John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Madam Speaker, the House and the Senate passed their own versions of budget resolutions on March 17. That was more than a month ago. I am glad that we finally are going to conference because that will bring the deliberations on the budget at least a bit out into the open. And if there is any aspect of the budget resolution that needs to be brought into the open and resolved with a public debate, all the stakeholders included, it is this provision that we have been discussing, and that is a provision that would cut Medicaid, over 5 years, by $20 billion. This motion to instruct conferees protects Medicaid from those spending cuts. Let me explain how those spending cuts would come about. The House-passed Republican budget resolution directs the Committee on Energy and Commerce to cut spending on programming within its jurisdiction by $20 billion. But the Republican leadership has made it clear. The resolution calls for $20 billion in cuts within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, but the Republican leadership has made it clear that those cuts should not include Medicare. That only leaves Medicaid. It leaves Medicaid subject to $20 billion in cuts over 5 years, per the language of the resolution passed by the House. On our side of the aisle, all Democrats oppose unanimously the House budget resolution which included the Medicaid cut. Now, 44 Republicans have signed a letter urging that the Medicaid cut be dropped in the conference report. As a result, it appears that a majority of the House Members are on record against the Medicaid cuts. Medicaid cuts, therefore, should not be included if the conference report is to reflect the will of the majority in the conference report. In the other body, the Senate, a majority also opposed the Medicaid cuts, with 52 Senators, including every Democrat and 7 Republicans, voting to strike the Medicaid cuts from the Senate budget resolution and, instead, to set up a bipartisan commission. So the purpose of this motion is to formalize the fact that both houses, a majority in both houses, are formally on record as opposed to the cut in Medicaid of $20 billion. And this motion simply instructs the conferees, it does not suggest, it does not tell them to consider, it instructs the conferees to follow the Senate's lead and strike the reconciliation instructions that target Medicaid for funding cuts and, instead, put up $1.5 million so we can have a fair bipartisan Medicaid commission to make these decisions. I am glad that the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), has said that he will recommend to his members to vote for this resolution. I am disturbed to hear him emphasize that it is nonbinding. Given the fact that the majority in both houses support the dropping of this $20 billion cut in Medicaid, I think this should be, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) put it, a moral mandate for the conferees. If it will bring back a conference report that reflects the will of the House, it should not include $20 million in cuts in the Medicaid program.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, all of us who go out into the field to see our troops, and particularly overseas, bring back many conclusions and various impressions; but to a person, we all come back impressed, inspired, and thankful for the men and women who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. In hard, dirty, and dangerous circumstances and often thankless deployments like Iraq and Afghanistan, they not only serve but they have had to adapt and improvise and tackle tasks they were never trained to handle. They have risen to the occasion, they have risen to the challenge, and at significant cost, in terms of those who have been wounded or injured or killed in action. These troops are the finest that any country has ever fielded, and they deserve not only our admiration but our support, and not just for them and their roles, which are vitally important, but for their families back home, for they sacrifice dearly. There are three levels in which our support should come: first, to those on active duty, and their families, and particularly those who are deployed for long tours of duty in harsh environments and under hazardous conditions; second, to the Guard and Reserve who leave their civilian occupations and are now serving in numbers and percentages we have never seen since the all-volunteer force was created some 30 years ago. Almost half of those in Iraq come from the reserve components. More than 300,000 have been called up over the last 2\1/2\ years; 45,000 have had their tours extended. Many are on their second tour, some on their third. They are answering the call, they are doing their duty, and they are proving that the total force works and works well. But they have families back home and jobs and businesses and obligations and debts to pay and health care needs, and they need our unstinting support as never before. They not only need it, they deserve it. Next come the veterans and the retirees, those who have put, in many cases, much of their adult lives into serving their country. They have served and they now look to their country to keep the promises that were made to them at the time they were serving and when they reupped and when they joined again and when they stayed in for 20 and 25 years, promises about retirement benefits, about veterans benefits, about health care and education and many other things. When the needs of these three groups are put together, all together, they make up a long bill of particulars, more than we can do, in all candor, in 1 year or even 2 years; but every time we take up a supplemental appropriation bill or a defense authorization bill or a defense appropriation bill, we should frankly, candidly, and honestly, searchingly, ask ourselves, what are we doing in this bill, on this occasion, to meet the needs of our service men and women who are serving gallantly in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and what are we doing in particular for their families? What are we doing to help them out in their combat circumstances, with flak vests and personal protective gear and up-armored vehicles? But what are we also doing for their children back home for their health care needs? Have we provided adequately, I do not think we have, for family separation centers, the one place dedicated to helping them resolve their problems while family members are overseas? And for Tricare, health care, critically important in our society, particularly for Reservists and their families, Reservists leaving their job, what have we done to provide and see to it that they do not have to sacrifice in terms of health care for themselves and their families not only while they are on duty but in the months after they are deactivated and come back home? And how about servicemen's life insurance? For years it had been inadequately funded. Many troops because of the premium, modest though it seems, have not elected to take it. What are we doing to see to it that every American soldier who goes into combat, hazardous duty has at least several hundred thousand dollars of servicemen's group life insurance? And what are we doing about our veterans, our category 7 and 8 veterans for over 2 years now, if they have not previously registered and are not able to get admitted to veterans health care facilities? There are 50,000 veterans waiting in line as we speak for an appointment to a veterans health care facility. The President's budget for this year provided $106 million, not much over last year which itself was inadequate to meet their needs. Over the next 5 years, this budget request is $18 billion below what is needed for current services. We can do better than that. We have got promises to keep to our veterans and these promises, above all, should be kept. Given the sporadic, unpredictable violence and the harsh, hard circumstances, it is not surprising that many of our troops come back, some have said as many as 17 percent, from places like Afghanistan and Iraq with difficult mental problems. This, too, is something we could do. Mr. Speaker, we have to follow up the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis) who not only is a member of the Committee on Armed Services but also formerly a military spouse and speaks knowledgeably about this subject.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, the opportunity is certainly theirs, having run the government for 4 years and having direct hands-on opportunities to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman, during much of this debate, as I noted earlier, my Republican colleagues have taken the attitude that today's deficits were unforeseeable, unavoidable, beyond their control. But we warned here in 2001 and in every year thereafter when this resolution came before this House that the other side of the aisle was betting the budget on a blue sky forecast and leaving no margin for error. It is their policy choices made in the face of our objections that have brought us to the point we find ourselves today. In deficit this year by $427 billion, last year by $412 billion, the year before by $375 billion, each year has broken a record for a bigger and bigger deficit. You control the House, you control the Senate, you control the White House; but you have not been able to control the budget, and you cannot escape responsibility for its dismal condition. As we stand here at the threshold of passing another budget resolution, I want to forewarn you, you will not take the deficit away, this resolution will not. You will not move the deficit down. It will only move it up and out, year after year after year to come. But do not take my word for it. I am partisan. I am the Democratic ranking member on this committee. Read what our neutral, nonpartisan budget shop, the Congressional Budget Office, has to say in a report that we request every year as a matter of law, analysis of the President's budgetary proposals for fiscal year 2006. Every Member has one of these in his or her office. You only have to read to the second page and look in the upper right-hand corner, and you will see there that the Congressional Budget Office says if the President's budget is passed and implemented over the next 10 years, it will accumulate $5.135 trillion in additional debt of the United States. Table 1.1, it is laid out there. But as you all know and understand the way CBO does these estimates, they do not include all the costs. Since the President does not have costs in his budget for Afghanistan and Iraq after 2005, this resolution, this estimate does not assume it, even though CBO estimates that the additional costs will be $384 billion. It does not include a dime for fixing the alternative minimum tax, even though we are warned that by 2010 there will be 30 million taxpayers paying it rather than the regular tax schedule. And CBO says the cost of fixing it over 10 years is $640 billion. It includes nothing for the President's signature initiative, the one he is pushing hardest and first and that is to partially privatize Social Security. The President has indicated himself that the cost of doing that, the additional deficits we will add if we do that between 2009 and 2015 will be $754 billion. When you add all of these additional costs into the mix, then the debt incurred through 2016 will be $7 trillion. We will double the debt of the United States. If indeed we do what the President is proposing and allow workers to peel 4 percentage points off FICA and put those payments into a private account, we will incur $4.9 trillion in debt over the next 20 years. We will not see the budget balanced again in our lifetime. CBO is our forecaster, our neutral, nonpartisan budget shop. They are warning us this budget will not bring the deficit down. This budget will not do away with the deficit. It will make the deficit worse. Indeed, they tell us in this report, same page, page 2, that the President's budget, basically your budget, the President's budget, makes the situation $2 trillion worse than if we just left things on automatic pilot for current services. I would simply close by saying, vote against this resolution. Let us go back to the drawing board. We can do better. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Chairman, 5 years ago, the budget was in surplus. Hard to believe, but it was in surplus by $236 billion. We are here today grappling with a deficit of $427 billion, the deficit expected this year, basically because of policy choices that were made since 2001, made since President Bush came to office. The Bush administration bet the budget on a blue sky estimate and went for huge tax cuts that left no margin for error. I stood here in the well of this House in 2001 and warned that those projections of $5.6 trillion surplus could disappear in a blink of an economist's eye. When the surpluses of $5.6 trillion failed to materialize, the budget sank into deficit: $375 billion in 2003, $412 billion in 2004, and an expected $427 billion this year and on and on and on. I know there have been random events that no one foresaw, terrorism, and recession, but that is part of budgeting, reserving for such contingencies. The Bush Republican budgets of the last 4 years not only failed to provide for such contingencies, by budgeting right to the margin, but when deficits replaced surpluses, nevertheless they kept coming with tax cuts, tax cuts after tax cuts. This budget has $106 billion in additional tax cuts included in it, knowing full well that all of those tax cuts will go straight to the bottom line and will add dollar for dollar to the deficit. That is one reason that the CBO says, in yesterday's production of the President's budget, that the President's budget makes this deficit worse, not better, by $1.6 trillion. In other words, if we left it on autopilot, at current services, it would be $1.6 trillion more in implementing the President's budget. So let us be clear. We are here because of policy choices that Republicans have made, the White House and the Congress, over the last 4 years, and you were forewarned and took the risk. Given the thrust of this budget that is before us, we will be back grappling again for years to come with deficits as far as the eye can see. Sitting here for the last 2 days I have heard their budget praised warmly by Members on the other side, and there are features of it, frankly, that I would praise too. For example, it includes $50 billion, as a rough cost, for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year, which is more than one can say for the President's budget, which does not include a dime. But this budget excludes the likely cost, according to CBO, in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, which CBO estimates to be $384 billion. This budget stops abruptly in 2010, running out 5 years of numbers instead of 10 years of numbers. That is a convenient place to stop because it avoids recognizing the cost of Social Security privatization, which the administration acknowledges will be $754 billion between 2009 and 2015, but which it omits from the budget altogether. And while it calls for renewal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, with the revenue impact of $1.6 trillion, not a dime of that revenue loss is included because it falls after 2010, but it clearly affects the outyears. Add back these omitted items, and it is clear there is no way, no way, that we are going to cut the deficit in half in 4 years, 5 years, 6 years. Indeed if we pass Social Security privatization, as the President proposes, it will add $4.9 trillion, as this chart shows, to the deficits of the United States over the next 20 years. In that case we will not see the budget balanced again in our lifetime. That is an undeniable fact, but it is a fact that this budget avoids acknowledging. Sitting here for the last 2 days, I have also heard the claim that this budget takes on entitlements. In fact, the gentleman who was in the well just before me emphasized this as one of the sterling features of this amendment. But let us be clear. It does not take on Social Security. I do not think it should, but it does not. It does not take on Medicare. It does not do anything to the farm program. The chairman here has made it clear that these are not to be the objects of reconciliation savings. Reconciliation will mainly fall on Medicaid and on other programs like Medicaid, Medicaid being the health care program of last resort for the least among us. The President has proposed cutting Medicaid over 10 years by $60 billion, but when the Congressional Budget Office scored his savings and said we cannot find $20 billion of savings here, maybe 13, maybe 14, but not $20 billion in these proposals, nevertheless, the committee has said to the Committee on Energy and Commerce to cut $20 billion anyway. Three Governors were here to speak with the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) and me and to plead with us, ``Please do not subject us to an arbitrary budget savings number. This program needs to be reformed. It needs to be restructured, but do not let reform be driven by an arbitrary number.'' That is exactly what this budget resolution does. It lets reform be driven by an arbitrary savings number. It cannot tell us what, where, or how those savings will be achieved. When what is off limits in the $68 billion of reconciliation is made clear, we can see where the cuts are likely to fall. Medicaid for sure, big-time cuts, but also the earned income tax credit, the child care and development block grant, food stamps, TANF, veterans benefits. In other words, the safety net. These cuts will shred the safety net. They are not intended for the major entitlement programs but for the smaller ones that are for the least of these who need the help, the most vulnerable among us. It will be argued, I know, that this is necessary to balance the budget, but, in truth, none of the $68 billion in reconciliation savings goes to balance the budget. That is because it is more than offset by the $106 billion in additional tax cuts. When we net these out, there is no spending reduction to put on the bottom line. There is no net reduction to the bottom line. The bottom line actually gets worse. Instead of using these mandatory spending cuts in Medicaid to reduce the deficit, as they would have us assume, these cuts actually are used to offset tax cuts. For whom we do not know, but, nevertheless, we do know they do not go to the bottom line and they do not mitigate the deficit. So there are major problems in this budget, particularly when it comes to the key objective, and that is reduction of the deficit. And I will return to that in a minute. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished whip on the House Democratic side.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means. (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, before yielding to the gentleman from Texas, I would simply like to say that I have here a copy of the CBO's report on the budget, January 2005, which shows that in the year 2000 we had revenues of $1,004 trillion under the individual income tax. Last year, in the year 2004, revenues were $809 billion. That is not an increase. That is a $200 billion decrease. One of the big differences between us and them is that we provide more for veterans health care and for veterans benefits. And now on that point, I recognize and yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Edwards.

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

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, before voting on this budget resolution, everyone should ask, what does it do to education, what does it do to the development of our communities, what does it do for veterans health care, and what does it do to the bottom line? In seeking an answer to those questions, I would recommend that you look no further than a publication which came to your offices yesterday from the CBO, fresh off the press. Read table 1.1, page 2, and look in the far upper right-hand corner, and you will see the amount of debt we will incur over the next 10 years if this budget, which is essentially the President's budget, is adopted and implemented: $5.135 trillion in additional debt. But that is without funding the war in Iraq after 2005. It is without fixing the alternative minimum tax estimated to cut revenues by $640 billion. And it is without reflecting one cent for Social Security privatization which the administration acknowledges to be a cost of $754 billion between 2009 and 2015. Adjust for these additional costs and this budget will add $7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. It will double the debt. If that is the legacy you want to leave your children and your grandchildren, then vote for this bill. But if you want to put the budget back on a path to balance as it was in the year 2000, if you want to avoid the accumulation of that mountain of debt, then vote for the Spratt or Democratic alternative. Our budget resolution gets to balance by the year 2012. It accumulates $1.7 trillion less in debt over the next 10 years than the Republican budget base bill. Ours also protects priorities, our children's education, our veterans, health care, our communities' development, and it supports defense, fully funds it at the same level as theirs, and it applies a rule proven to work called the pay-as-you-go rule. This rule rigorously applied will do more for deficit reduction, exponentially more than the Republican resolution for all its huffing and puffing can ever purport to do. The right vote here is for the Spratt amendment or substitute, the Democratic substitute, and against the base bill, the Republican budget resolution. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to an observation the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) made that this was the most fiscally responsible budget since the Reagan years. I was surprised, first of all, that he chose the Reagan years as a frame of reference. Those are the years that the mushroom deficits first appeared. We had deficits of $200 billion, 5.6 percent of GDP in the early 1980s. It took us 15 years to get to those deficits. That would not be the kind of model that I would choose. If you want something to model a budget after, then there is a much more recent and much more valid model and that is what we did in 1990, 1993 and 1997. In 1990, both sides sat down, President Bush took part in the negotiations through his staff and we came to the first agreement for the settlement of the budget deficit. The Bush balanced budget agreement of 1990 and 1991, laid the foundation for what we accomplished in the 1990s. In 1993, we did the Clinton budget. In 1997, we finished it up with the Balanced Budget Act. All of those acts contained three elements, the PAYGO rule which we are proposing to reinstate, caps on discretionary spending backed up by sequestration, and a multiyear 5-year budget, not just a 1-year budget but a 5-year budget with goals to attain each year. That is what is lacking here, the budget process, the budget discipline, the budget plan. If you want to see where this budget is likely to lead us, I would like to say once again that everybody should look in his mail and he or she will find an analysis of the President's budgetary proposals for fiscal year 2006. This is essentially the President's budget with a few changes to it, but it is basically his budget. As I have said, you only have to read two pages. You come to table 1.1 and you look in the far right-hand column and you will see the total debt accumulation according to CBO that will be incurred if we follow the President's budget through 2015. That total is $5.135 trillion and that is before anything for fixing the alternative minimum tax which CBO tells us is going to cost at least $640 billion, and before anything is added to the cost side of the ledger for the war in Iraq. This is where we are going if we adopt this budget, right back where we were in 1980 with the budget that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) said he admired so much as fiscally responsible. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown). (Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield a minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), the House Democratic Caucus Chairman. (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).