Date: 2009-02-26
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. today the President of the United States continued a tradition that has existed since the beginning of this Republic. and that is for the Presidents of the United States to send to Congress a message including his budget. This is the blueprint for this administration in the area of taxation and spending for the foreseeable future. At the outset. Mr. Speaker. let me give the President credit where credit is due. We should remark that the Presidents budget does highlight the dire problem with unsustainable growth and entitlement spending. He acknowledges that. as it should be acknowledged. and he does it up front. And for that. he is due respect. Secondly. the President does propose to fix the alternative minimum tax. the AMT. and builds the impact of this proposal into his budgets outyear projections. Now. this is something the previous adniinistration did not do. So this is an improvement in terms of what we might call accounting procedures. The reform of the AMT does fall short of full reform since it only- adjusts for inflation. and bracket creep will push more and more of olir constituents. the taxpayers of America. on to the AMT. which was originally considered to catch just a few. a handful. of multimillionaires who. in periods of time some decades ago. escaped any payment of taxesnot because they did anything illegal. but because they took advantage of various tax credits. tax shelters. et cetera. that were then available in the Tax Code. The President does one courageous thing. I would suggest. He asks us to consider means testing Medicare Part D premiums. Always a controversial issue but one that the President at least presented us with the facts forcing us to deal with those facts. And the President should "be commended for proposing in this budget for emergencies. The previous President. President Bush. set aside $5.6 billion in a reserve for emergencies in his first budget. but President Obama should be advised that the results of that were that Congress quickly spent the reserve on other problemsbase programs. not emergency programs. And there is a tendency in this body. and that on the other side of thd Capitol. to do the same thing. Now. those are the things for which I can give the President credit. but overall. this budget is of great concern to me and ought to be great concern to the rest of the American people. What it would do is increase the national debt by $2.7 trillion. Thats not billion. its trillion with a -T.- $2.7 trillion this year to $12.7 trillion requiring another increase in the debt limit which was just increased to $12.1 trillion in the stimulus bill. It actually doubles the national debt in 8 years. Now. I know my friends on the other side of the aisle have said. "How can you Republicans speak? You didnt do a very good job." And I will be the very first to admit that when I came back here after an absence of 16 years. I was surprised by the lack of intestinal fortitude in this institution towards fiscal responsibility. and my party was in charge. You might say. well. President Bush allowed the debt to rise from the first day he was in office to the day he left by $4.9 trillion. That is a record. But President Obama has already shown us that hes a record breaker because under his budget. the debt is projected to increase by $5.6 trillion in just 3 years. How are we going to take care of this? Are we going to be more indebted to the Communist Chinese? Are we going to be more indebted to those around the world? When do we stop the printing presses printing our money? When does the impact of that fall on our most vulnerable in this society. that is those on fixed incomes. when the value of the dollar they have in their pocket or in their bank account or somewhere in the theia investment portfolio is worth less than it was just a few months before? So we raise taxes by $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Now. some of it doesnt really look like taxes because its called cap and trade revenues. Cap and trade. So under the guise of global warming or climate change. we now are going to have a huge tax increase. So what we have here .is a budget with some small good points. huge debt. huge taxes. Thats not the way forward. We must do something better. We can do better.