Democrats Propose Increased Taxes and More Wasteful Spending

DEMOCRATS PROPOSE INCREASED TAXES AND MORE WASTEFUL SPENDING -- (House of Representatives - March 17, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to seeing the proposal that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) just mentioned because so far, the only proposals that have been put forward by the Democrats in committee have been billions and billions and billions of additional spending and billions of tax increases. So I am looking forward to seeing if, in fact, his proposal will be different.

Mr. Speaker, last week in the Committee on the Budget, by the way, the Democrats proposed raising taxes three times and increase spending by over $13 billion in their first five amendments to the budget resolution. Mr. Speaker, they had only just begun.

Tonight, in the Committee on the Budget that we finished a little while ago, they presented numerous more amendments increasing spending by billions more and increasing taxes on the hard-working American people by billions more. The final tally: stay tuned, because we will be bringing that to our colleagues in the next few days.

Now, why do Democrats want to raise, insist on raising, the American people's taxes to pay for more waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington? I say that because let me read my colleagues some examples. A recent GAO report found that bureaucrats at the Department of Agriculture were using taxpayer-funded purchase cards for premium satellite and cable TV packages, including charges for pornographic movies, thousands of dollars charged to the taxpayers. By the way, this one I could not understand: fish costumes, web of life costumes, and a hand-switched salmon tent, $12,000 that the taxpayers paid for those. Very expensive, it must have been a really nice aquarium for $3,000, a billiard table; and yet the Democrats insist on trying to raise the taxes of the hard-working American people in this country. And that is the difference. They insist on trying to raise taxes, and their proposals show that.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans are trying to solve this problem alone. During the last year's budget resolution, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) tried to eliminate just 1 percent of waste, fraud, and abuse by cutting spending by 1 percent. The esteemed minority whip said of that proposal that that was senseless and irresponsible to try to cut just 1 percent of waste, fraud, and abuse. What they proposed was not agreed to, but they proposed billions of dollars of tax increases and billions of dollars of more government expenditures.

President Bush is working on implementing the President's management agenda, a performance-based system that seeks to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse and has got nothing, nothing but opposition from the members of the minority party. This year, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) once again is providing an avenue in the budget to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. Democrats will likely, unfortunately, oppose those efforts as well, and likely, once again, as they have done tonight and as they did last week, will propose billions of dollars in more spending and billions of dollars of tax increases on the hard-working Americans in this country.

While Republicans are making great strides in cleaning up wasteful spending, Mr. Speaker, Democrats continue aggressively with this love affair of trying to raise the taxes on the hard-working American taxpayer.