Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2006

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (House of Representatives - March 17, 2005)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, this Republican budget conclusively demonstrates one thing: that when it comes to audacity, our friends on the other side of the aisle have an unlimited supply.

Yesterday Republican leaders, including the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), majority leader; and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), chairman of the Committee on Rules, claimed on this floor that the policies adopted by the Republican Party last year reduced last year's budget deficit by $109 billion. What an extraordinary Lewis Carroll ``Alice in Wonderland'' representation.

You incurred over $350 billion of deficit, as you well know. The only thing you reduced was the inflated figure the White House came with at the beginning of the year. A figure that, by the way, was supposed to be zero, as I recall, the 2001 budget.
On the Republican Party's watch, the Federal Government recorded the worst budget deficit in American history, $412 billion in fiscal year 2004. Four hundred and twelve billion dollars of deficit spending, and that is counting using every nickel of Social Security, which you said you were not going to do, which the President said you were not going to do. And you had a ``lockbox.'' It is a sieve box.

Our Republican friends, it appears, are the only people who believe that a $412 billion deficit is something to brag about. For years they have preened as fiscal conservatives, but in less than 48 months they have turned the projected 10-year budget surplus, a $5.6 trillion surplus that they were handed, that President Bush from this rostrum said we had as a result of the 8 years of the Clinton administration, $5.6 trillion, into a deficit today in 48 months. I will put up 8. Forty-eight months, $4 trillion dollars. That is a $9.6 trillion turnaround or $2 trillion plus a year.

We ought to be ashamed of that. We ought to be ashamed to tell our children that that is what we have done to them. We ought to be ashamed to tell our grandchildren, of which I have three, that that is what we have done to them and their generation. We have added more than $2.2 trillion to the national debt in 48 months. The entire debt of the United States of America from 1789 to 1981, when I came to Congress, was $985 billion, cumulative debt. From 1789 to 1981, $985 billion. Last year we raised the debt $984 billion in one year. That is the height of fiscal irresponsibility, and I suggest it is also a fiscally immoral act and is the abuse of our children and grandchildren and generations yet to come, who in their time will face a challenge perhaps like Iraq, perhaps like AIDS, perhaps a tsunami or other natural disaster, and they will look around for resources to respond to their crisis in their time and say, oh, my goodness, the resources were spent by this Congress and by the previous Congress. What a shame.

The Democratic budget that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) offers has balance by 2012. It has the PAYGO system, which Mr. Greenspan is for, but you are not for because you do not want to pay. You talk about cutting taxes or raising taxes, but what you are really saying is you do not want to pay for what you are buying. And you buy because all the spending that we have incurred is in your budgets. All of the spending is in budgets. We cannot control the budgets. So all of the spending, but there is very little of the pain. That is fiscally irresponsible.

I would like to see who is going to vote for the bankruptcy bill when it comes on the floor that want responsible borrowers.

I will vote for the Spratt alternative because it is a responsible alternative, and I will enthusiastically and proudly and morally vote against the Republican alternative.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I just went back to my office after I spoke, and I heard the gentleman speaking just now. And he talked about waste, fraud and abuse. And my question to the gentleman is, you have been through the budget hearings. Why do you suppose it is that the Bush administration over the last 50 months has not rooted out that waste, fraud, and abuse?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, the opportunity is certainly theirs, having run the government for 4 years and having direct hands-on opportunities to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, that occurred to me as well. I thank the gentleman for his response.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov