Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I wish to recognize the honorable service of the men and women of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army, who are again answering this nation's call to duty. They have already been deployed to the Persian Gulf in preparation for whatever conflict may lie ahead.

While international debate continues over the appropriate course of action, Mr. Speaker, it is easy for us to forget about the men and women who are already on the front line, preparing for the unknown, ready to accept the orders that are handed down.

There are almost 20,000 men and women stationed at Fort Campbell, which sits on the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. Fort Campbell is home to the 101st Airborne Division ``Screaming Eagles,'' under the command of Maj. Gen. David Petraeus. The 101st Airborne Division has a long history of outstanding military service, playing key roles in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm.

From an Apache fighter-helicopter, the ``Screaming Eagles'' fired the very first shots in the Gulf War, taking out Iraqi communications and paving the way for the ground attack. In the ground war, the 101st made the longest and largest air assault in world history into enemy territory. About 4,500 ``Rakkasans'' from the division's 3rd Brigade also spent six months in Afghanistan, fighting in Operation Anaconda, one of the toughest fronts in this nation's war on terrorism.

Now, the men and women of the 101st are again answering the call to duty. The ``Screaming Eagles'' have left behind their families and their homes to set up camp in the desert. These brave soldiers know that their country may need them, and they are ready to serve.

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will join me in applauding the dedication and duty demonstrated by the courageous men and women of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. Their love for our country, the safety of its people and the protection of its liberties, is what makes this nation free and great.

Madam Speaker, I think the gentleman is correct in his assessment that our generation ought to be willing or have the courage to

pay the bills that we are incurring for our protection and for the protection of our children and not pass on a debt that we have been working on to the extent that we are.

Let me give Members a few facts which are painful to even read. Right now we, the people of the United States, owe about $6.4 trillion as represented by our national debt. Even worse, 8 months ago Congress was called on to raise the debt ceiling; that is the amount of money that the people of the United States borrow. Eight months ago, we raised that debt ceiling $450 billion, which represents almost 10 percent of the then-$6 trillion debt. Do Members realize that 8 short months later we are told by the Secretary of the Treasury we are going to hit that ceiling in the next few days or weeks. That means we have run through in 8 months $450 billion of additional debt.

It gets worse. The Congressional Budget Office last week reported that the deficit for this year would be $287 billion, and that does not include any monies for a potential war in Iraq. CBO further predicted that the deficits over the next 10 years if we continue to follow the economic model that we are operating under right now and do the things the President has suggested with regard to the Tax Code, that over the next 10 years we will rack up almost $2 trillion of additional debt.

Now any rational businessperson understands that such an economic business plan, either in their business or for the country's business, is unsustainable; and the reason it is unsustainable is because interest must be paid on this debt. Last year we, the people of this country, paid $332 billion, paid and accrued $332 billion of interest on the national debt. The revenue of the Federal Government last year was $1.8 trillion. That means we have a debt tax, D-E-B-T, debt tax of 18 cents out of every dollar. Said another way, we have an 18 percent mortgage on our country and this debt tax, as we continue to borrow more and more money, is the only tax increase on the American people that cannot be repealed because interest has to be paid.

This does not even touch the moral argument of what we are doing to the next generation. I told somebody the other day, I said I do not think any of us in this room want to leave our children a country where the rivers and streams are so polluted that fish cannot live in it, kids cannot swim in it, and people cannot drink from them. I do not think anyone wants to leave our children a country where the air is so foul and smog infested that our children have to wear a surgical mask to ride their bicycle, and I do not think any of us want to leave our children a nation that is so burdened with debt that they will not be able to make the public investments that only the government can make to enable private enterprise to grow, expand and flourish.

If there is any businessperson in this country who thinks for one moment that private enterprise can flourish and grow without public infrastructure investment, whether it be in bricks and mortar, airports, railroads, harbors on our rivers and streams, or anything else, interstate highways. If they think private business can grow and flourish without that kind of public investment, then they have never been to a country that does not have any government because in those countries, nobody is doing any good. I have been there, seen that.

So I want to just say that under our present scheme if we listen to some, the deficits do not matter, that this is just a short-term problem. People have tried since the dawn of civilization and the invention of something we call money to borrow themselves rich. It has never worked then, and it is not working now, and anybody who thinks that we can borrow ourselves rich expects what never was and never will be.

We have a serious problem in this country. We are not doing our children right by passing on such a debt to them because we do not have the courage to either raise the necessary revenue for what we want, or we do not have the political courage to cut spending where we can. Something has got to be done, and that is why the Blue Dogs came today with a new budget for this fiscal year that will get us back on a glide path to balance. The biggest gift we could give to our country and to our children is a country that is debt free.

Just think, if we did not pay $332 billion in interest last year what we could do, either cut taxes or make the investments in education, in a world class military, in all of those things without ever raising taxes again. That is the kind of financial management I think people expect us to exhibit up here, rather than trying to borrow ourselves rich and tell them everything is going to be all right.

Madam Speaker, I just want to say that I hope people will give some consideration to the God-awful debt that this country possesses now and what is forecast for the future, and will help us as we try to wrestle with it.

Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, as everybody knows. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) is here with me. The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) was here earlier, as was the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor). This is going to be a first in a series of, I hope, enlightened or enlightening exercises that we do with regard to why deficits mean something in this country.

I heard some of the most astounding rhetoric I have ever heard in my life when there are some in this town who say deficits do not matter. We are going to try to point out why they do over the next few weeks.

Mr. Speaker, do you realize that today we are passing on to our children and our grandchildren an 18 percent mortgage on this country? We have literally mortgaged our children's future by our spending habits and our inability or our lack of courage to raise the necessary funds to pay for what my generation wants.

The President has submitted a budget that is another $300 billion in the red. Let me just say why that matters.

We already are paying, as a people, a billion dollars a day in interest on past consumption. If we do the math on that, there are 129.9 million individual taxpayers in this country, that means that every individual taxpayer last year paid on average $2,556 on the debt, interest on the debt, a debt tax that will continue to go up under these present economic policies that we are asked to follow.

It gets even worse than that, though, because what happens is, every time we borrow money, we have put a tax increase not only on us, but on our children and grandchildren, that can never be repealed because the interest must be paid. It is a tax increase every day we sit here spending more money or not having the courage to raise the money we need to protect this country and the people who live here.

Every day we do that is another tax on our children and us and our grandchildren that cannot be repealed. That is what the debt tax is. That is what the interest tax is.

And it really is ironic that people would sit here and say, we are not going to pass on the problems of this Congress on this day, in this hour, to those who come after us. If our forefathers had done to us what we are doing to our children and grandchildren, we would not have the standard of living we have today, that we have had and enjoyed. We would not have the opportunities, because we would not have the discretionary income for education, for health care, for veterans, for the world class military that we all know is necessary for the defense of this country.

We will not have that money. It will continue to go out in the form of interest payments.

What the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) said about Brazil, we are not creditworthy were it not for the full faith, credit and confidence of the people of this country in terms of what we have done in borrowing money. It is a shame what is going on each and every day.

The gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) asked for a balanced budget amendment vote, 1,400-some pages. We do not have one. This Congress, if it does not come face to face with the fact that we are spending a lot of money that we did not count on because of 9-11 that we have to spend to protect this country, our first and foremost obligation as Members of Congress, if they do not come face to face with that and understand that we have to get the money up to pay for it or else pass it on to our children in the form of a debt tax that can never be repealed, then we have shamefully failed not only our oath of office, but we have shamefully failed those who will follow us.

And each and every day a billion dollars goes out of this place to pay interest, and each and every day we operate in the red, it is more piled on. That is why deficits matter and that is what the Blue Dogs are going to be talking about over the next few weeks.