Jim Nussle

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman from Connecticut says there is no change in direction. Let me beg to differ. There is a lot of change in direction, a lot of change in direction in our economy. Our economy has, as many of us know and many people listening know who are out of work, who have had a difficult time with their jobs, small businesses that have not been able to make ends meet, they know that there has been a change in direction. We were heading in a downward path with our economy, but the last 6 months have been the strongest 6 months of growth within our economy in over 20 years. And why? Because we adopted the best fiscal policy we could at the time, and that was to say let us give the ability to create jobs to small business. What the Spratt substitute does, what the Democrats are rushing to the floor to claim today, is that right at the moment when we finally have seen a positive change in direction for our economy, let us give it a gut-punch. Let us kill the jobs. Let us kill small business with a tax increase, exactly at the wrong time. When you propose the tax increases of this budget, what you do is you kill the jobs, because 90 percent of small businesses pay at that rate that they want to increase. They want this automatic tax increase to occur. More than 80 percent of the increase in taxes on this top rate will be borne by small businesses; and in Manchester, Iowa, in South Carolina, in California and across the country, those are the businesses that are creating jobs. We do not want, we do not need, and we will not support a tax increase right at the moment when the country is getting back on its feet. Why do they propose a tax increase? Because they want more spending. So many of the Members over the last 2 days have come to the floor wringing their hands about the deficit. Oh, the deficit is so terrible; let's increase spending. Oh, the deficit is going to be passed on to our kids; but let us have more wasteful Washington spending. Oh, the deficit is terrible because it is going to promote all sorts of terrible things happening within our economy, but let us continue the spending. Spending and tax increases, spending and tax increases, on and on it goes. You would think over time they would come to the floor with a much more original budget than continuing tax increases and continuing big spending. It is about time that we finally realize in this country that when you are in a hole, you not only stop digging by controlling spending, but you stop digging in the pockets of the American family, the American farmer, the American small businessperson, who does the spending, who does the working, who does the toiling, that needs to be occurring in order to make this country great and continue the freedom and opportunity for our kids into the future. We have got to control spending. We do not want an automatic tax increase. Let us not support this substitute.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock), a member of the committee.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) so that he may respond.

Mr. NUSSLE. That is my understanding; and, therefore, I have no objection and believe that can be supported. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to myself. Mr. Chairman, there is not an economist in the country, not one economist who does not say that the economic recession that we had to face began under President Clinton. President George Bush inherited the recession from President Clinton. We worked to reduce it and get it back on a growth path, which we have done.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to myself. What an interesting concept. Let me review the concept the gentleman promoted from 1997.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry. Is it appropriate to make a request to expand that last minute by unanimous consent?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Let me just give my colleagues this again on veterans health care. Overall spending for veterans medical care has grown significantly in recent years. The Congressional Research Service estimates that it has increased from $17.8 billion in 1999 to $28.3 billion in 2004. That is 9 percent a year of increases, and we will continue that as we move forward into the future. Since 1999, spending on veterans medical care has increased from $16 billion to $28 billion a year, a 75 percent increase; and over the past 2 years, appropriation for veterans medical care increased rapidly, by 11 percent in last year alone. To come to the floor and suggest today that we are not meeting our promises to veterans is based on the veterans service organizations and what they call their independent budget. Look, I will tell my colleagues the same thing I tell them and tell my veterans at home. They, of course, have earned the right to request any amount they believe they deserve. That is not the issue. Of course they have the right to make that request. Our job, though, is to make sure that we fund and we make sure we are meeting the demands of veterans, and veterans under President Bush have gotten not only a promise fulfilled, but we are helping to ensure that the lines are shorter; that the care is better; and that it is delivered to as many veterans as possible under this bill. We continue that promise, and we do it at a faster rate than the other body. The veterans service organizations have been alerting Members because they thought mistakenly that the Senate had a higher number than the House. That is the reason that they were agitating over this; but when they have read it, when we have read it and when others independently have read it, they discovered that there are these unanticipated fees, unanticipated receipts, possibly means testing, possibly all sorts of things that are hidden in there in order to make that number look just a little bit bigger. Well, we are not going to do that to our veterans. We have already rejected that proposal; and as a result, the highest number that my colleagues can support is for the House base bill presented by the Republicans. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Modification to Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute No. 4

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, but just for clarification I would yield to my friend from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) under my reservation and just ask the question, Is there any bottom line impact on a monetary basis to the budget?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Okay, Members do not believe The Washington Post, we will go back to the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. The Washington Post may be understandably grumpy that Democrats are not standing with them, but we will get back to that in a minute. I want to show Members what was going on during the time when President Clinton was in charge of the VA budget. Look at that flat line. Look at that flat line for veterans. Look what happened when President Bush took office, look how we have been increasing it. It is one thing to come down here and claim what a terrible job Republicans are doing and what a terrible job that has meant for VA health care, but here are the facts: Under Republican control, under Republican Presidents, VA health care has gone up. But it is not just the number for health care, look at the number of veterans that we are serving. During this period of time, the budget authority for veterans' medical care, look how we are serving more veterans. Back during that Clinton period, which is the red period, we were not serving as many as we are now. That is why this is a good budget.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, we have no further requests for time, so if the gentleman from South Carolina would go ahead and close debate on the Spratt amendment, I will close on it as well.

Mr. NUSSLE. You mean to tell me that the words to this song are cut taxes and control spending and the deficit goes down. My goodness, what a novel concept. We should write a budget that says that. In fact, we have. We have written a budget which is the base bill today that reduces taxes, keeps them level; reduces spending, keeps it level; funds the priorities of national security; grows our economy; controls spending; and gives us deficit reduction. Exactly the words to the song, exactly the right music and the reason why you should support the Republican budget. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry. Does the gentleman ask unanimous consent to have this added on?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, we just heard an interesting speech about Medicaid cuts. So, on the one hand, it is okay when you put a Medicare cut into your budget, and then come to the floor and say, do not worry about the Medicare cut in the Democratic substitute, do not worry about that, look over here at the Republican budget where they are cutting Medicaid. Let me tell Members what is happening to Medicaid. Let us assume for a moment that was coming out of Medicaid, $2 billion was coming out of Medicaid. Sounds like a lot of money; it is a lot of money, particularly if you are a small business back home and people are trying to raise taxes. Let me show what happens to Medicaid with and without the reform. Instead of spending $1.15 trillion over the next 5 years, we are saying there are States out there that the Department of Health and Human Services has discovered are wasting or transferring approximately $9 billion per year of what the Secretary of Health and Human Services said were suspicious transfers or suspicious spending. Not one penny of that, he is claiming, is going to nursing homes or seniors, not one penny. He is saying it is suspicious because the States are playing games with that money. So what we say is, we want to look for that money and find out whether or not the States are doing that. We want to see if we can provide some of that savings, and we want to put it back into the program so it actually goes to nursing homes and actually goes to people who are in poverty or people who do not have health care or kids in the SCHIP program. So what we are saying within our budget is, when we find savings, because maybe some States are abusing this program or maybe others are abusing that program, let us take that waste and put it back into the budget so we have a better health care system for our people who are indigent.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, I would like to build on the comments by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) because he made them so well. In Washington, a cut, the definition of a cut and listen to this, if you ask for one thing and it is an increase and you do not quite get the increase you want, then you are cut. It is like my son, and I hope he is not listening. If my son came to me and he asked me for a $10-a-month allowance, and I only gave him an $8 allowance, would it be fair for him to scream that he was being cut $2? Of course not, because that is just not the way things work. It does not make sense. In Washington, however, when you do not get the anticipated increase you ask for, you can scream bloody murder that you have been cut. Unfortunately, time and time again Members come to the well or the floor here and they say we have been cut, we are gouging or we are eliminating spending, when in fact all we are saying is let us not grow as fast.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my remaining time in opposition be allowed to be split, 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), and that they be allowed to control that time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to myself. If facts are stubborn things, then why is it that you would increase taxes on those families you have just lamented $1.2 trillion over the course of the Democratic substitute, $1.2 trillion of tax increases. Why would we go through there? I thought, wait a minute, I thought the gentleman knew the song. He was talking the right words. He was saying the right words, but I thought he learned the music too. The music to this is reduce taxes, keep them low, keep spending under control, look for waste. That is what the budget that we have presented does, not increase taxes as the Democrat substitute does.

Mr. NUSSLE. My understanding, Mr. Chairman, is that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is going to go first, then myself, then the minority leader and then the Speaker, is I think how we are going to wrap up the debate. So I will allow the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina to begin the closing debate.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. First of all, I would like to extend my congratulations to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), who is my friend and colleague on the Committee on the Budget, for coming up with an alternative, the Democratic leadership substitute. As the gentleman knows and as I know, it is not easy to come up with a budget blueprint. As I said at the outset of the debate, it is like when that family or couple goes to visit the architect and they have to come to grips with exactly what they can afford and what they want as far as what the home looks like, what the layout looks like. And it is a hard job to set a blueprint, but without a blueprint, it is pretty tough when the carpenters show up to do their work. It is a mess if the budget is not set out ahead of time exactly where the budget needs to go and exactly how you are going to get there. That is why I compliment all Members who came today with a full budget substitute to the floor. I would also like to thank our staff which does an awesome job of preparing us for debate, and preparing the budget itself. Tom Kahn and Rich Meade from the minority and majority staffs, they keep us in line and give us good information. We appreciate the job that they do in getting us prepared for this, and they have more work to do getting us to a conference report between ourselves and the other body. And there is a difference between the sides of this aisle that we talk about that runs up and down the middle of this body; there is a difference in philosophy. That philosophy is going to come to bear today between the competition of these two budgets. One budget believes that we can continue spending at the rate we are spending in Washington, and it does not have the effect that we think on this side that it does. Another side believes that increasing taxes at this time in our economic situation is okay, is an appropriate part of the blueprint. I disagree. And we disagree on our side of the aisle. Raising taxes, increasing spending is not the recipe, is not the blueprint at this time for our Federal budget or for our economy. And why is that? Unfortunately, over the last 2 days, so many Members have come to the floor and have blamed tax cuts for everything. My goodness. I even heard, believe it or not, there were Members who came to the floor and said we were cutting volleyball teams because of tax cuts for the wealthy and all sorts of things like that. That is not only not in our budget, it is probably not in anyone's budget. Tax cuts did not cause the deficit. As Members can see from this chart, the tax cuts only took us down a little bit. And why did we cut taxes? We did not just put this white wedge in there for no reason. There is a reason we reduced taxes. Because when President Bush inherited the recession from the previous administration, we had to act. We had to make a decision about what we were going to do with regard to the economy. We made a decision. It was philosophically opposed by the other side; but we can respect that, that people, families, farmers, businesspeople, workers, laborers, men, women, old, young, rich, poor, whatever it is, they spend their money more wisely than the government can for them. And if you let them keep that money and you let them spend that money and you let them work with that money and invest that money, they do a far better job of getting that economy going than anything the government has ever been able to do. What are the results of reducing taxes that did not cause those deficits? Look what has happened to the economy. The last 6 months have been the fastest growing 6 months that our economy has seen in 20 years, 6 months of sustained, gigantic economic growth. People will say, where are the jobs? There is not an economist in the country that does not tell you that the very last thing that people do with their money is invest in job creation. Most of the other things that happen to start the economy going, it does not have so much to do with job creation. It is what is called a lagging indicator. It is about time for that lagging indicator to start heading in the right direction, and it is. And just at that moment, just at that moment when the economy is ready to recover and jobs are just now starting to be created is not the time to come in with a gut punch to the economy and say, let us raise taxes on the very people who are increasing those jobs, who are putting on those extra people, who are taking the risk when they open that store in the morning and saying, I want to hire another person to work next to me. That is not the time to increase taxes, particularly because we do not need those taxes out here. We do not need it for extra spending. Our budget says, Let's level-fund the government. Let's fund security, let's make sure we have got a strong America, let's make sure homeland security and national defense are funded, let's make sure we fund those priorities that keep us strong; but let's not increase spending for all of these wasteful things. It is just like any family, any business, any farmer sitting around their kitchen table right now trying to figure out how to make ends meet. They will say to themselves, Honey, what can we put off till next week, till next month, to next year, maybe even longer? Maybe we can take a vacation a little closer to home. Maybe we can do some things to trim some of the expenses. Maybe we can do some things that make more sense than continuing to add to that spending. That is all we are asking our colleagues to do. It is common sense. But for some reason in Washington that common sense is often missed. We define compassion in Washington by how much you are willing to spend. I have even fallen into that trap today. I have to confess that I have even fallen into that trap today, trying to convince veterans that because we are spending more money we must care more. That is not the definition. Or because we are spending more money in education, that somehow we care more. That is not the definition. Or somehow if we spend more money on farmers or spend more money on seniors or spend more money here or spend more money there, somehow that defines compassion. It does not. Oftentimes that money is wasted and wasted in ways that just frustrate the very people we are trying to help. So let us not kill the jobs at the very moment in time. Spending is out of control. Before we even talk about another year's budget, look where we have come. Every single year, more and more and more spending. Where does that money come from? It comes from the pocketbooks of every American in this country. And so when the Democrats come to the floor and they say, When you're in a hole, stop digging, I say to you, We are stopping the digging. We are holding the line on spending. What I want you to do is stop digging in the pockets of families, farmers, ranchers, small businesspeople, and Americans across the country who are tired of paying more and more for wasteful Washington spending. They are saying enough is enough, do with what you can, with what we have sent you, do a better job with what you already have. Do not ask us for more. That is why our budget does not increase taxes; it holds the line on spending. It says, let's look through the garden of all the different programs of our country and let's start looking for those weeds, let's start pulling those weeds, let's look for the waste, let's look for ways to trim that spending, just like every family and business across the country. We have had way too much spending that we are building on from the past. One last thing I want to talk about on spending quickly. Oftentimes Members will hear that we are cutting spending, but in Washington, it is a code word. It is a code word for decreasing an anticipated increase. It is just like when my son comes to me and says, Dad, I want 10 bucks a week for allowance and I only give him 8. Is it fair for him to scream that that is a $2 cut? No, of course it is not. Only in Washington would a decrease in an anticipated increase or a desired increase or a wanted increase be called a cut. All of these accounts that we have been spending money on, many of which have been increasing at astronomical rates, we are building on a huge baseline as we move forward. Last but not least, let me just say that I believe that this budget that we have put together does not do harm to our Nation's security. The most important issue, job one, is making sure our country's freedom is protected. If we are not free, there is not a word of this discussion that has made any difference at all, on my side or yours. If our country is not free, if we are not protected, if we are not strong, it does not matter what we do here today. So vote for the underlying Republican budget, vote against the Spratt substitute, and let us make sure that we get to a balanced budget in the very near future.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment in the nature of a substitute, and claim the time in opposition. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that half of the time I have claimed in opposition be yielded to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) for purposes of control.

Mr. NUSSLE. If the gentleman would permit me, I would say the same about the majority staff and all of our staff, and the members of our floor staff that are here that have endured the discussion over the last number of days. I hope they got their ``millions'' and ``billions'' all in the right places. We appreciate their help as we moved through this debate

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. The Washington Post has something to say about all of this discussion on veterans, and let me just read this to my colleagues because The Washington Post, I do not think anybody would accuse The Washington Post of being somehow shilling for the Republican Party. It says here, in fact, in an article on March 24, just yesterday, ``Veterans Funding Dispute not a Simple Matter,'' is the headline. And it says, in fact, Bush has never cut the agency's budget: ``The President has proposed increasing its discretionary budget, funding for programs not required by law, in each of his annual budget proposals.'' In fact, it goes on to say: ``The bulk of that money would go to the agency's health care programs. Over the course of his administration, Bush, along with Congress, has increased that portion of the agency's budget by $7 billion.'' Now, again, there has been CBO discussion, there has been OMB discussion, there has been veterans discussion. This bill, that bill. Listen to The Washington Post. They even say our budget is not cutting funding for veterans.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, at this time I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Brown), a distinguished member of our committee). (Mr. BROWN of South Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)