John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. It narrows our options, that is for sure. If we put too much pressure on them at the WTO, for example, trying to get them to unpeg their currency so that their exports are much more fairly priced vis-a-vis our imports, then they could get stroppy. They could simply retaliate by not buying any more debt and by making it difficult for us to sell our debt at a higher price. Let me yield to the gentleman from Tennessee because he is bringing us back to this whole question of principal accumulation, how much debt in a short period of time this administration has amassed.

Mr. SPRATT. The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990.

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me just wrap up by saying that this is our concern: $2.2 trillion of additional debt in 3 fiscal years, and what is waiting in the wings is a reform in Social Security which is likely to propose that a person not on Social Security can take 2 percentage points or 3 percentage points off his payroll tax and put it in a private account. If that happens, that will increase the debt by another trillion dollars over the next 10 years, and that is our great concern that this will be followed with policies that will actually worsen rather, than improve, this. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis).

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

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

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentlewoman from New York. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman from Virginia. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. SPRATT. There are certain items in the budget that are obligatory. Clearly, one of those obligatory items is interest on the national debt. We have a sovereign responsibility to pay it, and if we do not pay it or if we ever default in payment of it, the cost of credit for the United States of America would skyrocket. Consequently, that comes first, has to be paid, and when it has to be paid, then other things have to yield to it, education, the environment, the basic operation of the government. These other things have to yield to the payment of interest. Obviously, the more debt you stack on top of debt, the more interest we will have to pay.

Mr. SPRATT. Surely. If the principal is going up, your interest is going up.

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for eloquently expressing the moral dimensions of a swelling debt, $8 trillion today, growing to $14 trillion in just 10 years. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, 4 years ago, the Bush administration was just getting started. They sent us their first budget, then told us, based upon a projected $5.6 trillion in surpluses over the next 10 years, that there could be huge tax cuts, between a trillion five and $2 trillion, huge tax cuts and still a budget surplus, and that they would not have to even come back to Congress to ask again for an increase in what we call the debt ceiling until the year 2008, 7 years later. The debt ceiling is a statutory limit, a limit that we impose by law on the total amount of debt that the United States of America can incur. It currently stands at a level of $7.384 trillion. We did not buy into this argument. We did not vote for the tax cuts, and we on this side of the aisle were not surprised, disappointed, bitterly disappointed, because we had strived mightily to put the budget in surplus for the first time in 30 years during the 1990s. We did not vote for it, but we were not surprised when in the year 2002, not 2008 as predicted, but in the year 2002, the Bush administration came back to Congress and said that the statutory debt ceiling is about to be hit. In other words, we have run up so much debt that we are right at the ceiling of the total amount of debt that the government of the United States can incur, and, therefore, we need a $450 billion increase in the debt this year, 2002. The next year they were back asking for more, and now they are back asking for still more, this time $800 billion. It is phenomenal when you consider that the last increase occurred 18 months ago and amounted to $984 billion. That was the largest increase at any one given time in the fiscal history of this country. As a matter of fact, $984 billion, the amount by which the debt ceiling was increased in May of 2003, $984 billion is more than the total indebtedness of the United States when Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981, and how long has it lasted, this $984 billion increase in the debt service? Eighteen months. In fact, right now, this administration, under its fiscal policy of the budgets passed by the Republican majorities in this House and the Senate, has run up a debt of $1 trillion over the last 18 months. That is a rate at which we are accumulating debt right now, $1 trillion every 18 months. If we add together the increases to date since 2001, it was $450 billion in 2002; $984 billion, May 26, 2003; and then a request which must come to the floor sometime this week in one form or another, because the Treasury Department tells us they cannot continue to incur debt or meet their obligations unless we raise the debt ceiling, allowing them to borrow still more money, $800 billion will have to be passed some time this week. Those three increases for the last 4 fiscal years total $2.234 trillion. That is the amount of indebtedness that has to be accommodated by increases in the debt ceiling in order to allow room for the Bush budgets over the last 3 fiscal years. We think at the very least an increase of this magnitude, $800 billion, requires an unambiguous yes or no vote, a straight up and down vote under a clean bill that only deals with the debt ceiling, with one exception. We believe that it is unconscionable to continue incurring debt at this rate, $2.3 trillion over 4 years, without doing something to stop this juggernaut, this headlong descent into debt. So we propose that at least we be offered an amendment on the House floor to amend the debt ceiling increase to reinstate something we call the pay-as-you-go rule. The pay-as-you-go rule provides, quite simply, that if you want to increase an entitlement, liberalize an entitlement payment, you have to identify new revenues to pay for the increase or decrease another entitlement by a commensurate amount. On the other hand, if you want to cut taxes, you have to raise revenues elsewhere or cut an entitlement by the same amount so that the effect is neutral, has no effect on the bottom line of the deficit. That rule was in play in this House for at least 12 years during the 1990s, and it accounted for a phenomenal effect upon other measures we took up and the deficit of the United States. As this chart shows, when President Clinton came to office in 1993, the deficit the previous year was $290 billion. We passed a Deficit Reduction Act here sent to us by the President on February 17, passed it within 3 months. Every year thereafter the bottom line of the budget got better, until the year 2000 when we had a surplus of $236 billion. Four short years ago, we had a surplus of $236 billion. Every year since the onset of the Bush administration, the bottom line of the budget has gotten worse and worse, to the point where in the year 2002 we were back in deficit by $158 billion, and the year 2003 we had a record deficit, $377 billion, and this past year, which ended September 30, 2004, we booked a deficit of $413 billion in the Federal budget, $413 billion. Now, what happened? I mentioned earlier the big tax cuts passed by the Bush administration passed in 2001. There were more in 2002, still more in 2003. And instead of having a rebounding effect, a sort of supply-side effect so that the pick-up in the economy resulting from the tax cuts sort of replenished the lost revenues, instead of that happening, as projected, this was the curve that was projected, that there would be barely any loss of revenues, instead taxes have followed this particular actual curve, dropping from $1.73 trillion back in the year 2001 to $811 billion this year. Now, there are other sources of the problem. Terrorism is taking its toll on the budget. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost over $150 billion thus far. No question they have had an effect on the bottom line. But the tax cuts, based on this miscalculation, have had a substantial impact, and this is a course that was chosen by those who voted for it. Here is where we were in the year 2001 when President Bush came to office. This was the statutory debt ceiling, the limit on the total indebtedness the government could incur, $5.950 trillion. It was raised to $6.4 trillion, then raised again May 2003 to $7.384 trillion. It will now be raised again to $8.200 trillion, by $800 billion. And, folks, that is not the end of it. That is the hard part of it. That is what has happened thus far. Let me just summarize, though, where we are right now with the debt ceiling increases that have had to be adopted to accommodate the fiscal policies of this administration. Here we see it. In the year 2002, $450 billion, the next year $984 billion, now $800 billion, it comes to an increase, the amount I mentioned just a while ago, $2.234 trillion. That is the amount in 4 years by which the debt ceiling of the United States has had to be raised in order to accommodate the budgets and fiscal policy of this administration. As I said, the last increase, $985 billion, was the largest in our history. Not only that, that amount, $984 billion, exceeded the total indebtedness of the United States in 1980-81, when Ronald Reagan came to office. The total debt of the United States then was $908 billion. We had one increase that has lasted 18 months, that is all. We have already run through $984 billion on the watch and under the policies of this administration. As I said, it does not stop here. It would be bad enough if it did, but it does not stop here. This is what we really have to be concerned about and why we think at the very least there should be one single solid step taken in this debt ceiling increase to slow down this head- long descent into debt. This is the level of the debt ceiling in 2001 when President Bush came to office. The Congressional Budget Office, at our request on the Committee on the Budget last year, projected the Bush budget through the year 2014, from 2005 through 2014, for 10 years, and came back and told us if we follow this course, by 2014 the United States will have accumulated $14.545 trillion in debt. This is where the Bush administration started, this is where they would end in 2014, projecting forward on a current services basis, the tax cuts and other policies that they have. Let me make one final observation about this. As serious as it is, and anyone can look at this and realize the gravity of it, everybody understands the economics, everybody understands the fiscal effects, but the real issue here is the moral question. Is this the kind of legacy we are going to leave our children: $14.545 trillion? Because that is the course we are on right now. And let me give one other aspect with this second poster here. One other aspect of this problem, before turning to my colleagues, that everybody knows simply cannot be sustained. This lower line, the black line, is the gross domestic product of the United States from 1980 through 2014, slowly rising, growing every year. That is the GDP. This is the debt of the United States during the same period of time. And you can see that the debt of the United States is growing faster than our income. Everybody, every household, every business, and every government, State, Federal, or local, knows that you simply cannot sustain that kind of increase in your debt over and above your annual income for a prolonged period of time. But that is the course we are on right now. Madam Speaker, I wish to recognize at this point the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Ways and Means, who will be our floor person on this issue when and if the debt ceiling increase comes to the floor. (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, on the weekend before Labor Day, some four hundred alumni of Jefferson High School gathered for their first reunion since Jefferson closed more than thirty years ago. Jefferson got its start in a frame school house built for African- American students next to Wesley United Methodist Church on West Jefferson Street in York, South Carolina. From there, Jefferson graduated to a Rosenwald school and became the African-American public school in a racially segregated system Although the system was called ``separate but equal,'' Jefferson never had facilities or teaching materials equal to its counterparts, the white schools that I attended. Used books were passed on from white students, dated and worn. The school district built a new high school for white students in 1950, but left black students to make the best of their old one. The students, teachers, and administrators at Jefferson did just that. They made the most of their circumstances. The students who came back for this Reunion did not dwell on what they lacked at Jefferson High School. They saluted teachers who took a personal interest, believed in them, and encouraged them to excel. They recalled their formidable teams in football and basketball and the musical talent they produced. They recognized the values instilled in them for a lifetime. When the alumni sat down for a banquet the last night of their reunion, the pride they felt at being ``Jeffersonians'' was easily felt and well-founded. Among the four hundred attending the dinner, there were graduates who had risen to the highest levels of the Civil Service and become department heads in state government; Ph.D.'s in the sciences and liberal arts; college professors; school teachers, successful entrepreneurs, attorneys; and many more who had distinguished themselves. The banquet speaker, Roberta Wright, symbolized their success. She finished Jefferson and went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk University and the University of Michigan School of Law. She made a stirring speech, challenging everyone to do more for the common good. With the onset of integration in the early 1970s, Jefferson High School came to an end. But the three-day reunion made clear that Jefferson lives on in the lives it made better. Hundreds of the alumni attending attested to better, more productive lives because of what they learned at Jefferson under teachers who cared, encouraged, and challenged.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, on the weekend before Labor Day, some 400 alumni of Jefferson High School gathered for their first reunion since Jefferson closed more than 30 years ago. Jefferson got its start in a frame school house built for African- American students next to Wesley United Methodist Church on West Jefferson Street in York, South Carolina. From there, Jefferson graduated to a Rosenwald school and became the African-American public school in a racially segregated system. Although the system was called ``separate but equal,'' Jefferson never had facilities or teaching materials equal to its counterparts, the white schools that I attended. Used books were passed on from white students, dated and worn. The school district built a new high school for white students in 1950, but left black students to make the best of their old one. The students, teachers and administrators at Jefferson did just that. They made the most of their circumstances. The students who came back for this reunion did not dwell on what they lacked at Jefferson High School. They saluted teachers who took a personal interest, believed in them, and encouraged them to excel. They recalled their formidable teams in football and basketball and the musical talent they produced. They recognized the values instilled in them for a lifetime. When the alumni sat down for a banquet the last night of their reunion, the pride they felt at being ``Jeffersonians'' was easily felt and well-founded. Among the 400 attending the dinner, there were graduates who had risen to the highest levels of the Civil Service and become department heads in state government; Ph.D.'s in the sciences and liberal arts; college professors; school teachers; successful entrepreneurs; attorneys; and many more who had distinguished themselves. The banquet speaker, Roberta Wright, symbolized their success. She finished Jefferson and went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk University and the University of Michigan School of Law. She made a stirring speech, challenging everyone to do more for the common good. With the onset of integration in the early 1970s, Jefferson High School came to an end. But the 3-day Reunion made clear that Jefferson lives on in the lives it made better. Hundreds of the alumni attending attested to better, more productive lives because of what they learned at Jefferson under teachers who cared, encouraged, and challenged.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4200 and commend my colleagues, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), for bringing this conference to a very successful conclusion. Mr. Speaker, I would like to engage the chairman in a colloquy. Mr. Speaker, the Conferees' Report in section 3303 contains a provision on the release of ferromanganese from the strategic stockpile, which is critical to steel production in the United States. Section 3303 contains a requirement that to release more than 50,000 tons of ferromanganese, the Secretary of Defense, among other requirements, must certify that the disposal will not cause undue disruption to the usual markets of producers and processors of ferromanganese in the United States. This could be considered a certification about future events regarding markets, and one could question whether the certification of future events is possible. I ask the chairman if the conferees' intent in the meaning of this provision is that certification in this instance is the Secretary's best judgment about future market conditions and events.

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

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman for that clarification. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4200 and commend my good friends, Chairman Hunter and Mr. Skelton, for concluding this conference report. Everyday our armed forces make great sacrifices to ensure that we are safe, secure, and free. In return, this bill provides a 3.5 percent across-the-board pay raise. It stops short of targeted pay raises for NCOs and warrant officers, which I supported, but it helps bridge the gap with the civilian workforce; makes permanent increases in imminent danger pay from $150 to $225 and family separation pay from $100 to $250 per month (these are initiatives I championed a year ago--I'm glad to see them finally be adopted); provides $10 billion in military construction funds--keeping the Military Housing Privatization Program on track, and eliminating the program's funding ceiling. The reserve component is being used in an unprecedented way and at an unprecedented rate. The Guard and Reserve make up approximately 40 percent of the force in Iraq, and others are stationed in Afghanistan and other critical locations at home and abroad. More than 173,000 have been mobilized for active duty service. Their service must be matched with meaningful benefits. This bill provides enhanced TRICARE for reservists. It is not the full measure recommended by the Senate, but it is an improvement over current law. We can and should build on this beginning. This bill also offers improved tuition assistance benefits. In addition, this bill ends an injustice to the survivors of military retirees. H.R. 4200 phases out from October 2005 to March 2008 the current offset under the Survivor Benefit Plan, and increases the annuities paid to survivors of military retirees who are 62 years or older. Recognizing the good efforts of my colleagues, Mr. Skelton and Ms. Tauscher, this bill increases active Army and Marine Corps troop levels by 30,000 and 9,000 respectively. The Pentagon fought us every step of the way on this end-strength increase, but this is the minimum we can do to reduce the stress on our forces and ensure that we can meet military commitments in the future. This bill also provides $25 billion for the war in Iraq--enough to get through March of next year. We expect another supplemental request early next year of $50 billion--taking the total cost of the Iraq war well over $200 billion. The bill is not without shortcomings. The President, Senator Kerry and the 9/11 commission all agree that the gravest threat facing the Nation is nuclear terror. H.R. 4200 continues the Administration's pattern of under funding CTR programs. This bill authorizes $10 billion for missile defense, but only $409 million to help combat the gravest threat facing our country. How can we justify spending $10 billion on an unproven system developed to combat a relatively non-existent threat and only spend 4 percent of that amount on consensus greatest threat to the security of the American people. The Conference Report does impose some welcome disciplines on that ballistic missile defense (BMD) program. The Pentagon's Office of Testing and Evaluation regains an oversight role. It is tasked with devising a realistic test regimen for BMD. In addition, each block of BMD will be subject to Selected Acquisition Report requirements. This means that each block will have baselines for cost, schedule, and performance, against which actual results can be measured. These are steps forward, and steps long overdue in a program of this magnitude.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, the first time I saw H.R. 10, the base bill, was 5 minutes before markup. As I leafed through all 609 pages of it to see what was in it, I quickly saw there were two glaring deficiencies. The first is the National Intelligence Director. Oh, there is an NID in the base bill, but it is an NID in name only. This bill does not have the superpowers the 9/ 11 Commission considered necessary to pull together the 16 component parts of the intelligence community to fuse foreign and domestic intelligence. This NID is clearly lacking in those powers, and let me give two examples why I say that. One is the power of the purse, the power to make the budget. There is an old adage in the Defense Department called the golden rule, he who has the gold, makes the rules. Well, the NID in this bill does not have the gold, so he will not be making the rules that really matter. He does not have the power to set priorities or to make programmatic budget decisions. He is basically a facilitator; a coordinator. The same diminished powers apply to personnel, the hiring, firing, and promoting; putting the team together that can get the job done. He is not a CEO. He is not even a coach or a quarterback. He simply does not have the power the Commission conceived necessary. The prime mover in the 9/11 Commission report in this bill has a name but he does not have substantive powers, which begs the question: Can the NID ``effect'' real change, radical change, without real power? I doubt it. The other missing piece is nuclear nonproliferation. The other night the President and Senator Kerry agreed on one thing, that nuclear terrorism is the gravest threat facing this country. So what does this bill do about the gravest threat facing this country? Next to nothing. Oh, it calls for a study, but we have had countless studies. Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler, you do not get more high powered than that in this town, did the last study and they called for us to triple the amount of money we spend on nuclear nonproliferation. It has not happened. So the base bill slights the single most significant reform, the NID, and it ignores the gravest threat facing the country. That is why the White House, the Senate, and the 9/11 Commission support the substitute, and why I will support it and urge others to do the same.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez).

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) for his eloquent remarks. That is the reason we took advantage of this Special Order, to call attention to this problem. It should be a problem of national concern, a call to action. Here we are 9 days before the end of the fiscal year, and we do not even have a budget for next year, much less a multi-year budget like those we adopted in 1990, 1993 and 1997 and finally brought the deficit to heel. We do not have any of the implements in place to deal with this monumental problem, even though we proved in the 1990s that those implements, like the PAYGO rule, the discretionary spending ceiling and sequestration were useful tools and could actually turn the budget around from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998. That actually happened, and it can happen again if there is leadership coupled with the right process and procedures in this House, and we do not have them at all. We do not even have enough consensus under the Republican leadership of this House and Senate to develop a budget for next year, much less a budget for the next 5 years. We will never do it. If there is anything learned from the 1990s, we will never do it ad hoc. Indeed, the biggest enemy I have often said of deficit reduction is something we call disaggregation, breaking the process up into so many pieces that nobody ever gets a full picture of what is happening even though it is a monumental process. So here I stand, 9 days before the end of the fiscal year. We thought it was an appropriate time to call attention to the record of this year, the record debt, and to the fact there is no prospect for dealing with this in 2005 at all.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, to wrap it up, looking back, we started off talking about the deficit and accumulation of debt. Here is what we have accomplished, this Congress and this administration, in 3 years: The first year, instead of paying down the debt as the Clinton administration had done for 3 years in a row, they raised the debt ceiling by $450 billion. That was good for just 1 year. The next year, 2003, they raised the debt ceiling again by $984 billion, the biggest increase ever; and it has lasted for 15 months. Waiting in the wings right now is another debt ceiling increase of $690 billion; and what it is waiting on is a bill to which it can be attached, a vehicle that can carry it to passage with as few fingerprints on it as possible because nobody wants to be responsible for passing that kind of debt ceiling increase. So the Treasury is reduced to engaging in a lot of gimmicks with Federal retirement funds, for example, in order that we can tie things over until finally that debt-ceiling increase can be passed. In 3 years we will have raised the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. Compare that to the previous 8 years, and it is a phenomenal and depressing reversal. I thank the gentleman for his participation and his eloquent comments.

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman, and let me just wrap up and now turn to my other colleagues and yield to them, first by saying or asking, how does this administration respond to these dismal results? Nobody can put a pretty face on numbers like these, a deficit of $420 billion, a fiscal course that has led us to nearly $15 trillion in debt. Some legacy to leave to our children. In just 10 years, that is the course we are on according to CBO, even OMB. How do they respond to it? Last July when the administration issued, as required by law, its so- called mid-session review of the budget they actually resolved this. When they issued that, they went through the numbers as they projected them, put the best face they possibly could on them, and came to the conclusion that these deficits were indeed unwelcome. That was the strongest word they could muster, that these deficits were unwelcome. Did they offer a plan? No. Did they hold out any prospect that this deficit would be reduced and that the country would be put back on a path of fiscal stability? Not on your life. There is no plan, no prospect of it, no shock, no shame and no solution. We want to tell you more about the situation we find ourselves in, and now I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for that purpose.

Mr. SPRATT. Four hundred twenty billion.

Mr. SPRATT. That is why we are not seeing the results in jobs.

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