What the Federal Government Should Be Doing

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the Representative from Missouri and look forward to the opportunity to join you this evening. I am a member of the Budget Committee. And last year we had a lengthy budget debate in the committee, it was very robust, to discuss possible amendments to the budget. And even though the majority of the Republican amendments to the budget were not passed, we did pass a budget. It was over the ``no'' votes of the Republicans. However it fulfilled a duty of this body to pass a budget.

At $3.6 trillion, it was the largest budget in the history of the United States. President Obama this year proposed a $3.8 trillion budget. At a time of recession, he proposed a budget that was $200 billion larger than the budget the year before. And the budget the year before included some astronomical increases, such as a 39 percent increase in the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Well, as you can see from a full day of hearings that were held today in the House Natural Resources Committee, that additional 39 percent increase in one agency's budget in 1 year, as now applied in the Gulf of Mexico to the oil spill, has not yielded the kind of efficiency that we expect from government.

The United States is in charge of this cleanup. The President of the United States is in charge of this cleanup. And on occasion he has dispatched members of his Cabinet, members of the Coast Guard, members of other agencies to involve themselves in the cleanup. But the fact that they increased their budget 39 percent in 1 year has not contributed to the coordination efforts of Federal agencies in cleaning up the gulf.

Mr. AKIN. I would like to reclaim my time for just a minute. I really wanted to inquire of you about some of these numbers that you just said, because I am not on the Budget Committee. And I was kind of shocked in a way. We haven't not had a budget since back in the 70s, and that was just since we put this current budgeting process. And we've always had a budget, and yet this year we don't have a budget, and we are spending money at a tremendous pace.

Is the rapid rate of spending, is that part of the reason we don't have a budget, because we are just so embarrassed we are spending so much? Is it because by putting a budget down it acknowledges the complete fiscal irresponsibility that we have started down that path? Do you think that's what it is? Or is it just we can't figure it out? Why don't we have a budget?

Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman for the question. His question is very relevant because Republicans are asking the same question. Our chairman of the Budget Committee, John Spratt, is an honorable man, and we have pursued with him frequent efforts to encourage him to convene the Budget Committee for purposes of passing a budget.

Normally, the Budget Committee passes a budget by April 15. That's part of the traditional process of this House. And that budget sets the ceilings or the parameters by which the Appropriations Committee will act during its efforts to vet the line items within the budget, meaning really going through the budget carefully, deciding what to spend money on, what the priorities of Congress are this year.

So it is unprecedented, as Mr. Akin pointed out, for this Congress not to consider a budget. And here we are at the end of May, fully 45 days into the period of time during which we normally have a budget for the Appropriations Committee to work with; and, Mr. Akin, we do not have a budget. And it is becoming more and more apparent every day that the Budget Committee will not be convened.

I am certain that John Spratt, who is the chairman of the Budget Committee, finds this painful. But I am also of the impression that the leadership within his party has encouraged him not to convene the Budget Committee out of concern that passing a $3.8 trillion budget, the budget as proposed by the President, would set a tone for this election year that Democrats don't want to face up to. They don't seem to want to face up to the fact that we are at over $12.9 trillion in debt.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. LUMMIS. Yes. Recall that President Obama, since he took office, will double the debt in 5 years, triple it in 10 years. This is absolutely unsustainable.

When the Budget Committee met with Mr. Orszag, who is the director of the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, we asked him if this budget was sustainable. In other words, if there are adequate revenues being collected to pay for the budget that we have passed. And Mr. Orszag acknowledged that there are not.

We cannot do that. Yet we do it year after year after year.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. LUMMIS. It was not 3 weeks ago that the United States had a sale of the U.S. Treasuries that was undersubscribed, which means there were not enough purchasers of our debt for that particular bond issue of U.S. Treasuries that day, which is to say that in order to attract buyers of our debt, we are going to have to pay a higher interest rate to the people who are willing to lend us the money, which is to say that our interest rate payments are going to go up, which means a larger portion of the annual Federal budget will have to go towards paying the interest on our national debt, which is to say that it is a potential trigger for inflation.

Inflation is a job killer. We have asked the Japanese, who had a period of time in the 1990s called the forgotten decade, how we can avoid, in the United States, having a forgotten decade? They have told us, don't raise taxes during a recession.

So we are in a conundrum. If we raise taxes, we will increase the length of the recession, potentially. If we don't raise taxes, the deficit will grow, potentially leaving us, in my opinion, with one good choice. The good choice is to cut spending. How does this Congress cut spending? This Congress has never cut spending.

I am delighted to be a Member of Congress at a time of economic turmoil because I come from the State of Wyoming.

Wyoming is a State where we have had boom and bust cycles because of our dependence on the economies of oil, gas, and coal. As commodities go, the State of Wyoming goes. When I was a Wyoming legislator, I experienced both a boom and a bust cycle, and what we had to do was reduce spending.

Recently, the Wyoming Legislature reduced spending to the tune of over 10 percent. In Wyoming, it is customary to adjust to these types of belt-tightening, and expenditures during times of largesse.

So when we have money, we have invested in the University of Wyoming, invested in the bricks and mortar of our K-12 system, invested in our technology, in our economy. Yet, when we have to tighten our belts, we do it across the board. You know, it's not the best way to budget. We in Wyoming acknowledge it's not the best way to budget.

But I do believe that if we could cut spending across the board, domestic spending, that is, we would have an opportunity to reduce those expenditures. But I would also acknowledge that without addressing the entitlement situation we can never get a handle on our budget concerns.

That is why I commend, to the attention of everyone within earshot, a plan that was developed by Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the Budget Committee. It can be reviewed at www.americanroadmap.org. It provides the path, the glide path, towards our economic recovery without raising taxes. It takes a long time, it's not without pain. There are, as Paul always likes to say, sharp knives in the drawer.

But, nevertheless, it does it in a responsible fashion, without raising taxes, and addresses, long term, the consequences of overspending and of our potential of becoming a European-style social democracy and a culture of dependency.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

One of the great ironies of being a freshman in Congress is you see who people quote. It is so ironic that we Republicans, as Mr. Akin and I are, frequently quote JFK. JFK never disavowed American exceptionalism.

He acknowledged American exceptionalism and he harnessed American exceptionalism. And it is fascinating that we find ourselves frequently returning to his speeches, as Republicans, to review the importance of American exceptionalism in stimulating the economy and growing the economy and acknowledging what Ronald Reagan acknowledged, that we are a shining city on a hill and that we are to be emulated, but only to be emulated when we deserve to be emulated.

And it is at this time in our country's history when we need to review those great leaders and our great Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and our founding principles in a manner which provides the roadmap to our future. And, indeed, it does.

When we return to our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence, we are reminded that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, not by our government, by our Creator, and that we chose and consented to be governed and that we chose and consented to be governed pursuant to a Constitution that provided limited obligations to the Federal Government and reserved the remainder of the rights to the States and to the people. If we in Congress would vet bills pursuant to that model, we would return to that shining city on a hill and we could turn over to our children and grandchildren the Nation that we inherited from our parents.

It is stunning--and Mr. Akin has seen these numbers--that people in America today, when you ask them, Do you have a higher standard of living than your parents, acknowledge that indeed we do. And then you ask those same baby boomers, Do you believe your children will enjoy a higher standard of living than we do? They say no. They're concerned. They see a path, a pattern, a culture of dependency forming.

But I'm convinced that this year being another election year and another opportunity for government of the people to rise up, to take control, and to consent to being governed in the way they wish to be governed, that we will see an opportunity next year to return to government of the people and to our founding principles.

Now, Mr. Akin and I both know that that will all be for naught unless those who are in a position to govern next year take seriously the messages of the people of this country. And I can assure you, based on what I have heard as a freshman Member of Congress, that we will indeed take seriously the messages of the people in this country and that we will restore for the American people our first principles and that we are going to be able to be a strong, vibrant country and proud to hand the reins to our children and grandchildren.

I yield back.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Akin.

Would you be so kind as to pull the chart up that you have behind you, the one that displays what has happened to private sector employment versus public sector employment?

As you can see from the chart, private sector employment is an upside down U, in that in the year since the majority party has switched hands and Democratic control of Congress has been in place, we have seen private sector employment decline dramatically. At the same time, we have seen public sector employment increase to the tune of about 188,000 public sector workers increase. At the same time, we've lost about 12 million private sector employees.

Now, I have a bill that I believe will begin to address this serious problem that we see with regard to employment. It is the Workforce Reduction Act, but it does it without firing anyone. It does it through attrition. The bill provides that for every employee who vacates a position due to retirement or moving on, that that position would be moved into a position pool. In fact, for every 100 retirements that occurs in the Federal Government, 50 positions would be moved into a position pool, the other 50 positions, vacant, would be eliminated. And then agencies would need to apply for reinstatement of a position based on necessity.

Those agencies who critically need employees, such as possibly the Minerals Management Service, in its enforcement functions in the Gulf of Mexico, would be likely recipients of employees in order to meet the obligations of the Federal Government to protect our borders with regard to the encroachment of oil that is seeping into the Gulf of Mexico. For other positions which are less mission-critical, those agencies would downsize.

Now, this is not going to be dramatically harmful to Federal agencies because, as I said, since the Obama administration took office, 188,000 new Federal employees have been added, and this excludes people that were hired pursuant to the decennial census. Consequently, we know that somehow we survived without these employees prior to President Obama taking office.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source