Basically what this shows is in the red line at the top is a course of outlays from the 1980s through the current period, 2004. What Members see here is when President Clinton came to office in 1992-1993, spending was at 22.5 percent of our gross domestic product. Federal spending constituted 22.5 percent of our GDP. That is about the point at which President Clinton came to office, and this may be a surprise to some people, but because of budget discipline, because of PAYGO, because of the discretionary spending caps, two different budget plans in 1993 and 1997, every year outlays came down. At the same time, we enhanced revenues. That is the politically polite way to put it. We increased the revenues to the government. They came up. At the point at which they crossed as a percentage

of GDP, you have balance for the first time in 30 years because we worked on both sides of the ledger, adding revenues, holding back spending. We had a balanced budget for the first time in 30 years.

CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, was to look back on this period with some astonishment and appreciation and say 48 percent of the success achieved in eradicating the budget deficit during the 1990s was due to revenue increases, 52 percent was due to spending curbs, cuts, and decreases. There we have it right there.

Outlays continued to go down, and receipts continued to come up; and the difference between the two right there is the surplus that we had in the year 2000, $236 billion. But the blue line here, receipts plummeted with the tax cuts. The recession, plus the tax cuts, caused receipts to plummet while spending went up. We have the exact opposite of what we need in fiscal policy in order to bring or keep the budget in balance. We have increasing expenditures and decreasing revenues.

The Cato Foundation, which is probably the most conservative think tank in the United States, certainly in Washington, D.C., the Cato Group has said the Bush administration has succeeded in creating a fundamental mismatch at the base of our budget. They say we have Big Government spending and Little Government revenues, and the result is the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his comments.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, we do indeed. I was just looking for the chart that is most applicable. This is one right here. And what we have done here on the bottom line is we have taken, first of all, the baseline projection of the Congressional Budget Office; and as the gentleman noted, they have to assume certain things because those are the rules handed down to them by law.

But we have adjusted their projection for political reality. For example, we have assumed that there would be some continuing expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan. We have assumed that many of the Bush tax cuts when they reach the expiration date, because most of them have implanted in them a sunset expiration date, that is the way they will pass to begin with, that most, when they reach that sunset date, will, in fact, be renewed and therefore the revenues will not be recouped. When we do that, what we find is that the deficit improves a bit. We get a bounce from the recovery we are experiencing right now. We are not stuck at 521. It improves to about $389 billion next year and then bottoms out in the range of the mid-$300 billion level until we get to the far end of our table, at which point it declines again to about $500 billion. So, essentially, we tread water.

The deficit does not get better. And this is a point everyone should understand: the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, in making these dire predictions of unending deficits, this assumes a growing economy, a robust economy, growing at 3, 3\1/2\ percent a year, even more this year. And notwithstanding the growth, the budget does not grow out of the deficit. It assumes that the economy will be on a pretty even keel for all of this period of time and still we will have these deficits when we know, as the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) just said, I do not think this economy can sustain the growth rate we are at right now with the deficits of the magnitude that we are looking at

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, no question about it. This year for the second year in 3 years, we will have a mammoth increase in the debt. Last year alone we had a 1-year increase of $900 billion in the debt. We will have to increase that debt limit again before we leave here this year, or we will be perilously close to bumping the ceiling.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has been here for some time, and he knows that during the late 1990s and in the early years of this century, we all took solemn vows out here, different forms. We had something called the ``lockbox,'' corny title, serious subject, because essentially what he said was that now that we finally have a surplus for the first time in 30 years, we are going to foreswear forever borrowing from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds again. Those trust funds have been building up balances in anticipation of the retirement of the baby boomers ever since 1983. And ever since 1983 until about the year 2000 when we finally hit surplus, we have borrowed to make ends meet from the Social Security trust fund. We have given the trust fund a bond back, but in effect the government has borrowed from these trust funds.

Both Houses, both parties, everybody subscribed to the notion that we should quit that practice. Guess what? The Bush administration's budget every year that we have a projection from OMB or CBO, regardless of who it may be, everybody projects that every year fully the budget will consume the Social Security trust fund surplus and the Medicare trust fund surplus. And they are not small numbers; $160 billion for Social Security, 20 to $30 billion per year for Medicare. Every year, every year, when we give the number $521 billion, we have already taken the surplus in those two trust fund accounts, consolidated it with the other accounts which are in the red, in deficit, and offset or diminished the deficit by the amount of the surpluses this year.

It is actually worse.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely correct.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, just for clarification and an additional point, one beneficial result of our fiscal policies in the 1990s was that we brought down the national debt by $400 billion between 1998 and 2001. We also, because the government was not borrowing money, but actually putting money into the pool of savings in this country, helped bring down interest rates. As a result, debt service, the interest paid on the national debt, net interest paid on the national debt, dropped from around $240 billion to $250 billion a year to about $160 billion a year. That is a dividend that we had available to do things that people needed and wanted us to do.

Because of the Bush administration policies, that interest payment is going to go up steadily, so that 10 years from now, if we follow the course that CBO plots for the President's budget in its March analysis, debt service, interest paid on the national debt, will be close to $370 billion. It will more than double from its current level.

What does that do? That is $370 billion we will not have for education in North Carolina where the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) used to be the superintendent of education. That is $300 billion we will not have for the environment in Oregon, which is a near and dear thing to the heart of the gentleman.

Furthermore, it builds a sort of cynicism about our government, because people will pay substantial taxes. These are not tax cuts. When you are borrowing the money to finance the tax cut, you are just postponing the event, the inevitable. What will happen is people will be paying more in debt taxes and not seeing anything in return for it, and they become cynical of our government, because so much of what they pay in taxes goes up in smoke, so to speak, because it goes to interest payments.

I thank the gentleman for participating.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge).

Mr. Speaker, $5.6 trillion was the estimate of the surplus by his own budget shop, the Office of Management and Budget, $5.6 trillion between 2002 and 2011.

It turns out it was not. Now they have recanted and said it was probably overstated by 55 percent.

Everybody promised. Both parties, both the White House and the Congress, promised that never again, now that we were finally in this position, would we borrow from Social Security and spend the proceeds again. But that is the inevitable consequence. When you reduce that $5.6 trillion projected surplus by 55 percent, the result is about $2.6 trillion instead of $5.6 trillion. That $2.6 trillion is roughly equal to what is in the Social Security Trust Fund, so if you wanted to keep your promise now that you have adjusted downward the realistic estimate of the surplus, there was no room for additional tax cuts without violating that solemn promise never again to dip into the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for the operation of the government.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make a few points in closing about the budget.

It is often said, particularly by the President and by others, that we have had an explosion of spending. Indeed, there has been an increase in spending, a big increase in spending, in the last 3 years. But this chart, these four bar graphs show that 90 to 95 percent of the increase in spending over the last 4 years has occurred in defense, homeland security, an account that did not even exist in the budget a couple of years ago, our response to 9/11, the bailout of New York City, the bailout of the airlines, and this is where most of the spending growth remains in the budget.

The President has a budget which he claims will cut the deficit in half in 5 years, but he leaves out one major element, among others: He makes no provision for what it will cost to maintain 125,000 to 135,000 troops in Iraq and another 12,000 in Afghanistan. When the cost of that is added to it, he does not come anywhere close to his claim of cutting the deficit in half over 5 years.

The President has also said the tax cuts were necessary because we have had horrendous job losses, and it is true. Our economy went into recession in March of 2001 and came out in November of 2001. It was a short and shallow recession, but the effect on jobs has persisted. This is the first administration since the Hoover administration not to see a substantial increase in jobs during its tenure. We have had a loss in the private sector of 2.7 million jobs, unrecovered since the start and duration of the recession.

So what has happened, despite the $2 trillion to $3 trillion in tax cuts measured over 10 years that we have had in 2001, 2002 and 2003 under the Bush administration, this is the curve here for what the postwar recession typically has been. It has lasted about 27 months. You would have a downturn for 13 or 14 months, an upturn for 13 or 14 months. By the 27th month, the jobs lost would be regained.

Look what happened in this recession.

Notwithstanding three successive substantial tax cuts, we still have a loss of 2.7 million jobs in this country. That is a fact. As was said, once again, you can look it up. You can get it from the Department of Labor.

One other point I would like to make before closing is Social Security and Medicare. One reason that we are so concerned about the deficit, the mounting national debt, is that in 2008 we will have a demographic change in this country like none we have ever seen. The baby-boomers will begin to retire.

There are 77 million of them marching to their retirement right now. They are already born. They are not going anywhere. They will soon be claiming Social Security and then their Medicare, and in 10 to 20 years the number of people on Medicare and Social Security will almost double. The resources required will be substantial for those two programs, which are underfunded.

Most people look at these numbers and say there is no way feasible to deal with this problem, we will just have to restructure the programs. That means we will have to cut benefits, we will have to reconfigure the programs, cut the costs in order to make them affordable.

In truth, if you look at the first bar graph over here, this big fat bar graph of $14.2 trillion at the top, that is the total amount, the present value of all the tax cuts that the 2001, 2002 and 2003 tax cut laws will necessitate or allow over the next 75 years, 75 years being the timeframe we look to make Social Security solvent.

If you compare the requirements that would be imposed, that are imposed to make Social Security solvent and Medicare solvent, the two come to $11.9 trillion, the green and the blue here. So the amount of these tax cuts over 75 years is actually more than what is required to make Social Security and Medicare solvent.

We can have this. So those who say this is a set of circumstances we did not foresee and could not control, here is the answer: These are freely chosen policies, and they choose. They choose additional debt, additional deficits, over deficit reduction, and they choose tax cuts over Social Security solvency.

There is a choice here. There is a deliberate choice being made. Those who today say we are victims of circumstance will say the same thing then, but here is the proof right now. If you want to save Social Security, the wherewithal is there to do it, if you do not prefer doing it otherwise for tax purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend and fellow colleague on the Committee on the Budget for bringing this motion to instruct to the floor, and I rise to urge support amongst all Members, both sides of the aisle, for this motion to instruct conferees.

What does this motion do? It simply directs the conferees, who will be appointed today, to accept the pay-as-you-go provisions included in the Senate-passed budget resolution, which would make PAYGO applicable to both entitlement spending increases and tax decreases. It would make those steps on either side of the ledger deficit neutral in order to pass.

Let us not forget that we have a deficit this year of $521 billion, and if you take the President's budget as projected by the Congressional Budget Office, the deficits over the next 10 years will accumulate to $5.132 trillion. That is why this motion is necessary.

The Senate resolution creates a PAYGO point of order against any tax cut or any entitlement increase that adds to the deficit, the bottom line of the budget. That point of order can only be overridden by the vote of 60 Senators.

The gentleman here says, well, it takes 60 votes because of the filibuster rule to pass anything in the Senate. But there is a way around the filibuster rule in the budget process called reconciliation. If a tax cut is included in the reconciliation provisions of a budget resolution which is passed by majority vote, by one vote is all that is necessary, then reconciliation can dispense with the 60-vote requirement.

So, in order to have at least 60 Senators stiffen their spines and stand up and say, and I would like to see the same procedures in the House, no, we are not going to commit this act of further increasing the deficit, this rule would apply.

In contrast to the PAYGO provision in the Senate budget, the House budget resolution which we passed last week by a narrow margin contains what I can best describe as a half measure. It is nonbinding language. It endorses a single-edge PAYGO rule, by which I mean it applies only to entitlement spending and not at all to revenues. The one-sided PAYGO rule in the House Resolution would make no effort whatsoever, none, to temper tax cuts, although, since 2001, tax cuts have added four times as much to the deficit, mounting deficit, as entitlement increases have.

Ironically, ironically, this form of PAYGO would also open the way to initiatives that might otherwise be spending entitlements. That is because it could allow them to become law as tax expenditures, put in the Tax Code, called tax cuts, without being offset, and this could actually worsen the deficit and further complicate the Tax Code.

The original PAYGO legislation was part of a budget summit agreement that was reached between the first President Bush and Congress in 1990. That rule was extended in 1993 and 1997 but allowed by Congress and the second President Bush to expire in 2002.

The original PAYGO rule cut both ways. It applied to both revenue decreases and entitlement increases, and it worked, Mr. Speaker, it worked. It was one of the basic steps that we took in a long, arduous journey that moved the government out of mammoth deficits, $290 billion in 1992, to huge surpluses, $236 billion in 2000.

The Senate version simply restores the rule to its original form, that is all. In the House Committee on the Budget, the renewal of PAYGO in its original form was explicitly endorsed by none other than the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Greenspan.

I asked him myself, Mr. Chairman, do you support the restoration of the PAYGO rule in its original form?

He said, absolutely, I do.

I asked, Mr. Chairman, would you apply it to expiring tax provisions?

Yes, sir, I certainly would.

He was unequivocal in his support for it.

So also is the AARP, the Concord Coalition, the Committee For Responsible budget, anybody who is a responsible, informed observer of the budget process, who knows what PAYGO did for the 1990s, it stiffened our spine and helped us put the budget into balance for the first time in 30 years. We need it today more than we did then, because we have, as I said, a deficit of $521 billion. We have a cumulative deficit over the next 10 years of $5.136 trillion if you do not include Social Security.

We need the PAYGO rule with both edges applicable today as like never before in both houses, the House and the Senate. If nothing else, if nothing else, this can be the one bold step we take in a budget that otherwise does very little to move us out of deficit.

So I urge everyone, vote for the motion to instruct, vote for PAYGO in its original proven-to-work form, applicable both to entitlement increases and tax decreases, vote for this motion, and reinstate one of the best rules we have ever had for putting the budget in balance.

Mr. Speaker, in the Democratic budget resolution, let me remind the gentleman, we incur a lower deficit than their resolution. Every year for 10 years, we incur $1.2 trillion less debt than the President's resolution, and we merely bring spending back to baseline so that we can restore what is needed for priorities like education and veterans health care.