Budget Deficit

Floor Speech

Budget Deficit -- (House of Representatives - February 9, 2009)

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. But much more than that, I thank him for the work he does as our chairman of the Budget Committee and for the work he has done over the years as ranking member, the minority member of the Budget Committee, for being consistent and, in my opinion, accurate in his observations as to what we would reap from the fiscal policies we have sowed over the last 8 years.

We are here today, in my opinion, to be honest with the American people. They need to know that this economic crisis will not end overnight. I think the chairman has made that pretty clear. And they need to know the reasons for the deep, deep, deep fiscal hole we have inherited after 8 years of fiscal recklessness. In fact, the projected deficit for fiscal year 2009 is $1.2 trillion. That is a figure difficult to comprehend. It's a figure particularly difficult to comprehend when President Bush and his economic advisers opined that they were worried about paying off the debt too early under the Clinton policies.

One point two trillion dollars of deficits. Two factors have helped create that record-shattering number, the consistent irresponsibility of the past administration and our efforts to dig out of the economic mess he left us. It was not that long ago that you could hear on this floor heated debates about how to spend a projected $5.6 trillion, 10-year surplus created under the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Who would have thought, who would have thought then that our surplus would be wiped out by one President's borrow-and-spend foolishness by five record-setting budget deficits in 7 years?

I would remind my colleagues, who undoubtedly need no reminding, that there has been a hegemony of power, a monopoly of power, a singular control of policy over the last 8 years. Now I understand some of my Republican friends would say, well, the Democrats were installed because of the obvious need for change recognized by the American voters in 2006. They put you in charge in 2006 and 2008. That is true. But as I also point out, the President was not on the ballot, and two-thirds of the United States Senate was not on the ballot, and therefore, it was impossible to make the change that America knew was needed. They have done that now. But they have done it after a very deep hole has been dug.

While Democratic budgets were on pace to eliminate all of our public debt, today we are more indebted than ever. The national debt is now over $10 trillion from that projected $5.6 trillion of surplus. Who projected that? Not Bill Clinton. George Bush. President Bush's OMB projected that. Who told us that? President George Bush in 2001, speaking in this Chamber, told us that is the surplus that we could expect.

Tragically, that was dissipated. That $10 trillion of debt now has replaced that $5.6 trillion of anticipated surplus.

We will be paying hundreds of billions of dollars in interest on that debt that we have incurred. That's just one more way in which the Bush legacy means large structural deficits for years to come.

So what does that mean for our economy and for American families? It's easy to see a budget as nothing more than numbers on a page and it's just a short step from there to agreement with former Vice President Cheney's nostrum that deficits don't matter. In fact, he said that Ronald Reagan taught us that, that deficits didn't matter.

Unfortunately, the Federal Government pursued that policy. Unfortunately, business pursued that policy, and unfortunately, and tragically, to their harm, too many consumers followed that policy. But deficits do matter. Mr. Speaker, they matter profoundly.

Deficits and debt tie up huge amounts of capital, and when it comes to mitigating a financial emergency in the early stages, they tie our hands too.

Republican fiscal policies have also made massive borrowing seem normal and acceptable, as I said, the five largest deficits in history over the last 8 years. They've set the disastrous example that it's just as acceptable for a household as for a government to live far beyond its means. And just as surely as unchecked borrowing can pay for unsustainable luxury today, the bill will come due.

In 2006 Comptroller General David Walker told us that American irresponsibility, public and private, will gradually, and this is a quote, ``will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our standard of living and ultimately our national security.'' How true his words were.

Mr. Speaker, there's nothing to gain from pointing fingers at the last 8 years, but there is much to learn and a great deal to gain from looking back honestly at the fiscal choices we've made in the past. We learned just how much this painful legacy will complicate our efforts to confront this crisis, and we strengthen our pledge to return this Nation to budgetary sanity.

With your leadership, and with the courage on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of Capitol Hill, hopefully, we will accomplish that.

While economists agree that getting out of this recession will require deficit spending, that spending would be deeply irresponsible without a long-term plan to restore fiscal health.

I know, Mr. Chairman, you're focused on that objective. I am as well, and all the Congress needs to be, as well as the American people. Getting the budget under control is going to require hard choices, choices we're going to see reflected in President Obama's first budget, in my opinion. It will be a serious document for serious times because getting back on a sustainable fiscal path is going to take sacrifices from every one of us. But we can call confidently for those sacrifices for two reasons. First, because they will be truly shared from Members of Congress to every working family. And secondly, because if we put off our hard choices, they will grow harder and harder by the year, until they're absolutely crippling.

Last month we heard our new President declare, and I quote, ``a new era of responsibility.'' This is what it looks like. This is where we are. Let's meet it with our eyes open and make the best of it together.

Mr. Chairman, there's been much made of bipartisanship. I'm for bipartisanship. But I note, in 1990, there were really three reasons we created that $5.6 billion surplus. We made an agreement with President Bush I in 1990. In 1993 we passed a bill that set us on a fiscally responsible course, and in 1997, in a bipartisan way, we confirmed that course. Unfortunately, history shows us that we haven't had bipartisan support.

In the 1990 Budget Act, one of the key three steps that got us to that $5.6 trillion budget surplus, when we passed it through the House, there were only 10 Republican yeses, only 10. That was one of the key steps in getting us to fiscal surplus. Not one of those 10 serves in the House of Representatives today.

In 1993, of course, no Republicans voted for that bill. And in 1997, it was a bipartisan bill, which, Mr. Chairman, you and I both voted for. We then came on very hard times and we confronted the TARP bill.

Let me go back to 1993, however, when I said no Republicans voted for that bill. When it came back from conference, excuse me, there were no Republicans that voted for that bill. But in 1990, when it came back from conference there were 47 Republicans ``ayes.'' One of them remains here today.

Now, one could draw the conclusion that, well, they lost because of those votes. That would be the dead wrong conclusion. What they lost as a result of, I think, first of all, retiring, and secondly, feeling that perhaps their party was moving in a direction that they could not agree with. I hope that their party and this party comes together.

On the TARP vote that we had to meet this crisis caused by this fiscal irresponsibility, the Democratic Party stood with President Bush in making very hard votes, and the majority of us did so. The minority of his party chose not to do so.

It is time for the majority of both parties to stand with the American people and future generations to return fiscal responsibility to this Nation and to our people.

I thank the chairman for his leadership.

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