John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I do not think the House bill has any money at all for physicians in it. That is the point.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) 1 minute.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, what we are trying to prevent here is an abuse of process, because what has happened is the process known as reconciliation has been taken and stood on its head. The original process of reconciliation was to rein in the deficit, to have an end to the budget process by which Congress was compelled to revisit the goals it set earlier in the year and bring the budget in on the targets that it indicated were acceptable when the budget resolution was passed. To that end, a budget reconciliation bill was given fast track capacity to go through the Senate so it would not be subject to filibuster, because its purpose was fiscal prudence. Its purpose was to rein in the deficit. You can see from past history from this chart right here, you can see that in 1990 when we did the Bush budget summit, total reconciliation savings were $482 billion. In 1993 when we did the Clinton budget, total reconciliation savings over 5 years was $443 billion. In 1997 when we finally put the budget into balance for the first time in 30 years, the balanced budget agreement of 1997 provided for reconciliation of $118 billion. What does this reconciliation bill do? Well, when you put it together, because it has been divorced, separated from the tax cuts in the other reconciliation bill, it increases the deficit. It does not decrease the deficit. It provides for, and we see $108 billion of additional tax cuts all together thus far. I will show you exactly how those add up right here. One of the things that is going on here is that these fiscal actions get broken into many different fragments in the course of the year. As a consequence, it is hard to put all the small pieces together and figure out exactly what the tab is running up to. Well, here is what it is running up to. If you just look at the tax cuts that have been taken over the last 6 months, keeping in mind that the budget resolution called for $70 billion in reconciled tax cuts and $106 billion in tax cuts all together, you will see we are on a path to accomplish just that under the budget resolution. First of all, the transportation bill, $500 million. The Energy Policy Act, $6.9 billion tax cuts. The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act, $6.1 billion. The Stealth Tax Relief Act, $31.2 billion. That is the so-called alternative minimum tax, patching it for 1 year so it does not affect more taxpayers. Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act, that is the one that is before us in the other bill that I was referring to, the bill that is passing now in the reconciliation itself, and then, finally, $7.1 billion adapted just a week ago for the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act. Add all of that together, you get $108 billion. But wait a minute. This only has a 1-year fix for the AMT. And we all know that we are fixing it this year for the same reason we will have to fix it next year and the following years and on into time until we finally adjust it so that it does not apply to middle-income taxpayers for whom it was never intended. So when you recognize that fiscal reality and add to the total, tally a longer-term fix, a 5-year fix, on the AMT, the total amount of tax cuts adopted thus far over 5 years, the total amount is $301 billion, against which you are applying $50 billion in putative tax cuts and putative spending cuts, and how did you get those spending cuts? In the name of deficit reduction, which is a false claim, as can you see, because you are increasing the deficit. How did you get those cuts, those putative cuts? You went to students struggling to pay for their college education. You went to the poorest of the poor whose only resort to medical care is Medicaid and cut it by $11 billion. You went to child support enforcement, which is moneys used by the Federal Government to subsidy State efforts to see that parents who are not taking care of their children nevertheless have to pay something in child support and forces it, at $4.9 billion. CBO says it will deprive us of $25 billion for that most essential necessity. You went to foster care. You went to food stamps. You went to the pension insurance fund, PBGC, a false claim. You are claiming that these revenues generated for the PBGC can be applied against your tax cut. In truth, they are encumbered money; they will be needed to pay benefits before you know it. And then, finally, let me speak up for the doctors. You have not done anything at all about the fact that there are doctors, on January 4, faced with a cut of 4.4 percent due to something called the sustainable growth rate factor. Unless we do something here tonight, this weekend, on the budget reconciliation bill, they are going to suffer that cut. How do you think that is going to make them feel towards Medicare patients? Less willing than ever. So this is a bad bill. What we are trying to do with the motion to instruct is simply to take, as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) put it, the harshest and most hateful features out of it.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond. When the tax reconciliation bill with tax cuts is put side by side with the spending reconciliation bill, these two reconciliation bills add $52 billion to the deficit. That is the total outcome of the budget package that you are putting before us over the next 5 years; and that is not all, as I will show in a minute. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to lay out now the basics of the motion to instruct conferees for the budget reconciliation bill going to conference. First of all, we would move to preserve the safety net. This motion instructs the conferees to eliminate House provisions that would cut food stamps by $697 million and to reject Medicaid cuts of even more, $11 to $12 billion in the House bill. In addition, we would move to protect higher education. Because the budget bill as now written on the House side calls for substantial changes in interest rates and fees, by our calculation raising the cost of student loans by as much as $5,800. Next we would support personal responsibility. The motion instructs the conferees to eliminate House cuts of $4.9 billion in Federal spending on child support enforcement programs that are run by the States but partially subsidized by the Federal Government. This is the most misguided fiscal savings in this whole bill. This motion instructs the conferees to eliminate the House provision that would prevent hundreds of companies also that are hurt by unfair foreign trade known as dumping through the continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act which the budget reconciliation bill would eliminate. This motion also instructs the House conferees to accept the Senate conferees' provisions that cut subsidies to Medicare private insurance plans by as much as 4.4 percent beginning January 1 and to prevent the planned 4.4 percent cut in physician payments by taking funds instead out of the Medicare Stabilization Program, the Medicare Stabilization Fund, which is part of the Medicare advantage and Medicare modernization bill which was the prescription drug-Medicare bill. This motion instructs conferees to protect taxpayer-owned property as well and the environment by eliminating House provisions that would sell huge tracts of Federal land at below market value and expose them to purchase commercial and mining development. These are the instructions we would give to our conferees going into this conference as to where the House should stand with respect to positions it has previously taken and with respect to positions the Senate has taken. I will say more about them later. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell). (Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee. (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. So the right answer is to fix the growth rate factor, no question about it. But that fix is not going to be accomplished in the next 2 weeks. So unless we do something adequate, you are going to have perfection be the enemy of the good; you are not going to get anything done.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Skelton motion to instruct. Two years ago, the image of the United States was tarnished by photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The photographs drew condemnation from members of Congress, the American people, and the world. At a time when we were professing American values, these photographs told a story of secrecy and disgusting abuse. That's why the Washington Post's revelations about the CIA's clandestine detention facilities last month are so troubling. We all understand the difficult job our interrogators have in trying to pry useful intelligence from tough, hostile prisoners. We all believe that the vast majority of our interrogators perform their jobs admirably and within the rules, and the information they have obtained has served as the intelligence foundation of our War on Terror. But at a time when the wounds of Abu Ghraib have still not fully healed, fresh allegations of secrecy and questions about interrogation have the potential to reopen old issues of abuse that we have struggled for months to put to rest. The President has said that ``we do not torture'' prisoners, and I take him at his word, but we have the right to ask for answers about clandestine facilities supplied, of course, in classified form. The Skelton motion to instruct simply calls on the President to disclose to the Congress the nature, cost, location and operations of the detention facilities referenced by the Post, and the ultimate disposition of the detainees that are held there. This would in no way hinder the effectiveness of interrogations, but it would go a long way toward showing the world we are serious about preventing prisoner abuse. As Senator McCain so eloquently said, ``We are Americans. We hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people, no matter how evil or terrible they may be . . . The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don't deserve our sympathy. But this isn't about who they are; this is about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our enemies.'' I urge my colleagues to support the Skelton motion to instruct. All it seeks is information to which we are already entitled under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, and information we need to fulfill our duties under Article I, Clause 8 of the Constitution.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, over the last few days we have seen a flurry of tax cuts on the House floor: three yesterday, another one, a big one, today. And over the last 6 months, four other bills have been enacted that have tax cuts and concessions built into them, for example, the Energy Policy Act. By breaking all of those tax cuts into small pieces and by burying them in other bills, not tax bills, the audit trail very quickly becomes hard to follow. It is hard to see the forest for the trees. Hard to see in the aggregate how all of these different tax cuts add up. So let us look at the revenue scorecard over the last 6 months, bearing in mind that every delay of revenues cut is a dollar added to the deficit. First of all, the highway bill: $500 million. The Energy Policy Act: $6.9 billion over 5 years. The Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act: $6.1 billion over 5 years. The Stealth Tax Relief Act, the 1-year extension, or patch, to the AMT adopted yesterday: $31.2 billion. Today's bill: $56.1 billion. The bill we adopted yesterday, a miscellany of small tax cuts, but it adds up to $153 million. And finally the Gulf Opportunity Zone Tax Act which was passed yesterday: $7.1 billion. The total amount of all of these tax cuts comes to $108 billion. So if you pass this bill today, the total impact that you will have taken with today's vote and recent votes comes to 108. But wait, it is not over yet. Because there is a provision in this bill, a provision in our substitute, a provision in yesterday's bill that indicates something has got to be done about the alternative minimum tax. We are going to have to fix the alternative minimum tax. If you fix it for 5 years, not 1, the aggregate effect of this fix, of all of the other tax cuts along with it, comes to $301 billion over 5 years. That is the sum total that these tax cuts will add to the deficit, $301 billion if you fix the AMT next year and the following years the same way we are fixing it this year. So the net effect on the deficit is $301 billion in all political reality. So every Member here who is in earnest about the deficit should be on notice. You have a choice: you can vote for the underlying bill and add $301 billion to the deficit over the next 5 years, or you can vote for this bill and provide middle-income tax relief and not add a dime to the deficit. Here, in effect, is what your choice is. We stand at a crossroads today that CBO has depicted as follows on this particular chart. You can take this path here with $319 billion, or you can take this path here, and by 2015, we can be nearly out of deficit. On the other hand, you can take the path that this bill would take, and you will be $640 billion in deficit in 10 years. The Democratic substitute is morally and fiscally far and away the better choice, particularly if you want to balance the budget and eradicate the deficit.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, it is my sad responsibility as dean of the South Carolina delegation to advise the House, and especially those who served here in the 1980s, that Carroll Campbell, who served here from 1978 to 1986, died yesterday. He served here for a period of nearly 10 years, went on to two successful terms as Governor of South Carolina, and died at the age of 65 after a long battle with Alzheimer's. Those who served with him remember him as a very, very able friend, a wonderful Member of this institution, and someone of whom, as South Carolinians especially, we are all proud. I know that everyone who knew him especially will want to send their prayers and best regards to his wife Iris and their two sons.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, we have three tax cut bills before us today, a large one coming up tomorrow, and here is the problem with doing business that way, especially under suspension. When you break these tax cuts into so many small places, virtually fragments, we quickly lose the audit trail and do not appreciate in the aggregate how much they add up to. So let me try to reconstruct that audit trail on the back of this envelope right here and show you exactly what the summation of today and tomorrow will mean for the bottom line, i.e. the deficit. If we take the transportation bill which we passed this year, is $1.1 billion over 10 years, about a billion dollars over 5 years. The Energy Policy Act is about $6.9 billion in revenues lost over 5 years. The Katrina Tax Relief of 2005 has a $6.1 billion price tag. That is its revenue impact. The big bill tomorrow will be the Tax Extension Reconciliation Act, $56 billion in the House, $80 billion over 10 years. We have just done the Stealth Tax Relief Act extending for 1 year the AMT at its existing level of application. The cost of that for 1 year over 5 years is $31 billion. Then we have the Tax Revision Act of 2005 with small cuts in it which have not been scored, but it has a cost. Finally, we have the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005. The revenue effect of it over 5 years is $7 billion. Add all of those together, and the cost, the revenue impact, comes to nearly $100 billion which, goes straight to the bottom line and adds to the deficit. And the reconciliation spending bill that you passed only offsets half of that amount. That is not all. As we demonstrate today, the AMT will have to be fixed. It will be fixed this year, patched, patched next year, and patched into the future until we finally do something about its application to middle income families for whom it was never intended. If we do basically in future years what we have done today, the cost is going to be at least $30-40 billion a year. If you assume in the next 4 years after 2006, we will also have fixes to the AMT, the cost of these tax bills we are doing today, and it is going to be close to $200 billion. All of it goes to the bottom line and adds to the budget deficit, and all of it supports what we have been saying that until you deal with this aspect of the budget deficit, the revenue side of the equation as well as the spending side, until you reinstate the pay-go rule and offset these costly provisions in the aggregate, you are going to have a huge deficit. We would have offered, given the chance, on offset. And we will offer offsets tomorrow, given the chance, in the bill presented. We will offer a substitute that will offset the revenue impact on the bottom line. If we had that opportunity on the House floor and in committee, we would have done it again and we could have avoided the revenue impact and at least protected the deficit from being made any worse. It is a shame we will not have that opportunity.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I have served in this House for 22 years, all of them on the House Armed Services Committee, and my esteem for the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) and the wisdom he has accrued over defense and military matters has increased every year. He is a real American. He is a patriot. He is a marine. He is the best embodiment of Semper Fidelis that I have ever known. He made a proposal yesterday that I, myself, do not fully agree, but I have profound respect for the man who made it, and I watched the pain that he experienced as he agonizingly laid out what the conclusions were that he had come to. To take this proposal and trash it, trivialize it is outrageous. To treat Jack Murtha this way, a great American, a wonderful patriot, is beneath contempt. This resolution takes a profound issue we face, whether and when we wage war, and makes it another cheap pawn in the political process. You present a resolution that purports to be a facsimile or proxy of Jack Murtha's resolution when it is nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind, and then you dare to call it something it is not, a Democratic resolution. This is outrageous, Mr. Speaker, and all I can say is, at long last, have you no shame?

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr). (Mr. FARR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of our time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 12 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and ask unanimous consent that he be permitted to control that time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 20 seconds. To respond to the gentleman, he may be too young to remember, but 5 years ago, we bequeathed the Bush administration a surplus of $236 billion. This is what has happened in the last 4 fiscal years. The statutory debt ceiling of the United States has been raised to accommodate the budgets of the Bush administration to the tune of $3 trillion.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).