Paul Kanjorski

Mr. KANJORSKI

Mr. KANJORSKI. What I am saying is, why can the gentleman not join me and say, look, we are working extra time, our economy is as prosperous as it can be, let us form a policy to get rid of this debt while we can? We cannot pay the debt off when the economy is in recession or depression. If we do not pay it off when we are in prosperity, where is the fiscal hope of ever paying it off?

Mr. KANJORSKI. No, not unless the gentleman has the money to pay the debt off. Right now we are not going to have that. We are, quote, taking $1 trillion over the next 10 years, if all assumptions are right, that would have gone to the debt. And instead of letting it go to the debt, we are sending it back to the American people. But that means that an interest rate on the Federal debt, assume it is 6 percent because that is where it is about, that means $60 billion every year more will have to be paid ad infinitum until that is reduced.

Mr. KANJORSKI. The interest payments.

Mr. KANJORSKI. It is really a false claim. If the interest rate jumps up to 10 percent from the 5.6 percent it is at now, that immediate next year----

Mr. KANJORSKI. No, no.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I absolutely believed it.

Mr. KANJORSKI. That is right.

Mr. KANJORSKI. No.

Mr. KANJORSKI. No, I am saying we should start paying off that debt.

Mr. KANJORSKI. What I guess I am arguing is a simple proposition: the gentleman is an average American family, and the gentleman is making $400 a week and the gentleman has debt of $10,000, credit card debt, auto debt, whatever, and suddenly the gentleman's employer asks him to work 50 percent more hours a week, instead of 40 hours a week can the gentleman work 60 hours a week and be paid the same amount or double time. The gentleman has an opportunity to make $200 a week or $400 a week more than the gentleman ever had. Now, the gentleman does not know how long that is going to last, but right now the gentleman can say, gee, it is going to last for a month or so because my employer really needs this work done because he has sales to meet. Now, the gentleman meets around the kitchen table or the dining table on Sunday with the family and the gentleman says, I think I am going to have 20 weeks of this 50 percent more time, so, therefore, I am going to make either $200 more a week for 20 weeks, which is $4,000 or $400 more a week for 20 weeks, which is $8,000. We are going to have $4,000 or $8,000 more to spend in this family in the next 10 weeks. Now, who in their right mind would say, okay, Daddy, let us go on an around-the-world vacation? No, an intelligent mother and father would say, oh no, we are going to take some of that money and pay down our credit cards, or pay off the car, or take some of it and put it in the bank for education for the kids' future. There is no real difference here. What we are arguing about or differing on is we are just like that family. For the last 40 years, 30 years, since 1969, we have been increasing our debt every year, and particularly in the last, oh, about the last 20 years, since 1980 it has been exponential in its explosion. Now, I can justify why we did it, but now we are in prosperous times. Our unemployment rate is 4.2 percent. Most people cannot even believe it could get down to that level but certainly cannot see it falling much below that.

Mr. KANJORSKI. And we have.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Not only the stock market. Compare it to salaries. I heard Senator Harkin talk today about the last 20 years. If we took executive salaries, CEO salaries in the United States and the minimum wage, and we tracked them to give the minimum wage increase the same percentage as the corporate executive increase was, the minimum wage today would be $40 an hour. And, obviously, I am not saying that is bad. That is a business decision. That is the people who own the stock and control these corporations, and these are people that help create great wealth in this country. So I am not opposed to that. But let me go back to spending. If the gentleman makes the argument that all spending is the same spending, I do not agree with him, and that all spending costs money and could drive us into debt, I do not agree. There is intelligent spending and stupid spending, quite frankly. Intelligent spending, and I will give the gentleman an example, the GI Bill of Rights. When that was instituted by this Congress in 1945, it was a novel new idea that all these young American men and women that were going to be returning from all over the world into the private sector were going to be upskilled and uptrained and educated. It cost a great deal of money in the first 4 and 5 years of the GI Bill of Rights. But where is America today as a result of that expenditure? That trained, educated, skilled work force developed the computer, developed space industry.

Mr. KANJORSKI. My answer to that is, depending on what spending we are going to cut and depending on whose taxes and why we are going to increase them. I will give the gentleman an example. Today, people that have lived in this country with the existing market that has doubled or tripled their net worth in the last 6 years, even though they pay 1 percent more in taxes than they did 6 years ago, I doubt there is anyone who would trade their net worth in today, if they are in the upper 5 percent income bracket in this country. They will certainly not do that.

Mr. KANJORSKI. That is absolutely true. The budget of the United States has gone up every year. The population of the United States has grown every year. And every year from now until America becomes less than 50 states or has a decrease in population as a result of a catastrophe our government will grow. We will always have more Americans year to year. This whole argument of people saying, oh, they are spending more this year than they did last year. Of course we are, because this year we have 8 million more Americans.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Very clearly, because we were already in deficit, how could we not increase taxes? And we were already cutting spending. That was the beginning.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Well, it depends where the taxes are going to come from and what amount they are and who we are taking it from.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Cut deficits?

Mr. KANJORSKI. Spent more than was coming in; therefore, we were building up the debt in the United States. Now, there were two heroic acts, two heroic acts, one performed by a Republican president and one performed by a Democratic president. And I may not have ever said this to the gentleman before, but I was here in 1991, and I remember when President George Bush met with the leadership of the House and the Senate and tried to get our fiscal House in order in 1991; and they brought back a proposal that I voted against and which did not carry in this House, a budget proposal. They brought it back a second time. I voted against it, and it failed in this House. And then they called a group and said what is it going to take to pass a budget? And I quite frankly said we are going to start cutting this deficit and, therefore, the debt of the United States.

Mr. KANJORSKI. By passing the tax code right now, and by taking this supposed, assumed, money that may come in, the gentleman has now limited the funds that would be necessary to make intelligent new tax policy. Because if we want to make a simplified tax policy, we will not be able to project what revenues will come in from that tax policy for several years. Now, if we had a surplus, we could take that risk at that time. Further, we know that Medicare and Social Security do need adjustment, do need support. Why should we not take this surplus and make sure that Social Security and Medicare are secure 25, 30, 40, 50 years from now?

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I believe the gentleman from Arkansas agrees with that. But then if we look at the tax code we just passed, two-thirds of the benefits go to the upper 9 percent, and a third of the benefits go to the richest 1 percent of our population. So that certainly is not taking care of the 91 percent that only got a third of the tax benefits. But let me give the second problem.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I could agree with that.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, let me try and respond to the gentleman from Arkansas. I think two problems are at fault there, two fundamental errors. One, why do we want to get rid of the tax code? Because it is so lengthy, so complicated. Most Americans are so fed up with the time they have to expend preparing their taxes and business people preparing taxes and the expense of preparing taxes that they wanted to simplify it. Yet, just the other day when we voted the tax cut, we added 560 new pages to the tax code. We made it far more complicated. That will spurn about, oh, another 10,000 pages of IRS regulations to implement our changes in the law. Why did we do that if we were serious about changing it?

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Arkansas wants to try and give back to the American people what he may perceive as excess funds coming from them. I think that the gentleman somewhat has lost faith in the political system, both the Congress and the Presidency, or even the enlightenment of the American people; that if this money, all the surplus money practically that will come in or is projected to come in over 10 years, if it is not returned, it will be improperly spent. I think I look at it as two things. I think it is the first time in my lifetime that we have an opportunity of reversing this tremendous trend of increasing the national debt of the United States, and, in fact, we can start paying it off. I think that is fiscally responsible and that is the fiscal conservatives' position. Now, that is not to say that, at some point, we should not examine a tax cut because, certainly, if we knew the excesses of revenues were so great that we could pay the debt off in a couple of years, that would be great. But we all know that $5.5 trillion is not going to be paid off in a couple of years. Even the President's most optimistic view is that he could retire the public debt of $3.6 trillion in 15 years. But that again is assuming all these assumptions work out. I have been around the House long enough to know, every time I hear my friends on either side of the aisle, including my fellow colleagues on this side of the aisle, when they start making an argument based on all of these assumptions, seldom do these assumptions work out. I would like to err on the side of conservativism, fiscal responsibility. I think two things, too, on the side of the gentleman from Arkansas. Last year, I voted against what I thought was an irresponsible resolution, although proposed by a very good friend of mine, and I really like the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Largent). The gentleman from Oklahoma said, let us pass the resolution to do away with the income tax code by the year 2001. I checked the other day. That was in June of 1998. Some 219 of my fellow Republican colleagues voted yes, and about 208 of my Democratic colleagues voted no, and it passed. The whole theory, if we go back to that argument that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Largent) and those proponents made that day was that this gigantic out-of-control tax code has got to be finally shot and put to rest, given a decent burial. The only way to do that is pass a resolution that, on a certain date and a certain time, it is dead. It is repealed. Some of us argued that is awfully nice to say that, but if we do not have something to replace it, it is really injurious to the decision makers and business and in our communities and in our families of what are their obligations going to be 3 and 5 years from now. The whole purpose of passing a tax statute rather than year to year is to give people the benefit to project their needs and how they can respond to the obligations that they may have from the government.

Mr. KANJORSKI. No, not quite, but close, Mr. Speaker. Close. Here is what I want.

Mr. KANJORSKI. So that type of risk of that nature, that justifies almost any fiscal policy.