An Immoral Budget Proposal

AN IMMORAL BUDGET PROPOSAL -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2005)
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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I think we need to put the budget into perspective to see where we are with the budget as we discuss the priorities.

This chart just shows where we are starting with the first Bush administration ending with a $290 billion deficit. The 8 years of the Clinton administration, each year better than the previous year, up to a $236 billion surplus, with surpluses increasing as far as the eye could see.

The first year of the Bush administration we used up all of the surplus and ended up just with the Social Security and Medicare surplus, and each year worse than the year before. This year we expect a $427 billion deficit. Last year we ended up with a $412 billion deficit. When President Clinton left office, we had expected a surplus of $400 billion, a swing of over $800 billion.

That is significant, Mr. Speaker, because if you look at what we get from the individual income tax, everybody's individual income tax, it is less than $800 billion. That was the swing just in 1 year.

Mr. OWENS. Would the gentleman mind explaining the fact that every penny of the deficit costs us additional money because we pay interest on what we borrow and that is another expenditure that is added to the budget?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. When President Clinton left office it looked as though we could pay off the national debt by 2008 or 2009, which meant we would be paying out zero interest on the national debt. We would be able to replace all the money in the trust funds by about 2012, 2014, somewhere in there so there would be zero interest on the national debt paid to the trust funds.

Right now, about 2009, interest national debt is projected, instead around zero, about $300 billion a year. At $30,000 apiece that is enough to hire 10 million Americans, more than the total number unemployed today.

Where are we going? This chart shows, this red line is President Bush's projection of cutting the deficit in half in 5 years. First of all, we just showed that we started off with a surplus. We ought to be replacing the surplus, not just cleaning up half the mess. So the discussion about whether or not you can cut the deficit in half in 5 years really is out of place.

This chart up here shows in 2002, after 2001 President Bush projected surpluses in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and now he is talking about cutting the deficit in half. This chart down here shows a more realistic projection because it includes actually the war in Iraq and Social Security privatization, interest on all of that debt, extending the tax cuts and all of these policies would put us down on this line below.

Mr. OWENS. I want to congratulate the gentleman on his observation there, because I have thumbed through the budget documents, the introductions, and the administration is applauding itself for reducing the budget in half in 5 to 10 years.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. The budget deficit.

Mr. OWENS. The deficit in half. Great applause is being showered upon them when we should not have a deficit to begin with.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. We should have a surplus. And you will notice if we adopt these policies we will not even come close.

I mentioned Social Security. It is hard to take the Social Security plan seriously because this green line shows that we will be able to pay full benefits until 2042. If we adopt the President's plan to solve the problem, because after 2042 we will have a deficit, the President's plan goes bankrupt 11 years earlier. So if that is the solution to the problem, it is just very difficult to take that very seriously. Furthermore, there was not that much of a problem. In fact, the Social Security shortfall was about $3.7 trillion. If we do not make the tax cuts permanent for the top 1 percent, that is enough to just about cover the entire shortfall. Making the tax cuts permanent, $11.6 trillion, is much more than the Social Security shortfalls.

So when you talk about your priorities, there is a priority, tax cuts for the top 1 percent first. Worry about Social Security second. I think we should worry about Social Security first and then tax cuts second.

If you look at the other kinds of priorities, look at the criminal justice priorities. I serve on the Committee on the Judiciary, and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) mentioned some of the disparities in the criminal justice system.

There is a good part of the budget. There is more money in residential drug treatment and drug courts, but unfortunately it appears to be at the expense of other good programs in the substance abuse area. There is more money for offender reentry, $5.6 million for a total of $15 million; but we have hundreds of thousands of prisoners coming out of prison, so that is woefully inadequate. But, unfortunately, they are severe cuts, not only in education but in prevention programs, like Safe and Drug Free Schools, Weed and Seed and other prevention programs, the COPS program which will actually reduce crime.

There is more money for prisons, building two new prisons. Unfortunately, that only exacerbates the disparities there are now. For every 100,000 whites in America, 366 are in jail today. But for every 100,000 blacks, 2,209 are in jail today. We need to be putting more money into prevention and less money into prisons. And if we put it into prevention, we will not need the additional prisons.

Mr. OWENS. Do those figures apply to black males?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. African generally.

If we put more money into prevention, we would not have to build those two new prisons as we have to today.

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