Budget of the United States Federal Government

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor on behalf of a lot of colleagues who can't be here right now and on behalf of our colleagues who are going to speak to talk about the budget of the United States Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon after our legislative business for the day because it is the concern of many of us--and perhaps it is the concern of all of us who ran for office, who got elected, who honorably serve in this body--to say--to make sure, perhaps--that our priorities are in order.

And, Mr. Speaker, if you simply look at any number of ``debt clocks'' that run on all kinds of different Web sites, including one that continues live in my office, you see perhaps--I hope it is clear to you, Mr. Speaker--that our priorities are not in order. We are over $18 trillion in debt as I take the microphone right now.

Mr. Speaker, that is not the half of it. Over the next several decades we are scheduled to have over $100 trillion in debt. And that is not acceptable. In fact, I can't think of too many things that are more immoral than the present-day majority, than our present-day citizens leaving this burden to future citizens, people who do not yet exist. Talk about taxation without representation. But that is what we are faced with. That is what we do every day around here when our budget is not in balance and our priorities remain out of order.

To be clear, Mr. Speaker, we are able to get to this point, as very few other countries are, because of the fact we are the world's reserve currency, because of the fact that we continue to be able to print money, and because of the fact that, despite all our problems, when compared in a relative fashion to all the other countries of the world, we simply aren't as bad yet. But over time, that can very easily change, Mr. Speaker.

The solution to this isn't all that complicated. We have to stop spending more than we take in. We have to keep growing our economy. We have to simplify our Tax Code so that it can actually generate more revenue than it is doing right now. Of course, we have to reform what is driving the debt, and that is our spending. That is what the Republicans--in this Chamber, at least--are trying to achieve. We are trying to put our priorities back in balance.

Washington doesn't have a revenue problem, Mr. Speaker; Washington has a spending problem. In terms of revenue, we take in over $2 trillion a year--and these are rough figures--but we spend generally over $3 trillion. That is simply not sustainable. That simply can't go on if we are to have any credibility on this issue and if we are going to remain a strong country, best of nations in the 21st century, and continue to win.

So the House Budget Committee, and specifically the Republicans on the House Budget Committee, are about getting our priorities in order. And frankly, to our credit, for the last 4 years, Mr. Speaker, we have done just that.

Every year since 2010, we have proposed balanced budgets that, if followed, would have led us on a path to prosperity, would have made it clear that we are best of class in the world again and the best investment going. All we had to do is take the steps outlined in that budget and it would have become so.

This year, we are going to try again. We are going to balance this budget. We are going to have a markup in a week or so. We are going to propose and present ideas to the American public. Most of these ideas they have seen before over the last 4 years. There may be some new ones. We are still writing our budget. We are still taking input from Members and non-Members alike.

But one thing the American people can count on: it will be an honest budget, it will be credible, it will balance, and it will fulfill the promise we explicitly and implicitly made over and again to future generations that their generation will be better off than the generation before it. Isn't that what we are all about? Isn't that what we are supposed to be about?

But as I speak with you here today, the facts tell a different story. In fact, the current generation is the first one in American history that is destined and will, by any objective measure, leave the next one worse off. It has never happened before in American history. It is happening now.

I know several of us on the Budget Committee refuse to let that happen on our watch, and so we come to you tonight with several ideas.

I want to first recognize a very good friend of

mine, a professional who came from the private sector and practiced accounting as a certified public accountant for over 25 years. He has added tremendous value to all the work we are doing on the Budget Committee. Aside from budget issues, he is a tremendous asset to nearly every issue that is debated on the floor of the House. I yield the floor, Mr. Speaker, to my good friend, Congressman Rice of South Carolina.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. Well, if you go back to World War II, the gentleman rightly points out, Mr. Speaker, you see that our debt level crescendoed, obviously as a result of that war.

What is different about that period in our history from our current situation is the fact that, as the gentleman knows, World War II, one way or the other, was going to be a one-time event.

Thankfully, because of this country's courage and the men and women who served for our country, it ended the right way. As a result, the event ended, and we immediately began paying down our debt.

Some might say: Well, we have been there before. What is different this time? Why can't we solve the problem this time?

Well, we can solve the problem because, number one, we are Americans, but what makes the situation different, Mr. Speaker, and what the gentleman alludes to is what is driving our debt.

What drove the debt in World War II, again, was a one-time event. What is driving the debt now is not scheduled to end, has no end really in sight, unless we reform the programs that are driving it. That is one of the things that is strikingly different in terms of the current path we are on from where we have been before, and that is why we have to arrest what is driving the debt, and that is our social entitlement programs.

There is also another difference between now and World War II, and it is exemplified in this chart that I have, and that is who owns our debt. Of course, back in World War II, the gentleman will remember the bond posters that you could see all over the country, where we asked our private citizens to finance the war.

Now, as you can see from this chart, the people we are asking to finance our debt not only are our own citizens but--increasingly and alarmingly more so--other countries, who by the very definition of being other nations don't have our best interests top of mind.

That makes this a very different situation as well. We are increasingly, over time, becoming beholden to other countries to finance our spending problem.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue yielding to the gentleman from South Carolina.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. Not what he says, exactly right.

I also want to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to what the gentleman said on his poster board there about the eighth point, create a sustainable Federal budget, and the gentleman talked very articulately about the need for that.

It seems obvious, quite frankly, I would think, to every American family that must do this inside the walls of their own dwellings, but for some reason, it escapes the Federal Government.

I draw the House's attention, the Speaker's attention, to the wording that appears after that comma. It says, ``including entitlement reform''--``create a sustainable budget, including entitlement reform.'' We touched on this a little bit earlier in the hour that we have.

At this point, I am worried, Mr. Speaker, that some who are watching this discussion may think: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I put my hard-earned money into these programs, being Medicare and Social Security, primarily, every 2 weeks or whenever my paycheck comes, and I see the government taking out a lot, and that is my money. That is my property. What is Congress thinking? What are these two gentleman from South Carolina and Indiana and others who are going to speak here in a minute saying when they said entitlement reform? I put in; therefore, I should get out.

I want to take just a minute to address that because, of course, in a very real sense, that is what every working American has done. In another equally real and more important sense, we haven't. We haven't, and that is what is driving our debt.

Now, the gentleman had a pie graph up earlier that easily showed--and he will put it back up--the fact that most of our spending at the Federal Government level is on programs that are on autopilot. Right?

We, as Congressmen, can't vote on these priorities through the budget mechanism itself. We have to affect the underlying law. That is to say Congressman Rice and Congressman Rokita don't get to determine, through the budget process, year after year, what someone's Social Security check is going to be, what Medicare services people are going to get or not get. That is not done necessarily through the budget.

We talked about the need to reform those programs in the budget document, but it is not done through the budget language only. You have to reform that underlying law. Two-thirds of our budget, again, as the chart shows, is on autopilot. It goes year after year after year and gets worse after worse, and that is what is driving our debt.

Now, to my point about have we paid for those programs or not, this is a chart that describes the average American working couple. This is a Medicare example, so this is not Social Security. This is Medicare.

It shows that a couple making a combined $71,500 a year, on average, over a lifetime, has put in roughly about 30 percent of what they are taking out of Medicare.

Let me say that again. They are putting in 30 percent. We are putting in, the average American couple, putting in 30 percent of what we are going to take out of Medicare. The rest, Mr. Speaker, goes on the deck, and that is the crux of the problem.

If you go to the second set of bars, you see that the problem only gets worse, as a percentage of the amount we are putting in is only going to go down. That is what makes this a moral situation, a moral case that we are making the children of tomorrow pay, so that we can have more on our plate now, quite frankly.

It is just not Medicare. Social Security is in a much better position than this, but it is on the same trend. It is not just our health care and our social entitlement programs. It is the highway trust fund, for example, which I hope we address, not only in our budget document, but throughout this Congress. To date, the President hasn't done that. So that is really the problem here.

I yield briefly back to my good friend from South Carolina, Congressman Rice, and then move swiftly to Mr. Womack from the great State of Arkansas.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

The gentleman is exactly right. If we act now, no one who is on or near to be on any of these programs has to be affected. We can easily take care of the promises that were made and that these folks, again, who are on these programs or near to be on these programs have rightly relied on, and that is because we are still the world's reserve currency. We are not Greece.

If we make these reforms now, we are talking about the reforms affecting folks a generation ago, those in my age bracket or younger, who would have time to prepare for the new situation.

People who are having kids today, who will live probably past 100, they will have the time, under a new program that reflects the realities of living in the 21st century and, frankly, how long we live in the 21st century.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack), a good friend of mine, the former mayor of Rogers, Arkansas, a decorated military officer who is also a great friend and a great leader in this Congress.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. Well, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas. Clearly, Mr. Speaker, you see why he was elected mayor of Rogers, Arkansas. You see why he has been a leader in our U.S. military, and you see how and why he leads on the floor of this House.

I want to, again, thank Congressman Tom Rice from South Carolina for speaking today, and Congressman Mark Sanford, former Governor of South Carolina, now Congressman of the First District, for speaking today. Again, I thank Congressman Steve Womack.

With the time we have remaining, I yield to a good friend of mine who came in at the same time as Steve Womack and I in a wave of 87 new Congresspersons, the new crew, as I call it, my good friend, Rob Woodall, also a member of the Budget Committee, to put some icing over what we have learned over the past hour.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source