Date: 2006-03-01
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Well. it has been clear on a number of different levels that they have the Presidents back much more so than the Republicans back. We can see that when it comes to their support for the Presidents budget. when they support the Presidents initiatives at every level. 0l 1945 You see the red and green lights up on the board. and even when the more moderate Republican colleagues of ours obviously desperately want to vote differently. they hold the board open for as long as humanly possible so that they can twist arms and get those colleagues of ours to change their votes and vote differently than obviously their conscience has told them that they should vote. We are facingdown now a need to increase the debt limit. -The Treasury Secretary has indicated that we are going to bump up against our debt limit any day now. really within the next month. And we still have not voted to do that. One of the interesting things that I have found politically over the years is that the Republicans often accuse Democrats of being taxandspend Liberals. All I ever hear is taxandspend Liberal. almost like equating it with curse words. What has been clear is that the Republicans. since they have been in charge of this government. and in total control of this government. they have been borrowandspenders. : We have reached the poift -h America now where this administration. this President. has spent more than the previous President certainly. and other Presidents combined. We have spent more money now than the previous administration. yet Republicans continue to accuse Democrats of being taxandspend Liberals. It is really just funny. It has reached the point of sardonic humor.. Let us look at the issue of the debt limit. You see here that we have increased the debt limit not just on one. not just ontwo. but on five occasions. We had had $3 trillion of increases of the debt limit. In billions of dollars. you have in June of 2002. $450 billion increase in the debt limit. In May of 2003. $984 billion increase in the debt limit. November of 2004. $800 billion increase in the debt limit. The pending increase now is another $781 billion for a total of over $3 trillion in increasing of the. .debt limit. That means -that our future generations. my children. their children. are going to owe incredible sums of money. have debt to foreign nations. and that is not even talking about the deficit. So many people really have trouble getting their arms around the difference between. the debt and the -deficit. We have a problem with the deficit in this country. And we have examples of that in chart form as well. The deficit in this country has now reached $8 trillion. $8 trillion. Next week. Mr. Speaker. when we come back and do the 30something hour. we are going to have a chart that will try to illustrate for people just what that means. what a billion dollars will do. Because it is really staggering when you think about it. People have trouble getting their mind around that concept: $8 trillion translated to every person in this country means that every person in this country owes $27.000. And when I am talking about a person. I am talking about infants as well. babies as well. Let us look at the budget deficits of prior Presidents. If you start with President Reagan in 1982. he had a def.icit of $128 billion. We had a deficit of $128 billion. You go all of the way down to this President. and we are at $323 billion. Now that is just for fiscal year 2006. And that is obviously increased. except for one year where it was a little bit higher. In 2004 it was a little bit higher. $412 billion. So I feel heartened that .we had somewhat of a drop. but it is on the increase again. We have got to make sure that we get back to the point that we were at during the - Clinton administration when we did not know from the term deficit. because we had a surpkus. What we were debating during the Clinton administration was what we were going to do with that surplus: Were we going to use it to shore up the difficulties we were having with social security? Were we going to use it to shore up the difficulties that we were having with Medicare? We cpn9t have those di cussions any more because we are operating at our biggest deficit inhistory. What we have proposed. and what Republicans have consistently rejected. is going back to the PAYGO rules. the payasyougo rule. which means you do not spend it if you do not have it. The Republicans have repeatedly and unanimously rejected going back to the PAYGO rules. These are two examples of amendments that were offered by Mr. SPRATT from South Carolina in the 2006 budget resolution and the 2005 budget resolution. In 2006. it failed 165264. And you had zero Republicans supporting it. 228 Republicans opposing it. In the 2005 budget resolution. it failed 194232. Zero Republicans supporting it. 224 Republicans opposing payasyougo. Now. who is fiscally responsible and who is not? I really ask you to think about that. We have got to make sure that we return to payasyougo. because even though it is difficult. that is a hard policy to adopt. making sure you have the money before you spend it. anyone who lives. if you think about it in terms of your household budget. Mr. Speaker. it is hard to only spend the money you have. But we all know that you are obviously in the best fiscal shape. you have the most fiscally sound budget in your home when you are only spending what you take in. There are a lot of Americans that do not do that. There are a lot of Americans that have credit card debt. There are a lot of Americans in this country who struggle every day to make sure that they can pay their bills. And quite honestly. the only way that they are often able to cover the needs that they have is by deficit spending in their own household. But they know that it is not the right thing to do. and ideally if they could afford it. most of these families would not engage in that practice. The problem is that they are not in very good shape fiscally in their own household. so they have to. The Federal Government does not have to. You definitely cannot argue that we do not have the money to adopt this practice. We do. We have the money. we just do not have the wherewithal. Unfortunately. the Republican leadership here has not had the nerve. I guess for lack of a better term it has not had the nerve to adopt that responsible policy. I really do not understand it. I come from a State legislative background. 12 years in the Florida legislature. Anyone who comes from a legislative background and was an elected official in their home State in this body understands that every State in the country has to operate in the black. according to their constitution. You cannot deficit spend in a State budget. You cannot do it. : You have only thle ability to spend the money. that you have. The Federal Government has. I guess it is a luxury. but it is a luxury that comes back to bite you very soon as you progress down the road. and you end up throwing your own future into tremendous debt. There is a USA Today editorial that was just from the other day. and it talks about who is really the party of small government and big spending and who is not. It was really interesting. USA Today said tax cuts. they say. forced hard decisions and restrained reckless spending. The last time we looked. though. Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. They are the spenders. In fact. since they took control in 2001. they. meaning the Republicans. have increased spending by an average of nearly 7V2 percent a year. more than double the rate in the last 5 years of the Clinton era budget. That is really telling. So who is fiscally responsible? Who is for smaller government? Who is for responsible fiscal policy? Clearly. given this chart. where it indicates in USA Todays opinion. our thirdparty validator and this chart right here. Which shows the increase. drastic increase of the deficit over time from the Reagan administration to now. Let us look at the blue area right here. See the blue years. The blue years are surplus. Mr. Speaker. surplus. when we did not have a deficit. when we had PAYGO. When we only spent the money that we had. We had some Members. Mr. Speaker. in our caucus that lost their elections because of that vote. that lost their elections ensuring that we would adopt responsible fiscal policy. That is because we stand on principle. We do not blindly support our President. we do not walk in lock step. we vote our conscience. And I wish that I had not seen the angst in so many of my Republican colleagues faces when they had their arms wrenched behind their backs and were essentially forced to vote differently than you know in their heart they believed. It is really sad. I feel so free to come on this floor and. you know. Leader PELOSI. she tells you. you do what you feel is right. I know we are not always going to agree. You have to be able to do What you think is best for your district. Now. of course. she Would like us to be unified. And because we have such strong beliefs and values in our caucus. we have the most unified caucus that we have had in history. really since the 1950s. the most unified caucus. The Democratic caucus in this Chamber knows that we can take this country in a new direction. that together America can do better. and that if we work together and work through our differences and build consensus instead of forcing our colleagues to do what they do not necessarily believe in. then we are going to make sure that we can come up: with sound policy. The Clinton.years we had surplus.. The other chart that you just had up is also telling. Again. we do not force people in the Democratic caucus to do what they do not believe. I cannot imagine that my Republican colleagues in every single district in this country. stood in front of their constituents during their campaigns and said. you know what. I believe in deficit spending. I believe in an $8 trillion deficit. I just doubt that if I were in their districts at a town hall meeting. that they would be telling their constituents they were glad that we had an $8 trillion deficit. But yet they come up here and they vote to continue to support policies like that. I do not get it. Other than blind loyalty. I do not get it. Blind loyalty is what is hurting our constituents here in the United States of America. Let us look at how just the interest payments on the national debt. we are going back to talking about the debt. the money that we owe to other countries now. Just look at what the interest payments would pay for if we did not have to spend them on covering the national debt: If we did not have to spend them. we could spend them on education. we could. spend them on homeland security. we could spend them on improving the quality of life for our Nations veterans. You have about $50 billion that we could spend on helping our Nations veterans. You have abQut. I think that is about $30 billion that you could spend on shoring up homeland security. We are talking about domestic discretionary funding. the kind of funding that we can specifically direct to port security and airport security and making sure that our Nations borders are not infiltrated by terrorists. but we cannot spend that money on those things because we are paying interest on our debt to other countries. You could spend almost $100 million. I think it is about $75 billion dollars. excuse me. we get the Bs and Ms confused sometimes. $75 billion on education. Now. one of the biggest frustrations that I know I get in terms of feedback from my constituents. Mr. Speaker. is the No Child Left Behind Act and the fact -that this President committed from day one. and Mr. MILLER. my good friend from California who was just here. championed that legislation on our side with the administrations commitment that they were going to support full funding. We have not had full funding on No Child Left Behind. We have not had the ability to really implement that legislation and ensure that our children in our public schools are prepared for the path that they choose in life. What we have done instead is we have had to spend that money on things like -interest on the national debt. We have had to spend that money on tax cuts. becaPse.itis tax cuts that have been the top. priority. of this. administration. Still todaythis Presidents and this administrations ..highest priority appears to be making the tax cuts for our wealthiest Americans permanent. in. the face of the national debt being the size that it is. in the face of us having an $8 trillion deficit where each American owes $27.000 apiece. How is that possible? There are times when you just have to say. we cannot afford it. It would be nice. but we cannot afford it. When does that happen here?