John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds to remind the gentleman that we have 1.3 million fewer jobs today than we had on March 1, 2001 at the beginning of the Bush administration. First amendment, first recession since the end of the Second World War with that result. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 seconds to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) to respond.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 seconds it the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the bill we have before us, H.R. 4663, the Spending Control Act of 2004, causes me to say to my friends across the aisle, and I cannot help but take a little jab at them, our Republican friends control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. Why can they not control spending? And will this bill make a difference? I ask that question because there is a particular irony about this bill. This is a budget enforcement bill, but there is no budget to enforce. For the first time since 1974 when the Budget Act was first adopted, the party that controls both branches of the government, the Congress and the White House, is unable to get its act together and pass a budget. And now they propose new rules to the budget process if they cannot comply with the rules we have got. This bill before us is hardly a consensus bill. There is a lot of dissension about it even as it comes to the floor. When it was filed, 28 amendments were filed with the Committee on Rules to change it. All but one of those amendments, which is my amendment, focused solely on spending as the source, the cause of the deficit that we are incurring today. We are supposed to have a deficit this year of over $521 billion. The prognosis has gotten a bit better, but it looks like it will be at least 430 to $450 billion, 1 year, a half trillion dollars. Only my substitute deals with the other side of the problem, and that is revenues. Two rules of all the rules we will see today, two rules that stood the test of time, they have worked. They have helped us wipe out deficits. They did in the 1990s. One rule caps discretionary spending at fixed levels over the next 5 years. That was the rule that we put in effect in 1990, extended in 1993, and again in 1997; and it helped us balance the budget for the first time in 40 years. The other rule is what we call the pay-as-you-go rule, which requires us to pay as we go, that is, to offset new tax cuts and new entitlement increases by new revenues or by equal spending cuts so that they do not add to the deficit, pay-as-you-go, discretionary spending caps. As I said, the base bill and all the amendments except mine focus entirely on spending and not at all on tax cuts as the source of the problem. Yet if we look at the period 2002 through 2011, the 10-year period that covers the first 4 years of the Bush administration, $2.3 trillion of our total fiscal reversal during that period has been caused by substantial tax cuts and related debt service; and that revenue deficit grows as tax cuts that expire are renewed and new tax cuts are adopted, as the Bush administration proposes and pushes for more. This bill promises deficit reduction; but it ignores the elephant in the room, one of the chief causes now and well into the future, and that is the deficit in revenues. Do we have a problem? You bet we have a problem. In the last 3 years of the Clinton administration, I remind everybody, we ran surpluses for the first time in 30 to 40 years. We paid off $400 billion in debt. In the first 4 years of the Bush administration, Congress has had to raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt three times, three times in 4 years, to accommodate President Bush's budget. Congress raised the ceiling by $450 billion in 2002; by $984 billion in 2003; and shortly, the process is already under way here, by $650 billion this year. In all of the last 4 years by $2.1 trillion in order to accommodate Mr. Bush's fiscal policy. And these increases in the statutory debt ceiling are by no means over. They are part of a series. The Congressional Budget Office told us last March, when they examined the President's budget, that if we implemented, if we enacted that budget, the President's budget, we would have to raise the debt ceiling to $13.5 trillion in the year 2014. Not my number. It is the number of the Congressional Budget Office, which is a neutral, nonpartisan arm of the Congress. So we have a problem; but this bill, unfortunately, does not deal with it. It takes off in pursuit of red herrings and Draconian solutions that will not work, if they were ever enacted; and I doubt they will be enacted. It trots out almost every budget process idea that has ever been thought of, but the two that have worked, the two rules that have worked so well that, as I said, we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998. One is a double-edge PAYGO rule that requires both tax cuts and entitlement increases to be deficit neutral; and the other is discretionary spending caps over 5 years. They do not work unless you extend them out for some period of time. The caps in the base bill only go out for 2 years and are set to boot at unrealistically low levels. They are lower than the President's request, yet they provide more for transportation. I think the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will tell you if he talks about the appropriations bind he is in right now, he cannot take much more reduction in the allocation of discretionary spending than we have already given him. So we have got here a set of proposals that simply do not address the problem at hand, which is a substantial problem, except for one particular provision. All I am calling for and all I would recommend the House would do, but it would be a good day's work if we did it, is go back and reinstate the PAYGO rule, which worked so well in the 1990s; reinstate the 5-year spending caps, which worked so well in the 1990s; and then we can get to work on balancing the budget. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. My good friend, the gentleman from Illinois, comes to the floor and he acknowledges, he touts this amendment as requiring cuts that equal $445 billion over the next 10 years in entitlement programs, except for Social Security and Medicare, but they come out of Medicaid and Federal civil service retirement and military retirement and family support and TRICARE for life. The list goes on and on. He acknowledges that these programs will be cut by $445 billion. But he holds up the sign and says, but look, this money can be used to shore up Medicare and Social Security. But I defy you to read this substitute and find in it one line, one word, anything that will say that these savings must go to Social Security or Medicare. More likely than not, they will be used to offset tax cuts, maybe to offset the deficit but unlikely they will go to Social Security and Medicare. So what we have here is an across-the-board entitlement cap proposal that by the author's own acknowledgment will cut key programs by a substantial amount. It does protect some, limiting the cuts to 2 percent. But by limiting the cuts in some to 2 percent, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes it clear that this provision means that other programs, child care payments, farm price supports, crop insurance, TRICARE military benefits, face unlimited cuts that could reach 43 percent by 2014. Unless you want to vote for this kind of Draconian budget, vote against the Kirk amendment.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

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

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, the Kirk substitute is Hensarling light, just as objectionable for most of the same reasons, only less so. He just put up his sign over there which said it would save $445 billion and which could be spent on Medicare and Social Security. That is the estimated savings produced by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) just said they are wrong, and yet he was holding up a sign indicating that the savings that he would accomplish are just what they indicated they would be. So he saves $445 billion for Medicare but he gets it by taking $175 billion out of Medicaid, $50 billion out of Federal civil service retirement and disability, $28 billion out of military retirement, $22 billion out of veterans' benefits, on down the list. That is how that $445 billion adds up. He limits the safety net programs to 2 percent. It is true, he picks out some programs that are sensitive, we might call them safety net programs, and he provides they will not be cut more than 2 percent, another difference between him and the gentleman from Texas. But this provision means that other programs are not deemed to be sensitive and they include child care payments, price supports, farm price supports, crop insurance, TRICARE military health benefits, among others; these face unlimited cuts, larger cuts because the other programs are shielded. These cuts could reach 43 percent by 2014 based on current projections according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. So this particular substitute is just as bad, only not in dollar terms quite as great, it is just as flawed, has just as many anomalies in it, and for the same reason should be rejected by everyone in this House. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I want to correct the record. Earlier I said that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had done an analysis of this proposal and found that it would cut entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicare and TRICARE for Life by $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. They have done a revised study. It was correct. They have revised that study and their revised study shows that the cut will only be $1.551 trillion. That is in entitlement programs. It comes out of child nutrition, its comes out of TRICARE for Life, it comes out of veterans benefits. Across the board people will be hurt. I did not mention earlier the discretionary spending. Discretionary spending in the Hensarling proposal would increase each year at 2.1 percent a year. At the end of the 10-year period of time, because they take it out of the full 10-year time frame, this substitute would limit discretionary spending to $220 billion below what the President has recommended. And one of the reasons we do not have a budget right now is we are still struggling with the numbers the President has prepared, trying to bring it within the framework of what he has recommended. So this would have severe consequences; and it would have severe consequences upon, in the words of the AARP, the health and economic security of millions of vulnerable Americans. Finally, to remind everyone, if you voted against the automatic continuing resolution, if you voted against the joint budget resolution making the budget resolution a law signed by the President, if you are opposed to biennial budgeting, if you voted against expedited rescission, this bill reinstates all of those, and is an additional reason to oppose it.

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 15 seconds to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. For those who have voted against the previous amendments dealing with automatic extension of continuing resolutions, dealing with expedited rescission, for various other reasons they should be aware that this budget reincorporates all of those other provisions which they found onerous and objectionable in the past and would instate them in a bigger bill. The chief feature of this bill which is objectionable is the effort it makes to put a cap on entitlement spending. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if enacted, this particular provision would trigger the most severe budget cuts in modern history, calculation by which it would require entitlement cuts of $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. There are a couple of things to be aware of. When they say they are capping entitlement, they are capping not only entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid; they are also capping interest on the national debt. So one can have a result that certain Members would seek to have a large tax cut and succeed, which would increase the deficit and, therefore, increase the national debt and result in higher interest payments. And those interest payments would then have to be accommodated within the cap that will be imposed on entitlement spending. Take also the level at which the cap is set and how it treats the Medicare program. The cost of the new Medicare drug benefit enacted last year to real spending occurs until the year 2006. The cap will be set at 2005 spending levels. So there will be a substantial amount of additional spending for Medicare which will have to be recouped from cuts in entitlements like Medicare. This bill is full of anomalies that could have disastrous effect upon the programs in this country upon which people depend. I will come back and explain further why this bill should be defeated soundly. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Chairman, once again what we are trying to do here is to cut through all the rhetoric, go through all of these complicated rules, sometimes convoluted rules, and come up with two basic rules, two pragmatic rules that have proven themselves over a period of 10 years to work and work well. Indeed, they were part of the success we enjoyed in the 1990s when we moved the budget from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in the year 2000. First of all, we would impose a statutory cap on discretionary spending at a level that we think is realistic. And what do we mean by that? We take current services, basically treading water, with inflationary adjustment, and we add to it the Bush defense budget. But we want to make a point here, and that is this is the totality of domestic nonhomeland discretionary spending in the budget. This is one- sixth of the budget. Wipe it all out, you do not have an FBI, you do not have a court system, you do not have a Park Service, you do not have highways; but you still have a deficit, notwithstanding the fact you have wiped the whole thing out. If you look back over the last 4 years, what is the source of this spending that everybody is decrying tonight? What you find is it certainly is not domestic nonhomeland security; 383, 382, 383. Now, Mr. Bush said he would like to cut it down to $376 billion. Well and good. This is one of the reasons the appropriators are out here tonight. They are struggling with the attainment of that goal. That saves $7 billion on a deficit that is estimated at over $400 billion next year. That is how much blood you can squeeze out of this turnip. Where then have the cost increases come from? This chart tells it all. These bar charts show 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and they show that 90 to 95 percent of the increase in spending in those four fiscal years occurred in defense, homeland security, and the response to 9/11, not in what we call domestic nondefense discretionary spending. Therefore, the cap will have an effect, but not a great effect. Basically, what we have done is we have capped nondefense discretionary spending at a current services level. We provided, as I said, realistically for the Bush defense budget for the other half of discretionary spending in the cap we have set. Complicated chart. It says one thing in particular. When Bush came to office, when the President came to office several years ago, the Bush defense budget, the defense budget for the next 10 years was $3.6 trillion. Today, by our calculation, it is more like $5 trillion. We have seen defense spending go up over that time frame by $1.4 trillion. And what about revenues? This is where the Bush administration told us revenues would go if we had tax cuts as we did in 2001, 2002 and 2003; that they would follow this blue dotted line. They have not followed the blue dotted line. They have taken a precipitous decline downward over this period of time from over $1 trillion to less than $800 billion in a period of about 3 or 4 fiscal years. So if you want to solve the problem, you have to get to the source of the problem. You have to go to the budget and look at where the problem exists, and you cannot rule out revenues and expect to resolve a $521 billion estimate. That was the last official estimate we got from OMB of a deficit for this year. That is why we have, number one, spending caps on discretionary spending at realistic levels that accommodate for defense. Get real. We are not going to be reining in those accounts by any substantial amount in the near future, given our obligations that are still being worked out. And, secondly, we have acknowledged that revenues are a significant part of the problem. Indeed, when we resolved the problem of the deficit in the 1990s, and CBO looked back on it, they said 48 percent of your success was due to the fact that you were able to enhance revenues, 52 percent was due to the fact you curbed spending. Those two together produced the phenomenal results we enjoyed in the 1950s. Here it is right here. It can be done. The Clinton administration came to office and outlays were 22 percent of GDP. When he left office, outlays had been reduced to about 18 percent of GDP. Revenues were about 17 to 18 percent of GDP. They were taken up over 20 percent of GDP. And there is the measure of the success in the Clinton administration right there, the $200 billion surplus we have been talking about. And here is what happened with the Bush administration. Revenues have plummeted and spending outlays have gone up. But outlays are still below historic norms. Revenues, however, are pretty close to historic levels. Income taxes, as a percent of GDP, are about where they were in 1950. So you have to do all these things to have a successful budget process package, and that is why we suggest to you we have got before you now in this substitute a package of two simple and basic rules which we say to you pragmatically worked, worked phenomenally well, and ought to be reinstated so we can tackle this difficult problem and approach it and try to begin working down the deficit. I would suggest to the House that this would be the simplest way and the best way to resolve this whole debate. Adopt this substitute and wrap it up by reinstating the PAYGO rule with a double edge applicable to tax cuts and spending increases alike. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Could the Chair please advise me how much time I have?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this substitute would extend the so-called PAYGO rule through September 30, 2009, to require that both the cost of all net direct, mandatory or entitlement spending increases and all tax cuts both, this is two-edged, double-edged PAYGO, enacted during a session be fully offset. In other words, this amendment would reinstate the rules that expired two years ago, the rule that is applicable to entitlement increases, the rule that is applicable to tax cuts known as the PAYGO rule. In addition, this amendment would set total discretionary spending limits for 2005 and 2006 equal to the levels in the Democratic budget resolution which we offered on the House floor a few months ago. There are no total funding caps for other years. Like H.R. 4663, it specifies that annual mass transit and highway funding for each year through 2009 will be set at the levels also included in the House-passed transportation reauthorization bill, known as TEA-LU. Mr. Chairman, in the 1980s and 1990s, as we have struggled with deficits and as the effects of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings fizzled out, various rules, some of which have been surfaced on the House floor tonight, were proposed and tried. Two, however, emerged as meritorious and were included in what became the Budget Enforcement Act of 1991. It was a spin-off from the Bush Budget Summit in the year 1990. These were the disciplinary tools to implement the Bush Budget Summit Agreement, which really has not gotten the credit it is due for laying the foundation for what we accomplished in the 1990s. Neither have these rules gotten the full credit of their due, but they got a nice accolade from a source who admitted that he was a cynic, if not a skeptic, at that time, Chairman Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve. He told our committee, the Committee on the Budget, just a few weeks ago when we asked him about the renewal of these rules, if he thought from his observation as an outside observer of the budget that these were worthwhile tools. He said, you know, I was a skeptic. I did not think they would work. I thought they were diversionary tactic, but I have been proven wrong. They were remarkably effective. And when we questioned him and asked him, he said, I would reinstate both rules, both the discretionary spending caps, and I would reinstate the pay-as-you-go rule, which provides that if you want to have a tax cut when you have got a deficit, then you have to make it deficit neutral; you have to have an offset. You either cut entitlement spending one place in the budget, or you increase revenues as an offset in another place. And by the same token, if you want to enhance an entitlement, you have got to identify a revenue stream to pay for it, or you have to have a commensurate cut and another entitlement program elsewhere in the budget so that in all respects, they are deficit neutral at the end of the session. These two rules, the PAYGO rule, the double-edged PAYGO rule and the statutory spending caps on discretionary spending, are the heart and soul of this particular substitute that I am offering here. This cuts to the very core. Rather than go through all of these convoluted rules, let us go back to two rules that work. Let us be pragmatic. Let us pick from the past experience that we have had those rules that contributed the most to our success in the 1990s, and after all, we moved the budget from a $290 deficit to a $236 surplus in six fiscal years, and these two rules helped us do it. They have both expired now. We could do a world of good for the budget process, for the budget, for the deficit, by reinstating these two rules, and really, it is all we need to do that and fixing realistically discretionary spending caps. Let me say, we proposed 5 years of spending caps. The chairman has reduced his effort to just 2 years. In an effort to get something that he could possibly pass over there, he went with two years. I really do not think we have effective discretionary spending limits unless we have longer terms than that. So we have a 5-year spending limitation on discretionary spending, and I should acknowledge that we have set this a bit above current service, a bit above the CBO baseline. Why did we do that? Because we fully accommodated the President's defense request, nondefense discretionary, and our cap is pretty close to baseline, pretty close to current services, just a bit over. Total discretionary is somewhat more in excess of the CBO baseline because we followed the President's defense members. We put in the $50 billion this year for the Iraq and Afghanistan and supplemental expenses. That is realistic, and there is one rule that we learned in the 1990s we should apply here, too. It applies to the 1997 budget which was uniquely successful when we set the statutory caps on discretionary spending at a very, very tight and unrealistic level. When we got to the ideas, we fudged on them substantially and that is primarily because partly because we set them too tight to start with. Here, we have set them realistically. We have got two rules that work. They have proved their worth. The chairman of the Federal Reserve says I do not see why you would not reinstate them and make the PAYGO rule in particular applicable to tax cuts as well as entitlement increases. I submit to the House, if we want to do something tonight, if we want some concrete, valuable outcome for all of our efforts, these two things would do a world of good, and we could leave here feeling that we had done something good for the budget and something successful tonight. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, we have sat here for 3 or 4 years and watched tax cuts erode away the surplus and then, after the surplus was gone, watched tax cuts add to the budget deficit. We have asked ourselves where are we headed? What is the point of all of this? And we have suspected, long suspected, that the next step was to take us to the stage we are in now where we will hear increasingly, we just don't have the funds to meet our obligations for veterans' health care, we don't have the funds to fund education at the level we promised when we passed the Leave No Child Behind bill, and the pitch will be that all of this has been forced upon us by some outside events and we can't help it, we simply have to conform the budget to fiscal reality. Well, we do have a choice and this bill today shows us in one clear illustration what that choice is. We have a choice. It is not inevitable that we cut veterans' health care. It is not inevitable that we do not fully fund education or health care generally. We have a choice. We can move around, just a little bit, $18.9 billion and do a world of good. Where does the money come from? From those making over $1 million. How much do we take? $18.9 billion and still leave them a tax cut. And where does it go? $4.7 billion goes to deficit reduction. $14.2 billion goes to various selected needs. Let me give my colleagues just a few examples. Veterans' health care. Our own Veterans' Committee tells us we have funded veterans' health care at $1.3 billion below what is needed to meet our obligations. We have promises to keep and surely this is one we could keep, should keep, to our veterans. Selected pay increases for junior officers and senior NCOs. We did not fund it this year. We could fund it with this bill. Education. We passed a bill called Leave No Child Behind. We set a high level because we were imposing mandates on school districts across this country. We promised them money. We are $8.8 billion below the level that we set for ourselves in passing Leave No Child Behind. Homeland security. There are a host of unmet needs here. We are skating on thin ice. One is port security, funded at all of $124 million in this year's bill. That is twice what the administration requested. The Coast Guard tells us they need $5.8 billion over the next 10 years. We are not on that track. We can at least provide more for needs like that, glaring needs in that particular area. After 9/11, one of the questions quickly raised was what about the fire next time? What if this had been a radiological attack or a biological attack? A number of Members went down to CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta. They were really troubled when they saw those facilities and security at that facility in particular. So what do we do with CDC this year? The budget request from the President called for a $410 million cut in CDC. This amount of money would allow us to plus it up. Allied health care professions. We all know there are acute shortages of nurses coming up. The President's request this year cuts allied health care professions by 64 percent. Will this money be used better? Will it do more good for more people if we take some away from those whose AGI, adjusted gross income, is above $1 million and put it to these pressing needs? You better believe it will. That is why we should vote for this bill.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, this is called the Spending Control Act of 2004. The last time I looked, the Republicans control the House, Republicans control the Senate, and Republicans control the White House. So it begs the question, why can they not control spending? Why do we need this piece of legislation to control spending? As one looks at the bill and asks that question, another question arises: Why does this bill have nothing to do with revenues? Basically what this bill would do is affect discretionary spending for 2 years, not 5, and put in place a PAYGO rule, a pay as you go rule which applied to mandatory spending, entitlement spending increases but not to tax reductions. Do we disagree on the problem before us? Absolutely not. We have got a problem. The best evidence of the problem was signaled this week when we had a defense appropriations bill in which was buried a provision that will increase the debt ceiling over the next several years by a substantial sum of money. Let us look first at what has happened over the last several years on the watch of the Bush administration with respect to the debt that we have accumulated, the mountainous debt that we are building up now. The best indicator of that is where does the debt ceiling stand? There is a statutory ceiling on the amount of debt we can incur. When President Bush came to office, it was $5.95 trillion. Within a year, he had to increase that by $450 billion. Last year he had to increase it by, get this, $984 billion. The other day they increased it by $650 billion, to $8.74 trillion once it finally passes the Congress. That is the record of the last 4 years, three increases in the debt ceiling in 4 years, from $5.9 trillion to $8 trillion and this is the bad news: It does not stop here. The Congressional Budget Office tells us looking at the President's budget out over the next 10 years, as they are required by law to do, that if we follow the policies laid down by the Bush administration, the debt of this country will grow in 2014 to $13.6 trillion. That is where the debt ceiling will have to be taken in order to accommodate their fiscal policies. What does this bill propose with respect to this problem? As it turns out, very, very little. Before going any further, it is worth reminding everybody what happened in the 1990s. It can be done. If you put your shoulder to the wheel and the President supports it and the leadership of the Congress supports it, we can bring the deficit to heel. We did it in the 1990s. We went from a deficit of $290 billion at the end of fiscal year 1992 to a surplus of $236 billion in 1998. Just as a reminder from 1997 to 2000 on the watch of the Clinton administration, we reduced the debt of this country by $362 billion. If you added fiscal year 2001, which was basically the Clinton budget, we reduced the debt by more than $400 billion. What a fiscal reversal we have seen in the last 4 years. What does this bill propose to do? Essentially it proposes to clamp down on that wedge of the budget called domestic non-homeland discretionary spending. That is, discretionary spending from which we have backed out international spending and from which we have backed out homeland security, because in both of those categories, they foresee substantial increases, but they are going to bring all the force of their efforts to bear on this wedge of the budget which constitutes 16 percent of the budget. Let us ask the question, is this where the problem arises, in this segment called domestic non-homeland discretionary spending? This is what has happened over the last three fiscal years to that particular account: $383 billion in 2002, $382 billion in 2003, $383 billion in 2004. The problem does not arise here. But this is where they go for a solution. On the other hand, look what the solution is. The President proposes to take domestic non-homeland security resources down to $376 in 2005. That is a reduction of $7 billion. Actually it is hard to do but in truth, we have got a deficit this year of between $400 billion and $500 billion, you have only dented the problem once you have done it. This is where the problem lies. If you want to look at spending, which this bill does not do, over the last 4 fiscal years, 90 to 95 percent of the increase in discretionary spending has occurred in defense, homeland security and our response to 9/11. But this bill ignores that particular aspect of the problem. And where is the rest of the problem? When the Bush administration held their tax cuts out to us and when they were passed, they told us this is the path that revenues will follow, between $1 trillion and $1.1 trillion. This is where revenues, income taxes, have actually gone over that period of time, largely responsible to their tax cuts. And this is what has happened to spending generally. Spending generally has gone up in the Bush administration. Revenues have gone down. Spending, however, is still as we can see from this chart below the historic norm for the last 25 years. Revenues, on the other hand, are at an all-time low. Personal income taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since the early 1950s. So revenues are low, spending is high, and this bill unfortunately does nothing about the problem at hand.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to recognize the career of an extraordinary South Carolinian, United States Army Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Billy Tention. Following 30 years of distinguished service and after reaching the Army's highest enlisted rank, CSM Tention will retire from active duty on July 9, 2004. The significance of this milestone is matched only by his devoted service. General George C. Marshall once said, ``There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.'' This defines the military career of CSM Tention. Born in September 1953, in Camden, South Carolina, he entered the Army in September 1974, after graduating from Ashwood Central High School. He underwent basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and received his Advanced Training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. CSM Tention then excelled at every rung up the leadership ladder. From his early days as non-commissioned officer in charge of the Services Branch at Eisenhower Army Medical Center to Hospital Command Sergeant Major at Fort Leonard Wood, CSM Tention has demonstrated the Army's core values: selfless service, loyalty, honor, and integrity. His dedicated 30-year commitment to the Army speaks of his loyalty, loyalty to his country, the Army, and most importantly, his fellow soldiers. ``Do your duty in all things,'' General Robert E. Lee once said. ``You can never do more. You should never wish to do less.'' CSM Tention did his duty through service in numerous assignments including war-fighting during the first Persian Gulf War and other overseas duty in Europe and Asia. There's an old Army saying: ``Take care of your people, and they'll take care of you.'' CSM Tention has been taking care of his people for 30 years. Whether it's exceeding recruitment/retention goals, yielding the highest Expert Field Medical Badge graduation rate, or spearheading Dining In's and ethnic recognition programs, CSM Tention's actions reflect the highest respect and honor among seniors, peers, and subordinates alike. CSM Tention's awards and decorations include two Legions of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, two Meritorious Service Medals, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, 10 Good Conduct Medals, the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia), the Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait), the Expert Field Medical Badge, the Air Assault Badge, and the Recruiter Badge with 3 Gold Stars. CSM Tention earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia College in 2004 and is working towards a Master's degree in Human Resource Management from Webster University. I am proud to represent all South Carolinians in thanking CSM Tention and his family for their dedication, commitment to country, and service. CSM Tention is a credit to the United States Army and to the United States of America. I wish him all the best as he makes the transition to civilian life.