Date: 2005-03-17
Speaker: LORETTA SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I rise today to talk about the Republicans budget that wasjust passed in this House a little while ago. H. Con. Res. 95. Principally I think it fails to address the crucial and central issue which this Congress should address. and that is fixing" our national budget. Somebody in my area the other day asked me the question. what keeps me awake at night? And my answer was pretty simple. Being an investment banker by profession before I came to this House. I said our deficit and our debt. We have a serious problem. Mr. Speaker. our Treasury is over $7 trillion in debt. fl 1715 We continue to borrow every year under this administration at something over $500 billion a year. And how does this Congress react? We signed up for another credit card. Interest rates are low. We can afford it. And when we max out our new credit card. we will just go and get another credit card. Free money. That is what this Con�gress is doing. But even if the money is cheap. it is not free. And while it may be cheap now. at some point what went down must come up. Interest rates will rise. That is the history when you look at the markets. They always do. I wonder if the American public fully appreciates that this Congress and this President continue to borrow on their credit cards the way we do. Do they know. for example. that our deficits are being financed by the Chinese? As of last year. $1.9 trillion of our debt. or 40 percent of it. was owned by foreign investors. The Chinese own about $217 billion of that. the Japanese cover about $668 billion. the oilrich OPEC countries own about $48 billion. and the list goes on and on. So we keep cutting our taxes so we are not sending that money to Washington. D.C.. but we keep spending as if we had that revenue. as long as our friends the Chinese and the Japanese and other foreign investors continue to prop up our debt. How long will that last? We need to protect our financial security. Carrying around this much debt is making us incredibly vulnerable. We are essentially being held hostage by our own financial obligations. As long as we continue down this road. we weaken our position as a world leader because our financial stability is in the hands of other nations. This is not just a national security problem. Running a big deficit and debt is also a problem for the economic health of this country. As a Nation. personal savings has dropped from almost 11 percent in 1984 to about 1 percent in 2004. We are not saving. We are also weak in investment. despite historically low interest rates. In fact. if you look at this budget. you will see that we are spending about $1.5 billion a week in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. $1.5 billion a week. But we are cutting education. and we are cutting the health care system. We are cutting our national parks budget. we are cutting transportation. We are not investing and reinvesting in our water and sewage systems. All the investment that we need tobe a productive country. we are not investing. Do you think the Chinese are investing $1.5 billion a week in Iraq in a war? No. They are building their water systems. they are educating their people. they are building their transportation systems. their telecommunications systems. They are investing. We dre just spending. . It is poor fiscal judgment. and this Congress. led by this side. is guilty of putting that on a credit card that all Americans will end up paying. My background is in finance. I used to do that. I used to finance for companies. for people. I used to tell them how to do things. I have never seen this kind of disregard. this structural problem that we are creating. So I hope. Mr. Speaker. that this Congress begins to make the tough choices. and that is the reason I opposed H. Con. Res. 95 today.