Date: 2005-07-26
Speaker: LORETTA SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentlewoman from New York for putting together this Special Order. I think the chart that was just up is a very important chart to talk about. A lot of people ask me what is the most important thing you are worried about when you go to sleep at night. They know that I sit on the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Homeland Security. I tell them the problem is the debt and the deficits that we are creating in Washington. D.C. because they will come back to haunt each and every family in "this United States. The chart there shows that when President Bush took office we were running a surplus. a surplus in the annual budget that we had. in other words. our annual spending plan. President Clinton had structured our taxes in such a way that he brought down the deficit from earlier years. and we were in a surplus. We were collecting more taxes than we were spending in a year. which allowed us to take those additional taxes and bring down the debt. the actual debt that this country carried. But what happened when President Bush came into office? He began to change that around because spending went up and we collected fewer taxes. We have given three large packages of tax cuts in the time that President Bush has been in office. His own controller has said that the reason we are running deficits. 70 percent of that is due to the fact that we just do not collect taxes. We do not collect enough taxes to pay for the programs that we are spending on an annual basis. So 70 percent is due to the fact of those tax cuts. And those tax cuts. quite frankly. were not even very good. they are haphazard. They were used to buy votes and to make everybody think they had gotten a tax cut. but when you look at the tax packages and what has happened to us as a Nation in order to invest in our future. they were very poorly written and really do not do very much for our overall economy. But this deficit problem that we see on this chart. every year we are spending more than the moneys we are taking in in Washington. D.C. That is a problem because it adds to our debt. It is a problem because this just keeps growing and growing. Our debt is now over $7 trillion. and no one seems to mind here in Washington. D.C. We can give you tax cuts. we can spend $1.5 billion a week on a war in Iraq. and everything will be fine. When will that happen? Who will pay this debt? Well. sooner rather than later we will. my generation. And then when we cannot get to it. our children. After our children. our grandchildren. This is a major problem for us. The reason it is a problem is because unless you invest in your country for the future. you are going to become disadvantaged economically compared to the rest of the world. What do I mean by that? E 2310 Every week that we spend $1.5 billion in Iraq. we get nothing back in return. not one little dime on that investment. Meanwhile. we do not invest in education. we do not invest in a health care system. we do not invest in telecommunications. we cannot even pass a transportation bill in this town. we do not invest in new technology. When you do not invest in those things that make you more productive. sooner or later the Chinese and people from India and other places will be smarter. will be better equipped. and will be better able to take over the global economy. We are not investing in our children. We are not investing in ourselves. We are not retraining those people who have lost jobs. We are not helping them. We are not building the next new thing. We are not putting enough money into research because we are not taking in the money at the Federal level because of those tax cuts and because we are spending it on a war that is bringing nothing. no rate of return back to us.