Blue Dog Coalition

BLUE DOG COALITION -- (House of Representatives - June 29, 2006)

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to join tonight with my fellow Blue Dog, Congressman MIKE ROSS, the gentleman from Arkansas, who does an excellent job on behalf of representing his constituents from the great State of Arkansas.

Tonight, as a fellow Blue Dog member, I want to echo a number of the comments that Congressman Ross has made, because in that 12-point program that Congressman Ross will talk more about I believe lies solutions to the problems facing our Nation today, solutions that come to the heart of criteria and qualities that all Americans I think share. Those are accountability, competence and what kind of representation they want to see in their House of Representatives.

It does not matter what party you are a member of in this great Nation of ours. Accountability and competence are characteristics that Americans value throughout our great land.

In coming to the Congress as a new Member and becoming a fellow Blue Dog, we have had an opportunity to share and really spend a great deal of time in examining the challenges that our Nation finds itself in in getting its fiscal house in order.

Recently, the Blue Dogs, in consultation with a lot of research, uncovered an unpublicized Department of Treasury document that made a report that I think most Americans, unfortunately, are unaware of. This Department of Treasury, run by this administration, using the same tried and true accounting methods that every business in America uses, cast new light on the fiscal severity that our Nation is facing, what some would call a mess.

This Treasury report, filed by the Bush administration, reinforces what the Blue Dogs have been saying for years. One of the startling revelations of this 158-page report indicates by the admission of Secretary Snow that the U.S. deficit, as Congressman Ross said, under current accounting methods in 2005 was more than twice the amount that is being reported.

As a matter of fact, if you do not take into account, as Congressman Ross just stated, the Social Security surplus, our fiscal deficit, ladies and gentlemen, is over $700 billion today. And, yes, we pay the interest on that debt every day. But do not take my word for it. Look at the financial report of the United States Government, 2005.

Because it goes on to say that, in fact, in conjunction with the U.S. Comptroller, that there is no way we can get a clean audit from the books of most of our Federal agencies. Why? Because no one is being held accountable. Congressional leaders are not conducting the oversight hearings that we should do as a part of our responsibility as Members of Congress. And so, frankly, we do not know what the true state of our budget is, because so many of these agencies have not been able to provide the proper audits.

In a letter contained within this report, in this report, David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, explains that the model currently used by Government provides a potentially unrealistic and misleading picture of the Federal deficit, its overall performance, the financial conditions and what the future outlook will be for future generations of Americans to come.

The financial report makes it very clear that if we got into honest budgeting today, that in fact we would find ourselves with a much larger deficit than we have today. It goes beyond that to say that, in fact, if you looked at all 26 agencies in the Federal Government, that is on page 23 here, and you asked them for a clean fiscal audit, that over two-thirds of them would not be able to provide that clean fiscal audit.

That obviously is not the kind of condition that Americans want their Federal Government to be in. That is not the kind of operation and management that provides for the true fiscal

accountability and the competency. Competency. Remember, I said accountability and competency are characteristics that American taxpayers care about. They are values and characteristics that really make a difference.

So what we have today is not just a problem with accountability, but it is competence. It is not just the problems in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita with FEMA, but it deals with a budget deficit. It deals with a budget deficit that has been compounded by a trade deficit that has grown by 1,400 percent in the last 4 years.

In 1992, our trade deficit was over $36 billion. 2005, our trade deficit has grown to over $670 billion. Along with it, I might add, a lot of American jobs that have been exported overseas.

Let me close my comments, Mr. Speaker, by telling you that, as a new Member of Congress, I had served previously for 24 years in the California legislature. I think I did not come back here to Washington with any Pollyanna view of the world. But I also believe very passionately in representative democracy, when it works well and when it does not work.

I have just recently finished reading a book that I want to recommend to Americans back home. It is called Flight Club Politics. It is an accountability of what has occurred in the House of Representatives over the last 15, 20 years.

It did not begin with the Republicans. It involved the Democrats in the late 1980s and 1990s. And notwithstanding the Republican's efforts to pledge to reform the House in 1994 when they took over, the fact of the matter is, as the evolution of this, Flight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives, has unfortunately, in my opinion, only multiplied the problems that we now have exist today.

We no longer have a system of checks and balances. Under the Republican leadership during the Clinton administration, there were over 1,000 subpoenas of the administration.

Now, one could argue that the Congress was doing its part to provide checks and balances. Unfortunately, by comparison, under the last 5 years, with the Republican administration, there has been less than 10 subpoenas requested of this administration to hold them accountable, regardless of what Department or agency you are talking about.

When you have a view of the world that the only legislation that we can bring to the floor of the House must first pass with a majority of the majority, you are taking away the opportunity to have true bipartisan solutions. And it is one of the reasons, I believe, why today in America one of the fastest growing views of voters in America is ``decline to state or independent.'' So regardless of what party one must be registered under, people more and more view themselves as independents.

What we have to do today and in the future is to restore bipartisanship to this Congress. The Blue Dogs believe in that. We have to reinforce the opportunities that we don't need a de facto parliamentary system, where there is less focus on checks and balances and one party basically runs the entire government. Those are among the many challenges that we face today.

My colleagues, I am proud to be a member of a group of moderate to conservative Democrats who frankly believe that we must first get our fiscal house in order. How do we do so? We do so with true accountability, we do so with competence in terms of how our Federal Government is run, and we do so by ensuring that our House restores the civility and bipartisan workmanship that is what our founding fathers had in mind.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back to my colleague and good friend, Mr. Ross.

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