Reducing Non-Security Spending to Fiscal Year 2008 Levels or Less

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I rise in very, very strong opposition to this resolution. As I said yesterday during the debate on the rule, there are numerous, serious problems with this resolution.

First, it's meaningless rhetoric. My friends on the other side of the aisle like to talk a lot about cutting government spending, but the resolution before us doesn't cut a single dollar from the Federal budget; not a single cent.

The Republican Study Committee recently proposed $2.5 trillion in budget cuts and their chairman, Mr. Jordan from Ohio, said the following when he introduced this plan:

``One hundred billion dollars is the number the American people heard last fall. It seems to me we should be able to find $100 billion.''

Yet even after pledging a $100 billion cut in funding, the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee couldn't come up with a number when we asked yesterday, and instead produced what is most likely the first budget resolution in history that doesn't contain any budget numbers.

That might be because the Republican majority can't seem to figure out what the numbers should be. We have heard all kinds of numbers. We have heard $30 billion, $50 billion, $100 billion and beyond.

But I suspect, Madam Speaker, that's because the Republican majority is discovering that it's a lot harder to walk the walk than it is to talk the talk, and it is a lot easier to say things in a campaign than it is to do things in a legislative body. They are realizing that when you start trying to make those kinds of cuts, you start seriously affecting the American economy and the American people.

We are told that the Congressional Budget Office will produce some numbers tomorrow. I wonder why we couldn't wait until tomorrow to debate this resolution, but the answer is obvious. The President of the United States will be here this evening for the State of the Union address, and the Republican majority needs a new set of talking points.

It's that kind of politics--where message is more important than substance--that makes the American people cynical about Washington.

Second, the resolution continues the dangerous precedent of giving one individual, the chairman of the Budget Committee--rather than the full membership of this House--the ability to set spending levels for the Federal Government. And third, the resolution's vague and unjustified wording that only targets ``non-security'' spending, even though everyone from Secretary Gates to Speaker Boehner has recognized that waste exists in the Department of Defense and in the Department of Homeland Security and other security-related agencies. It says a great deal about the priorities of a new Republican majority that they will treat wasteful contracts and redundant weapons systems as sacred, but would put Pell Grants, medical research, food safety, FBI, ATF and DEA agents, and other vital programs on the chopping block.

Of course, when we Democrats have the audacity to talk about the need to protect those important programs, our Republican friends grow indignant and head to the fainting couch. ``Oh, no,'' they say, ``we would never cut those things.'' But Madam Speaker, the numbers just don't add up. When you start saying that popular program after popular program will be protected, you realize that it would take massive cuts in other parts of the budget.

When we talk about exempting only security programs, it means that other programs will need to be cut by 30 percent below current levels. That means the Department of Justice has to cut 4,000 FBI agents, 800 ATF agents, 1,500 DEA agents, and 900 U.S. Marshals. Federal prisons have to cut 5,700 correctional officers, and the Federal Government will lose the capacity to detain 26,000 people because of their immigration status.

Of course, the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee said we're not going to cut the FBI, as he said yesterday, so I can only assume that means more ATF agents, DEA agents, and U.S. Marshals will be fired by the Republicans. I can only assume that this means more than 26,000 people in this country illegally won't be in Federal custody. That's the Republican agenda?

Madam Speaker, I think former Secretary of State Colin Powell said it best this weekend: ``I'm very put off when people just say, let's go back and freeze to the level 2 years ago. Don't tell me you're going to freeze to a level. That usually is a very inefficient way of doing it. Tell me what you're going to cut.''

As I urge my colleagues to reject this misguided resolution, I ask my Republican colleagues, what's the number? And what are you going to cut?

I reserve the balance of my time.

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I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I'm glad the chairman of the Budget Committee finally joined this debate. And I would say two things. One is that last year we passed the Budget Enforcement Act with real numbers in it, and we voted on it, and it was significantly less than the numbers that the President had proposed, number one. Number two, one of the things that we proposed in the Rules Committee was an amendment to allow Members of the House, on both sides of the aisle, to be able to vote on the number. And that was rejected on party line as somehow a radical idea. And then the chairman of the Rules Committee talks about this free-flowing debate we are having. We are having this debate today under a closed rule, and so there's no opportunity for amendment.

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I thank the gentleman, and I reclaim my time. I appreciate the brevity of the bill, but that doesn't mean the bill doesn't have a very negative impact. And when we tried yesterday to protect the FBI and enforcement agents from cuts, that was voted down. So we are very concerned because we don't know what the number is. And I think people in this Congress on both sides of the aisle, the American people, ought to know what we're talking about. Is it $100 billion? Or is it more? Where is it? And where are those cuts going to come from when you keep on exempting programs?

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Madam Speaker, the bill makes defense spending sacrosanct and says nothing about going after fraud and waste in defense contracts.

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I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in political theater today. We know the CBO will come out with numbers tomorrow, but the Republicans feel it's important to do this today because somehow they think the press will pay attention to this and they'll be able to have a countermessage to the President's State of the Union address. They are blowing a major opportunity.

There is bipartisan concern about the budget. There is a bipartisan consensus that we need to find cuts. And rather than working in a bipartisan way, we have a bill that comes to the floor under a closed rule. We are told that the chairman of the Budget Committee can unilaterally come up with a number; the rest of us are irrelevant to this process. That's not the way it's supposed to be. And I think that the Republican majority owes it not only to the Members of this Congress, but they owe it to the American people to tell us what the number is and where they're going to cut, how deeply they're going to cut, who's going to be impacted. Because I will tell you this: Who's going to be impacted are real people, and they're going to feel the real pain of some of these cuts.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against this misguided resolution, this press release.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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