Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, that was the question I asked.

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. COBURN. Okay, again I would make the point. The point is this: There is a significant increase in this section of the bill. It is $21 million in a time when we are spending money on a war, where we have made a commitment not to spend Social Security dollars to run this government, and in an area that offers nothing for our farmers. Now, there is no question that I want more dollars to go to our farmers. That is why we spent almost $12 billion in emergency supplemental dollars last year for our farmers. That is why we advanced the Freedom to Farm payment of $5 billion last year. That is why the baseline for the agricultural bill was up $5 billion over last year, because what was appropriated in the initial appropriations was $55 billion, almost $56 billion; and when we adjust that for the emergency spending that raises the baseline, we come to $61 billion.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to wait on the gentleman.

Mr. COBURN. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I would again thank the gentleman for responding to that. Again, I would stand by what I just read in the committee print, which is how this money was labeled in terms of the strategic space plan, and I guess I will just have to be satisfied.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I want to say from the outset, I come from a farm district of rural northeastern Oklahoma that has a great deal of farmers. And I believe, overall, that the appropriators have done a good job on this bill. But they have not done good enough. We passed two supplemental emergency bills for farmers in this last Congress, almost $12 billion, and I am not objecting to the fact that we did that. What I am objecting to is the fact that that money was paid for out of Social Security receipts. There is no question about it. And what I want to focus on is, where is the money going to come for the increase in this year over the true baseline last year? It is going to come from Social Security. I want to spend a minute just showing everybody the kind of problems we have. Most young people under 35 believe in UFOs before they believe they are going to get their Social Security money. And do my colleagues know what? They are probably right. This is the Social Security 1999 Trust Report. And what we see in black is the amount of money that is coming into the government in excess of what is being paid out, and my colleagues will note as of 2014 that starts to turn red. Last year we spent approximately $29 billion of that money. The Congress appropriated $29 billion of excess Social Security money for appropriation bills. Twenty-nine billion was taken out of the money that was coming in supposedly dedicated for Social Security. The other thing that I would like to discuss is we do not have a real surplus. What we have is a Washington surplus, because if we exclude Social Security money, last year we ran a $29 billion deficit. The debt to our children and our grandchildren is rising at the rate, as we speak, of $275 million a day. So it is not about whether we should do the right things for our farmers. We should, and probably we should spend more money on our farmers than what we are spending. The question is, how do we spend that money? If we look at what is about to happen this year, the surplus for the year 2000, as estimated by the Social Security Administration, is $141 billion. Based on the plans that we see, it is a conservative estimate that $45 billion of that will be spent. That is Social Security money that people are working every day putting into that, with the trust to think that that money is going to be there for them when they retire. And that does not come close to addressing the issue, can they live on their Social Security payment now? In my practice in Muskogee, Oklahoma, when I see seniors, I have seniors who are totally dependent on Social Security. And do my colleagues know what they do? They do not buy their medicine because they do not have enough money. They buy food before they buy medicine. So not only do we have a problem in taking the money that is supposed to be for Social Security, the benefit that we have out there in many instances is not enough for our seniors to live on, let alone live healthily on. Finally, the point I would make is that we have 102,000 Agricultural Department employees. We have another 87,000 contract employees for the Department of Agriculture. That comes to 189,000 employees in the United States. If we take 260 million people, it is pretty quick you can come up, for every 1,500 people in the United States, we have at least one Agricultural Department employee. Do we need all those employees? What we have said is we cannot cut the number of employees in the Agriculture Department, we cannot have less employees, and we cannot get more money directly to the farmer, because we are chewing up a vast majority of the money trying to give them the money. It is not about not taking care of our farmers. If we expect to protect Social Security money, which on both sides of the aisle, save two Members of this body, voted for budgets that said they would protect 100 percent of Social Security, then we have to bring this bill back to the level of spending last year. What that requires is about $260 million worth of trimming amendments to be able to do that. I propose to offer offsetting amendments that will bring us down to last year's level. When we are at that level, then I will stop offering amendments. Until we get to that level, I plan on continuing to offer amendments. This is not done in any precocious fashion. My intention is to help us all do what we all voted, save two Members, to do, and, that is, to preserve Social Security. The best way I know of doing that is the first appropriation bill, to make a first start on that.

Mr. COBURN. Wonderful. Mr. Chairman, what the American people are looking for from this body is honesty, integrity, and truthfulness about what our situation is. We can have wonderful debates about where our priorities should be, but the fact is that we did have an agreement. I did not happen to vote for the 1997 budget agreement, but we did have an agreement with this President, with the Congress of the United States, that said we are going to live within this agreement. What the American people are wondering is are we really going to do it, or is Washington going to continue to do what it has done the last 40 years, to say one thing and do something completely other, and at the same time spend their pension money?

Mr. COBURN. I will answer when I have my own time, because I am not sure I am going to get to answer the way I want to.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. COBURN. So the purpose of this amendment, Mr. Chairman, having the House, with 137 Members, I believe, agree that we should freeze this spending, given the fact that the increase in spending is going to be above this last year's fiscal year and will come from Social Security surpluses, the purpose of this amendment is to decrease by one-half the amount of increase in the Department at this level. I have before me a sample of what most seniors probably think is going on right now, a check from the Social Security Trust Fund for $231,000. This still gives that department in that area an increase two-and-a-half times the rate of inflation. Very few people within our districts and within the private sector are seeing increases in their operating and overhead or their expense or their salaries going up at two-and-a-half times the rate of inflation. It is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget that the Social Security surplus this year will be $149 billion. On track, the first appropriation bill to meet this House, has an increase over last year. The budget agreement that we agreed to with the President in terms of meeting the targeted spending in 1997, the budget that passed this House, the minority-sponsored budget, all had provisions to protect Social Security 100 percent. The purpose of this amendment is to try to keep us at our word, to protect Social Security dollars. It is my feeling and my conviction that we do that best by, with the first bill, setting an example on how we are going to spend money. I recently had a Member come up and say that I was a good reason to vote against term limits, because I was offering amendments to decrease the spending in Washington and that I felt we should not spend any money that comes from Social Security. Well, I would portend just the opposite of that. I think that is a good reason to vote for people with term limits. The fact is that we are spending $260 million more in this appropriation bill than we did last year. The purpose of this amendment is to trim some of that. It is not to inhibit what we do with our farmers, it is to make sure that the money that we put into the Department of Agriculture gets to the very people that we want it to. By having an 8 percent increase in this office, a portion of that money could be saved, could be preserved in Social Security, could be used to lower the FICA taxes that our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay so they will be able to have Social Security. It is not anything but incumbent on Members of this body to try to spend the taxpayers' money in the way that they believe is in the best interest of the country and in the best interest of the long-term security for this Nation. I want to be measured by how I left our country. I want to be measured when my grandchildren, who are now 3 and 1, look at their income tax statements and look at their payroll slips and know that we were not responsible for raising the FICA payments from 12 percent to 25 percent. And that is the estimate from the Social Security Administration that is going to be required by the year 2022. We can change what happens in Washington. We do not have to spend more money.

Mr. COBURN. It is my understanding that this amendment was given to the Chair, and I will be happy to supply the gentlewoman with a copy of it at this time.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment under the same section at the same line item to cut the rate of increase in one-half of what the committee has recommended for the Office of Budget and Program Analysis within the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. COBURN. And the money that was being spent in the Food and Nutrition Services has been reduced by that amount and transferred to this committee.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to talk about where we are going in this country. This rule is symptomatic of the problem that we face. There are two Members of the House who honestly agreed that we would not be able to live within the 1997 budget agreement with the President. Those two Members voted for a budget that would actually spend Social Security money. Everybody else that is a Member of this House voted for one budget or another that would preserve 100 percent of the Social Security surplus this year. This bill is the first among many bills that will do exactly the opposite of that. The Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies states that this bill is a cut. That is an untruthful statement. This bill actually increases spending around $250 million. That money will come from the Social Security surplus. There will be those today in the debate on this bill that will deny that. They will say there is no way you can know that this money will be coming from Social Security because we have not considered the other bills. To me that is intellectually dishonest, because we realize that this is the first bill of 13 appropriations bills under which we will consider over the next several months. We have said with the budget that passed this House that we would preserve 100 percent of the Social Security surplus. My question to my colleagues is if we really do not intend to do that, it is time for us to be very, very honest with the American people. I put my colleagues on notice that I will vote for no appropriations bill and no rule that is intended to spend the first penny of Social Security surplus. The issue really is not Social Security. The issue really is are we going to regenerate faith of the American people in this body? We cannot in good conscience for our country, for our children and for our grandchildren do anything but be fully honest about what our intentions are. On my side of the aisle, there is a great debate on how best to accomplish this. We are faced with an ag appropriations bill because of process time. We must get a bill to the floor. We must start passing appropriations bills. Consequently, we are going to put forth a bill today and a rule. There is no question in my mind it will pass. There is no question in my mind that this bill also will probably pass. But if it does in its present form, $250 million above last year, then what we are saying to the American people is we do not really mean what we say when we passed both a Democrat budget, which did not pass but when we voted on it, or the Republican budget which did pass and we voted on, that we really do not mean what we say about protecting Social Security money. That lies at the heart of the problems of our body. For America to thrive, for America to turn around from the tragedies that are facing us today, the same principles have to be beheld in this body, and that is a principle of truth. If in fact this body intends to protect Social Security, if it intends to do that, if we are true with our votes about what we meant on the various budgets, then there is no way this rule should pass and there is no way if this rule passes that this bill should pass. I come from an agricultural district. My district is farmers. It is rural. Everything in my district has lots to do with the appropriations coming from the Agricultural Department. But we can do better. We must do better. Because it is not about spending Social Security money. It is not about being true to our word. It is about the foundational structure of our country and whether or not we are going to operate on the principles that we want our children to have, that we are going to reinforce the positive aspects of honor, of commitment to your word. Are we going to set an example for our children in high school that we are going to do what we said we were going to do? Are we going to be true to the founding principles of this country? I am in my last term, and I must say that I am very much discouraged as a Member of this body whether or not we have a great future when in fact we say one thing and mean another. I hope that you will check your heart, not just your mind, especially not your political mind, but that you will check your heart. Do we really mean it when we say we are going to protect Social Security, or do we not? I believe we do not mean it.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that this debate be expanded to 20 minutes on each side. There was a drafting error in the rule. We were supposed to be given the same amount of time as all of the other amendments. Because of the drafting error, we were not. I would ask unanimous consent as a courtesy from the minority to give us the same amount of time on our amendment that he will have on his.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I want to seriously question what was just said, and I want to quote: ``The Obey amendment affirms the value of American families.'' Sending $100 million of Social Security money to Jordan is affirming the value of American families? The money comes from our seniors and our children. What we are going to do is we are going to affirm the value of anybody that is not going to pay for the Social Security money that we are going to spend. Who is that? It is not anybody. Because we are all going to pay for it. There are no family values in that. $100 million to Jordan needs to go, and we passed a bill that paid for it by decreasing spending somewhere else. The Obey amendment does not address that issue.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger).

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford)

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. One of the reasons that I believe that the gentleman objected to our unanimous consent request is that it is hard to hear about spending Social Security money. It is not palatable to politicians. This chart shows exactly the fallacy of what Washington is telling the American public about surpluses. Here, in green, is what Washington is saying is the surplus. The red shows the rise in the national debt each year. The question that I would have for our body is, if we have a surplus, why is the debt rising? Why did the debt rise $105 billion last year? Why are our children going to be burdened with an additional $1,000 per person just on the basis of what we did last year? Congress has a moral obligation to our troops, to restore our military readiness, and we also have a moral obligation to our farmers, who are dependent on us. But we also have a moral obligation not to spend Social Security money. Probably that is not right. We have a moral obligation to be truthful about whether or not we are going to spend Social Security money. To oppose offsetting this bill is to make the assumption that this government is running at an efficient level. So everybody at home can actually see where we are on the numbers, these are CBO numbers, the projected Social Security surplus. Not real surplus, but an excess of Social Security payments over Social Security outflows that were projected to be $127 billion this year. We already have consumed, on what we have done so far this year, $16 billion of that. We have already committed $16 billion of the seniors' Social Security money. When we pass this supplemental, without this amendment, we will spend another $13 billion of Social Security money. That is enough money for every notch baby in this country to get equitable treatment to the neighbors that are around them. I understand why it is difficult to trim. I have great respect for the members of the Committee on Appropriations and the hard job that they have. But I also know what the American people feel about it. They want those services delivered, but they know they are not delivered in an efficient manner. For us to say we cannot do so is not an appropriate response to the people that we represent. I would take my colleagues back to World War II. We did not allow spending to go up in every other branch of government. We actually cut spending in every other branch of government because we had a war. I have heard that today from both sides of the aisle: ``We have a war.'' There is not a moral imperative for us to pay for the war out of other agencies instead of taking it from our seniors? The last point that I would like to make is, if we take this money from our seniors, what we are really doing is lowering the standard of living of our children and we are decreasing the opportunity that our children will have to have a standard of living comparable to what we have. As we take opportunity, and we are the land of opportunity, we should never be so guilty as to steal the future from our children, because they will pay back this money. Our seniors are not going to pay this back, the Members of this body are not going to pay back this money, but our children and grandchildren will be the ones to pay back this money. So the question we have to ask ourselves as we leave here today, as we leave after voting, and I am very hopeful that we pass this bill, is, can I live with myself saying it is morally right to support our troops and to fund them at a level that makes their readiness and gives them the equipment and the ability to carry out their missions and it is not morally right to pay for it; but it is morally right to take money from every notch baby, to take money from the Social Security System, to take money out of the very future that we say is our highest priority? This conference passed a budget that said we are going to protect 100 percent of Social Security, and there are Members on this floor and in this body that voted for that. By failing to vote for this amendment, what the Member is saying is, ``King's X. I did not mean it. I am not going to vote to protect Social Security. I am not for protecting the Social Security surplus. I am not for fixing Social Security. My vote on the budget was meaningless. It did not matter.'' If that is the case, then we need to fix the budget process. I would appreciate the support on this amendment, as will every other senior in this country and every child.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, we are talking about supplemental emergency spending on very important projects, and there is a moral basis for us to support our farmers. There is a moral basis for us to put the things there that we need for our troops. There is also a moral basis for us to pay for it. This Congress has passed a budget that said we will protect 100 percent of Social Security. There is no excuse for our body to pass this bill and not pay for it. Now there are going to be a lot of people that are going to say, but we cannot; we cannot pay for this. When we say that, what we mean is we do not mind taking the money out of the Social Security system to pay for it because that is what we are going to do. Everybody readily admits that the money that is going to be used to pay for this supplemental is coming directly from the Social Security funds. So the question that we have to ask ourselves, if it is moral to supply the proper things for our troops and if it is moral to put the things there for our farmers so that they can continue to feed us, so they will be there next year to be able to produce a crop and pay for it and pay the taxes, how is it not moral for us to pay for it? Ask anybody in their district if they believe the agencies of the Federal Government are efficient. I do not think we will find one, other than a Federal employee working for one of those agencies. If that is what the constituency says, why do we not have the courage to ask the rest of the Federal agencies to become efficient enough to pay for that? We are going to be having an amendment in a little while that is going to discuss that very issue, and the question, as we leave here today and go back to our homes, are we going to leave here being consistent or are we going to leave here being inconsistent? We are going to claim a moral high ground and then we are going to duck the issue when it comes to the moral high ground for our children.