John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez). (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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 Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

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

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. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, this bill is a sham. This bill does not reduce the deficit. It increases the deficit by at least $7 billion, and it results from a budget resolution passed a few months ago that does not lower the deficit. It raises the deficit by over $100 million over the next 5 years. Now, I know the supporters of this bill claim it is going to help for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, well, that is a phony claim, too. This bill has nothing to do with paying for Katrina. It has everything to do with facilitating further tax cuts. This bill comes out of a larger budget resolution for 2006 that calls for a total of $106 billion in new and additional tax cuts, $70 billion in reconciled tax cuts, $36 billion in unreconciled tax cuts. So the spending cuts in this bill are really just the first step in a three-step process. Step number two will come tomorrow or soon thereafter when tax cuts are introduced in the form of another reconciliation bill. And when these two are put together, the result will be a bigger deficit. So this is not a deficit reduction bill. It does not lead to deficit reduction. And after the tax cuts are passed, there will not be a dime left to pay for Katrina and Rita, but there will be a bigger deficit. And that brings on the third step in this process and that is a $781 billion increase in the national debt of the United States of America. That is, this bill is part of the process that will require an increase in the national debt ceiling of $781 billion. As you can see, over the last 4 fiscal years, to accommodate the budgets of this administration and the leadership of this Congress, the Congress has raised the legal debt ceiling of the United States by $3 trillion 15 billion, of which $781 billion is included in this budget resolution, deemed approved when we pass the budget resolution. Once upon a time, the purpose for reconciliation was to reduce the deficit, rein in the deficit. But the reconciliation bills for this year, this one and the tax bill to come, stand that purpose on its head. They actually raise the deficit for the reasons I have just mentioned. And this is our first reason for opposing the bill. In the end, it will not reduce or rein in the deficit. It will only make it worse. Let me answer the gentleman's charge of where is our plan? We do not need a plan. We produced a plan as an alternate budget which they chose not to vote for just a few months ago. The budget resolution for 2006 which we brought to this House floor would have balanced the budget in the year 2012, and accumulated far less debt than their budget resolution in the process. Where is the plan tonight? We do not need a plan because this plan tonight on the House floor is a plan to permit further tax cuts. It was our feeling that when you have a $412 billion deficit, and that is what it was in 2004, the first rule of holes is to quit digging. Do not make the deficit worse. So we did not propose further tax cuts that would have made the deficit worse, which we would have done and we are trying to mitigate with this particular bill. That is why we did not have a plan here. Our budget did not call for it. But our budget resolution would put the budget in the surplus again by the year 2012. This bill calls itself ``The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005,'' but it does not live up to its name. This bill results from a budget resolution that does not lower the deficit. The bill raises the deficit by $100 billion over the next 5 years. Supporters claim that this bill will help pay for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This too is a phoney claim. This bill has nothing to do with paying for Katrina; it has everything to do with facilitating further tax cuts. This bill comes out of a larger budget resolution that calls for a total of $106 billion in new and additional tax cuts: $70 billion in reconciled tax cuts, along with $36 billion in unreconciled tax cuts. The spending cuts in this bill are the first step in a three-step process. The second step will come tomorrow or soon thereafter in the form of tax cuts, and when these two steps are completed, the net result will be an increase in the deficit of around $7 billion. After the tax cuts are passed, there will not be a dime left to pay for Katrina and Rita. But there will be a bigger deficit, and so that brings in the third step in this process, a $781 billion increase in the government's debt ceiling. The budget resolution of 2006 already deems its approval by the House. Once upon a time, the purpose of reconciliation was to rein in the deficit. The reconciliation bills for this year stand that purpose on its head. They will actually raise the deficit, for reasons I have just mentioned. This year's budget resolution called for $106 billion in new tax cuts over five years. $70 billion of that is assured a fast track through the Senate because these tax cuts are ``reconciled.'' The mandatory spending cuts, contained in this bill, will go to offset in part the revenues lost to tax cuts. Nothing goes toward deficit reduction or toward paying for Katrina, due to new and additional tax cuts. This is our first reason for opposing this bill. In the end, it will not reduce or rein in the deficit; it will only make it worse. Now, that outcome may not be immediately clear. That's because this reconciliation bill with spending cuts is being considered separately from a second reconciliation bill with tax cuts. There is another reason for the hiatus between spending cuts and tax cuts. The spending cuts made by this bill will hit the young, the old, the sick, and the poor, and hit them hard. The savings realized from these spending cuts will go to offset, partially at least, tax cuts for taxpayers whose incomes are in the upper brackets. Our colleagues from across the aisle want to avoid that connection, so they have separated the two bills. He may not buy the claim that this bill is ot pay for or partially offset the cost of Katrina. But we do believe that disaster relief is a form of shared sacrifice. So in paying for Katrina, we believe that the cost should be spread equitably over the entire country, and not just loaded on those least able to bear it. Yet that's exactly what this bill does. Who bears the brunt of the cuts made by this bill? Single mothers seeking child support from delinquent missing dads. Students struggling to pay loans for their college education. Foster children. The sick and poor whose only access to health care coverage is Medicaid, and families who depend on food stamps. Is this any way to pay for Hurricane Katrina? Or to pave the way for tax cuts? There are $11.4 bilion in cuts to Medicaid, including cuts over $8 billion that fall upon beneficiaries through co-pays, premiums, and benefit reduction; -$14.3 billion in spending cuts to college student loan programs over 5-years, of which $7.8 billion is realized through increases in the interest rates and fees that students pay; -$4.9 billion in cuts to child support enforcement, which will cut back the state's capacity to enforce child support orders, -$577 million in foster care cuts; $732 million in SSI cuts. Other provisions in this bill cut conservation by $504 million; cut deeply into rural development; and eliminate altogether the Byrd Amendment. The Byrd Amendment requires that duties paid by foreign firms, as a penalty for dumping their goods here at prices below cost, should be shared with U.S. firms damaged by import dumping. This reconciliation package claims to offset the cost of Hurricane Katrina. That, like the title, is a false claim for two reasons. Rather than helping pay for Katrina, many of the services cut, such as Food Stamps and Medicaid, benefit the victims of these disasters, the people who have been uprooted and displaced. I must say, we are mystified over this newfound interest in offsets. Since 2003, we have passed three huge supplementals to cover the cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. We supported all of them, because when we put troops in the field, we stand behind them. But any notion of offsetting those costs was dismissed out of hand. As we have asked before, why is it that you insist on offsetting the cost of rebuilding Biloxi, but not the cost of rebuilding Baghdad or Basra? Will the next supplemental for Iraq be offset? There is $50 billion in ``bridge funding'' in the defense bill not offset. If this bill reduced the deficit or helped pay for Katrina, as you claim, we would still have trouble with the cuts you have chosen. Many hurt those who need help most. Moreover, the savings are overstated, and some won't stand scrutiny. For example: This bill includes $6.2 billion in increased PBGC premiums, but these premiums are entrusted to pay pension benefit guaranties, and in the near future, these additional premiums will be spent for that very purpose. You can claim these additional receipts as offsets to your tax cuts only because the federal government runs a cash-basis budget. If we accrue the liability for benefit guaranties, there would be no balance in this trust fund to use as an offset to tax cuts. This bill makes crippling cuts to child support enforcement: $4.9 billion over five years. This will only shift the cost to the states, and if the states don't make up the difference, this reduction will result in a loss of more than $24 billion in child support over the next ten years. This is a flagrant case of false economy. And as if the reduction in child support were not tough enough, this bill allows Medicaid to charge children co-pays, and to deny care if the cost-sharing is not paid. At $3 and up, the co-pays may not seem much to us, but they can be a birch well for someone living at or below the poverty line. The co-pays as such do not save much in total Medicaid spending. The way they save money is by discouraging low- income children and others from seeking medical care. This bill also claims one-time receipts from spectrum auctions to offset the recurring loss of revenues to permanent tax cuts, and it overestimates the net receipts by assuming the cost of converter boxes at $1 billion, though the cost is likely to be about three times that amount. This bill cuts $2.2 billion in mandatory spending to administer the student loan program. But these costs have to be paid. Guess where? Out of discretinary funds for education. In short, there are many reasons that this bill does not live up to its title. It makes deep and painful cuts all right, but it paves the way for new and additional tax cuts, despite an enormous deficit, and the end result is a larger deficit. In this respect, today's legislation is like the budget resolution that set it in motion. This is one in a series of fiscal actions that will cause the debt ceiling of the United States to be raised by $3 trillion between 2002 and 2006. So, not only is this bill a shame, it is also a sham. When the Bush Administration took office in 2001, it inherited a surplus and blithely predicted that the surplus would endure, even if its trillion dollar tax cuts were adopted. The Bush budget was adopted, and in fiscal 2005, the bottom line was not a surplus of $269 billion as it once projected, but a deficit of $319 billion. Realistic estimates show that these deficits are structural and will get worse, not better, over the next ten years, and that when the Bush Administration's full agenda is factored in, deficits will climb to $640 billion by 2015; the national debt will double; and debt service will more than double. This legislation will make deep and painful cuts, but it will not avoid that budget outcome or lead to balance in any time frame. So, we oppose this bill because it's not only a shame, but also a sham. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 12 minutes of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) for the purposes of control.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 500, a resolution to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of the Navy's Flight 19 in the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945. Every schoolkid in America knows the Bermuda Triangle as a place of ghost stories and mystery--a place where whole ships and airplanes literally disappear without a trace. Rumors abound about the cause of these disappearances, ranging from mechanical failures to irregular magnetic field activity to extraterrestrial abduction. No mystery from the ``Devil's Triangle'' has more captured the attention or imagination of America than the ill-fated journey of Navy Flight 19. At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, Flight 19, a squadron of five Navy Avenger TBM Torpedo Bombers, took off from Fort Lauderdale for a training run that took them into the heart of the Bermuda Triangle. The weather was cooperative and the water was calm, which was deemed lucky for a squadron where only one of the 14 airmen, Lt. Charles Taylor, had combat flight experience. Nonetheless, midway through the mission, Lt. Taylor became disoriented, claiming his compasses had stopped working, a curious phenomenon in an area known for erratic magnetic activity. Thinking himself over the Florida Keys, Lt. Taylor pointed his squadron Northeast in an attempt to return them to land. Unfortunately, the squadron was over the Bahamas to the east of Florida instead of over the Keys, so their continued northeasterly journey actually took them further out to sea. At 7:04 p.m., the last radio contact was made by Taylor, when he reportedly uttered ``everything is wrong . . . strange . . . the ocean doesn't look as it should'' and ``They look like they're from outer space--don't come after me.'' After this communication, Flight 19 was never heard from again. This kicked off a massive search spanning 250,000 square miles of ocean. As part of this search, two additional aircraft known as Martin Mariners, were deployed by the Navy to patrol and look for wreckage. With no indication of difficulty, one of these Martin Mariners failed to meet at a scheduled rendezvous point, and was never heard from again. No sign of the Mariner or the Flight 19 Avengers has ever been found. Roger Allen from Sumter, South Carolina, in my district, was one crew member on the missing Mariner whose fate has yet to be discovered. H. Res. 500 takes the laudable step of commemorating the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of Flight 19 and the naval Mariner rescue aircraft and honoring the memory of the 27 Navy airmen lost on these flights. It also acknowledges the continuing efforts to determine what caused these disappearances so we can provide answers and closure to the families of the airmen who were lost. I commend the fascinating and haunting tale of Flight 19 to anyone interested in the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, and I join Congressman Shaw in urging my colleagues to support H. Res. 500.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I now yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement, and I now yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. SPRATT. The gentlewoman is not only right. She is forcefully correct. She is absolutely right, no question about it.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the upcoming special order.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I yield now to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal), and I would remind the gentleman that we have about 6 minutes left. Is that correct, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. SPRATT. That is what we are doing now is alerting everyone to the contents of this reconciliation bill which is hanging in the wings, pretending under the name of ``deficit reduction'' to be about fiscal responsibility when it is anything but that.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, as we speak, there is a bill in the wings called the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, its fate yet to be determined because it is not at all clear that there are enough votes in this body to pass it. Basically, this bill is part of the budget resolution for 2006, and what it anticipates is a three-step process except that those steps are treated very separately and in isolation. The first step is what the bill I am talking about proposes, that is, reductions in mandatory spending, so-called ``entitlement spending,'' of about $54 billion. The second step to follow is a reduction in taxes in the amount of $106 billion. That is what the budget resolution calls for. As a consequence, this bill does not achieve its stated name, which is the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Instead, by cutting taxes by more than they cut spending, it leads to a deficit that is $52 billion bigger than would otherwise be the case. That is the second step. And then there is a third step in this bill that is not much talked about, but it is written into the bill, written into the budget resolution for 2006, and that is an increase in the debt ceiling of the United States by $781 billion. That is what happens when you have tax cuts that are not adequately matched by spending cuts. The deficit gets worse, and the bottom line is, $781 billion will have to be added to the debt ceiling of the United States, the legal limit to which we bill because of the fiscal policies we have followed for the last 5 years. Now, some supporters claim that this bill, the so-called Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, will go to help pay for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In truth, this bill has nothing to do with paying for Katrina. It has everything to do, as I said, with facilitating further tax cuts. This bill is part of a larger budget resolution that calls, as I have said, for a total of $106 billion in additional tax cuts yet to come, but nevertheless called for in the budget resolution. $70 billion will come in reconciled tax cuts, which means they will be on a fast track. They will go through the Senate without threat of filibuster. $36 billion are in unreconciled tax cuts. The total is $106 billion. As I have said, this is a three-step process. The original purpose of reconciliation was to rein in the deficit. But the reconciliation bill this year, the one that is waiting in the wings, the one we are addressing today, only raises the deficits for the reasons I have just mentioned. Now, if we do not acknowledge this, but if you take the position that these cuts are somehow going to facilitate the appropriations we have passed and will pass to pay for Hurricane Katrina and Rita, one would have to say that if we are going to do that--and I think we should somehow, over time, have a plan for paying the enormous sums we are borrowing to reconstruct the gulf coast--if we are going to do that, we should spread the cost equitably over our whole population. And that is what we want to address today, more than anything, and that is how the costs are being spread, how the costs are being allocated. Whether you take the attitude that this goes to pay for Katrina or goes to offset tax cuts, who bears the brunt? Will it be those who are able to bear the brunt or those who are vulnerable and least able to bear the brunt? Unfortunately, and this is a point we will make again and again and demonstrate the facts to prove our case, unfortunately, the brunt of this bill will come to rest on the shoulders of those who are least able to bear it. In that respect, I now recognize the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case) to discuss the implications of this bill.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).