Health Care and Fiscal Issues
HEALTH CARE AND FISCAL ISSUES -- (House of Representatives - October 20, 2005)
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. I thank the gentleman from Georgia who is doing such an extraordinarily wonderful job, Mr. Speaker, as he represents the positions that our party holds on so many issues that are important to the American people.
I am going to be heading to my district for the weekend, as most Members are, spending some time there, having the opportunity to talk with them. But as the gentleman from Georgia was saying, we wanted the opportunity to just address and maybe do a little bit of correcting on some of the points that our colleagues from across the aisle have been saying and stating. Sometimes I think that they are just sadly misinformed on some of these issues.
They said that Republicans are not looking to cut spending. I just find that extraordinary. They said that Democrats are the ones that are wanting to cut spending. Mr. Speaker, the level of hypocrisy in that statement is absolutely astounding. We have a Democratic Party in this House whose message, and I honestly believe many days is the only message that they have, that message is: Spend more. Whatever it is, spend more. Whatever they are wanting to do, if they do not think the outcome is right, go spend more. And for years they have held this thought that if you just put more money in the pot, then the outcome is going to be what they want. Spend more. Spend more.
And what holds them together? Mr. Speaker, I think that is something that is a curiosity to many people, because they are not united on foreign policy, they are not united on winning in Iraq, they are not united on border control issues, they are not united behind working families who tell us repeatedly that what they want is lower taxes, lighter regulation, preserving individual freedom, and having their shot at hope and opportunity.
Our colleagues across the aisle are not united on that. The one thing that they repeatedly seem to be united on is spending more of the taxpayers' money, spending more of your hard-earned money. And it is amazing to me, government never gets enough of the taxpayer money. Government has this huge, voracious appetite for the taxpayers' money. They just cannot get enough of it. There is always another program. Many of them are great programs, but one of the truths that we all see here in this body: If government moves in to solve a problem, generally neither the private nor not-for-profit sector will move in and address that problem.
So you have additional costs that come about. Every time we talk about winning in Iraq, our friends across the aisle seem to say let us get out, regardless of the sacrifices that are made. Every time we talk about controlling the border, they are over there saying no way.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I was on a CNBC program; and a Democrat Member of the House said that their party had never been invited to offer spending cuts. There are 435 Members of this body, and Mr. Speaker, they are waiting for an invitation to come in and participate in how to reduce the size of government. This morning, I was on the floor and I said please consider this the invitation, come on. Everybody needs to work on this. It should be a bipartisan effort. It should involve every single Member of this House, how we go about reducing what the Federal Government spends.
I have three bills that would enact across-the-board cuts, 1 percent, 2 percent and 5 percent cuts; and for all of their talk today about how they want to cut spending, Mr. Speaker, not one single Democrat is on those bills, not one. We have got 14 Republicans who are on those bills, and not one Democrat has signed on to commit to finding 1, 2 or 5 percent of waste, fraud and abuse in government spending.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues, who is really leading on this issue? I hear plenty of accusations from the left. I hear plenty of complaining, and I see zero action. A lot of talk, no action. They controlled this body for 40 years; and in that 40 years, they built layer after layer after layer after layer of government. They cooked them a big old government cake, layer upon layer.
We have got programs out there that do nothing but waste our money. We have got 342 different economic development programs. There is a lot of work that we can do. Everyone is invited to come in and work on these issues; and anytime we even try to restrain spending, look at the rhetoric that we hear.
Mr. Speaker, it is our party in this House, it is our leader, the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert), who truly is leading on this issue, not the minority leader. It is our leaders who are pushing this. It is our party who would like to reduce government spending by billions of dollars, billions more in next year's budget. It is our party that would like to see across-the-board spending reductions.
Their solution that they offer is repealing tax relief that is well deserved by hardworking American families, repealing that relief and raising taxes, period. That is the only thing that unites their party.
I hope that they will work with us on reducing the spending of the Federal Government. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.
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