Date: 2006-05-02
Speaker: LORETTA SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Thank you so much. Mr. BOYD. I just am very grateful that you decided to take this hour to talk a little bit about the financial crisis. really. that our United States is in. and what we can do or what we must do in the near future to begin to get our financial house in order of our Nation. As you know. I am an economist by training and a former financial advisor and investment banker for 12 years before I came to the House of Representatives. -and besides sitting on the Armed Services Committee and the Homeland. Security Committee. I also sit on theJoint . Economic Committee for the Congress.. the economic committee that looks at the macro picture of what is going on in the United States. And. quite frankly. we take a look at our position visavis the rest of the countries of the world. In other Words. how are we going to hold on to our financial status. our quality of- life. our way of life as we know it? And I believe. every night when I go to sleep. I believe that this is the biggest issue that is facing us here in Washington. D.C.. and as Americans. Earlier. Mr. COOPER showed a chart that qaid that we are telling the American people. this Congress. this Republicanled Congress is telling the American people that. in this coming year. our. shortfall or what we are overspending by for the year will be $319 billion. And it says it right there. But the reality is. take aside our responsibilities that we have told people we are going to do for Medicare and Social Security for the future. the reality is that we spend much more than $319 billion this year. Without that Medicare and Social Security responsibility. we really spend $760 billion more than the money we take in. Now we sat down a while ago with the Comptroller of the United States as a Blue Dog Coalition. and he said to us that 70 percent of the deficit that we. have on an annual basis is because we are not collecting the taxes we should be collecting from the American public. In other words. with the three sets of tax cuts that were given by President Bush and the Republican Congress. we have failed to take in the money we need to pay our bills. What we are basically doing is borrowing to pay. and at some point that comes due. It is like putting it on a credit.card. At some point. the credit card company will come and tell you. okay. you have got to pay up. And. as you know. it becomes much more difficult than to have paid it as you went along. We. as Blue Dogs. believe that we should do pay as you go. that we should make tough decisions every year and decide how we are going to spend and how we are going to tax and bring in the monies we need. how we are going to cut spending. if we need to cut spending. But we havent been allowed to do that. Each and every year. as Blue Dogs. when we get together and we make -our budget and we think about it. Mr. COOPER. on the Budget Committee. others of us. and the reality is that every year the Republicans decide that it is not the year to get our house in order. our financial house in order. Now. you know. there are some things that people havent even begun to think that will impact even more our deficit -spending over the inability for us to pay our bills on an annual basis and. therefore. put it on the credit card. The Medicare part. D. the prescription drug program that the Republicans voted in 2 years ago. okay. it hasnt gone very well. We all know that. We all wonder what they are doing with it. et cetera. They said it would cost $400 billion over 10 years. This is extra that they were going to spend. We now know it is going to cost at least $1.5 trillion if we meet the responsibility of that program. That is "not factored into the budget deficit that we see coming in the future. Hurricane Katrina. that is not factored in. We have done really very little. We have already given about $83 billion towards Hurricane Katrina. but the two Louisiana senators from that State have a bill that says they want us to spend almost $300 billion more just for Louisiana to get the place fixed up. That is not counted in the deficits we see for the future. And the Iraq war. $1.5 billion a week of spending. How long is it going to take? We are already approaching almost $400 billion spent on that war by the end of this year. And I sit on that committee. the military committee. I dont think we are going to be out by the end of the year. You do the math. $1.5 billion a week. That is the operating cost of being bogged down in Iraq. Will it be 3 years. 5 years. 10 years. 20 years? Korea. at 50 years? Start adding up those numbers. America. and you will understand why we. the Blue Dogs. are so concerned that the Republicans will not take this seriously and sit down with us and hash out what we need to do in order to begin to get this under control. That is why I am grateful that you have come down here today to talk about this. Mr. BOYD.