John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, before mentioning my amendment, let me also commend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member. There are not two Members of the House for whom I have greater respect. This is a good bill. I intend to support it. But I have an amendment which I think will make it a better bill. My amendment is simple and it is straightforward. It would take $84 million in funding for missile defense that is not needed and add it to an area where it is woefully in need, to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials. Everyone here remembers the first debate between Senator Kerry and President Bush last year. They agreed on one thing for sure, that the gravest threat facing the United States is that of terrorists armed with nuclear weapons. Our front line in the defense of this threat is variously called Cooperative Threat Reduction, nonproliferation, or Nunn-Lugar. Whatever we call it, its object is to stop, secure, and dispose of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials at the source if at all possible. I referred to the President. Just this past February, he met with the President of the Russian Federation, and together they cited the fact that nuclear nonproliferation is a matter of compelling importance for both countries. Five years ago we appointed a bipartisan commission headed by Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler. They came back after 1\1/2\ years of lengthy study and recommended to us that we take these accounts dealing with nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and increase them to $3 billion over the next 10 years. Here is how they sized up the threat 4 years ago: ``The most urgent, unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable materials in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home.'' That was 4 years ago. And DOD's nonproliferation budget, together with the DOE budget and the State Department budget today, all together come to $1.9 billion, way short of what was recommended 4 years ago by Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler. The DOD program called Cooperative Threat Reduction, CTR, Nunn-Lugar, was launched in 1991 to secure, to deactivate, to dispose of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union and in other countries. Since then, it has racked up quite a scorecard. Since 1991, the CTR program has deactivated 6,564 warheads, destroyed 570 ICBMs, eliminated 543 SLBMs, retired 142 bombers, and I could go on with a host of other potentially threatening missile and nuclear components which this program has eliminated. Despite these successes, the CTR program has been virtually flat- funded since its inception at around $400 million a year. This year, the budget request of $416 million falls $27.6 million below the level at which this program was funded on 9/11; $26 million less than 9/11. My amendment makes a modest correction to this shortfall. It allocates an additional $84 million to Cooperative Threat Reduction to bring total funding to $500 million. It pluses up the CTR budget, allowing DOD, the Department of Defense, to do something it has urgently wanted to do: upgrade security at Russian weapons storage sites. DOD has indicated that to get all of the upgrades needed at Russian sites, to secure nuclear weapons and nuclear components, it will need funding each year that is about $150 million more than the budget provides for the next 5 to 7 years. My amendment puts up about half of that shortfall. We make this funding possible by an offset that I think we can all accept. My amendment reduces the Ground-Based Missile Defense budget by $84 million. Now, here is how it does it. It would do so by limiting the funding for silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, to 26 silos this year, and Vandenberg to four silos. In other words, my amendment would permit, would fund 30 ground-based GBIs and silos. The Missile Defense Agency is planning to provide 34 silos for the first 30 GBIs. The extra four silos are referred to as ``swing space,'' additional, nice to have; but this is a cost, nearly $16 million, that we can avoid per silo that we can avoid for now and spend more wisely elsewhere. So my amendment does just that. It withholds funding for these four extra swing silos and saves $63 million. The fiscal year 2006 budget also includes $20.7 million as an advanced payment on 10 additional silos, even though the chairman's mark cuts the funding for the missiles that would actually go in these silos. My amendment, therefore, eliminates this funding at least for 2006. If the interceptors work, 30 silos should be sufficient for defense against a rogue nation like North Korea, and 30 silos should be sufficient for now for the ground-based interceptor until testing has finally shown that it works.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, the aftermath of the war in Iraq has been marred by miscalculations and mistakes, made up for in many cases by our troops, who have filled the breach brilliantly by improvising, often doing duty for which they were never trained. You cannot go to Iraq and talk to our troops in the field and come home without saying to yourself, thank God there are such Americans. But their valiant efforts would have been more effective if the Pentagon had not ignored General Shinseki and deployed too few troops initially to secure the country and capitalize on our victory in battle. Their efforts would have been more effective if the Pentagon had not ignored General Garner and cashiered the entire Iraqi Army. Their efforts would have been more effective if we had moved much sooner to set up a representative government and stand up Iraqi security forces to whom we can ultimately and must ultimately hand over the responsibility for securing their own country. Before we disengage from Iraq, we have to do both of the above. I firmly believe that. We have to stand up security forces, and by that I mean police and border guards and the army, adequate to stabilize the country; and we have to steer the Iraqis through the shoals towards the adoption of a constitution and the election of a government under that constitution. We cannot leave any sooner without risking the collapse of Iraq into a fractious and bloody civil war which could very well require us to return. I believe that. But to be sure that we are moving systematically in the right direction, the minority leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), is asking for a yardstick, milestones, by which to measure our progress. This is not a plan of withdrawal. If it were, I would not vote for it. This is a strategy for success. Let me give you one reason from a budget perspective why we need it. Basically, the budgets in the out years beyond 2006 contain no estimation of what the deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North American Air Defense are costing us. Even though the cost is $80 billion to $100 billion a year, it is not included in the budget. CBO undertook to estimate, to model, what our likely deployment in Iraq may cost, because otherwise there is a gaping hole, an unrealistic aspect, to the budget. Their estimate was that if we drew down to 20,000 troops in theater by the end of 2006 and 20,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2006, and then taper that force off over the rest of the remaining 10-year period, the cost over 10 years would be $384 billion. That is a significant item. If that is what is in the cards, if that is what is likely, given the strategy for success, we need to know it, we need to plan for it, we need to be expecting it. Given what is at stake, given the lives that have been lost, given the billions that have been spent, what we are asking is a modest request to make of the Pentagon; and, Mr. Speaker, it involves the sort of planning that I would hope they would be doing anyway and should be sharing with us if they are doing it. I would therefore urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question and a vote for the leader's amendment.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, first question, what is the effect of this amendment? This amendment in simple terms will stop the slaughter or human consumption of horses, the meat of which will be exported to foreign countries. It does not stop, affect or any way impede euthanasia by veterinarians. It stops the brutal slaughter at slaughterhouses. Sometimes horses are jacked up by their hind legs and have their throats slit. This is the kind of slaughter that this bill will prohibit so that the meat can be exported to Europe and other places. Secondly, who is affected? Slaughterhouses in two States. That is it. Three different slaughterhouse locations in two States. That is it. Those are the net effects because, you see, Americans do not eat horse meat. These horses are not slaughtered in this country, 65,000 last year, for consumption here. They are slaughtered for consumption in Europe and Asia, and 35,000 were not trucked to Mexico and Canada only to be euthanized there. They were shipped there to be slaughtered. So this affects foreign consumers of American horse meat. That is all. No Americans are affected, and only three plants in two States are actually affected. Who is for it and who is against it? I will leave this 7-page memorandum which shows individuals, organizations, horse raisers, horse racers, horse farmers, horse lovers of all kinds who support it, including a substantial number of veterinarians. Seven pages long, that is how many people are in favor of it. Next question: What do we know about the consequences of this? What happens when you stop the slaughter of horses at, albeit, just three plants? Well, we know from practical experience in five States, including California, the largest State for the last 7 years, this law has been in effect Statewide in California and four other States and in California since 1998. What has been the effect? Have there been horses that have been left for neglect, derelict horses? No, there have been no effects. Have there been horses that have been too numerous to be euthanized? No. Practically, in the five States that have implemented this law, there has been no effect whatsoever. Finally, what is the legislative history of this bill? The legislative history is we filed a bill like this in the last Congress. We filed it again in this Congress. In the last Congress, after we put on an effort to win support for it, we collected 225 co-sponsors. We never had a hearing. We were entitled to one. So we come here today using a different parliamentary procedure. But this bill has been thoroughly exposed, thoroughly supported, thoroughly argued for and against; and today we are entitled to this vote on the House floor. And if the 225 Members who have supported our bill in the past come forward, we will see that the will of the House is that this becomes the law of the land.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in support of the en bloc amendment and also a particular provision of it whereby the leadership of the committee has worked with me to include some reporting requirements. They are not as complete as I would like. In fact, we have pared them back three or four times in order to reach consensus, but nevertheless I am glad that we will put them in here because they relate to reporting and oversight of our commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan and Operation Nobel Eagle. There are three main areas that will be covered in these war-related reports: costs with numerous breakdowns, the reconstitution of equipment, and military construction, partly because it is a good indicator of where we are headed. The Congress has just passed an $82 billion supplemental making the total amount provided this year for Afghanistan and Iraq over $100 billion. Only 2 weeks after its enactment, the Army is already hinting that they may run out of O&M funds. As a consequence, we have a bridge provision in this particular bill authorizing an additional $49 billion. The House Appropriations Committee just approved a $45 billion bridge, a supplemental that is intended to carry the services through the early months of fiscal year 2006, at which time another supplemental will be needed. We need a better system for tracking these costs as they are incurred. We do not get it in advance on the Committee on Armed Services. That is why we are providing an advance authorization in this bill. But we need to have at least the information retrospectively so that we can see where the costs are being incurred and we can keep tabs on some of the contingencies that are going to have to be paid down the road, costs that are being incurred now like repairing equipment which has suffered greatly in the environment in Afghanistan and in Iraq. These are, I think, essential amendments if we are to do our oversight job on the Committee on Armed Services. I appreciate the chairman and the ranking member working with me to see that they are included in the en bloc amendments.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I do not object to the amendment, but ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), has been a leader in the Congress on relations with Russia for some time. I reviewed his amendment, and I support it and would like to state several reasons for supporting it that I think others can readily identify with. First of all, this is not a new idea. It has been talked about at least as long ago as Reagan's Presidency, when Mr. Reagan was trying to make the point that he did not necessarily seek nuclear dominance, and that he was ready to share certain parts of missile defense with the Russians if necessary to show that it was consistent with the balance of power between our two countries. But today, if you want principle reasons, one reason to have an amendment like this and the policy that it supports is to show the Russians that ballistic missile defense need not be perceived by them as adverse to their security. Just as our missiles are no longer explicitly targeted at the Russians, the ballistic missile defense systems we are building are not directed really at countering their systems, but of the adversaries. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) mentions two good reasons, two practical reasons, for making this amendment our policy. Number one, it is possible that the Russians could cooperate with us in allowing us to test specific elements of their tracking equipment of their own missile systems. And, number two, they have early warning radar that the Missile Defense Agency may find very useful. In fact, if we begin some day in the near future to install systems that will give us protection against threats like Iran, we may find the geography inside Russia is ideal geography, ideally located for the kind of early warning system and detection that we would need and want and would be preferable possibly to locating some of these systems in Eastern European countries. So there are many good reasons at this point in time to support this policy and therefore to support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, the well of this House ought to be a free market of ideas. It ought to be a great national forum where we dissect legislation and debate the big issues both. And particularly today, as we take up the Defense authorization bill, with thousands of troops deployed all over the globe in harm's way, suffering casualties daily, we are spending $440 billion a year on national defense, plus the $80 billion in supplementals, over a half trillion dollars, today particularly we should have a full, vigorous, and complete debate. In the 1980s, it was this way. At the height of the Cold War, when this bill came to the floor, 100, 200 amendments were offered; and most of them, many of them were made in order. It sometimes took us 2, 3 weeks to get this bill off the floor. We had a full, free, and open debate. Today the debate will be circumscribed, carefully controlled to bar the issues that our Republican colleagues want to avoid or fear losing if the House were allowed to weigh the issues and work its will. This is not the way this institution should treat something so important. In addition, in years past, when we ran the House, there was something called comity. And senior members of the committee in particular were allowed to have the deference at least of a few amendments that would be offered on the House floor. Their experience was valued. Today, the gentleman from Missouri's (Mr. Skelton) amendment, shut out. My amendment on nonproliferation, well crafted, carefully considered, at least I wanted the opportunity to present that choice to the people of the House, shut out. I will go down the list with senior members on the committee, senior Members in the House, offering thoughtful amendments that at least this House should consider, weigh and work its will upon, all have been shut out. This is no way to run a debate on something of such gravity and importance.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I have at the desk an amendment, a proposed amendment that I intended to offer, but that I will not offer as a result of the ensuing colloquy. Mr. Chairman, I have filed an amendment for myself and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett) that states that none of the funds made available in this act may be used in contravention of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. The committee report directs the Secretary to begin accepting commercial spent fuel for interim storage at one or more DOE sites within fiscal year 2006. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett) and I are concerned that the interim storage facilities called for in the report could divert funds from a nuclear waste fund and further impede completion of the repository at Yucca Mountain.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will further yield, can DOE conduct such interim storage consistent with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act? What force does the committee report have when it comes to modifying existing law?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the clarification and the explanation.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, earlier I entered into a colloquy with the chairman, and he was good enough to clarify for me some parts of this committee report that are important to me. I would like to further build a context on which my concerns were built. In this committee report accompanying the bill, there is directive language at pages 122 and 123 and 124 that can be taken to amend the explicit terms of existing laws. And the laws at issue, which the report language could be construed to change, of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and possibly even the National Environmental Policy Act, both carefully wrought, are both vitally important. I do not think it is the intention of the committee report to change the laws because I do not think it can but nevertheless it makes some strong recommendations. The committee report laments the latest delays at Yucca Mountain. The start-up date has slipped again, this time from 2010 to 2012. The committee, to its credit, with the chairman's strong support, funds Yucca Mountain at the requested levels, I think we should, $651 million for fiscal year 2006; and I commend you for that and finds this sufficient to do the engineering work, continue the license application, continue the design work. I have an interest in this because I represent four nuclear reactors, and I live in an area where nuclear generation accounts for 50 percent of our electricity. My constituents pay one mil per kilowatt per hour to fund a permanent waste facility, and they and the others who pay this assessment deserve to have their money spent well and used solely for that purpose, a spent fuel repository. The chairman has assured me wholeheartedly that he wants to see, too, that that end is accomplished. But Yucca Mountain in the words of the report ``recedes into the future.'' I am concerned if we open up new options, even expedients like interim storage, and if we use the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for these options, then Yucca Mountain will keep on receding into the future. This report proposes a concerted initiative. It is a bold proposal for interim storage of spent fuel and for reprocessing of spent fuel. These are ideas that have been considered in the past, but abandoned. The committee brings them back to life, provides some funding; but it is only a tiny fraction of what these facilities are going to cost. So you cannot avoid the concern that some, if not all, of this money may come from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the expense of Yucca Mountain. I have this concern because Savannah River Site is among the specific sites singled out as a candidate for interim storage. I become more concerned when I read the report which says: ``The committee directs the Department to begin the movement of spent fuel to centralized interim storage at one or more DOE sites within fiscal year 2006.'' That is next year. If this is taken literally, I do not see how they can possibly prepare an EIS. That is why I was saying that the report would almost override the National Environmental Policy Act. There is no way they can finish an EIS on a matter of such importance in a year. The report recognizes that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act applies to these matters. For example, the report recognizes that the NWPA borrows an interim storage facility at the same location as the permanent repository, Yucca Mountain, and yields to that law by proposing that the storage facility be sited elsewhere. In another place, the report calls for a plan of implementation within 120 days. Here again, it anticipates that legislative changes may be necessary to execute the plan by asking DOE to submit them. In these respects, the committee report supports my point that explicit law cannot be amended or overridden by report language. But in pushing for an interim storage facility, the report is on the collision course with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act because it abandoned the idea of interim storage in 1990 by sunsetting the law that passed it. In its place it authorized a retrievable storage facility, but only after Yucca Mountain is licensed. So these were my concerns. These were the reasons for asking for the colloquy and asking for the clarification. I have problems with interim storage, and I have problems with reprocessing fuel. But I support the chairman in his endeavor to see Yucca Mountain finished, and I also support the chairman in his quest to see that nuclear power is able to make a comeback, because I think it has a role in our energy future. That is the reason I asked for clarification, to make sure that the committee was not pushing the envelope and overriding the statutory law on pages 122, 123, and 124, which struck me as more than just report boiler plate. I appreciate the confirmation, the clarification from the committee chairman and for all of his other efforts in bringing together this bill. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me to make this clarification. Mr. Barrett and I have an amendment, but before I explain it, let me explain why I am offering it. There is a longstanding rule of this House against legislating policy on an appropriation bill, but it's honored in the breach. In the case of this bill, the committee report contains directive language at pages 122, 123, and 124 that can be taken to amend the explicit terms of existing law. And the laws at issue, which the report language could be construed to change, are the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, both carefully wrought laws, and both vitally important. The committee report laments the latest delays at Yucca Mountain. The start-up date has slipped again, this time from 2010 to 2012. The committee, to its credit, funds Yucca Mountain at the requested level, $651 million for fiscal year 2006, and finds this sufficient to do the engineering work in support of the license application and to continue the design work. I represent 4 nuclear reactors and live in an area where nuclear generation accounts for fifty percent of our electricity. My constituents pay 1 mil per kilowatt hour to fund a permanent waste facility, and they and others who pay this assessment deserve to have their money spent well and used solely for the intended purpose: a spent fuel repository. But Yucca Mountain, in the words of the report, ``recedes into the future.'' And I am concerned that if we open new options, even expedients like interim storage, and if we use the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for these options, Yucca Mountain will keep on receding. That's why I am concerned about this report. It proposes ``a concerted initiative'' (1) for interim storage of spent fuel and (2) for reprocessing spent fuel. These are ideas that have been considered in the past and discarded; but the committee report resurrects them, with a token addition of funds that is the tip of an iceberg, a tiny fraction of what these facilities will cost. One cannot avoid the concern that some, if not all, of this money will come from the Nuclear Waste Fund, at the expense of Yucca Mountain. I have this concern because Savannah River Site is among the sites singled out as a candidate for interim storage. I become even more concerned when I read report language which says: ``The Committee directs the Department to begin the movement of spent fuel to centralized interim storage at one or more DOE sites within fiscal year 2006.'' If this directive is taken literally, it will override the National Environmental Policy Act, because it is doubtful that an Environmental Impact Study can be finished in a year. The report recognizes that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act applies to these matters. For example, the report recognizes that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act bars an interim storage facility at the same location as the permanent repository, and yields to that law by proposing that the storage facility be sited elsewhere. In another place, the report calls for a plan of implementation within an incredibly short time, 120 days, and here again, the report anticipates that legislative changes will be necessary to execute the plan by asking DOE to submit them. In these respects, the committee report makes my point, that explicit, longstanding law cannot be amended or overridden by report language. But in pushing an interim storage facility, the committee report is on a collision course with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. It abandoned the idea of an interim storage facility in 1990 by sunsetting the law that authorized it. In its place, the NWPA authorized construction of a Monitored Retrievable Storage Facility only after the completion of the license for construction of Yucca Mountain. This means that no interim storage facility is allowed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act for the time being, and I do not believe that report language can change the explicit provisions of an existing statute. Our amendment simply points out that despite the report language, ``None of the funds made available by this Act shall be obligated or expended in contravention of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.'' So, unless the NWPA is changed, DOE cannot move forward with interim storage until Yucca Mountain is licensed. What's wrong with interim storage? Interim storage is risky because it puts spent fuel in facilities not constructed to hold them forever, yet there is a real risk that once in place, interim storage becomes permanent storage. Interim storage is problematic because it could shift funds and focus off Yucca Mountain, and stretch out its completion indefinitely. Finally, interim storage is expensive. It's expensive to put nuclear waste in interim storage, and even more expensive to take it out to move it to Yucca Mountain. How does interim storage affect you? Under the committee's report language, anyone's district could be the next nuclear waste storage facility. If you have a DOE site, a closed military base, or any other federally owned site, your district could be a candidate to store nuclear waste. So, pages 122, 123, and 124 of the committee report are more than the usual boilerplate. To clarify their effect, I asked the distinguished Chairman of the Energy and Water Subcommittee if he would engage in a colloquy, and he confirmed that the committee ``provided our guidance only in report language;'' and with that assurance, I withdrew our amendment. Amendment to 2419, as Reported Offered by Mr. Spratt of South Carolina At the end of the bill, add the following new section: Sec. 503. None of the funds made available by this Act shall be obligated or expended in contravention of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me say, I enjoyed serving here with your mother, and she has every right to be proud of the service her son is rendering here. He was well raised. The young in this country, and you fellows are young by my reckoning, have a right to be concerned about the course that our government, the Federal Government, is taking under President Bush. Obviously, we have a huge problem with our own budget, our budget deficit. President Bush enjoyed an advantage that practically no President in modern times has enjoyed. He came to office with a surplus that his economists projected to be $5.6 trillion between 2000 and 2011, over a 10-year period of time, an unprecedented surplus. It was not just a projected surplus. The year before the year 2000, the last fiscal year of the Clinton administration, the United States Government ran a surplus of $236 billion. That was the context, the fiscal context in which President Bush came to office. Today, when we closed the books on September 30, 2004, that fiscal year, we had a deficit of $412 billion. OMB is still predicting a deficit this year, even bigger. But CBO has some good news. They tell us that revenues are coming in at a faster clip; and they are hopeful that deficit will be coming down to $350 billion. But $350 billion is only something to cheer in the context of deficits that have been running at a level of $412 billion, the highest level deficits in our history, and we went there in just 5 short years. What we are effectively doing, I say this to the young people of America whom my colleagues represent, is leaving our children and grandchildren the tab for fighting a war, letting them pay for the lion's share of it by simply adding it to the national debt. We are adding to national entitlements. We are cutting taxes, above all, and then borrowing to pay for the revenues we give up by the tax cuts and letting our children pick up the tab, pay the bill. I often go to civic clubs; and I tell them, there is clearly a fiscal problem for the United States Government's budget, because the more we borrow, the more interest we have to pay and, pretty soon, debt service begins to eclipse accounts in the budget, like education, that are critically important. But in addition to that, this is a moral problem. It is a moral problem when we shove these mountains of debt off on to our children and grandchildren. That surely is what we are doing. Quickly, let me just show my colleagues what we have here. This chart, which has its own mountains, shows us where President Clinton started in 1993, at a deficit of $290 billion. On the floor of this House, by one vote, we passed the Clinton budget in 1993, one vote; and every year thereafter the bottom line of the budget got better, better and better, to the point where we had, as I mentioned a minute ago, a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000. Since the election of Mr. Bush in 2001, the budget has gone down and down and down every year; the bottom line of the budget has gotten worse to the point where we had a record deficit of $412 billion last year. Now, the Committee on the Budget and President Bush both tell us we have a plan. We have a plan that will cut that budget deficit in half over the next 5 years. Well, we can cut a budget deficit in half when we leave out some of the biggest items that we are likely to face over the next 5 years. One of those is the cost of eventually dealing with the alternative minimum tax. More and more taxpayers are having to pay the AMT instead of the regular tax; and when that problem is finally fixed, it will have to be politically an inevitability, because it will, by 2010, affect 30 million tax filers. We will have to fix it. CBO says the 10- year cost in revenues lost to fix the AMT so that it only applies to the upper bracket taxpayers for whom it was intended is $642 billion in lost revenues. Then there is the cost of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. We just passed an $82 billion supplemental. There is not a dime in the President's budget after 2005 for the cost of those troops; and CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has said we need to have some kind of national estimation of what it is likely to cost to keep those troops there, assuming that they will be gradually redeploying. So they said, let us assume that there will be 40,000 troops, 20,000 in Afghanistan, 20,000 in the theater around Iraq for the next 6, 7, 8 years. Their calculation is $384 billion. That cost is left out of the President's budget. So major items have been left out. We have gone back and put in items that are not contentious, not controversial, but politically realistic; and we can see from this chart that the deficit does get a bit better, because the economy gets better; but 10 years from now, we have a deficit of $621 billion; $621 billion.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, we can see it coming down the track. This chart depicts it as graphically as we can make it. The deficit never rises below, never falls below $350 billion, and rises to $621 billion. Tally that up and we will see a mountain of debt added over the next 10 years, and then we have to pay debt service, we have to pay the interest on that debt; and that debt service begins to encroach upon other necessities, other critical priorities of the government like education, like health care. So this is why we are concerned, the gentleman and I, and we, we are leaving to the next generation this legacy of debt. Surely, surely this generation of Americans, like every generation, which has strived to leave their children a better life, a better world, a better economy, does not want to be remembered for leaving our children and grandchildren a mountainous legacy of debt; but that is the course we are on right now. Let me stop there so that we can yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. SPRATT. And it does. One in seven workers ends up on disability before retirement

Mr. SPRATT. This chart shows it as graphically as we can express it. There are two claws impinging on Social Security under the President's proposal. First of all, most Americans do not understand this, but when you go to retire, if you have elected to put money into a private account, the first thing you will have to do before Social Security computes your benefits is pay Social Security back. That private account, that ownership account, is really a loan from the Social Security Administration. You have to pay back, upon retirement, every dollar you have diverted into a private account plus interest at 3 percent over the rate of inflation. That means that there will be a significant privatization tax which gets bigger and bigger over time, depending on how many years you are in the work force. In addition to that, there is another factor buried in all the detail which is critically important because it changes the nature of Social Security. And that is that basic benefit computation will be free formulated. Let me express that differently. Today, when you go to retire, the clerk at Social Security takes all your earnings from age 14 onward, takes the highest 35 years, averages those, brings them up to a present value, and then, each year, the amount of income that you can get is dependent upon a formula that is used to derive what is called the PIA, the primary insurance amount. You get 92 percent of the first $627. You get 30 percent of the next $3,779, and you get 15 percent of everything else. That is complicated. But the net result of that is that lower-income workers tend to get more, a better deal out of Social Security than the higher-income workers do. It has this effect to it that makes it a social insurance plan and not just a retirement plan. If you change the way that benefit is indexed every year, which the President proposes to do. Today that basic benefit will be indexed and changed according to the rate of inflation and wages in our economy. The President wants to change it to price inflation. That is economic talk. But it is critically important in a practical sense because, over a 70-year period of time, it will slash in half the basic benefit to which you are entitled from Social Security. And this chart shows it right here. Someone who is retiring in 2075, born in 2010, a couple of years from now, 42 percent of his accumulated benefit in his private investment account will have to be paid back to Social Security; 56 percent of the remaining amount will be diminished by the recalculation, the reformulation which President Bush is proposing. So we have what is left that this chart shows. You start out with the big blue bar, all along here. That is scheduled benefits under Social Security. The green amount beneath that shows the traditional Social Security benefit to which you are entitled; in 2015, it makes up most of your benefit. But by 2045, about half of your benefit is traditional Social Security, and half is in your private account. When you get to the 70th year, almost all of your benefit is coming out of the private account, and only a small part, this little green tip down here, is coming from traditional Social Security. So we are going to ask you, the young people of today, the families that are 30- something with kids, raising them, to continue paying that 12.4 percent in the traditional Social Security, only to get this in the way of traditional benefits out of it. It is going to change the nature of the program in ways that cannot even be fully anticipated.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, following up on what the gentlewoman has said, this chart spells it out, it is a little busy, but the President and others who are claiming there is a crisis point in 2017, 2018 as a pivotal year, that is the year when incoming dedicated revenues will be exceeded by outgoing scheduled benefits. But Social Security at that point in time, the trust fund will be sitting on a reserve, a cache of U.S. Treasury bonds equal to $4.7 trillion. The interest on those Treasury bonds will not only continue to ensure benefits in full; they will actually add to the surplus, the corpus of the trust fund, so that in the year 2027, $6.5 trillion will be in that cache of Treasury bonds held by the trustees of Social Security. Now, at that point in time the interest income will no longer be adequate to fully cover the benefits outgoing, but with $6.5 trillion in Treasury bonds, by redeeming those bonds the system is assuredly solvent until 2041. As the gentlewoman just said, the actuaries of Social Security are paid to be conservative. They are paid to be very, very cautious and they are. The rate of growth they are assuming is a very, very modest rate of growth. We do not want to be fools, so we take a very conservative view of things. But the CBO has taken a slightly more realistic view of the future and they say, we think you will make it to 2052. We think the system then will be able to pay out 78 cents on the dollar, not fully but substantially, and after that something in the range of 78 cents on the dollar. So the system is faced with problems down the road, but we have got time to fix them. The sooner the better; and if we fix them right, we will not have a problem. I was here in 1983. Social Security really was in trouble in 1983. Some forecasted that it would scrape bottom, run dry in the retirement trust fund in July of 1983. President Reagan got together with Tip O'Neill and the leadership of the Senate. We appointed a truly bipartisan representative board. You had Mr. Greenspan at one end. Claude Pepper at the other end. Dan Moynihan here. Jim Baker there. They got together and they came up with a menu of different choices to which every stakeholder contributed something. And the result was the system was made assuredly solvent for the next 60 years. That can be done again. There is no reason we cannot do it again, and everybody then can breathe easily. But you cannot do it and incorporate these private accounts which are carved out of Social Security and make the shortfall today twice as large as it actually is.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, there is one thing we have not spoken about. We have talked about the budget deficit. We did not speak about the trade deficit, $666 billion, also an encumbrance we are leaving our children. We did not talk about the jobs deficit. In the last recession, 2.5 million manufacturing jobs, the best of our jobs, were lost, that have not come back. Service jobs have but not manufacturing jobs. One of the solutions to all of this has got to be education. We have got to have a workforce that is educated as never before in American history, adaptable, keen, intelligent, quantitative, and if we look at the budget the President sent us for the first time since 1988, a President of the United States requested less for spending on education than we are currently spending at the present time. He wipes out vocational education, $1.3 billion. Wipes out the drug free schools. Wipes out GEAR UP for underprivileged kids who want to get a college education. Wipes out Even Start. Wipes out educational technology. There are some plusses and puts and takes so that a lot of these do not come out on the bottom line, but when we consider everything, this is the least forthcoming education request at a time when education was never needed as much as it is now. So we have got an education deficit as well. That is why we are out here tonight, to talk about the 20-somethings and the 30-somethings and what they can expect for the future of America. We have got deficits, which means that we are leaving negative legacies in numerous different areas that we have got to reverse, we have got to undo, and it starts with the budget. We simply cannot keep stacking up mountains of debt which we shove off into the future for our children to pay.

Mr. SPRATT. We have a number of different deficits. One is the Social Security deficit. The actuaries at the Social Security Administration tell us that the shortfall in Social Security funding over the next 70 years is $3.7 trillion. What Mr. Bush is now proposing as a purported solution to that is to allow workers to divert 4 percentage points off their payroll tax, one- third of their payroll taxes into private or personal accounts and away from the Social Security trust fund. This will have enormous consequences. First of all, everyone can see that it is counterintuitive. If you have got a trust fund which is $3.7 trillion, do you resolve that problem by diverting a third of the revenues away from that fund, so that you virtually double, and then some, the shortfall in the account? That does not square with anybody's understanding of how to resolve this problem. But it is of particular concern for younger Americans, because they will be paying substantial sums into Social Security, and they may get, unless the reform being discussed is done differently from what the President proposes, the worst they will get out of Social Security. Thus far, Social Security, every generation would say, has been a success story. It has made the fabric of America a better country, a better society. A lot of young people walk up to me, I would say to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), and they say: I do not ever think I will see my Social Security or at least nothing like what is promised to me. I am paying in big bucks, 12.4 percentage points of my gross income, after accounting for what my employer also pays. And I do not ever think I will see what I am contributing come back to me. And I tell them all, Social Security is not just a retirement plan. Social Security is also a plan particularly for younger families. As a matter of fact, 37 percent of those on Social Security today drawing benefits are younger Americans who are disabled or have had a family member, a breadwinner, die, or they are the dependents of these particular beneficiaries of Social Security. Social Security provides the equivalent for, let us say, a young couple, age 27, two children, it provides the equivalent of $403,000 in term life insurance. And for those who become disabled, nobody thinks he will, but many do; for those who become disabled, it provides $353,000 in disability insurance, which would be hard to buy in the individual market. And that is not to mention Medicare, which comes with the Social Security disability. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), the distinguished chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, before yielding to the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) to respond.

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 California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott). (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)