Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chair, one of the great companies in this Nation, and a big company in Vermont, is International Business Machines. This year they are about to celebrate their 100th anniversary. I was speaking to some folks from IBM in my office a few days ago, and they told me the story of what happened to them in 1992.

The world was turning upside down in the tech industry. Companies that wanted to survive had to make big decisions. They had 400,000 employees, and there was some question as to whether they were going to make payroll. They had to make changes. They did two things. They looked at every single element of their operation. They looked at every single line item in their spending. In every single place they could make a cut, tough as it was, they did. They made cuts. But they also said where do we have to be in 10 years, and what do we have to do to get there?

As nerve-wracking as it was for those folks at IBM, they made decisions to invest money in acquisitions, in research and development, to meet a plan that required investment, that required spending at a time when they were doing every single thing they could to save every single nickel.

Now IBM is stronger than ever, and it's going to celebrate its 100th anniversary. This country has to make similar decisions. We have to cut. There is not an argument here. I listened to Paul Ryan when he gave his opening statement, and he said we have to leave this country and its fiscal state better off for our kids and grandkids. He is right. There is no question about it. That means like companies that look at a balance sheet, we have to look every single place we can to save money.

The criticism about many governmental programs you know is right, we know is right. Wherever we can find that waste, fraud, or abuse, let's get rid of it. That serves nobody, Republican or Democrat. But on the other hand, we have to make investments. There are places we in fact do have to spend money. And we have seen that in the history of our country. So judgments have to be made.

My question about the Republican budget is basically the premise in the budget. It's not the goal. Mr. Ryan stated that well. He speaks for me when he says about that obligation to leave our kids better off. But there are two premises in the budget as I see it. One is that lower taxes are always better and will lead to growth. Sometimes that's true, but not always. We have to have revenues to pay for infrastructure, to pay for things like broadband deployment, to pay for the National Institute of Science, things that we might argue about where is the best priority, but we need revenues to do things like a company needs revenues to make investments.

The second premise is that less spending is always better than more investment. Those, as I see it, are the two premises that are in the Ryan budget. And those are debatable.

Now, the other aspect of the budget that in my view, Madam Chair, is lacking is what's off the table. It's not what's on the table. I don't agree with the Medicare proposal in the Ryan budget. But it's fair to put Medicare on the table for debate. We've got to make that more affordable.

The Acting CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. HINCHEY. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. WELCH. What is the problem is that the Pentagon is off the table, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are still on the credit card and off the table. Whatever our positions are on some of these matters, including military, we will all stand up, we have to pay our way.

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