John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Four hundred twenty billion.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, in less than 10 days we will close the books on fiscal year 2004, and what a year it has been. A few days after that we will declare a deficit of $422 billion. You got it, $422 billion. Now, there will be all sorts of spin to make that shortfall seem a lot less serious than it really is. But here are the hard facts. At $422 billion, this year's gift will set an all-time record, $47 billion more than last year, which itself last year was the worst deficit on record. And at $422 billion this deficit is bad enough; but if you back out the surplus in Social Security, as you should, 15 years ago we adopted a law and said Social Security shall not be included in the regular budget of the United States. It is, after all, a trust fund. The money is incumbent for the beneficiaries. So if you back out those trust funds and the surplus they incur this year, the deficit in the regular budget of the United States is $574 billion for fiscal year 2004, $574 billion, more than a half trillion dollars in debt. Now, the President keeps telling us that this economy is on the mend. Usually when the economy gets better, the bottom line of the budget gets better, but not now. This year's deficit, you see, is not going away. It is not even going down by much. Even if the economy improves, it will still be about where it is, 4 to $500 billion for the next 10 years. What we have got, what we are stuck with for the time being until we do something about it is what economists call a structural deficit. It is built into the texture of the budget itself. On the House Committee on the Budget, our Democratic staff has taken the latest projection of the deficit and the economy given to us just a few days ago by the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, our neutral, nonpartisan budget shop. We have taken their forecast, and we have made what we regard as political readjustments to it. We have actually decreased the war of Afghanistan and Iraq that they have included because we do not think and do not hope, certainly, it will continue at existing levels. We have assumed that the alternative minimum tax will be fixed, as politically it must be fixed over the next several years; and we have assumed that the President's tax cuts will be made permanent as he earnestly seeks. He will get his way. When you do that, you see what happens on this bottom red line which starts in 2004 at $422 billion, that is this year's deficit, because from 422 to 360, yes, it gets a bit better, we hope, but then it bombs out in that range. And by the time you get to the end of this 10-year period in 2014, the deficit is $503 billion. As I said, the deficit does not go away and it does not go down by much; and at the end of the 10-year period it is bigger than it is today and we have accumulated a mountain of debt. By our calculation, using CBO's forecast, the Federal Government will incur $6,816,000,000 in additional debt between now and 2014. And when that $6.8 trillion in new debt is added to our old debt, which is $7 trillion or thereabouts, the total debt of the United States will come to $14,890,000,000 in that year. If we follow the fiscal course the President has laid down, keep implementing his policies, do not make any changes in this budget, we are adopting basically his budgetary assumption, that is where we will be: $15 trillion in debt by the year 2014. That is the legacy that we are leaving our children. If this burden were not enough, we always have to remember that out there, looming on the horizon, beginning in the year 2008, it is a phenomenon called the baby boomers, 77 million of them are marching to their retirement as I speak tonight. They have already been born. They have already qualified for their retirement benefits, and in 2008 they will start drawing their Social Security. In 2011 they will start drawing their Medicare. In 20 years they will double the number of beneficiaries on Medicare and Social Security. And what should we do to prepare for this unprecedented demographic event, the doubling of the number of people on retirement? We should be saving money now, no question about it; in this period of time we should be saving money. Instead, we are doing just the opposite. We are building up mountains of debt as this chart shows.

Mr. SPRATT. The blue line on the top is the path plotted by the Bush administration in 2001 when they brought us their first budget. They said, this is the path that we expect to follow. This was the basic baseline of the budget, before the Bush policies that were projected back in 2001. That is how good things looked. This is how bad things are now 3 short years later.

Mr. SPRATT. Well, I said what we should be doing is saving, paying down our debt, not building up our debt. Now, some may discover that, some might say, when did the United States Government ever pay down any debt? Well, in case you do not know it, in 1993, when President Clinton came to office, the deficit was right there, $290 billion, a record deficit under the last President Bush, $290 billion in 1992. That was the deficit situation President Clinton inherited. We passed in this House, in the mid-spring of 1993, a deficit reduction act that the President sent to us. We passed that bill by one vote here in the House and by one vote in the Senate. As a consequence, every year after that for the next 8 years, the bottom line of the budget got better and better and better to the point where in the year 2000 we had a surplus of $236 billion. All of that happened on the watch and under the administration of the Clinton administration because of two major multi-year budgets that we adopted in those years, hard votes, probably cost the Democrats control of the House, but we did the right thing and there was a payoff, a budget and surplus by an unprecedented $236 billion in the year 2000. As Yogi Berra likes to say, If you do not believe it, you can look it up. It is a matter of national record. Well, what has happened since then? This is when President Bush came to office. He inherited a surplus. The budget there, midfiscal year 2001 was in surplus by $127 billion, but every year thereafter the bottom line of the budget has gotten worse and worse to the point where it is $422 billion in debt today. Now, let me show you what those surpluses in the Clinton years meant, which was also unprecedented. In those 3 years from 1997 to the year 2000, that 3-year period of time, the debt of the United States held by the public outside the Government went from $3,772,000,000 to $3,409,000,000. We paid off in those 3 years $362 billion of debt. If you take what was paid off in the year 2001 when President Bush came to office and inherited the budget of the previous administration, it is over $400 billion in debt reduction. By contrast, this administration told us when they came to office in 2001, their own economists at OMB, Office of Management and Budget and CBO both, they told us if you stay this budgetary course, you can pay off the debt held by the public; keep doing what the Clinton administration has been doing, you can pay off the debt held by the public by 2010, 2008 as early as that. But in the foreseeable future, if you stick to this budget course, to these fiscal policies, you can pay off the debts of the United States and lay the basis of the solvency of Social Security, the first big step you can take towards making Social Security and Medicare solvent for a long time to come. We know the story. The Bush administration did not choose to stay that budgetary course. They chose their own budgetary course, which called for deep tax cuts, very significant tax cuts; and when the budget forecasts did not materialize as expected, those budget cuts, those budget tax cuts ate even more deeply into the deficit of the United States. As a consequence, in the year 2002 instead of paying down more debt, we had to increase the national debt of the United States. We had to raise the statutory ceiling. There is a statutory limit on the debts that we can incur. We had to raise it by $450 billion in the year 2002. Next year, having raised it $450 billion, the very next year we had to raise the debt ceiling again by $984 billion. Let me tell you something, $984 billion is more than the entire debt of the United States in 1981 when President Reagan came to office. But we had to raise the debt ceiling by that amount in 2004 in order to accommodate the increases in debt. When you add all of these together, you will see what I have cited earlier, the phenomenal increase in debt under this administration. If we stay the course we will be going to $14,890,000,000. But already with the two debt-ceiling increases passed of 450 plus 984, plus one that is pending right now, which is $650 billion, when those three debt-ceiling increases are passed, it will come to $2.1 trillion. That is the fiscal record of this administration. Compare it to the last 3 years of the Clinton administration which I have just shown you where we paid off $362 billion.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, we are one million jobs short to the number of jobs we had on March 1, 2001, when the last recession started. It was over in November. And we are still a million jobs short of that despite the supposed economic stimulus which obviously did not stimulate the economy by nearly enough.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for my colleague, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), and I understand the position he has taken; but let me suggest that this is a case where an exception should be made and to explain why, let me go quickly through the history of this program. The Military Housing Privatization Program was established in 1996 and 1997. OMB established how the program should be scored, how it would reflect the cost to the government. From 1997 until and through this year, OMB has stood by that methodology. If we follow that methodology, we would not be having this debate. In 1996, the committee established a cap of $850 million to make sure that the program worked as intended, and the program has worked as intended. It has exceeded the expectations. The cap, $850 million cap, was based on OMB's method of scoring. And, once again, if we used that method of scoring, we would have no problem today. In 2002, we asked OMB and DOD to reaffirm the methodology, and OMB and DOD came back and reaffirmed the methodology. CBO only changed its notion of how these scorings should be done in this year, midstream. November of this year, the cap we set several years ago will be reached. In the Committee on Armed Services we abided by this fact, and using the revised CBO scoring, we provided an offset of $6.5 billion. The problem is, that will not kick until 2006. Over 2005 and 2006, the DOD has planned to build 50,000 units. If we cannot do what the bill does today, or would do today, that will leave 24,000 military families out in the cold because of an arcane scoring difference between OMB and CBO. Let me simply say in conclusion, we are not calling for free-lancing. We are not calling for some pull-it-out-of-the-sky number. We are simply saying we will stick with the scoring this program has used since its inception, still used by OMB, as opposed to having CBO's scoring. If we do that, we do not have a problem here. There is no need for a point of order. The bill should be passed as is. But the rule, if it does not protect that provision, should be voted down.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I further thank him for scheduling this Special Order. Mr. Speaker, our Armed Forces won an impressive victory in Iraq, but the Pentagon was poorly prepared for the aftermath. Three big assumptions proved wrong: one, that the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators; two, that oil would soon pay for Iraqi's rebuilding; and, three, that we have plenty of troops, weapons, and equipment for the postwar situation. American troops were left to tackle tasks that they were not trained to handle, but let me tell my colleagues, they rose to the challenge. While the situation is still ours to win or lose, it would be far, far worse if it were not for their can-do attitudes and their courage. They are doing their best and have been doing their best to stabilize a God- forsaken country and put Iraq back in working order, and they are doing it under extremely difficult circumstances with all too little credit or attention given to their successes. No one in the Bush administration thought that now, nearly 14 months after the end of major hostilities in Iraq, that we would have 161,600 U.S. troops deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom, 130,800 in Iraq, and 21,800 in Kuwait. We are about to embark on the third rotation of troops for the war in Iraq, which so far has involved the movement of 277,000 troops. Currently, Guardsmen and Reservists account for 40 percent of the Iraqi Freedom force; and following the upcoming rotation, the Reserve component will make up 43 percent. These are men and women who leave their jobs and businesses, their farms, not to mention their families, and serve tours longer than any of them ever expected. In the first Persian Gulf War, the question was whether the total force would work, whether active and Reserve forces could fight and maneuver side by side. In this war, there is no question. Without the Guard and Reserve, our active duty troops could hardly deploy. Whether active duty or Reserve, our troops face a daunting challenge. Security in Iraq is so bad that thousands of troops unfortunately, but probably, will have to stay for a long time to come to prevent this country from falling into a fractious, bloody civil war. How did this happen? Poor assumptions, poor vision, poor planning. Ignoring State Department warnings, the Iraqi army was disbanded in May of 2003. With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison. The Army's Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, warned us that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to police post-war Iraq. What did he base that upon? Firsthand experience as the commander in chief of our multilateral force in Bosnia and Kosovo, several hundred thousand troops. Pentagon officials dismissed it the next day as wildly off the mark, fixing the figure closer to a hundred thousand. General Shinseki has been vindicated by what has happened. Last August, our troops began training a new Iraqi army, a light infantry force of about 40,000 to be ready by this October, 2004. As of today, 7,000 to 9,000 have been trained, and when these troops are trained, it will still be far, far short of what is needed to maintain Iraqi security. The situation in Iraq, unfortunately, differs dramatically from the rosy picture that was painted for us by expatriates before the war. During an interview with Meet the Press March 16, 2003, our Vice President, Mr. Cheney, insisted that our troops would be welcomed as liberators. When asked what if we are viewed as conquerors instead, he said, ``Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.'' What was his source? Well, he said, ``I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them over to the White House.'' While some Iraqis did greet our troops as liberators with open arms, many did not, and aliens like Abu Musab Zarqawi took advantage of open borders and infiltrated Iraq to begin waging guerilla war. Since the Pentagon underestimated the number of troops required after the end of hostilities, we were not prepared to prevent looting or to guard hundreds of weapons dumps spread throughout the country. So the looting destroyed key components of the Iraqi infrastructure, and stolen munitions are being used today in attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi civilians. Because this violence was not anticipated, thousands of troops were sent to Iraq without adequate body armor and without up-armored vehicles. They were to be greeted as liberators, but, in Iraq, 882 have been killed so far, and 5,394 have been wounded. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, 130 have been killed, 332 have been wounded. Our troops are the best-trained, the best-equipped, the best professionals, the finest fighting force the world has ever seen. More than 300,000 of them have served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and over 40,000 have taken part in the conflict in Afghanistan, and despite blunders from above, the can-do determination of our men and our women in uniform never ceases to amaze me. I traveled to Iraq late last summer, and I met with the Coalition Provisional Authority, with the Iraqi Governing Council, with U.S. commanders and with our troops. North of Baghdad in Mosul, the 101st Airborne Division was in charge. Its able commander, General Petraeus, calls this region the most viable region in Iraq, and he never missed a chance to salute his own troops. He told us privately, ``I've seen our young soldiers endure tremendous hardship, overcome huge challenges, fight a tenacious, determined and even suicidal enemy, and demonstrate incredible innovativeness and compassion. It's just extraordinary,'' General Petraeus said. The first 30 days of an occupation, everybody knows, are critical. General Petraeus spent the first 30 days training local security forces, fueling the economy by use of his commander's funds to create local jobs and to befriend Iraqis. In the 101st, troops were often dual-hatted as warfighters and peacekeepers, carrying a rifle in one hand and a wrench in the other, putting down insurgency on one front and winning hearts and minds on the other. Let me give you another snapshot. Consider the 1st Infantry Division. Soldiers from the 1st Division delivered medical supplies, textbooks and journals to the Tikrit Hospital, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, and Tikrit University Medical School in particular. They delivered 150 boxes of textbooks donated by medical schools and medical students in the United States. Prior to this restocking, the university has had to use photocopies from medical students and medical texts. Our contribution raised the library at that school to 50,000 volumes. Another snapshot. Let me read a portion of an article by James Lacey, and I read it because there has been so much copy devoted to what is going wrong there, so much copy about the violence there and about the hopelessness of the situation, we really do need to look from time to time at the success stories and at the remarkable and aspiring examples of our troops. Here is what Lacey, who was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, wrote. ``Bravery inspires men, but brains and quick thinking win wars. In one particularly tense moment, a company of U.S. soldiers were preparing to guard the Mosque of Ali, one of the most sacred Muslim sites, when agitators in what had been a friendly crowd started shouting that they were going to storm the mosque. In an instant, the Iraqis began to chant and a riot seemed imminent. A couple of nervous soldiers slid their weapons into fire mode, and I thought we were only moments away from a slaughter. These soldiers had just fought an all- night battle. They were exhausted, tense, and prepared to crush any riot with violence of their own. But they were also professionals, and so when their battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Hughes, ordered them to take a knee, point their weapons to the ground and start smiling, that is exactly what they did. Calm returned. By placing his men in the most nonthreatening posture possible, Hughes had sapped the crowd of its aggression. Quick thinking and iron discipline reversed an ugly situation and averted disaster.'' Since then, Lacey writes, I have often wondered how we created an army of men who could fight with ruthless savagery all night and then respond so easily to an order to smile and relax your weapons. Mr. Speaker, pride in our troops is not a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans alike support our military personnel. For our troops, this is tough, dangerous duty. And though morale is satisfactory, as General Cody acknowledged in the New York Times just a week ago, the Army, among others, because they are doing most of the heavy lifting now, is absolutely stretched thin. That is why when the supplemental providing $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan came before Congress, I proposed a package for the troops. Surely we could find a niche somewhere in an $87 supplemental for the troops and their families. I proposed that we increase imminent danger pay, separation pay, that we give them R&R tickets that would take them all the way home and not to their last duty base. I proposed extra funding for family assistance, because it is grossly underfunded. I am sorry to say it, but the Republican leaders of the House would not let my package be offered on the House floor. Parts of it, fortunately, ended up in the conference report. In May, when we had the defense authorization bill before us, I offered another amendment to that bill to ensure that every sailor, every soldier, every airman and marine in the combat zone has $250,000 minimum life insurance paid for by the government itself and to fund several force protection measures, including the test and evaluation of new technologies that would neutralize these horrible devices called improvised electronic devices, roadside bombs, that have killed and maimed so many, I offered some money to boost that particular research. Once again, my amendment was not even made in order to be debated, at least debated on the House floor. As costs mount, in lives and dollars, it is natural to second guess, but one lesson I hope we have learned is that the U.S. cannot go it alone in a policy that leaves American troops taking all the risk and American taxpayers paying all of the costs. Our country, the United States of America, may be the world's largest economy and the world's only superpower, but we stretch ourselves dangerously thin by taking on commitments like Iraq with only a motley band of allies to share the burden. The cost of the first Gulf War came to $80 billion in today's money. Our allies picked up $60 billion through cash contributions. $16 billion was provided us in kind, petroleum and food and other things, mainly by Persian Gulf countries. That left us $4 billion out of pocket for an $80 billion war. This war so far has cost us $125 billion and counting, because largely we decided to do it on our own, with only the United Kingdom as a paying, fully participating partner. I may disagree with the administration over aspects of this war, and particularly going it alone, not building a broad-based coalition to support whatever we have done, but I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that I stand second to none in supporting our troops. Because of that and because I recognize how stretched we are, I am all for an increase in Army end strength of at least 30,000 and in Marine end strength at least by 9,000. But, you know, Mr. Chairman, the test of our support is not what we see but whether or not we pass legislation that backs up what we say, that gives our troops the tools they need to execute their mission successfully and gives their families the resources they need to have peace of mind and security. We owe them no less, for they make this country the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Mr. SPRATT

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As I was just informing the House, Mr. Chairman, I have, obviously, no objection to what the gentleman wishes to do. I understand all of his sentiments. This process needs to be fixed. If the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will remember, we had a conference in 1997 when we did the balanced budget agreement of 1997. Most of the budget principles, when they were affected, the subcommittee chairmen of the Committee on Appropriations came. It would be good if we could get together again, something like that, where you do have interest from all of the House, and we could sit down and I would hope in a nonpartisan way try to come up with a better process than we have right now, because the process we have now is in the ditch. I would still have problems with the gentleman's amendment because it does not provide for the full double-edged PAYGO. It has now a provision in it that changes the fiscal year to November 1. I do not quite understand why the gentleman would want to do that. But, nevertheless, it is a moot point now. We appreciate the gentleman's removing it from consideration. There are some ideas in there I do agree with. For example, the gentleman would tell CBO not to assume that expiring tax provisions are not going to be renewed. They are most likely going to be renewed, and that is the way the projection ought to be carried out, I think. And so I agree with a number of those provisions like that in the gentleman's proposal. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I certainly have no objection to the gentleman's withdrawing the amendment.

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

Mr. SPRATT

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, this particular amendment could have a perverse and unintended result, and that is it could lower, lessen the incentive for Congress to get its work done, knowing that if we could not come together and pass appropriation bills, all 13 of them, if we could not get them on the President's desk in time, why, it would be automatic. This continuing resolution would just automatically kick into effect. Anyone bent upon sort of disrupting the process and preventing an appropriations bill that he thought was maybe too much or maybe too little could manipulate this result, manipulate the situation if this rule were in place. So I do not think it helps the process at all. I think when we have to pass a continuing resolution, it is a bit embarrassing that we have to get up and say to the country and the public, as well as the President, we have not gotten our work done yet, so keep on spending money at the existing level. It gives us a strong incentive to go ahead and finally come to those final compromises that help us close the appropriations process. So this would probably complicate, prolong the process, and lead to situations where we did not even pass appropriation bills because there would be an automatic reversion to the prior year's spending level. It is not a good idea. It has been debated before, debated more thoroughly than it has been debated tonight, and there is a good reason it has never become law, it is not a workable or viable idea. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the caps that are being proposed here could create shortfalls of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, triggering huge cuts. And let me tell the Members the programs that would be cut: veterans compensation, veterans pensions, food stamps, Medicaid, children's health insurance, childcare, direct student loans, farm price supports, TRICARE for Life, military benefits, and trade adjustment assistance among others. This is not a good plan. We do not need to put those in jeopardy of automatic cuts, and I oppose the amendment and urge others to do so also. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In response to the gentleman's statement, it is still my understanding that child care, direct student loans, farm price supports, TRICARE for Life, military health care benefits, and trade adjustment assistance, among other things, would be subject to these automatic cuts. If there was some sort of growth over and above the cap that he has imposed, all of these things would get whacked unless Congress somehow intervened and saved them from being cut by administering cuts elsewhere in the budget. It is not a good idea. It is not a workable idea. And I continue to oppose the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this bill would set an arbitrary cap on some of the most important spending in the Federal budget, the spending that supports Medicare, on which millions depend for their health care; the spending that supports Medicaid. All kinds of spending falls under the rubric of category of direct spending or mandatory spending, including debt service, the interest we pay on our national debt. So we fix a level that corresponds to the existing level of expenditure, and then every year it increases. The gentleman does allow for the spending level to increase with the rate of inflation measured by the CPI. As everyone in this room knows, the cost of health care every year, for as long as I have known it, goes up substantially more than the consumer price index so that over time in holding Medicare to no more than the rate of growth of the CPI, while the rest of health care spending is going up at a substantially higher rate, this is going to erode away spending authority for Medicare. It is going to result in automatic cuts in Medicare and other programs, affected programs. If the cuts are not taken out of Medicare, they will have to come all the more out of other programs. Secondly, since debt service, the interest we pay on the national debt, is included, we could have this anomaly: we could have a huge tax cut that would result in a substantial deficit, requiring us to borrow large sums of money. Interest on the principal for the additional debt would go up, and that increment over and above the entitlement cap would have to be taken out of other spending programs like the Medicaid or children's health insurance or TRICARE for Life, trade adjustment assistance. All of these programs fall under that category and would be subject to automatic cuts if we had any anomalous action like that. So this is not a good idea. Certainly these are not programs we want to put in that kind of jeopardy. We would like to exercise some control over their growth, and we have from time to time in the past voted to reduce rates of expenditure to curb the growth in Medicare and Medicaid and these other programs. But to do it automatically, to do it mindlessly, to do it with a meat cleaver is not the way to go on these programs on which so many people depend. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This would be making a distinction between defense and nondefense spending. This gives you one big aggregate for all discretionary spending. That is how far back it takes us and how little definition it leaves to what we end up doing. We come up with three or four big numbers and that is the end of the budget. The gentleman is suggesting we could do something much more elaborate, but this would be the only statutory prerogative we would have which would mean that pretty soon we would probably not be doing any function allocations at all. It would not have any statutory basis. I am not saying they get great deference from the Committee on Appropriations today, but once we reduce the budget process to this, I doubt the Committee on the Budget would get any deference from the appropriators.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am just suggesting to my good friend and someone for whom I have great respect that he gives so much flexibility to it that it is limp when we get through with it. There is nothing left. It is a process without any teeth, without any structure, without any starch to it. It is almost meaningless. It is the last rites for the budget process. If we are going to do this we may as well just not do it at all. A couple of speakers have noted that the functions that we designate in the budget resolution do not correspond to the 302(b) allocation made by the members of the Committee on Appropriations. That is true. That is an old, old compromise. If we dared back away from that compromise, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) would be on his feet, I am sure, protesting vigorously that usurpation of their authority on the Committee on Appropriations. But it is an opportunity. When the Committee on the Budget and one party or the other party wants to propose new initiatives in certain areas, it might be education, it might be NIH in health care, it might be defense, it gives us an opportunity to make that proposal, to show what the consequences are for the bottom line and for trade-offs against other programmatic areas and then allows us to have a debate on that subject on the House floor. These aggregate numbers do not signify anything. They do not really tell you what is going to be cut and what is going to be increased, and that is the problem I have. We do not get the process started with that sort of message and direction that the budget resolution now gives to the process and the opportunity it gives to the House as a whole to make a statement of priorities and have something of a debate on programmatic priorities for the next 1 to 5 fiscal years. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I wish there were some procedure in the House where we could give a hand signal or maybe use a code word and incorporate by reference all of our comments previously made on the same subject. I have to repeat myself because this amendment is, to some extent, the same as the amendment previously offered. This amendment would eliminate the requirement that the annual budget resolution include 20 budget functions. Once again, this is one of the opportunities we have as a House collectively, all of us, to have a debate in-depth about our priorities, whether we want to spend more for education or whether we need to spend more for defense or highways, priorities that are big functions of our budget. It takes away that opportunity. It also takes away our perception into the budget to see whether or not it is adequate to provide for the many things we want to do. Secondly, as I have said, there are a lot of centrifugal forces in this House. There is a lot of fragmentation of what we do. It is very hard in this House and in the Congress to keep a picture of the whole, of what is happening altogether. The budget resolution gives us the ability to keep the puzzle kind of together, so we can get a perception into what is happening altogether. This particular budget resolution would not even require that discretionary spending allocations be split between defense and nondefense. It would simply call for a total of all new budget authority and outlays. So the House would forgo the opportunity to say we want to do more for defense while we are going to do less for nondefense in order to pay for the additional commitment to defense. It calls for an aggregate statement of revenues, but nothing with respect to the House's expression to the Committee on Ways and Means as to what those revenues might be, no reconciliation instructions, so a key function of the Committee on the Budget, a key means of exerting discipline and control in the institution, would be lost, and then a simple statement of the surplus or deficit. To me this is letting the reins go, giving up what little control and structure we have got, what little ability we have got to keep a picture of the whole composed at all times. I think it is a bad idea. If we want to do away with the budget resolution, let us just repeal it altogether because what this leaves in place is practically useless. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, once again, if we want to make the budget process opaque, more opaque, less transparent, then this will be the way to do it, but if you think we need more visibility, the House should assert more control, then we should have the kind of numbers we need to make honest judgments about the budget. We should stick at least with the process we have got. It is flawed, but this would be a travesty. This would destroy the budget process as it has existed since 1974. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.