The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“DEBATES ON BALANCING THE BUDGET” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H11772-H11775 on Nov. 6, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
DEBATES ON BALANCING THE BUDGET
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Scarborough] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
expressing condolences to the family of yitzhak rabin and the people of israel
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, I also wish to express my condolences not only to Mr. Rabin's family, but also to the people of Israel on behalf of my family and my district. It obviously was a devastating loss for a peace process that began some time back, with the Camp David accords, and has now seen two great leaders and visionaries slain on behalf of peace in the Middle East, and how ironic it is that Anwar Sadat was assassinated by an extremist, an extremist Arab group that wanted to do anything they could to stop peace in the Middle East, and that now the Prime Minister was slain by an extremist in his own land. It shows the divisions that run deep in this conflict that have been going on for thousands of years, but is yet another step in a painful process toward peace, and one that we, obviously, must have, and must press forward to secure.
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I just thank him for all he did during his lifetime to help secure that peace.
Today I wish to speak on a matter that is pressing at home regarding the balanced budget debate. We have heard much over the weeks, we have heard much over the past months and over the past year on how we balance our budget and what we do to balance our budget.
Mr. Speaker, I went home this past weekend and spoke at some meetings across the district, both formal and informal, and talked to people and tried to get a sense of what they were thinking about our plan to balance the budget. We are the first balanced budget plan in over a generation.
As I came back, it really did hit me after talking to those Americans that the plan that now is before Congress, and the one that we have passed, with all of its flaws, really does give the American people the best chance they have had in some time to put their financial house in order, really for the first time in a generation.
Mr. Speaker, look what has happened over the past 40 years, over the past 40 years of liberal spending policies and liberal taxing policies in this House. Of course, everybody knows that it has been 40 years since we have really had a true, bona fide, balanced budget plan and that this year we are $4.9 trillion in debt. Think about that for a second. $4.9 trillion. That is a lot of zeros.
We right now are spending $270 billion on interest alone, paying off the interest on the debt, $270 billion. We are spending as much money paying off interest on the American debt as we are spending on our Department of Defense budget. Think about that for a second.
We spend as much money paying off interest on the debt as we spend on tanks, jets, B-2 bombers, Seawolf submarines, our military infrastructure, paying all of the personnel costs, all the health care costs, all of the defense-related costs, $270 billion, and yet it seems ironic to me that all of those liberals that stand up and scream and tell us that we are spending too much money on the defense budget that in the end is to protect the shores of this great country and to protect American interests across the globe, those same liberals are saying, OK, $270 billion is too much to protect our country, but on the other hand, it is not too much to protect our financial future. They have no objection with us continuing to throw $270 billion away per year on interest payments alone. That is money that goes right down the drain, that does not support any programs whatsoever, that does not support Medicare or Social Security, or support anything.
Yet, today, every child is spending, or every child has a debt of
$20,000 on their head. If a child is born today, that child will pay well over $150,000 over their working lifetime on taxes alone simply to pay off their portion of the debt that is on this country right now.
Let me say, Mr. Speaker, it disturbs me to hear them complaining about the fact that we finally stepped up to the plate and were willing to do what needs to be done to balance the budget. They talk about it as being radical, they talk about it as being mean spirited.
Mr. Speaker, I ask you this. What could be more mean spirited, what could be more mean spirited than to continue doing for the next 40 years what we have been doing for the past 40 years, where we are literally reaching our hands into the pockets of our children and our grandchildren, and stealing money from them and from future generations, only to throw them away on political programs that have clearly failed over the past 40 years?
Sure, it may help some Members here get reelected to push for those programs, but yet they are not willing to stand on the floor and to say, this program is so important that I am going to tell you how we are going to pay for it. Instead, they propose one budget after another that does not balance the budget. We have had it for 40 years, since the checkbook has been in the hand of the Democrats, and this year, finally, we step forward with a plan to balance the budget, to make sure that we do only the same thing that middle class Americans have to do: We only spend as much money as we take in.
Mr. Speaker, what is so radical about that? What is so radical about the fact that right now the Federal Government spends $4 for every $3 that it takes in, but we want to have the Federal Government pay $3 if it takes in $3. If it takes in $2, it spends $2. But all we hear is, this plan to balance the budget is radical. It is mean spirited, and we are cutting way too much.
Mr. Speaker, let me tell you a little secret, and it is a secret that has not gotten out yet. This plan does not cut too much. In fact, it does not cut at all. I have a chart here to show that.
If we look at this chart, this is how much money we have spent as a Federal Government from 1989 to 1995: $9.5 trillion; $9.5 trillion. Now, over the next 7 years, from the year 1996 to the year 2002, in this radical budget plan that supposedly cuts too much, over the next 7-year time period, we will be spending $12.1 trillion. So over the last 7 years we have spent $9.5 trillion, and over the next 7 years we will be spending $12.1 trillion, an increase of almost $3 trillion over the same 7-year time period.
Now, where I come from that is a pretty significant increase. In fact, that is an increase of $2.6 trillion.
Now, let us look and see what the difference is between what the Republicans have suggested we do over the next 7 years and what the Democrats have suggested we do over the next 7 years. If we do nothing, if we continue to let this run-away train go down the tracks and go off the tracks and move us toward bankruptcy, then we will be spending
$13.3 trillion over the next 7 years.
But you see, Mr. Speaker, it is not that radical. It is not radical at all, in fact. We are talking about spending $2.6 trillion over the next 7 years instead of $3.8 trillion over the next 7 years. Where I come from, this is less than this; $12.1 is more than $9.5. I wonder about this Washington new math where a spending increase is called a spending cut. It makes no sense to me.
I was in committee, and now they are working it the other way. We talked about abolishing the Department of Commerce because it is the last great bastion of corporate welfare in America, and you know what they call that? They call that spending cut a spending increase. Ron Brown stood before our committee and in sworn testimony said it will cost more money, it will cost billions of dollars for us to abolish the Department of Commerce. So now it has made a full circle. In Washington, DC, a spending increase is now called a spending cut, and a spending cut is now called a spending increase.
We have a Member from Ohio who, when faced with this sort of logic, screams into the microphone, beam me up, Scottie, I cannot take it any more. Well, that is how I feel sometimes. I feel it when I go back to the district and some people say to me, gosh, is it true that you are slashing spending too much in Washington? I give them the figures, and they cannot believe it.
It is the same thing with Medicare. We hear time and time again that the Medicare cuts are too radical. You are cutting Medicare. How many people have heard, you are cutting Medicare, you are cutting Medicare. That is all we hear. The fact of the matter is, over the next 7 years, spending on Medicare will increase by 45 percent, from about $850 billion to $1.8 trillion. Forty-five percent. Some people still have the nerve to sit on the floor and speak into the microphone with a straight face and call that a spending cut.
I do not understand it. Quite frankly, even the President of the United States, supposedly the leader of the Democratic Party, does not understand it. After saying for years that we did not need a balanced budget, the President has come out recently saying we do need a balanced budget, and we need it in 10 years or 7 years or 8 years or 9 years. It is hard to nail him down exactly, but he is saying at least we need a balanced budget in some period of time.
The Democrats' response to that has been anger. They have been extremely angry that their President has dared to step forward and echo what about 90 percent of Americans are now saying, that a balanced budget amendment this year has to be the top priority.
I just cannot imagine that, though, for a second. I cannot imagine that members of a party would be angry with their party head for simply saying that the Federal Government should only spend as much money as it takes in. Does that help explain the ideological demise of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party? I think it does. Does that mean that this plan is radical No, it is not radical. Again, 88 percent of Americans support the plan that we are going to pass.
Furthermore, if we look at what happened 1 year ago on November 8, 1994, about 1 year ago, Americans agreed overwhelmingly that we needed to more forward with the balanced budget amendment, with a balanced budget plan, with cuts in spending, and we needed to do it because our future depends on it, and they agreed with us at the voting booths.
Remember all of the liberal press members who said what a serious mistake the Contract With America was, that we should not put all of these things out there and should not make all of these promises that we were going to try to pass a balanced budget plan. They said it would destroy the Republicans' chances.
Well, the fact of the matter is, we put our program out there and got the most unambiguous mandate in the history of off-year elections. Of course, the Republicans gained control of the Senate and the House, but also, think about this. This is shocking, but not a single House incumbent Republican, not a single Senate Republican incumbent and not a single gubernatorial candidate who was an incumbent and a Republican got defeated in 1994, all across America. Absolutely staggering.
So no, Mr. Speaker, this is not a radical plan; no, we are not too far ahead of the American people. The fact of the matter is, this is what the American people elected us to do and it is what we are going to be doing.
Let us talk for a second about what the plan does, Mr. Speaker. First of all, it rewards wise investment. Now, some debate, and I have debated, at times, the necessity for some of the tax cuts and their ability to stimulate the economy. Some have also preferred a 5-year plan. I personally think that I would have preferred that we try to balance the budget in 5 years, but obviously, the Democrats do not think we should balance it in 50 years, let alone 5 years.
There are, of course, some pet programs that we created over the 40 years of the Democratically controlled House that do not get zeroed out as quickly as I would like, and we still have the question of the Social Security trust fund. I think it needs to be offbudget, I do not think we need to calculate that in when we are trying to figure out how to balance the budget.
My gosh, with all of the resistance that we have had to put up with with this very moderate 7-year plan, I would hate to think what would happen if we dared to move even further. On balance, it really is our only hope to achieve the goal that 88 percent of Americans have asked us to achieve, and that is to balance the budget for future generations, which leads to the next question.
Why is it so important? Well, I can give you a personal anecdote. This morning early at 6 o'clock in my home town of Pensacola, FL, I had to leave to catch a plane to come up to Washington, DC, and as I did, I had to say goodbye to my 7-year-old boy and my 4-year-old boy and tell them that I had to come back to Washington, DC.
As I looked at my 7-year-old, especially, I thought to myself how quickly he had grown. I do not know the numbers. I am sure I could call CBO and get the estimates, but I am sure in his 7 years the budget has absolutely exploded, the budget deficit has exploded. The fact of the matter is, what we do today is going to effect his life and the lives of his children and the lives of their children for generations to come.
I really cannot say this any more straightforwardly, because when you put all of the political rhetoric aside, one fact remains, and it is this one, that we, as a Congress, we as a Congress for the past 40 years have been stealing money from our children, from my 7-year-old boy and my 4-year-old boy, and from other children, simply to pay off political programs that help Members of Congress get reelected. That is what it comes down to. It comes down to power.
I hear people, I hear them trying to scare 85-year-olds, I hear them lying about Medicare. I hear them lying about this balanced budget plan. I step back and I ask myself, what is so important about this job that you would deliberately scare our senior citizens and deliberately scare those who need comfort in their retirement, and would deliberately mortgage my children and their children's future? I mean, at what price do you hold your seat in the House of Representatives or in the U.S. Senate or at the White House? It is not worth it. It is simply not worth it.
So let us get some basic facts out on the table. If we do nothing, then very shortly down the road, in the next year or two, we are going to be spending more money on servicing the debt than we are spending on our entire defense budget. If we do not do something about balancing the budget now under this plan, not only are we going to be doing that, we are also going to come to a time in America where the only things we are spending money on are going to be servicing the debt and those mandatory programs.
Mr. Speaker, there will be no money for children's programs. There will be no money for environmental protection. There will be no money for defending our shores, and in the end, that translates to defending our children. There will be no money for any school lunch programs that liberals have fought so hard to say we need to increase on the Federal level, and there will be no money for any programs that liberals complain were so essential.
This balanced budget plan is ideologically neutral. It is about getting our financial house in order. If we do not do that, again, we are going to be paying for it.
So I do not understand why the Democrats are doing what they are doing. I do not understand why they are misleading the American people and talking about massive cuts. I do not understand why holding their seat is so important that they would deliberately mislead Americans.
It is the same thing with Medicare. I had a meeting with some senior citizens this weekend and I also had a separate meeting with some physicians to talk about Medicare. Mr. Speaker, the physicians told me that senior citizens would come into their office and thank them for what they had done, but they would say, I guess I will not be able to see you when this Medicare plan passes because they are going to be doing away with Medicare. I mean, that is absolutely unbelievable. Of course, the physicians would explain that that is not the case, that that was just a lot of political rhetoric, but there are a lot of seniors out there that have been deliberately misled.
So let us get the facts out on the table, because obviously we are not going to be getting them from the liberal Democrats. I agree with the Speaker. I really think it shows the demise of the liberal Democratic Party when the last tactic comes down to trying to scare 85-
year-old senior citizens.
Here are the basic facts. First, Medicare is broken. Who can deny this? The President of the United States cannot deny it, because in April the President had the Medicare trustees come up with a report to tell him what the status was of Medicare. Was it solvent? Did it need fixing?
The Medicare trustees came back with some dire warnings for the President of the United States. They said, Medicare, as we know it, will be broken and bankrupt in 7 years. Medicare will cease to exist in 7 years if we do not undertake dramatic reforms now.
That was in April. The fact of the matter is, three of the President's own Cabinet members served on that Medicare trustees' board and signed off on the recommendations that Medicare had to be saved.
Well, it is broken. But the plan that is before the Senate and the House and the President today fixes Medicare. It protects and preserves Medicare, but it does something more than that. It moves Medicare into the 21st century, and it does it several ways. But before we talk about all of the changes that are going to be coming to Medicare, I think it is important to point out one basic fact that senior citizens do not know about, and if they do not know about it, it is because they have been misled.
The main fact to understand if you are a senior citizen about Medicare is under this plan, if you liked your Medicare plan, you can keep it. That is right. Nobody is saying that we are going to make you get off of Medicare as you know it. You get to keep Medicare, you can stay enrolled in the same Medicare plan today if that is what you choose to do.
Now, of course, many believe that it was passed in 1965 with few changes since, and it is in the end a 1965 Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan codified into law run by a Government bureaucracy, but if you like that, you can keep it. But, if you want to be caught up with all of the changes that have happened over the past 30 years, you can also do that too.
First of all, you can enroll in what is called Medicare-plus. You can do one of three things. You can have a medical savings account called Medisave, and in that medical savings account, you can take out a medical IRA, and then use that as your Medicare plan, and you and your physician can decide how you want to apply that money. It gives you the power, it gives you the choices, it gives you the decisions.
Second, of course there is an option for HMO's. If you like HMO plans, you can use them. Some seniors love them, some seniors hate them. But again, the important thing is that the choice is going to be taken out of the hands of the bureaucrats and given to the senior citizens so that they will be empowered.
Let me tell you, the third choice that seniors will have beyond staying on Medicare as they know it is that they are going to be able to enroll in what is called PSN's, provider service networks.
Now, what does that mean? That means that doctors can get together with other doctors, doctors can get together with hospitals, and they can come up with a plan between themselves and between their patients on how they want to treat a patient and how Medicare patients can enroll in their own plans. The best part of it is, it keeps the third parties out of there, it keeps the middle man out of there, and it is going to cut costs.
Insurance companies may not like it, because insurance companies have a lot of middle men in HMO plans that can make a lot of money. But the fact of the matter is that these provider service networks allow the senior citizen to get together with the doctor and come up with a plan that makes the best sense for them.
A lot of people have told me that senior citizens will not like this because it involves changes. Well, I think that is underestimating senior citizens a little bit, because you are giving senior citizens hundreds of options that they never had before. But again, more important, along with all of that change, you are giving them stability. If they want to stay in the plan as they know it today, they are welcome to do that. Who could ask for more?
I have to admit, Mr. Speaker, there is not a whole heck of a lot that I ever thought was very exciting about medicine, about Medicare, about Medicaid, about digging through all of the mess that you have to dig through, but what is exciting about the Medicare reform plan is we are finally infusing the free market and free enterprise into our medical system.
So the senior is empowered, and so the senior and the physicians can make the decisions. You are talking about the consumer of a good and the supplier of a good without a third-party payer stepping in. That is going to cut down on a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse.
There was a TV show this past week that talked about a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse, and it is highlighted. I held 25 townhall meetings in the month of August. A lot of seniors asked me questions about Medicare, but at the same time they told me about the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse that was occurring in the system. If you added up all of that waste, fraud, and abuse, where people were being overcharged, of not being billed or being billed too much, you could see why this system is in the trouble that it is in.
I had some of these seniors tell me that they called medical providers and said, you have overcharged me, and the medical providers said, well, do not worry about it. But the seniors said, but you have overcharged me, please correct this. They said, you are on Medicare, right? The seniors said, yes. The medical provider said, do not worry about it, it is not your problem. The senior would say, but it is my problem. You have overcharged me; take it off the bill. Finally, the medical provider would say at the end, do not worry, it is not your money. Just do not worry about it, we will take care of it.
Well, the fact of the matter is, it is the seniors' money and it is all Americans' money. We have to cut back on waste, fraud, and abuse and make this system solvent, not only for future generations, but for those that are on Medicare right now for my 92-year-old grandmother, and also for my parents who will be enrolling in Medicare in the next few years. Too much depends on it.
Finally, the third part of the balanced budget plan is welfare reform. Look what this one plan is doing. We are saving Medicare, we are balancing the budget, and we are overturning a welfare system that for the past 30 years has been devastating to this country.
So many people will stand up and say, what will we do without the welfare program that we have today? We should not dare to change it, we should not dare to reform it. Well, the proof is in the pudding, and I challenge anybody who tells me or who tells you that the welfare system has been a success over the past 30 years, I challenge them to drive through south central Los Angeles, or drive through Gary, IN, or drive through the south Bronx, and look at the devastation in those inner cities and tell me that this welfare system has been a plus.
We have spent $5 trillion over the past 30 years on the Great Society, on this so-called war on poverty that in the end has been a war on hard work, a war on discipline, a war on families, and a war on the very things that made America great.
Mr. Speaker, all you have to do is again, look at the fabric of the inner cities. It is just horrible. As the Speaker has said before, we find ourselves in a country, in this welfare state, where 12-year-olds are having babies, and 15-year-olds are shooting each other, and 18-
year-olds are graduating from high schools with diplomas that they cannot even read. Yet, we are told that it would be mean-spirited to end those welfare programs.
I think the reverse of that is the truth. Washington, DC, does not have the answer to every single solitary problem. If our $5 trillion and our 30 years of social experimentation have shown us anything, it has shown us that social policy cannot be micromanaged from Washington, DC.
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Instead, the answer lies, where our Founding Fathers knew it lay, in the communities, in the States and in the hometowns and not in Washington, DC.
You know, Thomas Jefferson said that the Government that governs least governs best, and James Madison said we have staked the entire future of the American civilization not upon the power of Government, but upon the capacity of each of us to govern ourselves, control ourselves and sustain ourselves according to the 10 Commandments of God.
Read the Constitution, read the 10th amendment. It says all powers not specifically given to the Federal Government are reserved to the States and to the citizens. Well, I believe 30 years after we embarked on this social experimentation program called the Great Society, it is time to turn the power back to where our Founding Fathers knew the power belonged, with individuals, with families and with hometowns. The answers do not lie in Washington, DC, and those 30 years of getting failed social experimentation have shown us in the end that the best social policy is a job.
How do we create jobs? Not through some massive job program in Washington, DC, that socializes even the job process. No, instead, we create jobs by balancing the budget, by bringing down interest rates, by cutting taxes, by cutting regulations and by cutting spending in Washington, DC.
We have had so much testimony before us, and the facts bear it out, that if we dare to balance the budget, we will see interest rates drop at least 2 or 3 percentage points. Alan Greenspan has said that America will see unprecedented economic growth, growth that it has not seen since the end of World War II, if we will only dare to balance the budget. And that is a challenge that I am willing to take up today. That is a challenge that most Members of the Republican Party and many Members of the Democratic Party will dare to take up.
Again, it is not a perfect plan. I voted against one of the plans because it raised the debt ceiling to $5.5 trillion, but I voted for the balanced budget plans the other times they passed through Congress earlier this year.
It is time for us to stand up and dare to make a difference, and that is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to return government to where it belongs, at home, and we are going to start doing what middle-class Americans have been doing for 200 years, and that is only spending as much money as we take in. America's future depends on it, and more importantly, my children's future depends on it.
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