How Fast Will They Run?

HOW FAST WILL THEY RUN? -- (House of Representatives - March 29, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.

Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, this week we are going to see just how committed our Republican friends are to the irresponsible budget that they passed 4 days ago.

Tomorrow, Democrats will offer a motion to instruct House conferees on the fiscal 2005 budget resolution to accept the Senate's bipartisan pay-as-you-go budget enforcement rules. Those rules would require us to find offsets for both new spending as well as tax cuts. As a matter of fact, one of the real authors of pay-as-you-go, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), in the 1990s is here, which led to the most fiscally responsible administration's performance, frankly, in history, under Bill Clinton. And with a projected budget deficit of more than a half a trillion dollars this year, it is fair to ask, What could be more reasonable than that?

After all, our bipartisan agreement to pay-as-you-go rules in 1990 led to the steady decrease of our deficits throughout that decade and 4 consecutive years of budget surpluses between fiscal 1998 and 2001, the first time that has happened in 80 years.

But in their budget resolution, our Republican friends pretend that we can get our fiscal house back in order by applying so-called pay-as-you-go rules to spending only. Tax cuts, they believe, are a freebie, even though the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 40 percent of our deficit is attributable to revenue reductions. Who is going to pay that bill? Our children will pay that bill. Our grandchildren will pay that bill.

And even the respected chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), said in February, "No one should expect significant deficit reduction as a result of austere, nondefense discretionary spending limits. The numbers simply do not add up." So said the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), conservative Republican.

So I urge my Republican friends: join us. Join us in this effort to restore fiscal sanity to our Nation's budget. Vote for this important Democratic motion to instruct. That is not so hard. And remember, you have done it before.

Last year, a mere 96 hours after you passed your fist 2004 budget resolution, you turned right around, 180 degrees, and voted for the Democratic motion to instruct conferees to reject the deep cuts called for in your budget for education, for veterans, Medicare, Medicaid, and other areas. The chairman of the Committee on the Budg et, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), even stood on this floor and railed against our motion for half an hour. For half an hour he railed against our motion, before he and most of the Republican leadership flip-flopped and helped pass it by a vote of, listen to this, Madam Speaker, 399 to 22. That was the Democratic motion passing. Why? Because Republicans wanted to pretend that they were actually for the motion to instruct's priorities when their budget clearly denied that, contradicted it, did not provide for those priorities.

So I urge my Republican friends to support the adoption of pay-as-you-go rules which helped Democrats produce a budget for fiscal year 2005 that was both fair and responsible.

Our Democratic substitute would balance the budget within 8 years. The Republican resolution would actually increase our deficits. Our Democratic budget would protect Social Security. Our democratic budget would match the Republican budget on defense spending to ensure our national security and provide nearly $6 billion more over 5 years for homeland security to ensure that our people here at home are safer. Our Democratic budget would provide tax relief for hard-working families; and our budget, the Democratic budget, even as it reins in deficits caused by the Republican Party's failed policies, would provide more resources than the Republican budget for education, veterans, job training, public health, and infrastructure, the last, of course, being extraordinarily effective jobs-producing.

Finally, Madam Speaker, we also will consider this week, as I have said, the transportation reauthorization bill, which will pass, I predict, with wide bipartisan support, but leave both Democrats and some Republicans shaking their heads.
This is not only a bill about infrastructure, critically important to our economy, critically important to the safety of this Nation, critically important to every American; it is also a jobs bill. Democrats and some Republicans, including the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), himself supported a spending level of $375 billion, which would have created 1.7 million new jobs.

Why is that important? Because for the first time in 75 years since Herbert Hoover, the first time, this is the first administration in three-quarters of a century that will end its 4-year term having lost jobs net in this economy. That is why we have over 8 million people unemployed and 2.5 million jobs lost. Yet, the President, who has the worst record of job creation since Herbert Hoover threatened a veto of that jobs-creating bill, demanding a funding level that would create 1.1 million fewer new jobs.

[Time: 12:45]

I urge my Republican friends to stop ignoring the plight of the unemployed who have suffered under your failed policies.

Since December, more than 1 million jobless workers have exhausted their regular State unemployment benefits without receiving temporary Federal assistance. Why? Because Republicans allowed the Federal program to expire. Democrats have been asking for the last 6 months to extend that program, as we did under the Reagan administration, as we did under Bush 1. They have refused to do so.

Before we leave Washington this week for a 2-week recess, we should pass an immediate extension of temporary Federal jobless benefits. It is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, and I would suggest to you it is the right thing to do for our economy as well. There is no excuse for failing to act.

Madam Speaker, I hope that when the motion to instruct on the budget resolution is made to have a responsible, effective, historically effective pay-as-you-go process, to discipline our budget so that America's children and America's grandchildren and America's economy will not be put deeper into debt and that we will have an effective enforcement process, which will, like America's families, make tough decisions so that we will have a better future for our country.

END