Date: 1984-05-22
Speaker: PHILIP M. CRANE (republican)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I take a position that I know is not shared with some of our leaders on the Republican side of the aisle who believe that the responsible thing to do is to raise the debt ceiling. while. in my judgment. that is not the responsible alternative for fiscal conservatives. I share the sentiments of my good friend from California here on that subject. An important thing for all Members faced with this vote to acknowledge is their role in contributing to the necessity for hiking the debt ceiling. Interestingly enough. the National Taxpayers Union has just come out with its latest rating of the Congress for the first session of this term. It is instructive for people to review the contents thereof because the National Taxpayers Union rates us on the basis of the total number of dollars we vote to spend. They do not make subjective evaluations as to good spending versus bad spending. it is all spending. from welfare to weapons. If you examine the contents of that rating one can pretty well identify those who have the responsibility to cast the vote to hike the debt ceiling as a means of providing for the levels of spending that were dictated by their earlier votes. Now. there is something else that needs some clarification. namely. the whole subject of responsibility for spending. U.S. News & World Report. in their recent issue with red ink spilling over the Capitol dome. attempted to suggest that Presidents have something to do with budgets. Presidents have nothing to do with budgets. have nothing to do with spending except in a negative way and that is through exercise of the veto. Can you imagine trying to run a corporation as a chief executive officer sitting down with your board of directors at the beginning of the year and then charting the anticipated expenditures for that year and as CEO. when you knew you could make an economy while still carrying out the intent of the board. failing to do so? You would get your pink slip by the end of the year. But the fact is that is the way our National Government.is run. You remember back in the days of Richard Nixon when in attempting to carry out the congressional mandate he impounded money. that is. he saved money to the taxpayer. And what did this body do? It promptly passed the AntiImpoundment Act which says you cannot make those economies even if you see opportunities to do so. The fact of the matter is that from the beginning of the Republic all general spending bills. general appropriation bills. have always originated in this Chamber. Just like constitutionally the tax function is a mandated responsibility of this Chamber. That means not only do we originate the spending. we originate the taxation. we originate the policies. and the arrangement of priorities. These are first and foremost House functions. For anyone who wants to assess blame based on any partisan consideration. I would simply remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. that in the last 52 years Republicans have controlled this Chamber only 4 years. and the last time was 30 years ago. In addition to that. if you look at the pictures of Presidents depicted as U.S. News & World Report did over budget surpluses or budget defitits in the postWorld War II era. Harry Truman looks very good. I think it was four of the six budget surpluses that we have had in the last 40 years in this country that he presided over. But one of those Congresses that gave him budget surpluses was what he called the donothing Congress. It was not a donothing Congress. it was one of those two Republican Congresses that we have had in better than half a century. They were responsible at least for giving this Nation budget surpluses. The concern I have on this point is a startling fact that everybody in this Chamber ought to chew on. especially if you have children. If we balance the budget every year for the next 1E yearsand if you harken back over the previous 16 to 1968. we only did it onceif we balance the budget for the next 16 years running to the year 2000. we finance it at 10 percent inter est ratesand that is another very op timistic assumption--our $1.5 trillior national debt goes to $7.5 trillion b3 the year 2000. Now that is with no ag II -1289 gravation of this grave problem that is confronting our country and is threatening. in my estimation. to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. This is not a partisan issue. All of us have a profound stake in what goes on here in terms of trying to rein in the excessive spending. Let me give my colleagues a quick example of what has been done in our neighboring State of Delaware. Pete Du Pont. former colleague. came to the Governors office in 1977. At that time they were running deficits 50 percent of their annual revenues. Delawares bond rating was number 50 out of 50 States. and they had amongst the highest taxes in this country. What they did in the State of Delaware was to pass a constitutional amendment requiring balanced budgets. They cannot spend more than 98 percent of what they take in. They have run budget surpluses every year since. their bond rating has gone from number 50 up to 15. In addition to that. Pete du Pont got the first tax cut in the history of the State of Delaware passed in 1982. and there is another one scheduled for this summer. I think it speaks to the importance of imposing some kind of external discipline. As Thomas Jefferson said"Bind the rascals down with the chains of the Constitution." This is one area where we have not been bound and where some kind of discipline is desperately neeeded.