Earl Pomeroy

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to begin by offering the comment that on any tax measure brought to the floor of this House, I believe it is entirely appropriate to discuss the larger budget framework facing this country, the out-of-control deficit, the record level of deficit leading to records of levels of debt leading to the impending vote on debt limit. These are all very serious financial matters before the country and brought obviously germane to any discussion of tax cuts, even the one before us. But I want to speak in favor of this bill. I would have preferred that an offset be included, offsetting the cost of this bill. But, nonetheless, this is a very measured, targeted, and important piece of social policy; and it strikes me right where I live. On February 3, 1994, I was a freshman Member of this body. My workday ended with a drive to National Airport where my daughter came off the plane from Korea, my daughter, Kathryn, adopted daughter Kathryn; and it was the greatest day of my life, until May 29, 1996, when in another trip after another day out to National Airport brought me face to face for the first time with my baby boy, Scott. These children have enriched my life more than anything else possibly could and beyond my wildest imagination. Each day with them is a pure joy. I now know, and am learning later than most, what a complete and fabulous adventure parenthood can be and how deeply satisfying it is to the very fundamental purpose of life. I speak that from a parent's perspective. But I also care so deeply about the perspective of little children, little children who need homes, need families to love them. I especially am concerned about children in circumstances where placement has been difficult: special needs children, slightly older children, children that would pose for families considering adoption higher costs than an infant adoption. Because I think this experience is so profound and fundamental to life experience, the business of having children who need homes, connected with parents who will love them and raise them as their own, I certainly do not want financial barriers getting in the way. In the course of activity of recent years, we have moved in place an adoption tax credit, $5,000. We have now moved to double it. And with this action today, we would move to make it permanent. I think that is precisely what we need to do. We must not bar families from this experience because of their inability to front the significant up-front costs now ranging from $8,000 to $30,000 per adoption. And my belief is that one would have to look long and hard to find an adoption agency for placement less than $15,000. So these are very significant costs. This tax credit will not cover all of them in the great majority of cases, but it will make a difference. This will make a critical difference in allowing families to participate in the miracle of adoption that otherwise would not be available. I want to commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp), who in particular over the years has led this Congress and earlier Congresses in breaking down barriers that have kept kids in indeterminate status, in foster care arrangements with no certainty, no stability. He has, with earlier legislation, made it possible, I believe, to significantly change the national priority and move toward children's interests first, children interests, that being part of a permanent family. The financial piece of this follows along with this legislation. I think it dovetails very nicely with the gentleman's earlier work. So I ask that we put aside partisanship on the question of the bill before us. We certainly have much to discuss about the budget, as I mentioned at the outset; but this is important social legislation, the business of building families through the miracle of adoption, linking parents or would-be parents desiring to play out that role in a little one's life with children who need and want more than anything families to love them and raise them. This is good social policy. This is something we can agree on. Let us help it along with this tax credit, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, again I support the underlying proposition before us, but there are remarks made about a national sales tax that I simply have to respond to, representing a rural area like I do. The principal industry in North Dakota is agriculture. Agriculture is based upon family farming. The economics behind a family farm are pretty interesting. Every year, these families essentially stake about everything they have got on making equipment payments, making land purchases, buying the inputs to get the crop in, the seed, the fertilizer, the gas to run the tractor. You are not going to find for a family-sized small business, I do not think, an undertaking beyond family farming where there is so much money that goes out the door and into the ground with the hope that you are going to have a crop come around harvest time and have something to make up those costs with. Why go into that is because, just think of it for a minute, suddenly you are going to add about a 23 cent per dollar hit on a national sales tax. You could not come up with a worse scheme if you imagined to knock family farmers out of business all across this country. I believe it would absolutely be a catastrophe to family farmers and to rural America. Underlying the principle further is the whole notion that we should tax wages, not wealth. The gentleman talks about leaving the payroll tax intact. But for someone living comfortably on trust fund income, zero tax on those earnings; and then a tax, of course, on consumption, like everyone else would have. What is at stake here is an effort to make incredibly regressive changes to the Tax Code so that the moderate-income families, the middle-income families in this country, suddenly assume a significantly new burden in terms of additional taxes away from the most affluent few. You would think the changes already made, that have been documented to be so regressive in character, would already have been enough to satisfy this appetite. But there seems to be no limit to what they want to do in terms of increasing burden on the middle- and moderate-income families, while giving a pass to the most-affluent few. When it comes to a particular industry, one I know well, agriculture, this would be a death knell for family farming all across the country. This national sales tax proposition is very bad business. Let us not let this concept take root, even in a discussion this afternoon on the adoption tax credit. This national sales tax is bad, bad business.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to say that I will be voting for H.R. 5006, the fiscal year 2005 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations bill, but doing so with some reluctance. While I support many of the funding provisions in this legislation, I also believe that this bill shortchanges many important needs in education and health care. Almost three years after the historic No Child Left Behind legislation was passed into law, I remain concerned about Congress' ongoing failure to commit the resources promised to our Nation's teachers, parents and students. While I support the intentions of the education reform promise to leave no child behind, I am also convinced that the success of this new law will be determined in part by the investment made in this historic reform effort. I am deeply disappointed that this funding plan falls more than $7.2 billion short of the resources promised for low-income and disadvantaged districts, thereby making up the vast majority of the total $9.5 billion NCLB shortfall contained in the bill. Not only does this bill fall short on critical funding for education, but it also makes cuts to the Rural Hospital Flexibility and Outreach grant programs, important resources to North Dakota health care providers. It is my understanding that Chairman Regula has committed to work to restore this funding in conference, and I intend to actively support those efforts. Certainly, this bill includes many provisions that I applaud. While I was pleased that the Rural Education Achievement Program once again received funding to help rural districts manage the No Child Left Behind Act's new accountability requirements, I strongly believe this program merits an increase in funding. I was also pleased that this bill restores the federal overtime protections to six million workers who saw their overtime pay threatened by the Department of Labor's new rules. Ultimately, I cast my vote in favor of this legislation in order to ensure that the appropriations process could move forward. I remain hopeful that the Senate will include higher funding levels for these programs and that we can work on a bipartisan basis to develop a fiscally responsible funding plan that provides adequate resources to strengthen our schools, address our public health needs, and support our Nation's workers.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise to engage in a colloquy with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. Chairman, I rise on behalf of the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass), the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) and Resident Commissioner, the gentleman from Puerto Rico (Mr. Acevedo-Vila) to discuss an issue that is critical to our districts, air traffic control training programs. As you know, the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative, also known as CTI, is a successful program that provides the Federal Aviation Administration an educated pool of candidates to meet its air traffic controller staffing needs. I am proud to inform you that the University of North Dakota's air traffic controller program is one of the 13 FAA approved and certified CTI programs that graduates exemplary students ready for assignment with the FAA. As a strong supporter of the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative Program, I am concerned that the proposed report language in fiscal year 2005 House, Transportation and Related Agencies appropriation bill may effect the current role CTI programs play in the Federal Aviation Administration's training process. Some may read this report language as requiring all new air traffic controllers to receive their initial training at the FAA Academy. I would appreciate the chairman's confirmation that this proposed report directive does not jeopardize the status of CTI programs as an integral part of the FAA's training process.

Mr. POMEROY. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, that was a very important clarification for us. I thank the gentleman for participating in it.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I find this agreement to be somewhat of a close call. But where I come from we have an expression ``once burned, twice cautious.'' We are a major producer of wheat, and yet our farmers compete not just against the wheat farmers of other countries. In some instances, they compete against their governments as well, because their governments countenance a monopoly marketing mechanism called wheat board. When the Canadian Wheat Board was allowed to continue its operations in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement, what unleashed upon our farmers was a dramatically unfair set of circumstances that have left them at a disadvantage and cost them markets and market value to the loss of millions and millions of dollars. The U.S. Trade Representative has announced his opposition to state trading enterprises like the Canadian Wheat Board, but in this agreement we see the Australian Wheat Board, a very similar state trading enterprise, being allowed to continue without mention in the agreement. Unfortunately, this leads me to conclude this agreement should not go forward. We need more action against state trading enterprises.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, this proposal would allow a vote on the Senate to reduce the House 302(b) allocation. A vote on the Senate reduces our allocation. This is an absurd idea on its face. But it perverts the name ``lockbox.'' Previously we all agreed on lockbox. Lockbox meant we did not spend Social Security, we did not spend Medicare revenues on anything but Social Security and Medicare. The deficit policies of the majority now spend every nickel of the surplus of Social Security and Medicare, every nickel; $500 billion this year alone. They want to get up on the floor of the House and talk about creating this Mickey Mouse lockbox of theirs to capture fruit fly spending. It is ridiculous. Let us talk about the real issue: blowing all the revenues of Social Security, all the revenues of Medicare, all of the surplus intended to strengthen these programs, gone because of runaway deficit spending, the absolute core result of Republican fiscal policies. Rather than pass a budget to deal responsibly with beginning to get us out of this hole, they put us through this charade tonight. Shame on my colleagues. Defeat this amendment.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I think it is useful to put this debate into perspective: enthusiastic ideas about how the budget process can work; talking about building a new house for the construction of the Nation's budget. It reminds me of a contractor that you might hire that has left the house in utter shambles, the project nowhere done, no hope of completion, yet he wants to talk to you about the next house, the next project. We do not have a budget. We have a Republican President, we have a Republican Senate, we have a Republican House, and they cannot pass a budget. So what is the amendment before us? It says we have to have a concurrent law for a budget. That will make it all right. Mr. Chairman, if we just took all of this time and put it to work in trying to get a budget; after all, it should not be so hard: Republican controlled, Republican controlled, Republican controlled. If they just did the task in front of them, that would be a really good place to start. And in the absence of getting the budget done, all of the rest of this does not mean anything.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I have a lot of respect for the sponsor of this amendment and the gentleman who just spoke, but let me make it very clear. There is nothing moderate about this proposal. Not to be too graphic, but imagine going to the deli. The person puts that little ham or turkey up there and an automatic slicer starts going. Just imagine further that the slicer keeps going until the hand goes into the slicer, up to the wrist, up to the forearm. Not a pretty picture. This is the budget equivalent that is created in this bill. It puts automatic cuts in place by a process and then those cuts cut and they cut. They cut the fat, they cut the skin, they cut the meat, they cut the bone. They cut and they cut and they cut. Entitlement caps under this proposal would devastate so many programs: Medicaid, medical assistance to the poor, estimated cut at $175 billion. The President of the American Legion has written to express his profound concern about entitlement caps, as well he should because the projected cuts of the Kirk proposal, $28 military retirement and disability, $22 billion veterans' benefits, TRICARE for life, $6 billion. We also see student loans once again taking a hit. They also hard freeze other programs, discretionary programs, no inflation. That means again put the automatic slicer in place and the cuts start happening. The cuts under that proposal alone on discretionary programs would take, as a proportion of the Federal Government discretionary program, spending down to a level not seen since Herbert Hoover was President. Herbert Hoover was a Republican. And he was the last Republican other than the existing President to have a job loss under their administration. It appears that this is no accident. Herbert Hoover seems to be someone that they aspire to, because this economic plan takes the Federal Government to the days of Herbert Hoover. There is nothing moderate about it. Reject it.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, we have a lot of energetic young legislators earnestly talking about budgets. I have got some advice for them. We do not have a budget this year. Their party, Republican party, controls the White House. They are part of the House majority. Their party controls the Senate. All these high-falutin ideas you bundled in this bill are not going to go anywhere. You ought to put your efforts where it might matter, getting a budget this year, getting a budget this year. The majority cannot produce a budget this year, and yet they run us out on a day-long adventure full of ill-founded ideas. The gentleman from Texas speaks movingly about a budget, but in reality what he is proposing is very close scrutiny. I do not think I have seen a more irresponsible budget plan proposed in this House. He would propose excruciating cuts on essential programs while allowing any tax cut that might ever be passed irrespective of consequences to the deficit to go without check. What are the spending cuts proposed? The Center For Budget Priorities analyzes that over 10 years, $674 billion in Medicare reduction. At time when we are in the military conflict, they come after veterans with a vengeance: military retirement, $56 billion in cuts; veterans benefits, $45 billion in cuts; TRICARE For Life, $11 billion for cuts. These are calculated on the proportional reductions that you have to make across mandatory spending programs that I know do not stop there. Nutrition programs for the little children of this country, reduced $19 billion in the gentleman's proposal. Cutting food for children. Beyond that, student loans. At a time when our college tuitions are soaring, as our families know all across the country, proportional reductions would be $9 billion in student loan funding. I believe this is a mean-spirited, ill-advised amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I have no malice at my friends on the other side, but this is no laughing matter. They do not have a budget under the Budget Act without the House and the Senate passing versions, coming to agreement in conference committee and passing the final budget.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. We would have liked the opportunity to present an amendment to this bill that teed up cleanly the prospects of pay-as-you-go, including both the revenue and spending sides. Remember, pay-as-you-go on spending. That does not mean anything, because a budget is revenue and a budget is outflow. If you only do outflow without revenue, you will never get to balance. Never get to balance. It is not even a serious effort. What did they do to the request we had to have a clean vote on it, the request by the Blue Dogs? They did not make it in order in the Committee on Rules. We have been working the last several hours through 19 amendments. They have made every cockamamie idea under the sun in order. But when we wanted to have a straight pay-as-you-go to address this budget deficit, it was not made in order. It again shows why I believe the underlying bill is not a serious effort in budgeting whatsoever, and the effort put forward by my friend and colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), represents an alternative in a bad situation. That is a situation we should support.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Chairman, this is one fine exercise in utter budget hypocrisy. The crowd in charge of this House has failed to produce a budget. We have no budget agreement with the Senate, it remains deadlocked in conference committee, and now they direct us to spend an afternoon on the floor in this charade of an exercise in budget responsibility. The budget debate has been something to watch. It has been contentious, it has been mean, it has turned personal, and that is just between the Republicans. They control the White House, they control the House, they control the Senate, and they have not produced a budget. No party has had solid control of all three points of power and not produced a budget in years and years and years. Yet, rather than resolve that naughty little issue of not having a budget, they come to the floor and preen about with this budget enforcement resolution. It is a joke. If on the face of it, it was not ridiculous already, just look behind the circumstances, briefly. The people who have brought this to the floor are the people who have pushed this country deeply into deficits, spiraling deficits that have forced us to increase the national borrowing limit of our Nation twice because we have hit the credit limit of the United States of America. Yesterday they put one in, and this week they have put a place-holder in to raise it yet a third time, bringing debt borrowing authority to over $8 trillion. We are screaming in red ink, and they cannot get a budget. Secondly, they bring a sham PAYGO requirement up that has nothing to do with revenues. Can my colleagues imagine a family trying to get a hold of their finances saying, honey, we have to cut back on the expenses, but because we do not count the revenue side, I am going to half-time at work because I do not want to put in so many hours. Of course you cannot balance a budget without looking at spending, without looking at revenue, but that is expressly prohibited under their PAYGO requirement. This is a sham. It is an embarrassment to this House. Reject it.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, my thoughts and prayers go out to Mrs. Reagan and her family as our nation mourns the loss of President Reagan. Our nation has lost a leader. President Reagan inspired Americans to a higher purpose. He believed, and led all Americans to believe, that our country could be the ``shining city on the hill.'' It was his spirit and faith in American values that helped reinforce America's faith in itself. I was serving in the North Dakota Legislature on the day President Reagan was shot. I remember the somber atmosphere and deep concern from Republicans and Democrats alike as legislators gathered around a television anxiously awaiting word on the President's condition. With characteristic optimism, President Reagan went on to recover from his wounds and continue to lead the nation as our President. President Reagan's passing brings us sadness at the loss of an American leader, but reminds all of us of his lasting legacy of service to our nation.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we should pass this bill. It is a good bill. We should simplify the Tax Code for seniors. That effort has been well under way. I am very pleased the IRS has had the work focus group tested so they have been able to draw direct feedback from senior constituents representative of those who will now be using the new form. I am pleased to vote for this bill. I, just again, to put it all in perspective, let us not be claiming too much credit here. This effort was well under way, but it is a good thing to do. Let us do it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, back in North Dakota people chuckle about the story of the chicken who was absolutely convinced that dawn arrived as a consequence of his crowing. Well, we have heard some crowing today. And the reality is we are going to have a simplified tax form for seniors. In fact, the Treasury Department has published it, shown us what it is going to look like. All this without a congressional bill. But what the heck. It is a good idea so let us join the party and quickly pass this bill. I would like to straighten out a couple of things. It is not, as my friend and colleague on the Committee on Ways and Means said, that over the last 10 years of Republican majority in this House they have marched steadfastly towards the goal of tax simplification. Well, we all know the reality is a bit different. Hundreds of pages have been added to the Tax Code. It is more complex than ever. Things phase in; things phase out. It is a nightmare. And so I am really delighted to hear both sides of the aisle talking about tax simplification. I believe this is precisely something we need to do. Now, while the 1040EZ was crafted essentially to capture those that are just basically reporting their W-2 statements, single people or married, wage earners without children, it has done a good job of that. Obviously, senior citizens fall into a different bracket. They have been using the 1040A, which is another simplified form; but we can improve on the 1040A. I am very pleased that the commissioner of the IRS has demonstrated leadership once again with this 1040S, which I think will be a much better form. To help illustrate the order of events here, this bill before us, H.R. 4109, was introduced, but in the end was not consistent with the work under way at Treasury and IRS to develop a new IRS form. So H.R. 4109 was amended to reflect precisely the work being already done at Treasury. Well, let us salute them for a job well done. I guess we could clap them on the back with a resolution of congratulations. Instead, we will demonstrate our fervor by passing this legislative directive under the suspension bill. All of that really does not matter. What matters is that we get a simpler form that is going to help seniors, make it easier than ever for seniors filing their taxes. That is what this resolution does. That is why I am going to vote for it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am very worried that somebody might hurt themselves patting themselves on the back on this one so let me put this in perspective. What we are about to legislate is a congressional directive to the Treasury Department, to the agency overseeing the IRS, to do what the IRS is doing. We are all for simplified tax forms for seniors, and I will be happy to support this legislation. I will go into the detail of it in a minute. I have got before me and I will offer as an exhibit in the Record a sample form released by the Treasury Department yesterday which is precisely the subject of the legislation before us. In other words, in this instance, Congress appears to be scrambling to try and get in front of the parade that is already well under way. We have prospects, I believe, of bringing this online with or without this legislation. But because everyone is for tax simplification for seniors, I urge my colleagues to vote for it. To correct any misunderstandings, seniors are not presently precluded from using the 1040EZ form. On the other hand, it does not capture a senior citizen deduction relevant to their needs. That is why seniors using simplified forms tend to use the form 1040A. It is a simplified form, 20 million Americans use it, a number of them seniors; but it includes items not relevant to seniors' taxable situations. Items like educator expenses, student loan interest, tuition and fees deductions, these are extra lines on here. They are very clear what they purport to mean, but they are irrelevant to a senior's considerations. So the IRS, under the leadership of Commissioner Mark Everson, has developed a form that is simple, two pages, captures the sources of income commonly reported by seniors, including investment income, pension, interest, dividend income, capital gains and losses. It includes all of that, but still in a simplified form with a larger font to make it a little more readable for seniors. I commend the commissioner for his leadership of the IRS. I believe that he has taken steps to improve its service to taxpayers while improving compliance with the Tax Code by the taxpayers. I am very heartened about the stepped-up targeted audit activities geared toward large corporate concerns that have been routinely cheating on the Tax Code. I also commend him for this particular initiative simplifying the Tax Code for seniors. I guess we in Congress thought it was such a good idea we are scrambling to get a little bit of the credit ourselves. So I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and commend the gentleman as well as the chairman for what is a very interesting debate with some technical sophistication on the business of how we expand health insurance in the small business environment. Let me begin by explaining briefly how purchase decisions work in a small business, unlike General Electric. General Electric has a human resources department. They have actuaries on contract. They can thoroughly do due diligence on any health insurance program they are evaluating for their employees. Our Own Hardware store in Valley City, North Dakota, my hometown, is quite different. There is one business proprietor, may a half a dozen or a dozen employees, and when he sits down to visit with a person promoting a health insurance program, he does not have an ability to evaluate the rating scheme. He does not have an ability to assess the adequacy of the fairness of the medical underwriting. That Our Own Hardware store does not have the ability to determine whether the company is solvent and reserving adequately to pay future claims, the Our Own Hardware does not have to do that because when they sell health insurance now, it is regulated. We have a State insurance department that does that. That used to be my job. And the State insurance commissioners across this country are in their offices every day making certain that the presentations to the Our Own Hardware stores represents a product that is going to be there when they need it. When we buy insurance, we pay premiums today with the hope of getting the claim paid tomorrow, and that means we have to have a reliable entity on the other end. That is what regulation brings us. The bill before us would depart from that. They would basically substantially do away with State solvency checks, with the State regulation on underwriting criteria, with the assessment of whether or not the rating is fair. I believe there would be very, very damaging results. In order to bring the cost of insurance down, we have seen self-regulated companies like the AHPs try to cheat on the business of paying claims. They do not have the capital to pay the claims when the claims come due. In fact, the most recent version of the AHPs that have been out there, these MEWAs, the insurance commissioners tell us they left more than 400,000 people holding the bag with medical claims but no insurance company to pay them. The majority talks a lot about trying to get coverage to those who do not have it. You sure do not want to give people the illusion of coverage that is not real because they count on that company in paying the claim. And what we see with these self-regulated outfits, when you need them, they are not there. They have taken your money and they have left. So not only does it fail in a meaningful way to get coverage to those who need it, it undercuts the coverage of those who already have insurance. In fact, the estimate from the actuarial firm that a million would lose their coverage is yet another solid reason why we should not take this path and adopt the AHPs. Vote ``no'' on this measure.

Mr. POMEROY

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we know that we have a very large problem facing this Congress: we cannot pass a budget. We have got a budget that has passed the House, a budget that has passed the Senate, but an absolute train wreck in conference committee with neither side indicating any indication to reach compromise and finish the budget process. The motion that we have before us, we believe, unlocks this problem. It would have the House pass the motion to instruct conferees relative to the PAYGO requirement, a requirement I will explain more fully in a moment. This passed the Senate and is now, I believe, the key to getting this resolved, will we have the PAYGO budget enforcement provision as part of the budget. Quite frankly, it appears very possible that without embracing some kind of bipartisan step toward budget discipline along the pay-as-you-go requirement, this House, this Congress, will not be able to pass a budget. Obviously, with the President, the Senate and the House in one-party control, one would not expect that that would be the result, but that is the result without some movement toward budget discipline. Why has budget discipline become so central to the budget debate? I have got some charts that illustrate in very painful fashion what has happened to the Federal budget during the last 3\1/2\ years. This chart captures the skyrocketing deficit from years 2002 to projected end of year 2004. What we see is a budget spinning entirely out of control, an absolute hemorrhage of red ink with Congress now spending more than $1 billion a day more than it takes in. This all accumulates in the national debt, a soaring burden for our country and the next generation. If that chart captured the whole story, it would be very dangerous and frightening. I hate to tell you this, but the story is actually worse than that. Because of budget rules, the full exploding nature of the tax cuts which throw our budget even more radically out of budget occurs after the measurement period of this budget debate. This chart captures that. The budget before us covers the first 5 years. What happens in the next 5 reveals the dirty little secret of their budget plan, skyrocketing red ink, a budget more out of balance than ever before, just at the period of time baby boomers leave the workforce, move into retirement, each one carrying a guarantee from the Federal Government that Social Security will be paid, that Medicare will be paid. Knowing how many baby boomers there are relative to the rest of the population, the obvious thing for this country to do is pre-position and improve the fiscal condition of this country so that we are ready to take the tremendous hit entitlement spending will bring when baby boomers retire. My colleagues can see what we are doing: exactly the opposite. It is fiscal lunacy as we borrow in ever-radical fashion just before baby boomers retire. The long-term trend here, assuming the administration budget policies, AMT reform and the ongoing war costs take us to a national debt situation of $14.8 trillion by the year 2014. The debt service cost on that alone is $400 billion, just in interest costs. So this is a very, very serious problem. It is a fiscal catastrophe that has been foisted upon this country. The only thing to do is to begin to deal with it. This is not the first time the country has had budget problems. It is not the first time we have had people of good will trying to reach across a partisan aisle and come up with some answers. The pay-as-you- go requirement, in fact, that is before the House with this motion was initiated in a budget conference convened by President George Bush, not this President George Bush, his father, George H.W. Bush. They came upon a fairly basic budget enforcement mechanism. In light of not wanting to make the budget situation any worse, they agreed that a pay- as-you-go requirement would apply. What does that mean? That means if you spend more, you are going to have to find the money to pay for it. You are going to have to either cut spending, or you are going to have to raise revenue. Also on the revenue side, if you cut taxes and reduce the inflow of revenue, you are going to have to deal with it. You are going to have to show at that time where the spending cuts are going to come that offset the revenue loss or what other revenue increases you would have to offset that revenue loss. This was ultimately adopted in a bipartisan vote in 1990. Many believed it was an extraordinarily important contribution to national budget discipline. Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke about the need to get such tools back in the budget process in his testimony to Congress just within recent weeks. After the 1990 agreement, this thing started to show that it really could work. The budget picture continued to improve. In the budget vote of 1993, the budget votes thereafter, the bipartisan balanced budget agreement of 1997, the pay-as-you-go requirement was affirmed no fewer than two additional times by bipartisan votes of Congress. There is some confusion, I believe, raised by some of the arguments that I have heard coming from majority leadership that those early pay-as-you-go requirements were not applicable to the revenue side. That was misinformation. I have the language of the earlier pay-as-you-go requirements with me, and I am prepared to debate on the floor of this House the applicability of those earlier pay-as-you-go requirements to the motion before us. The motion is the same. And so to my friends in the majority who are inclined to look at this very carefully, thinking about their earlier votes back in 1995 and 1997 in favor of the pay-as- you-go requirement, I am telling you that you have done this before, and now we need to do it again. We need to do it again worse than ever in light of the budget situation. That is the motion we have before us. This motion has had two very close votes. When it was offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson) last spring, it was a tie vote, 209-209. Last week, a similarly very close vote on an identical motion brought by the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), that one failing 208-215, although we have been informed that some of those voting late in the balloting against this bill were led to believe that the motion before us was different than the pay-as-you-go requirement they had voted for in the 90s. Let the record be very clear on this. The motion before us on this pay-as-you-go requirement would reinstate the same pay-as-you-go requirement that we had in the 90s that many of my colleagues have voted for before. We have got a situation where we are going to leave our children with this as the legacy, or we are going to have to come to some kind of awakening and recognize it is time for us in a bipartisan way to begin to assault this monster. The way to do it is by reinstating budget discipline. For that reason, I urge very careful consideration of the motion I have put before us. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting bit of economic history there, but I would put forward a different view. Which economy worked best, the economy of the nineties, when you had pay as you go, or the economy of this decade, so far a very stalling, disappointing economy? Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I consume. To have the effort to break loose the budget stalemate in conference committee by having our House pass something similar to what the Senate in a bipartisan vote passed is a serious effort. Obviously they are taking it pretty seriously. They have the chairman of the Committee on the Budget on the floor. And rather than rebut the rather painful underlying reality about the Nation slipping into what would almost appear to be an irreversible hemorrhage of red ink, in very bellicose and sarcastic tones, he wants to point at individual votes and accuse other Members of hypocrisy. I guess that is kind of a refuge when they do not have arguments on the issue, let us blow a little smoke, let us have a little fun, let us throw a little political rhetoric around. But this deserves so much more than that. I would say to my friend from Iowa, it is not ruining printers that concerns me, it is ruining the Nation. And I really do believe that the red ink that we are generating and continuing in escalating fashion as the baby boomers move into retirement is a dire threat to the future of our country. I believe that you have already put us on a path, with you serving in your leadership as position as Committee on the Budget chairman, working with the administration, working with the Senate Budget Committee, to diminish the prospects of our children by so undermining the fiscal strength of our country.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as required to close and I will speak from the other podium. I thank my friend from Iowa, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, for joining in this spirited debate, but to any one of our colleagues watching, there is something that we know for sure and that is that bluster does not cover facts. Energetic presentation of lots and lots of stuff does not mask an economic record reflected in these charts. This is what has happened to the deficit during the last 2 years, and this is where we are going over the next 10 years. Now, what we are seeking with this motion is budget enforcement ability to try and level out this deeply alarming trend line on national debt. Pay-as-you-go means that if you spend more, you have got to cut somewhere else; or if you cut taxes, you have got to cut spending and show where you do it; or if you cut taxes, you have got to raise taxes somewhere else. It has all got to work out in a zero-sum game. You cannot continue to make the budget situation worse. We can get lost in the economics and the numbers, but I think it is helpful to just think of it this way. We pay as you go now, or our kids pay when we go later, because these things are not balancing out. Representations that tax cuts are producing more revenue are not at all borne out. The Federal revenues from individual income taxes in the year 2000 was $1.4 trillion. The 2004 estimate is $765 billion, almost down a quarter. As you have revenues fall so precipitously, you have had the debt line grow so significantly. We have had some job numbers thrown out. The fact is we are down 1.6 million jobs. This administration is the first administration on track to have a net loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover was President, but those are issues for another day. Let us just understand that if you like the economy of the 1990s better than the economy we have seen this decade, realize that throughout the 1990s we had pay-as-you-go budget enforcement, which meant we were trying to get a handle on national debt. We have absolutely lost our way when it comes to fiscal sanity, and that is why we have had this explosion of debt, a deficit leading to debt, and we have got to get our hands around it. So I believe that if this House took the step of instructing conferees to go with what the Senate has passed, and that is a bipartisan vote to embrace this pay-as-you-go requirement, we can once again get on track. This has been the very issue that has received bipartisan agreement in the past, 1990, 1995, 1997, and now it is time in 2004 for us to do it once again. It is time for us to do this for our children. We put pay-as-you-go in the budget or it is you pay when we go to our children. As a father of an 8- and a 10-year old back home in Bismarck, North Dakota, I know we owe them a good deal better than this, a very unstable fiscal situation just when baby boomers retire and start drawing on Medicare and Social Security. We could turn this around, and passing this motion is the place to do it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. POMEROY. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.