Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I rise in support of the Cole amendment, and the reason why I do is twofold. Number one, I do think there are some questions about what are the motives. Why should you have to tell the Federal Government absolutely everything in our society today when you're just bidding on a contract? I see some good in it, and the gentleman mentioned the L.A. Times article. I think it makes some good points. But I also see how there is a double-edged sword, that there's too much information that's out there. But the other thing is this is a major change and a possible encroachment on your constitutional right of First Amendment freedom of speech as to whom you give. So if we are going to make this the law of the land, public policy, it really should go through the legislative process--hearings and testimony--and let everybody have something to say about it instead of just one more Executive order from the administration. So I think we should adopt the Cole amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record. [From Forbes Magazine, Mar. 28, 2011] What's the Real Defense Budget? (By Mallory Factor) The new Congress won the election by promising to cut spending, and unsurprisingly the defense budget is on the table for the first time in more than a decade. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently announced $78 billion in defense spending cuts over the next five years, including reductions in troop levels for the Army and Marine Corps. These types of cuts suggest that the military is working to become leaner and more efficient. Still, many Americans and congressmen are calling for deeper cuts. Not counting the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense budget is expected to be $553 billion in 2012, up from $549 billion in 2011. That outlay currently represents 19% of the entire federal budget and over 50% of U.S. discretionary spending; cutting it would go a long way toward reining in government spending. But before further slicing the military budget, Congress must reconsider the military's mission and what activities it should undertake. The purpose of a large standing army is to provide for our national defense. In essence, the defense budget is an insurance policy that protects the U.S. against threats from other nations and groups. But in recent years a growing percentage of that budget has been spent on activities that don't involve traditional national defense. These include nation-building, policing foreign nations, humanitarian missions and ferrying executive- and legislative-branch leaders and their attendants around the globe. While these activities may be tangentially related to our standing in the world, they do not enhance our war-fighting capabilities; rather they relate more to the success of our foreign policy than to our national defense. This increase in nondefense missions has been accompanied by a dramatic shift from war-fighting to nation-building. The official White House website now describes the function of the Department of Defense as to ``protect national interests through war-fighting, providing humanitarian aid and performing peacekeeping and disaster relief services.'' Is war-fighting just one among the many functions we want our military to perform? Rightly or wrongly, we give our military these various assignments because we don't want to pay someone else to do them, and other government entities currently can't. Yet just because our military can do these jobs doesn't mean that it should. Indeed, these assignments shift focus away from the military's core missions: keeping America safe and winning wars. Right now it is difficult for Congress to determine how much money is spent on protecting the U.S. The ``military'' budget gives an exaggerated impression of the cost of our national defense. When Congress adds burdens to the military, direct costs like fuel, food and relief supplies may be calculated and expressed in the budget. But these items are just a small part of these missions, and the larger costs get buried. These hidden costs include recruiting and training extra troops, purchasing and servicing additional equipment, additional layers of bureaucracy, and maintaining and enlarging bases, none of which are separated out in the budget as relating to nondefense missions. The military's nondefense activities may or may not be warranted, but their total costs must be transparent. If Congress does not consider these costs separately, traditional defense missions and essential equipment upgrades will be crowded out. America is a compassionate nation and would surely engage in humanitarian activities even if their true costs were known. But why charge these costs to the defense budget and then hide them? Only by demanding that the military budget be limited to legitimate defense activities can Americans know how many dollars we are actually devoting to our national security. Some military leaders have privately estimated that if these nondefense-related activities were eliminated or given a separate budget, defense spending could be substantially reduced and at the same time the military's war-fighting capabilities increased. Given this uncertainty, before any additional cuts are made to military spending, Congress must demand transparency with respect to the different roles of our military.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I stand in support of the amendment and the passage of the bill, but I want to raise a point which is of great concern to me as an appropriator and as a fiscal conservative, and that is the Pentagon's practice--and it's being practiced by the Obama administration as it was by the Bush administration--of putting the war on terrorism money for Afghanistan and Iraq and other places around the globe off the military budget. We are debating a budget today which is about $550 billion, but there is another $120 billion which goes under Overseas Contingency Operations which we do not debate or scrutinize nearly as much as we should. What that money does is actually brings us to a military spending bill that is not in the 500 billions but is $670 billion. A lot of that money is not going to emergency spending but ongoing operations. Did anybody last year think we were going to be out of Afghanistan or Iraq this year? No. That money should be in their base budget. As a member of the Defense appropriations committee, I have submitted language on our bill to straighten this out, and I hope that Congress will take a look at it down the road. I do support this amendment, however, and I thank the gentleman from California for the time.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, can you imagine in your household, if, for every $1 you spent, 40 cents was borrowed? That's the situation we're in with every dollar that we spend in the U.S. Congress today. And yet there are those who do not want to reform or change. But if I brought in my family and said, listen, guys, for every dollar we spend, 40 cents is borrowed, we would say, okay, what can we cut out? Can we do with less travel? Can we do with fewer clothes? Can we cut back on the kitchen table a little bit? We would come up with some ideas. They might be tough choices, but it's the right thing to do. It is time for Congress to get our house in order and to think about the next generation, not just the next election. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I can tell you, each and every day, people come to see me to ask for more money to be spent. We've got to change our culture of spending here and get the House under control.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman, and wanted to speak in support of H.R. 1214 for three reasons. Number one, we have got to remember that we are now in our third year of a $1.6 trillion deficit. That's right. The Obama administration has now put us in our third year of a deficit of $1.6 trillion. For every dollar we spend, 40 cents is borrowed. At what point will that mean anything to our Democrat colleagues? I don't understand it. At what point will it mean anything to the administration? Do you really believe you can defy gravity over and over again and expect that it's not going to come back to haunt you? I don't understand it. I'm baffled by this. So, number one, we've got to impact the deficit as we've got to consider future generations. Number two is duplication. The stimulus bill and ObamaCare had $3 billion that went to the Health Resources and Services Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services for improvements in community health centers that many of the school-based health care clinics are eligible for. This is strictly a duplication of $50 million on top of $3 billion. Number three, as an appropriator, I believe we have to be very careful about advanced appropriations. This goes to the year 2014. If it is so good, as we have heard--and certainly there is a level at which you can argue the effectiveness of this--why not let them get in line as soldiers have to? as educators have to? as hospitals have to? as researchers have to? As everybody else who gets Federal Government money, let them get in line each and every year, and let them justify their budgets. Then Congress, in weighing it out, will say, Okay. Let's fund it again this year. But what the Democrats are asking us to do is to obligate future Congresses on money to the year 2014 and to put it on automatic pilot. That's not fair. That's not right. In these budgetary times--again, when we are borrowing 40 cents for every dollar we spend--we do not need to be advance appropriating anything or any entity.

Mr. KINGSTON. The point is, if it's a good program, then certainly they can justify their budgets each and every year just like the soldiers have to and just like everybody else has to. For those three reasons, I strongly support H.R. 1214.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to respond to my friend from New Jersey. This is very important. If we added up the Bush deficits in those years, certainly the Bush administration overspent. There is absolutely no question about it that the Republican Party overspent. Yet not to be outdone, in 1 year, the Obama administration ran up the deficit numbers higher than the Bush folks did in 8 years. It's outrageous. The year that the Democrats won the majority, the Bush deficit was $160 billion. I agree that it was way too high. But what did they do? $1.6 trillion. That's a lot of money, and that's all the more reason that we need to eliminate duplicative spending, which is what this is. Support H.R. 1214.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, swap data repositories have the ability to provide regulators and markets with information on aggregate data positions that can assist them in evaluating and managing risk. However, that ability can be substantially diminished if important information is excluded from them. One risk of fragmentation or exclusion of data is if a country's laws in practice provide disincentives, or even prohibitions, to the sharing of such data to a repository located in another jurisdiction. Sections 728 and 763 of the Dodd-Frank Act require that repositories obtain indemnifications from foreign regulators before sharing information with them. There was no legislative history behind this provision, which was incorporated late in the legislative process, without having been considered in the hearing process. As a result, it was not subject to extensive discussion and consideration prior to the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act, and its negative consequences must not have been clear to the conferees or the relevant regulatory bodies. I believe that the indemnification provision will significantly impede global regulatory cooperation. Foreign regulators are not likely to grant Derivative Clearing Organizations, DCO's, or Swap Data Repositories, SDRs, indemnification in exchange for access to information. Accordingly, regulators may be less willing to access the aggregated market data, resulting in a reduction of information consumption, domestically and internationally, which jeopardizes market stability. Further, the provision could have an immediate negative impact on the ability of U.S. regulators to obtain information from repositories located in foreign countries should reciprocal indemnification provisions be enacted in foreign laws. U.S. regulators, like foreign regulators, might be legally or practically precluded from signing such agreements. This is not a theoretical concern. Just a few days ago in March, Jean-Paul Gauzes, a French Member of Parliament from the Conservative Party included in a package of 950 amendments put forth by the European Parliament to the European Commission language that would mirror the indemnification clauses in Dodd-Frank Act. The amendment was a deliberate response to the extra-territoriality provisions of ``indemnity'' contained in Dodd-Frank, and adoption of the package is anticipated in May of this year. The proposed European language would require the United States government to indemnify EU trade repositories for any expenses arising from litigation relating to the information provided by the trade repository. The provision, which could well be adopted, has the potential to create numerous problems for the United States. For starters, it is not clear that U.S. regulators have the legal authority to enter into such an indemnification. Were they to do so, the indemnification becomes an invitation to such litigation by third- parties, domestic or foreign. These problems mirror precisely the problems for EU governments created by the indemnification clauses in Dodd-Frank. In practice, while governments worked to address the issues raised by such requirements, the default position for any SDR would have to refuse to provide such information absent the indemnification, creating fragmentation and information gaps that could meaningfully harm global safety and soundness. Preventing the exchange of information between regulators will frustrate efforts to mitigate international financial risk and fragment regulatory oversight on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis. The goal is to ensure that in situations where foreign regulators are carrying out their regulatory responsibilities in a manner consistent with international agreements, which includes maintaining the confidentiality of data, can be appropriately exchanged without Sections 728 and 763 becoming an impediment to the goals of transparency and sound policy. In light of the EU calendar on indemnification, swift action to prevent the unintended consequences of this inadequately considered provision of Dodd-Frank is needed.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me thank my friend from Maryland for answering this, because I do think it's important for the Democrats to be given an opportunity to offer an alternative budget, and I'm glad that you will be, and there will be five such budgets. And I'm hoping even if your budgets don't pass, that we can still pick and choose some parts of those, and there will be some parts of our budget that you like and want to support as well. But I want to emphasize over and over again that the President, who yesterday tried to reclaim some territory because he did not take on the recommendations of his own deficit reduction commission, he was not offering a budget yesterday. What he did was give a speech. Now, the President is kind of becoming the Spectator in Chief or the Speaker in Chief. He's the guy who offers a budget, and then yesterday decides to give a speech. Well, the time has come and gone for speeches. What our budget does is take on some serious changes in our spending habit. It does tackle the difficult choices that we have on Medicaid and Medicare. It does not create a voucher system; it is a supplemental system which will give seniors more choices. And it doesn't affect anybody 55 years or older, which is very important. But we will hear from the liberals in this community the cage rattling of senior citizens over and over again, and that's why we can't make progress in this town, because we always reduce policy to politics. The time to put policy first is now. We've got to tone down our rhetoric and say, you know what, here is a plan to save and protect and preserve Medicaid and Medicare, not for the next election, not for politicians, but for America's future seniors. The baby boomers who are under 55 years old will have a Medicare/Medicaid plan that they can count on because it will be there. If we don't change, it will not be there for them.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, we are facing a crisis in the country today. Imagine back home in your family budget if for every dollar you spent, 40 cents was borrowed. Surely you would bring your entire family to the kitchen table and say, okay, what can we cut out? We cannot continue to borrow 40 cents for every dollar we spend. You would make changes in your household budget. But for some reason, many in Washington, D.C. want to stick their head in the sand and say, no, we really don't have to do this. And yet right now the national debt is 90 percent of the GDP. We borrow billions of dollars a year from China, which is not exactly a great idea in terms of national security. I sit on the Defense Subcommittee of Appropriations. We watch China year in, year out building up their army, and yet we go to them over and over again for more money. And yet, while we do that, those in Washington, D.C., don't want to do anything. We heard yesterday the President's mulligan budget. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States is responsible to submit his budget to Congress each year, which the President did in February, totally ignoring his own deficit commission's recommendations. The Simpson-Bowles language was not in there. And yet, yesterday, the President decided, oh, well, give me one more chance, I'm going to introduce another budget, which has a lot of phony numbers in there and a lot of false promises and calls for more studies and commissions. I ask my Democrat friends, is that budget going to be on the floor today? Are we going to be able to offer it? I yield to my friend from Maryland.

Mr. KINGSTON. You will be offering the budget the President talked about yesterday? I'm going to yield back to my friend from Maryland, but I want to say this: Unlike when you guys were in charge, we are offering the Democrats opportunities to offer budgets. We think it's very important, because we want the best of your ideas, and we think the best of our ideas can be combined together for the best of America.

Mr. KINGSTON. I am going to yield to my friend, but here's what I want to say, that we keep hearing over and over again in the last 24 hours about the President's wonderful mulligan budget that he offered yesterday, but I don't believe it's going to be offered on the floor of the House. Now let me yield to my friend.

Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask specifically, the mulligan budget that the President offered yesterday, will it be on the floor of the House today?

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and let me say that I want to be the first one to say we do want to close the tax loopholes for Big Oil. In fact, for the 4 years the Democrats were in charge, we're not sure why they didn't take it on. We are ready to take it on after this 4-year negligence on it. Think about this, Mr. Chairman: For every dollar we spend, 40 cents is borrowed. Now, if that was happening in your family, you would bring everybody to the kitchen table and you would say, Look, we have got to make some changes here. We can't continue to spend money the way we are doing. Today, the national debt is 90 percent of the GDP. Spending is approaching 24 percent of the GDP. That's a historic high. We can't get to a balanced budget with a spending gap that high above revenues, and yet that is what we are doing. That is why the Republican budget, the Ryan budget, not just reduces spending by $4 trillion, but changes the trajectory of spending. Because unless we change the pattern and we make some choices for the next generation, important programs like Social Security, like Medicaid, like Medicare, will not be there. Too often we hear from the liberals in Washington, D.C., the scare tactics: Well, Republicans hate seniors, they hate clean air, they hate education. And that's what we're seeing here tonight. In fact, yesterday the President tried to claim a mulligan on his budget. He actually introduced a budget in February and did not bring in one recommendation of his own deficit reduction commission. Even though I've seen a chart on the floor tonight about it. It sounds great, but it's not in the President's budget because it wasn't presented. We think it might be a good idea to use some of the recommendations of the deficit reduction commission, and that's what the Ryan budget does. But more importantly, it doesn't do anything to the important entitlement programs for anybody over the age of 55. Medicare will be there for them as it is today. But for younger people, it is not going to be there because it is going broke. That's why we need to make some changes. And giving them a subsidy to help them have more choices in Medicare is the way to save the program. That's just one of the many aspects of the Ryan budget, and it's well worth supporting.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the spending debate in Washington boils down to a couple of fundamentals: We spend 23 percent of our GDP; that is the level of spending of Congress. The revenues to GDP are only 18 percent. So you have a 5 percent difference in what your revenues are and what your spending is. Years of doing this means that, right now, for every dollar we spend, 40 cents is borrowed. You can't continue to defy gravity. This week, we will consider the Ryan budget. It has tax reform; it has spending reform; it has regulatory reform--all things that are very good. I'm glad to see that the President will be reintroducing another budget this week, because I think it's very important that if you do not like the Republican Ryan budget, that's fine, but put your budget on the table because surely the Democrat Party has some ideas. So far all we've heard from the Democrats is criticism. That's not good enough in times like these. We've got to come together as a country to do what's best not for the next election but for the next generation and, indeed, for our future.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, America is at a huge crossroads right now. We're in a situation that whenever we spend $1, 40 cents of it is borrowed. Our national debt is about 95 percent of our GDP. We are losing our edge as a global leader. It hurts our job creation, it smothers the private sector, and it denies you and me of some of our basic freedoms; because the bigger the government gets, the smaller your personal freedom gets. That's why the budget that has been introduced today is so worthy of a strong debate by both of us--both parties, that is. This is about the next generation, not about the next election. I urge my Democrat friends and my Republican friends to come together and do the best thing for the United States of America, not just for partisan politics of the day. We are Americans. We can do better. We can get this job done, and we must get this job done.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, can you imagine in your household if, for every $1 you spent, 40 cents was borrowed? Can you imagine if you were in that situation and didn't change your buying or your spending habits? That would be absurd. Yet that's what the U.S. Congress is doing. We've had a debate on a spending reduction of less than 2 percent. Yet, the way some people are screaming and hollering, you would think that we were cutting spending in half. This isn't about protecting programs and the status quo. This is about the next generation. Sit down, and tell your children: You know what? We've got a deficit of $1.6 trillion, and we've decided the tough decisions that are necessary to balance the budget aren't worth it for the next generation. That is not the America that you and I know and love. We deserve better. We can do better. It's time for Democrats and Republicans and independents to come together to do what is best for the United States of America, to not worry about the next election but to worry about the next generation.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, in the classic movie by Frank Capra called ``It's a Wonderful Life,'' the main character, the hero, played by Jimmy Stewart, contemplated the question of what would the world be like if you had not have lived. In his case, what would his town have been like. And I think that's the question we 435 Members of Congress have to answer: What would Congress be like if you were not serving? Would you go on spending money--right now, borrowing forty cents for every dollar we spend; a national debt of 96 percent of GDP; a deficit right now of $1.6 trillion. What if you had not served? Would it make a difference? That's what the debate is about right now. Eighty-seven new Members who came to Congress to change this spending habit, to say ``no,'' and Democrats and Republicans have their fingerprints on overspending, but it is now time for changing. There's another popular movie called ``The Blind Side'' in which the main character was drafted by Ole Miss University to protect the quarterback on his blind side. That's what these Members need to do, Mr. Speaker, is protect the blind side of the taxpayers from absolute disaster.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, what is the budget battle about? It is about our country; it is about our kids; and it is about our freedom. Imagine if you were borrowing 40 cents for every $1 that you spent in your household. You would change your purchasing habits. That's what this battle is about. Do we want to leave to our children a legacy of billions and billions of dollars in debt which they owe to China? That's what this budget battle is about. This is very important stuff. We have to put the politics of spending and positioning and about being Democrats and Republicans aside. We've got to do what's best for the next generation, not the next election. We need to come together and come up with commonsense solutions, because you and I as Americans, we can do better and we deserve to give our children better than what we're doing right now.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. KINGSTON. I have heard that. And I understand there is something like 150 other economists who have signed a letter to that effect that was led by John Taylor, who is an economist as well.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the chairman for the time. Madam Speaker, I want to make three very important points right off the bat: Number one, our debt is almost at 95 percent of the GDP. It's the highest debt we have ever had in history. Last year alone the deficit was $1.5 trillion. We are borrowing 40 cents for every $1 that we spend. Now, if you and I were doing that in our households or our business was doing it or anybody else, you would say, okay, we've got to change our spending habits. But somehow there are those in Congress who think that we can continue to defy the laws of gravity. We have got to get our house in order. Number two, why are we here? We are here because the Democrats last year did not pass a budget, did not pass appropriation bills, and did not complete their work on fiscal year 2011. That's what we're doing. We are trying to clean up the mess that was left to us. And in doing that, we are mindful of our financial situation and trying to reduce some of the spending. Number three, let me say this. This bill was passed with an open rule. Indeed, I believe we had 127 votes on different amendments. Democrats and Republicans offered a myriad of amendments. Now, for those who are complaining on the floor today that they don't like these cuts, why didn't they offer their amendments on the floor a couple of weeks ago? That would have been the way to do this. Now, the chairman and the Speaker have committed to have open rules throughout this process this year, and so there will be a lot of opportunities to go after some of these programs. And some of the ones that are mentioned, I think I will support those cuts. But I just want to emphasize that everyone has had a bite of this apple. Finally, let me just say this, Madam Speaker. The Zandi report comes from an economist, a political economist we might say, who was the same person who told us the stimulus bill would work, the stimulus bill would keep us from going to 8 percent unemployment. We reached 10 percent. I don't think we need to listen to any more of his advice.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the chairman.

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the chairman. I just want to say that I don't think that Mr. Zandi has any more credibility. We have already spent $800 billion on his advice that the stimulus program would work, and it did not work.