Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2005

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005 -- (House of Representatives - March 25, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 574 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the concurrent resolution, H. Con. Res. 393.

[Time: 11:50]

IN THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 393) establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2005 and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2004 and 2006 through 2009, with Mr. LaTourette (Chairman pro tempore) in the chair.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, perhaps the chairman believes what he says. If so, he is extraordinarily wrong. But those of us who have been here for some period of time have heard this rhetoric before, over and over again.

In 1993, when we offered an economic program, every leader, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, Speaker Gingrich, Leader Armey, an economist, came to this floor and said if you adopt the Democratic alternative, the economy is going to go to hell in a handbasket.

They were 180 percent absolutely wrong. In point of fact, we had the best economy, the best economic performance in the next 8 years that we have had in the history of America. They do not know what they are talking about. Maybe they believe it, but they are wrong.

Let us compare the 8 years under George Bush, George Bush the senior, and George Bush "W." They ran deficits of $2.5 trillion. There is one person in America that can stop spending in its tracks, just one, the President of the United States.

Neither George Bush nor his son have ever had a veto overridden stopping spending. Not once.

Let us get real. Under the 8 years of the Clinton budget, which the Republicans said would take us down the road of deficits and unemployment, we had a $61 billion surplus and ran the last 4 years in surplus, the first time that had happened in the lifetime of anybody in this room.

Get real. Stop giving us this stuff. And the reason to stop giving the stuff is what you are doing is back to the same old $2.5 trillion in debt, except this time you take it from a $5.6 trillion surplus. Who said we had that surplus? George W. Bush said we had that surplus. What is it now? A $4 trillion deficit, an almost $10 trillion turnaround.

I say to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), that is your performance. That is the result of your budgets. That is the result of your economic program, a $10 trillion turnaround to the worst. And who pays the bill? That is the sad part. The children and grandchildren of America, that is who will pay the bill.

What this budget that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is offering does, unlike that of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), it brings the budget to balance within 8 years.

Does it ask some people to pay the bill that those young men and women in Iraq are paying? It does. Is that right to do? It is.

It is exactly what you said in 1993, and you were dead, flat wrong. Vote for the Spratt alternative. Put America on a safe track so that our children will not be put deeply, deeply, deeply in debt. Vote for Spratt. It is right for America.

END