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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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I had not planned to speak at this point in time in the debate. But somebody, sometime ought to talk about facts.
The gentleman mentions the Contract with America. The first plank of the Contract with America was fiscal responsibility. Now, you weren't in charge when the Contract With America came into your purview as the majority in 1995. Bill Clinton was President of the United States. I have served here, my 26th year; 18 of those have been with Republican Presidents. Eight have been with a Democratic President. Every one of those 18 years we had a deficit of over $100 billion.
Now, there is only one person in America who can stop spending, the President of the United States. Reagan didn't stop spending. Bush didn't stop spending, and this President has spent, and you have spent, twice as much as we spent under Bill Clinton. The Heritage Foundation will tell you that, not we Democrats. We will tell you that too, but the Heritage Foundation will tell you that, I tell my friend from Texas.
You have voted for budgets which have provided the largest deficits in our history. In the last 64 months, your budgets and your policies have resulted in an additional $3 trillion of deficit spending. Three trillion. You are in charge of the House, you are in charge of the Senate, and you have the Presidency.
Now you say, oh, we had 9/11 and then we had the war. You didn't have that during the Reagan years, and you had a deficit every year. You didn't have that in Bush I. You had the Gulf War I, but guess what, that President Bush had the rest of the world substantially pay for that effort.
$3 trillion in additional debt. And in this budget, you are going to add an additional 650 billion-plus to the national debt. Those deficits, by the way, so you understand, and these are facts, you are welcome to look at your little books, get out your staff and say, oh, no, Hoyer is lying. The public maybe is watching.
During Republican Presidents those 18 years, $4.3 trillion of deficit spending net. You know what you had under Bill Clinton? $62.5 billion of surplus. The only President in your lifetime, I say to all of you, who had a net surplus during the course of his terms.
So I hear the gentleman from Texas get up and talk about the Contract With America. It was blarney.
You said you were going to be fiscally responsible. The finances of this Nation over the last 6 years have been the worst since my service here, and perhaps in the history, I think in the history of America. You talk a good game, but you are not playing a good game. You are not playing for real, and you are trying to fool the American public. The problem you have is they are not being fooled.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, let me start by saying that Democrats have not spent any money over the last 6 years. None of our budgets have passed. The appropriations bills would not have passed but for Republican votes, and the Republican President signed the budgets. That is what this crowd has offered. They have done it all. What has that meant? Three trillion dollars of additional deficit spending. That is what it has meant. This budget continues that practice.
Mr. Chairman, the overwhelming majority of Americans now believe that our great Nation is headed in the wrong direction. Not difficult to understand why they think that.
The Republican Party's incompetence over the past 5 1/2 years is undeniable, from the miscalculations in Iraq to the inept response to Hurricane Katrina, to failure to secure our ports and borders, to the historic turnaround in our fiscal health from the $5.6 trillion surplus that they inherited, which they have turned into a $4 trillion deficit, a $9.6 trillion turnaround in 64 months; 5.4 million more Americans live in poverty, 6 million more are uninsured. Real median household income has dropped nearly $1,700. Thus, today it is stunning that our Republican colleagues have brought a budget resolution to this floor that so badly betrays our values and fails to meet our Nation's priorities.
This shamefully short-sighted budget resolution cuts crucial investment in our Nation and our people. The difference, I tell my friend from Wisconsin, is we want to pay for what we buy. You are buying a lot. You are buying more than we bought when we were in charge. You are not paying. You are borrowing from the Japanese, the Chinese, the Saudis. You borrowed more money from foreigners over the last 5 years than were borrowed in the 210 years before that.
Over the next 5 years, it slashes education by $45 billion; veterans health care, to which the gentleman referred, by $6 billion; public health by $18 billion; and environmental protection by $25 billion.
Even worse, this budget resolution is a continuation of the most reckless fiscal policies in the history of our Nation, policies that have squandered, as I said, a $5.6 trillion budget surplus. Who said that? George Bush, March 2001, said that is what we had.
They added more than $3 trillion to the national debt and weakened our ability, weakened our ability to respond to national and international crises.
Listen, my friends, to the warning of the nonpartisan Comptroller General David Walker, not a Democrat, appointed by your side, who stated in February, ``Continuing on the unsustainable fiscal path will gradually erode if not suddenly damage our economy, our standard of living, and ultimately our national security.''
Mr. Chairman, that is what Mr. Walker says their budgets are doing to America; yet that is precisely what this Republican budget continues to do. It not only fails to rein in the record Republican deficits of the last 5 years, it makes them worse. Hear me. This budget makes the deficits worse. It not only fails to arrest our exploding national debt, it calls for a debt limit increase of 653 billion additional dollars.
Last year during our debate on the budget resolution, the chairman of the Budget Committee confidently proclaimed, and I quote, ``We will be able to give, I believe, our kids and grandkids the opportunities of a debt-free world if we begin with a small step again this year.''
That is the chairman who brings to this floor a $653 billion additional increase in our national debt. The chairman's assertion then has been eviscerated by the facts now. Vote for this responsible Spratt alternative and reject this fiscally reckless proposal on top of the last five fiscally reckless proposals.
The reality is, this budget resolution--and the Republican party's policies--have instigated a dangerous spiral of deficits and debt that constitute nothing less than fiscal child abuse, because they will immorally force our children and grandchildren to pay our bills.
In sharp contrast, the Democratic alternative is reasonable and responsible.
It would balance the budget by 2012; reinstate the pay-as-you-go budget rules that were instrumental in creating four consecutive budget surpluses in the 1990s; and invest in our Nation and our people.
Our Democratic alternative provides matching resources for defense, and more resources for education, veterans' health care and other health priorities, and the environment.
I urge my colleagues: vote for fiscal sanity.
Vote for the budget that puts America back on the right track.
Vote for the Democratic substitute.
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