Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2007

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007 -- (House of Representatives - May 17, 2006)

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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding and acknowledge his tremendous leadership of putting forth the Spratt Democratic budget, which reflects the values of our country and is in balance.

Mr. Chairman, our most important responsibility as elected officials is to provide for the common defense. Keeping the American people safe is our first responsibility. That personal safety and America's national security are seriously jeopardized by the Republican budget. A vote for the Spratt Democratic alternative is a vote for a safer and more secure America.

Close to home in our neighborhoods, the Republican budget slashes funding for our first responders, including the COPS program and the SAFER Act, initiatives which put cops on the beat and equip our firefighters. The Spratt Democratic budget restores all of these cuts.

The Republican budget cuts homeland security funding by over $450 million in fiscal year 2007 and $6 billion over 5 years. I repeat, when it comes to our homeland security, the Republican budget cuts over $450 million for fiscal year 2007 alone and $6 billion over 5 years. The Democratic budget provides $1 billion more for port security and overall $6.5 billion more to keep our country safe.

The Republican budget continues to hide the cost of the Iraq war from the American public and cuts the Army National Guard strength by more than 17,000 troops despite the tremendous strain that the war has placed on them and now the additional charge that the President has made of them on immigration. The Democratic budget fully funds our Army National Guard.

The Republican budget betrays our veterans by cutting $6 billion over the next 5 years from current services and tripling TRICARE health fees. Mr. Spratt's budget, the Democratic budget, keeps our commitment to veterans.

Republicans are abandoning our veterans and failing to invest in America's safety in order to give huge tax cuts to the wealthy that leave Americans awash in red ink.

Today the President signed a tax bill. Tonight, in this budget, we have to deal with the consequences of those tax cuts, largely for the wealthiest people in America. Under the President's bill and passed by this Republican Congress, Americans making $20,000 a year will receive $2 a year in tax cuts; $20,000, $2. Americans making $40,000 a year will receive $16, barely enough for a couple to go to the movies. Those making $50,000 a year will receive a $46 tax cut, barely enough to fill up your gas tank these days, thanks to Mr. Cheney's energy policy. But if you make more than $1 million a year, $1 million a year, you get 1,000 times what somebody making $50,000 a year gets. You make $42,000 in tax cuts. Fifty thousand dollars a year, you can barely fill up your tank; $1 million a year, you can buy a luxury car because the American taxpayers are giving you $42,000.

In effect, American taxpayers are going into debt to China in order to give a tax cut to America's wealthiest people. When Republicans spend the Federal budget into the red, the U.S. Treasury borrows money from foreign countries. Since President Bush took office, the amount of foreign-owned debt has increased by over $1 trillion. In fact, it is more than all of the foreign-owned debt of the 42 previous Presidents combined, a horrible record.

The Japanese now own about $670 billion and the Chinese own $260 billion of our foreign debt. Our national debt is a national security issue. Countries that own our debt will not only be making our toys, our clothes and our computers, pretty soon they will be making our foreign policy. They have far too much leverage over us.

While the Republican budget is never balanced and has deficits as far as the eye can see, the Democratic budget, the Spratt substitute, reaches balance by 2012 and follows the strict pay-as-you-go rules, no deficit spending.

Instead of investing in our veterans, instead of securing our ports, the Republican policy of tax cuts for the wealthy have meant that the interest payments to foreign countries are the fastest-growing item in this budget.

Democrats take seriously our first responsibility to provide for the common defense. Our Democratic budget reflects that commitment. Mr. Spratt is not only the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, he is a very senior member of the Armed Services Committee, and his commitment to tough and smart national security for our country where we project America's power to protect our people and protect our interests throughout the world is a strong commitment, and his, Mr. Spratt's, patriotism and his commitment to our national security, they are reflected in this budget that he has proposed. He has helped create a Democratic budget that makes us all proud, and he does it in a fiscally sound way.

I urge our colleagues to support the Spratt substitute and to reject the unpatriotic, irresponsible and, as the religious community says, immoral budget that the Republicans are proposing tonight.

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