John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman for these clarifications. Therefore, the gentleman's amendment would prohibit funding for the space-based ballistic missile defense interceptors, $54 million is requested, but it would not affect sensors at all.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I support this bill, but I think an admonition about the budget is in order. We actually have one bill before us, while holding another in abeyance. The President requested a total of $396 billion for national security, primarily for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the nuclear weapons program run by the Department of Energy (DoE). The President asked us to set aside $10 billion of the DoD budget as a ``war reserve'' for actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the war on terrorism. For DoD, he requested a total of $379 billion, of which $10 billion is for the war reserve and $369 billion is the regular request. There are two reasons for keeping separate the $10 billion request. One is to earmark funds for the war on terrorism, the other is not to merge into the base budget funding that may be non-recurring. One of the bills approved by the House Armed Services Committee authorizes $3.8 billion, which is to be drawn from the $10 billion war reserve. But the $3.8 billion we are authorizing is actually part of the regular $369 billion request. In the main bill, we are authorizing DoD activities at the $369 billion level, but since $3.8 billion of the regular request is now being provided for in the other bill, we have $3.8 billion more in the main bill to be used for ships and other procurement needs, research and development, and member-interest items. Here are the problems with this approach. One, we are actually authorizing $3.8 billion more than the President requested for regular DoD appropriations, and DoD will eventually need that money for the war on terrorism. I met with the DoD Comptroller, Secretary Zakheim, and he acknowledged that while the $10 billion war reserve was a good faith effort to account for the likely budgetary effect of the war, it is a low-ball estimate. So, if we use $3.8 billion of the $10 billion reserve for regular items, we will have to make up the $3.8 billion by adding that amount to the supplementals that are likely to come later to fully fund the war on terrorism. If the appropriators follow our lead, we will spend $3.8 billion more on defense than the President has requested, and add $3.8 billion more to the deficit and national debt. Second, what happens if the appropriators do not follow suit, or if they are not allowed to do so by the House leadership? Then, we will have $3.8 billion in hollow BA (Budget Authority). We will authorize $3.8 billion worth of items that never get appropriated. This is not an idle concern because the White House and the Speaker are both resisting efforts by the Appropriations Committee to take up this $3.8 billion shift. Another shift of funds comes in the military personnel account. This account is reduced by $810 million, and the money is shifted to other purposes. The DoD actuaries are likely in the next month to conclude that the military personnel budget overestimates the accrual payment for the Tricare-for-Life program. This is a program this committee established, and along with it, we instituted the accrual system to make sure the costs of this program are accounted for over the long term. If the actuaries do reduce it by that amount, the effect is minimal. But what if they reduce it by only $400 million? Then we will be shorting the military personnel accounts by $410 million, unless we shift the money back from the items to which it is transferred. Committee staff asked DoD for a likely estimate of this adjustment and took the high end of the range indicated by DoD. If the actuaries come in lower, the adjustments will have to be made. Certain items now funded will have to be de-funded or cut. Congress should not get in the habit of trying to jump ahead of actuarial estimates in order to find savings to be used for other items. There is a widespread sentiment that DoD needs more funding, even though the President's request for next year is the largest increase in twenty years. I share the sentiment, but question quite a few of the allocations in this bill. For example, if we took $70,000,000 out of projects like the space-based kinetic interceptor (on which we have spent millions already, to no avail), we could buy 24 PAC-3s and lower the purchase cost from $6.5 to $5.6 million per missile. The PAC-3 is the only missile defense system that we will deploy in the next five years, and it is a theater system, where the threat is clear and present. With only 20 PAC-3s deployed, and 72 in process of being procured, 24 additional PAC-3's could make a major difference to the defense of our troops in some conceivable scenarios in the very near future. Moving from the tactical to the strategic. I have long been concerned that we are under-funding the DOE's nuclear complex both for stockpile stewardship and environmental cleanup. The bill we are reporting does little to address these important areas. I have always supported a strong defense, but we should bear in mind that our economy is the first instrument of our national defense. The federal budget constitutes 20 percent of our economy and has a great impact on it, as we saw during the 1990s. Each year for eight years, we reduced the budget deficit and then moved the budget into surplus; and every year for 120 straight months, the economy grew. In passing this bill, we take the first step in a defense budget that will cost $557 billion more than inflation over the next ten years. I recognize the need and the primacy we must give the defense of our country, and I do not think that we can be stinting about the cost of our war against terrorism. But I am concerned as to whether we can sustain over the long run all that we are supporting in this bill. As we pass the bill authorizing a $48 billion increase in defense, the budget overall is moving toward a unified deficit of $150 billion this year. In other words, the federal budget in fiscal year 2002 will borrow and spend all of the Medicare surplus, all of the Social Security surplus, and still need to borrow $150 billion more. Revenue collections this year are lagging last year by $130 billion. For the first time since 1995, the Treasury must borrow money to make it through the first calendar quarter of 2002. These signs are all the more ominous when we remember that the first of 77 million baby boomers will retire in 2008; and when all are retired, the number of beneficiaries on Social Security and Medicare will double. I agree that the defense budget takes precedence for now, but the federal budget has a rendez-vous with destiny that we cannot dodge. By shifting regular DoD funds to the war reserve and second-guessing actuarial payments, the bill we report sets precedents that I am not eager to establish, and it begs a big question: for how long can we sustain what we have started?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would have been opposed to the amendment as of yesterday, but we have had a work in progress here and I must say we have come up with a very good effort. I commend the gentleman for his efforts. I think he has a good bill. The gentleman is probably more engaged than any member of Congress in either house in trying to bring Russia and the United States closer together. What he has in this bill, the first part of it, is an ambitious agenda dealing with nonproliferation, lab exchanges, visits to our testing sites. What the gentleman has in the first part of the bill is an ambitious agenda of how we can bring Russia and the United States closer together in strategic cooperation. It lays out a number of specifics ranging from nonproliferation efforts to lab exchanges to joint visits to our testing sites, an ambitious agenda but nevertheless all the things we ought to be doing, the whole strategic spectrum. I think it is well stated and well in order, and I think the bill deserves support for that reason alone. I had a problem with the last page of the bill originally because the last page dealt with an amendment that I had added to the law, to Title XX, some six or seven years ago. That provision, the Spratt provision, Spratt first provision, prohibited testing below the level of five kilotons for reasons I will not get into here. There is no longer a provision in this bill that would repeal that. But there is a provision in this bill that would broaden the type of research that our labs can do with low yield weapons, the kind of development work they can do. It limits that work to what we could call in the Subcommittee on Military Research and Development 6-2-A; that is to say; they can do concept definition work, they can do research work, they can do design work, they can build a wooden mock-up, but they cannot bend metal or do fissile component parts until the law itself is changed. I think that is a reasonable provision that gives the labs a much clearer definition of what the boundaries are, broadens the scope of what they can do, but stops short of decreeing a repeal of the 2-K-T provision. In addition, yesterday this bill contained a call for a joint Russia collaboration on the development of nuclear penetrating weapons, nuclear and conventional, and the gentleman, after some reflection and discussion with the Department of Energy and others, has decided to take that off the bill. With those two improvements this is a very good bill, a very good piece of work, and I commend it to everybody's support. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to commend both the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Tauscher) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) for reaching agreement on what I think is a good amendment to an amendment. Basically the Nuclear Posture Review raised more questions than it answered; among them, why does it take 10 years to draw down the operationally deployed force; why do we have to maintain a responsive force of the magnitude that was indicated? We may have as many warheads actually deployed in 2012 as we do today. How costly will it be to maintain this force? These are all questions that we need to ask directly, and that is what this amendment will do. It will put these questions back to DOD and get a further addendum or response to clarify NPR on these critical points. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentlewoman for offering this amendment, and support it fully.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Tauscher).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking member of our committee.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), one of the key players in the compromises that have perfected and made this a better bill.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I am not opposed to the amendment, but I claim the time on my side.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment included among the en bloc amendments which was specifically requested by the Department of Defense. In fact, the idea for this amendment arose at a breakfast we had with Secretary Rumsfeld at which there were complaints about limitations on their ability to manage the Pentagon. One was in the quality of personnel they have for financial management, the attraction of personnel with the requisite qualifications for handling a budget that is now approaching $400 billion, the certification of these qualifications, hiring, firing. I responded to that by calling Dr. Dov Zakheim, who is the comptroller of the Department of Defense, and telling him if he had problems like this, we were not going to be stinting about the cost of professional personnel in the Department of Defense. We need to raise the quality of management throughout the Federal Government and certainly in the Department that has the largest budget. I asked him to send me legislation of what he would like to have in the way of professional qualifications, certification, what he could reasonably require for those who worked in the Department of the Controller. He sent me some legislation, and we made a few minor revisions to it. We made some revisions primarily to make it prospective instead of retrospective so that nobody loses his job because he does not meet these new qualifications or these new certifications. Secondly, we worked with the American Federation of Government Employees to make sure that they were satisfied with the proposal we have got. This amendment is just a crucial first step to helping the Department of Defense improve their abilities in the area of financial management and their ability to track and account for the funding that Congress provides. The heart and soul, obviously, of any accounting system is the people it employs. This will enable the Department to raise the level, raise the bar in the qualifications for people who are attracted and hired in the Department of Defense for financial management. It is my understanding that the Committee on Government Reform has also vetted this legislation and supports it as well. I urge an ``aye'' vote on the en bloc amendment.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, let us vote to affirm Ronald Reagan's wisdom. Let us win one for the Gipper. Vote ``aye'' for nonnuclear missile defense.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, when Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative, he made a wise decision. He decided that SDI should be non- nuclear, and he did it for good reason. SDI was not the genesis of missile defense. President Johnson had proposed a missile defense system in 1967, a system he called the Sentinel. It was to be deployed at 15 sites around the country, but it packed a nuclear warhead, and the news of its coming was not warmly welcomed. When the Nixon administration came to office, it answered the local resistance to the Sentinel by naming it the Safeguard and by reorienting its mission. Safeguard consisted of 2 interceptors: Spartan, a third-stage missile with a 1 megaton warhead, and Sprint, a shorter range missile with a warhead that produced an intense burst of neutrons. Both of them were radar-guided. Neither was accurate enough for what we call today hit-to-kill, but with a 1-megaton warhead, the Spartan did not need hit-to-kill. The lethal range for the x-rays generated by its warhead above the atmosphere was several kilometers. These systems were flight-tested often, and compiled an unimpressive record, but there was one flaw that really did it in. A nuclear weapon detonation above the atmosphere produces a huge quantity of electrons. Their interaction creates electromagnetic pulse and ionizes the whole top of the atmosphere. And when electrons in this mix reach a certain density, the waves that are projected by long-range radars are weakened to the point that they can no longer see objects as small as reentry vehicles. In other words, the Spartan and the Sprint, put together, were self-blinding. They did not work. They were self-defeating. In October 1975, we opened the site at Grand Forks for the deployment of the system and it lasted all of 2 months; 2 months. We spent $20 billion in today's money and the system was shut down. Now, after spending $20 billion to learn that nuclear-tipped interceptors are self-blinding, self-defeating, let us do not go down that path again. After spending another $60 billion since SDI to perfect the technology we today call hit-to-kill, let us stick to our knitting. It is about to work. It is about to come to fruition. Let us keep missile defense focused on things that are feasible. Now, my colleagues may say that what I am doing in this motion is setting up a straw man and then knocking him down; that MDA is not even developing so-called nuclear-tipped interceptors, and that is true, for now. But there are reports that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asked the Defense Science Board to weigh this option, and here is what our own committee report says at page 230, in this bill on page 230: ``The committee understands that the Department may investigate other options for ballistic missile defense; among them, nuclear armed interceptors. The committee would consider the examination of such an alternative to be a prudent step.'' I do not consider that to be prudent in terms of dollars or defense policy. That is why I move to recommit and undo this language. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute and 50 seconds to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I have served in the House for 20 years and for 20 years I have served on the House Committee on Armed Services. I speak from experience and mince no words when I say this rule is an outrage, nothing less than that. In the 1980s when I also served here, we had another enormous buildup in our national defense. And every year when we came to the floor with this defense authorization bill, we would have 100 to 200 amendments filed to the Committee on Rules, and we bent over backwards to make most of them in order. We had a full, fair and free debate in the well of this House. It was a free market idea, but it is no more. We lived in those days up to article 1, clause 8, the solemn responsibility the Constitution gives us. We gave these issues serious consideration. The consideration they merit. We had another tradition that somehow has been lost in the last 5 or 6 years. Senior members of the committee with experience were given deference on the Committee on Rules. If we brought amendments to be considered, the Committee on Rules would give some weight to the fact that we had some experience on the committee. I brought four rules. I did not abuse the privilege. I brought four amendments to the Committee on Rules yesterday and asked that they be made in order. One was an amendment that was made at the behest of the Department of Defense. Another one was an amendment that was made in order because also another amendment, a second order amendment, was made in order that would change it to the liking of the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter). I will support that amendment, but that really makes it his rather than mine. The two other amendments that I sought were important amendments. Neither was made in order. Now they made in order amendments for noncommittee members. But when the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen), who is a member of the committee, asked for an amendment, he was stiffed. The gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Tauscher) was stiffed. I was stiffed. Noncommittee members who offered amendments that they thought might be ``got you'' amendments, they went ahead and made in order, but not ours which were seriously considered and we wanted an open and free debate on those issues. One was nuclear testing. I sense a slow, subtle about-face in our policy of moving away from nuclear weapons, particularly tactical nuclear weapons, particularly early to use nuclear weapons towards nuclear weapons and even a resumption of nuclear testing. That may be the right policy. It may be the wrong policy. In any event, it is a serious policy issue. As we make this move subtly, we should have a full, free, fair and open debate. And all I wanted to say was, Mr. President, by virtue of this act, we ask you solemnly for 12 months notice before you make the decision to resume nuclear testing. As a matter of fact, it will not impede in any way the resumption of nuclear testing. DOE says it will take them today 24 to 36 months. But it would allow us 1 authorization appropriations cycle before that solemn decision was finally taken. We would have an opportunity to register opposition. We will be a full partner in what I think is a fundamentally serious decision. That amendment was not made in order. This is a rigged rule. It shuts out debate. It makes a mockery of the Constitution. Vote against the previous question, vote against the rule.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to point out that the budget resolution brought to the floor by the House Republicans last month provided only $77 billion in tax cuts over the next 5 years. The President is calling for $675 billion in tax cuts over the next 10 years, and the repeal of this repealer will take at least $400 to $500 billion. Their budget resolution did not provide for this tax cut.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, the critical vote came first. It was the vote to bypass the budget and do away with the rules that have served us well for the last 10 years. They moved the budget out of deep deficit into big surpluses. Now, with those rules out of the way, this tax bill can work its will, which is just what the gentleman said, it is to raid Social Security. If you do not believe me, look at the President's own budget. The President's budget calls for $675 billion in tax cuts on top of the $1.3 trillion passed last June. Among other things, it calls for this repeal of the sunset provision. As a result, look at the President's own budget. It wipes out what it is left of any surplus, it spends the entire Medicare surplus, consumes it completely, and spends two-thirds of the Social Security surplus, by the President's own accounting. Last month, when our Republican colleagues in the House brought out their budget resolution, it provided for none of those tax cuts. Not any of them. It did not make any mention of repeal of the so-called sunset in last year's tax bill. Why was that? Because they knew if they factored into their budget these tax cuts, it would drive the bottom line through the floor. It would put the budget in deficit for as far as the eye could see. They would be spending virtually all of Social Security, the Social Security surplus, and all of the Medicare surplus. Now, one month later, they bring up a tax cut that they could not accommodate in their budget resolution, did not want to put in the context of a budget resolution, because that would have shown what it did to Social Security, what it did to Medicare. They bring it up ad hoc, all by itself, a blatant violation of the budget process rules. Consider this: Last year, the Secretary of the Treasury told us that we would not need to raise the ceiling on the amount of national debt we can incur for at least 8 years. That was his testimony. Yesterday the Secretary of the Treasury sent us his third letter saying that the ceiling on the national debt needs to be raised, and raised now, by $750 billion. Why is that? Because we are spending the Social Security trust account, we are spending the Medicare trust account, and not using them to pay down the debt of the United States. So what is the response of our Republican leaders in the House? It is not to raise the debt ceiling. Their response is to reduce taxes by another $500 billion between now and 2012, $4 trillion between 2012 and 2022. This will wipe out what is left of Social Security and all of the surplus that builds up between now and 2012.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, a year ago I closed the debate on the budget by noting that it has taken us almost 20 years, $4 trillion in debt, to escape the fiscal mistakes that we made in the 1980s and to turn this budget around and finally move it out of deficits and into surpluses. But we did it. There is the record of the late 8 years of the Clinton administration: every year a better bottom line. I went on to say that today, if I had one priority, a year ago, one overriding objective, it was simply this, to make sure that we did not backslide into the hole that we have just dug ourselves out of. That was my objective, I said. That is why I had a problem last year with the Republican resolution, because it left so little room for error. I went on to say I hoped that these blue sky projections that totaled some $5.6 trillion in surpluses over the next 10 years will materialize. It will be a great bounty for all of us. But if they do not and if we pass this resolution, we can find ourselves right back in the red again in the blink of an economist's eye. Mr. Chairman, here we are, back in that hole again. You listen to the other side talk, and you would not even think that we had a problem. I just pulled two pages out of various economic studies of the budget situation we have got on our hands. Here is CBO's most recent estimate of the deficit in the President's budget. This year it will be $248 billion. $248 billion. Next year, $297 billion in the red, in deficit. Over the next 10 years, 2003 to 2012, it will be $1.8 trillion in deficit, and that means $1.8 trillion into the Social Security Trust Fund, because that is how you make up that deficit. They act as if we do not have a problem. They talk about recovering surplus. Look at their own numbers. Next year, a deficit of $224 billion on budget excluding Social Security. Over 4 or 5 years, $830 billion. Here we are, Mr. Chairman. We have witnessed the biggest fiscal reversal in the history of our country. $5 trillion has vanished, disappeared, it is gone. We had $5.6 trillion last year. Looking at the President's own numbers this year, we have $0.6 trillion if we implement his budget. Last year we had for 10 straight years nothing but black ink on the bottom line, 10 straight years we had on budget surpluses last year. We talked last year about virtually paying off all of the Treasury's debt held by the public, over $3 trillion worth. This year, this year we have got on budget deficits for 10 straight years. And what are we talking about now? Raising the ceiling on the national debt immediately. The Secretary of Treasury says he needs $750 billion of additional debt ceiling because the national debt is going up, it is not coming down. Well, here we are, Mr. Chairman, and my problem with this Republican budget is that it presents no plan, no strategy, no way to get us out of this hole. It only leads to bigger deficits and greater debt. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) offered a process before the Committee on Rules and defended it on the floor. So did the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran). They at least had a way to back the budget out of Social Security, which is an objective we all profess at least to hold. It was not made in order. Nothing was made in order, except this resolution under the rule that was presented to us. So we have a Republican budget in name, but in name only, because it does not have a plan. Oh, it has a default plan, all right. In the absence of any kind of constructive concerted plan, it has a default plan. That default plan is to keep on borrowing and spending Social Security, to revert to the practice that we all foreswore and said we would never ever do again once we reached that summit and were able to get away from that onerous practice. Why do we have such little time then in the face of such serious matters to debate the most consequential vote that we will cast in this session? It is not because Republicans are eager to get home. It is because their budget will not stand scrutiny, not for long, and they know it. It will not stand scrutiny because it is just the tip of the iceberg. This is not the real budget. This is part of their budget. Let me give you an example. Last year, in order to shoe-horn the tax bill into the amount allocated for the total tax bill, they phased it in over time, and then in 2010 they did something dramatic, they actually repealed everything that had just been implemented. So we have a repealer in 2010 that undoes tax cuts that were done last year. We asked, with this 5-year budget, does it provide or anticipate anything with respect to the repeal of the repealer in 2010? We were told emphatically ``no.'' The next day the Speaker said absolutely, we will repeal the sunset provision in the Tax Code. Ari Fleischer at the White House backed him up. Those are pretty high sources. But you search this budget in vain for any trace whatsoever of the repeal of the repealer in the year 2010. It is not in here. CBO tells us if you put it in there, you have to make a $569 billion adjustment, deduction, to revenues. It is not in there. Nor is there any provision for fixing the AMT, nor is there any provision for extending popular tax provisions that will expire, nor, for that matter, is there any of the President's request for $675 billion in additional tax relief. It has all been pushed forward into the second 5 years. This is not some policy wonk debate whether you should do a budget 5 years or 10 years. This is a concerted strategy to shove everything forward and make the first 5 years as good as you possibly can by ducking the issue that will come just over the horizon. A budget is a plan, we all know that. We have household budgets, and if we had a plan here, if the Republicans had a plan in their budget, they would display it. They would roll it out. Because surely if they had a plan, one goal, one objective in that plan, would be to get the budget out of Social Security, to quit borrowing and spending the Social Security budget. One of the reasons we have a 5-year budget, one of the reasons that we have Social Security, one of the reasons that we have OMB as a scorekeeper for this budget instead of CBO, is right here. It is this chart right here. These bar graphs right here tell an awful lot. If you look to the far left axis, you see a little blue stub. That is where the Clinton administration got us. We were, for the first time in 30 years, out of Social Security, out of Medicare. We had a surplus over and above both of those accounts. 2001, you see a little stub below the line. That too is a partial Clinton year. The reason that stub is below the line is that the Republicans shifted a corporate tax payment, $35 billion worth, from September 15 to October 1 to shore up 2002 numbers. Back that artificial shift out and it too is right at the line. So this is the beginning baseline that the President inherited, the best fiscal situation any President has inherited in modern times. And these are the deficits that are entailed by his budget and these are the results to Social Security and to Medicare. Medicare, the yellow or orange line at the top. Fully consumes the Medicare surplus, $650 billion over the next 10 years, every penny of it. Social Security, 70 to 75 percent of the Social Security surplus is fully consumed over the next 10 years. The key thing is if you look in the year 2007, which is a terminal year in this budget, if you looked at their budget you might think, well, they have a plan. It looks like the amount of invasion of the Social Security surplus is about to diminish, they are about to turn the corner. But in truth, it keeps on keeping on. There is no plan. There is no result. This is not the kind of budget that will put us back on the path we were on. We have had some fundamental changes since this time last year, I will be the first to acknowledge it, and I will be the first to say the debate today is not about national defense or homeland defense. We support both, on the same terms and in the same amount. But we also support Social Security. We also thought we had a good thing going with our fiscal policy last year. We would like to get back on this path. This budget does not lead us back. This leads to more debt, more deficits, more invasion of the Social Security Trust Fund, and it has no plan for resolution of any of those things. Before this year is out, I hope, earnestly hope, having been here 20 years and struggled and worked to put the budget on an even keel, I hope we will have some solution to this problem. But this is not a solution. This does not lead us in the right direction and this budget should be emphatically defeated. Mr. Chairman, I yield 12 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) for the purposes of control.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) for purposes of control.