John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) in support of this bill, as a cosponsor of the bill, as well as the floor manager for the bill on our side of the aisle. The road to Saturday's successful intercept has been long and arduous; and we have miles to go before we can say we have gotten there, even gotten to the point where we have what we call a limited defense system capable of defending us against rogue missile attacks, simple rogue missile attacks, or perhaps unauthorized or accidental strike. We have a long way to go, and we should not let the euphoria of this moment obscure that fundamental fact. Indeed, if we have learned anything since March 23, 1983, when Mr. Reagan made his speech and proposed what became the Strategic Defense Initiative, it is that missile defense is not likely, unfortunately, to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. It may enhance deterrence, but it is unlikely to replace deterrence. That is a fundamental point. Nevertheless, I think enhancing deterrence is a worthy goal. I think that if we can prove through testing, like the tests that we held Saturday night, rigorous testing, that gets more and more demanding and challenging with each test, that eventually takes on countermeasures as well, if we can prove after this kind of rigorous testing that we have a system worthy of deploying, that will give us limited protection against the kind of threat I just described, it is worth deploying; and I think it is worth observing what was accomplished Saturday night, because it moves us in that direction. Let me emphasize that testing is critical. I have been a long-time supporter of that. We do not want to fool ourselves into thinking that we have got a system that can take on this daunting challenge when, in fact, it can easily be overcome or is not capable of what it is touted to be. We do not want to fool ourselves by deploying some kind of scarecrow system. We associate ballistic missile defense with Mr. Reagan's speech on March 23, 1983; but in truth both administrations, the Clinton administration, the Reagan administration, the Bush administration, going all the way back to Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1967, have supported missile defense in one form or another. Indeed, the safeguard system originated in 1967 with President Johnson's administration. It was taken to the point that it was deployed. The Spartan system failed a number of times. No one felt that it was a complete and good defense system; and after spending what would amount in today's money of about $20 billion, we abandoned the system in North Dakota. We kept spending money on ballistic missile defense in Democratic and Republican administrations. There were systems that have long been forgotten, like the BAMBI, which was a boost-phase interceptor, which was abandoned because it could not be proven to be invulnerable to counterattacks in fixed orbits in space. Indeed, the path to Saturday night is littered with systems that simply could not meet the mettle. We have spent a lot of money, $60 billion since 1983, to get where we have gotten; but we have had some successes, and I think it is right to take some time aside to savor those success. I think the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) would agree we should not forget that this was not the first intercept with this system. Indeed, the first intercept occurred 2 years ago under the Clinton administration. This was a Clinton administration system. They in effect brought the technology to the point where it could be tested Saturday night and proven to work at least in those circumstances. Mr. Speaker, when the test was concluded, General Kadish, who is doing a commendable job as the manager of this program, a very practical, pragmatic man, told everybody there, all the press there, when they asked him what should we deduce from the success we just had, he said if you just lower the level a little bit and let us proceed in a rigorous disinterested way, let us not get too excited about this thing, let us do our work, we think we can prove to you that we have got something worthy of deploying. I think it is very, very fitting and very, very appropriate for us to rise today to commend the thousands of people who have made this a success. While we are at it, I think we might commend a lot of other people in the so-called military-industrial complex, which is what we call them when we are usually disappointed, when we are usually confounded by the bills they present us, when we are usually suspicious of what they are up to. When they succeed like Saturday night, we call them the arsenal of America. There are a lot of people out there are working in the arsenal of America making the F-22 meet its test every day. There are a lot of them working in other programs, like the THAAD, which was almost discarded. We gave it some extra money and another chance. They went out and made it work. They have just brought to fruition the PAC-3. So there are successes, and we should commend them for their enormous technological capability, their perseverance and ability that brought us this far. I hope that this sort of bipartisan occasion today is an example of how we can treat ballistic missile defense in the future. It has been a political totem, frankly. I would like to see it treated like any other weapons system, the F-22, the C-17, you name it. If it meets the mettle, we go forward with it; but it if it does not, it should be held to the same standards, truly with the same sort of rational examination and expectation we would any military system. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, as Memorial Day draws near, I want to remember one of my constituents, Chance C. Melton, Jr. of Gaffney, South Carolina, whose valor helped save hundreds of sailors from dying in the Pacific. Chance Melton served in the United States Navy aboard the USS Pittsburgh during the latter stages of World War II. During his duty in the Pacific theater, Chance Melton helped rescue survivors of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin after it was bombed by the Japanese. The Franklin was attacked early on the morning of March 19, 1945, in enemy waters, shortly before it was to launch an attack on the Japanese mainland. The attack killed 725 men, injured 200 more, and forced roughly a thousand overboard into the Pacific. Chance Melton, as a crew member on the USS Pittsburgh, helped pull dozens of sailors out of the water, and later helped as the Pittsburgh towed the Franklin, which miraculously was still afloat, for three days to get the carrier out of Japanese waters. Melton and his crew mates were under enemy attack throughout their operation, but they achieved their mission. They started the Franklin on its long but successful journey back to the Brooklyn Naval Yard. This was the first rescue in naval history to pull a disabled ship out of enemy waters. For his service, Chance Melton was awarded the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Medal with three Silver Stars, and World War II Victory Medal. He served four years in the Naval Reserve before leaving military service. Chance became successful in textiles, and remains a leader in his community. He helped establish the Cherokee County Veterans' Museum, and has served as Commander of American Legion Post 109 since 1995. At age 85, Chance Melton is one sailor who is still going strong. I am pleased to honor his valor and unstinting service to our country.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I do not have a large chart. I simply have this piece of paper which I previously have put in the Record. On this one sheet of paper, we show the consequences of the conference agreement that we adopted on the budget and the consequences in particular of the tax cut that we are about to send to conference. This tax cut will have a cost in the area of $1.3 trillion. When one factors into the budget all of the puts and takes, one starts with $5.610 trillion, it seems that everything is possible. My lord, $5.610 trillion. But if we back out the Social Security surplus and then back out the Medicare surplus, the available surplus for policy actions before tax cuts is substantially less than that. It is about $2.6 trillion. When one backs out the tax cut, we end up with, after interest adjustments, a contingency reserve of $504 billion. There is $504 billion for policy initiatives, for estimating errors, over a period of 10 years. Now that, too, sounds like a lot of money until we look at the bottom line and see that in the first 5 or 6 years that cushion for errors, that contingency reserve, ranges between $12 billion and $30 billion; never a big number, particularly when we consider this: in the puts and takes that I have just mentioned, in getting to this so-called contingency reserve, this cushion fund, there is no calculation for an increase in education, inflation only. No real spending increase in education at all. More seriously, more importantly, we have in this budget a placeholder number for national defense. It is $325 billion next year, but everybody knows that Mr. Rumsfeld is now transforming our military and will soon be on the Hill, after this is all done, with a request ranging anywhere from $20 billion to $35 billion next year, and probably $250 billion to $350 billion over the next 10 years at a minimum. Nobody disputes that. I showed this chart today to Mr. Rumsfeld when he testified before our committee. I told him that what we assumed is that he would be up here next year for at least a $20 billion increase. Each year thereafter, it was staircased by $5 billion until it reached $50 billion. He did not demur to those numbers. Here is what happens when we factor in defense at that level and when we also factor in to these calculations, emergency spending, which is at the historic average of about $5 billion to $6 billion a year. Next year, the contingency reserve in 2002 is $12 billion. Defense and emergencies alone will need $15 billion. That means we are back in the red again. In 2003, defense and emergencies will need $24 billion. The contingency reserve is $19 billion. In 2004, defense and emergencies will need $31 billion. The reserve is $24 billion. That is how thin the ice gets as a result of this budget and, primarily, as a result of the proposed tax cuts. That is the risk we are taking. Furthermore, for those who want to say there is still money left for education, there is no money in here for education over and above inflation. That is already factored into the equation. Once we do the defense budget, there is no room left for policy initiatives. There is nothing set aside for Social Security and Medicare, other than what they will accumulate in their own trust funds. That is why I am opposed to this budget. It comes too close to the margin, too close for comfort, and leaves no room for error. I think everybody should bear that in mind, because this motion to recommit tonight at least says, let us take the tax bill and try to make it as well-contained as we can within the parameters of the budget we have here. That is the least we can do, is send our conferees to the conference committee and tell them, do a better job than either House has yet done in fitting this tax bill into a budget reality.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. I simply want to underscore what my counterpart, the chairman of the committee, is saying. We do the talking; our staffs do the arduous analytical work and all the document preparation, working long, long hours to meet this peak-period requirement. They do an enormous job and do an excellent job as well on both sides. I think this commendation of the staff on both sides of the aisle is entirely appropriate and well in order. I thank the gentleman very much for doing so.

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

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, let me quickly respond to my friend, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), that if he wants an example of model bipartisanship, 1997 is a good year to refer to. That year the White House was controlled by Democrats, the Congress was controlled by Republicans, and we sat down and had a process that lasted several months and then came up with something called the Balanced Budget Agreement of 1997. I think what we learned from that experience is that regardless of the outcome, just putting it through the process, where everybody participates, develops a better product. The gentleman does not have to go back to Mr. Clinton's proposals. We did not bring his budget to the floor. He is no longer President. We had a budget in the well of the House just a few weeks ago which called for an allocation of a third of the surplus to tax cuts. We were supporting that. We came forth with the idea in our resolution for a tax stimulus this year and next year using the surplus we know we have in hand. That has come out in this final product. The other side could have had the same sort of result if we had had a real give and take. We could have had a real free market of ideas. We would not have let our colleagues get away with coming to the floor with nothing for education in their budget. We would have insisted the defense number be realistically represented in this budget. I think we would have had a better budget and we might have had an opportunity, one of those rare opportunities, for a bipartisan budget for the next 10 years.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the minority leader. (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that we have never said we should not have tax cuts. We said when we brought our budget resolution to the floor, unlike theirs, that we should have some this year, take the whole surplus this year and rebate it to the American public, and we set aside $800 billion to $900 billion for additional tax relief. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Tanner. (Mr. TANNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House for more than 18 years, and in those 18 years I have served on a lot of conference committees; but I have never been so completely excluded, so totally shut out as in this particular conference. I hope at the end of it all, my colleagues on the other side will allow us at least one thing, and not call this bipartisan. It is by no stretch of the imagination bipartisan. It is the very opposite. And it does not augur well for bipartisanship in the House for the future. But bad as the process has been, the substance is even worse. Because what is missing from this budget are not two pages, what is missing are real numbers. And let me give the most salient example: the largest account in the discretionary budget, national defense. We pass 13 appropriation bills. The defense bill is as big as all 12 others put together. In this budget there is a number for defense of $325 billion. That is a place-holder number. That is not a real number. Now, how do we know that? Number one, we know Mr. Rumsfeld is busy at work doing a top-to-bottom review of defense. And once he has finished that review, he is going to send us a huge plus-up in the defense budget. Number two, read the text of this resolution and my colleagues will find that we give unprecedented unilateral authority to the chairman of this committee to increase the allocation for defense by as much as nearly $400 billion over the next 10 years. None of us has a say in it. He can add that to the budget. Let us just make that adjustment, as this chart does, to the reality of this budget, the defense budget we all know that is coming. Let us assume it is $20 billion to $25 billion initially and builds up over time. Let us also add back to the budget what the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) was wise enough and right enough to put in it to start with, some allocation for emergencies we know based on experience are going to happen. When we add those two lines, as we can see from this chart, every year for the next 5 or 6 years the amount of money we need for additional defense spending and the amount of money we need for emergencies exceeds the contingency fund that is left over after we do the puts and takes that are included in this conference agreement. Now, what does that mean? Let us take education. This budget zeros out education. The Senate had three votes. They added $300 billion to defense and passed a resolution with that plus-up in it. This budget was then taken behind closed doors in a conference and all of the money for education was excluded; not only the Senate's added to education but also the President's request of $21.4 billion for education. All we provide for education is inflation. Now, some may say on the other side that education's day will come. We have a 302(b) allocation process; we will have another occasion when we can plus up for education. Not after we adjust for defense and emergencies. There is nothing left over. So, Mr. Speaker, that is why I say this is the substance, this is the reality, and this is why we should vote against this rule on grounds of process and substance. Vote against this budget.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, in response to the gentleman, I would say what is missing from this budget is any sense of priority that education is the number one challenge facing our country. There is not an 11.4 percent increase. That is what Mr. Bush claimed when he was offering $21.4 billion. That increase is not included in this budget. The Senate added $300 billion. It is not there. The only thing in this budget for education is inflation, the same thing everything else gets. So the dominant priority here is not for education, that is for sure. Mr. Speaker, to back up what I have just said, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), to talk about education, the missing piece in this budget.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez). (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton). (Mrs. CLAYTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that there is no money set aside in this budget for Social Security and Medicare, except for the money that is set aside for a prescription drug benefit, but not to make the program solvent; and there is certainly no lockbox. It is not in this bill at all. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Capuano).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 90 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen). (Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary Miller) who just spoke that it is as a matter of record we overspent the President's request last year. While there were some things the President got that were over and above what we were willing to give him before the negotiations began, we were already beyond the President's request for spending, and we added $4 billion among other things to his request for national defense. We added a huge sum to transportation precipitated by the Speaker's request that we take care of Chicago's mass transit. So there was a mutual effort to add to spending last year. We ought to really come clean and say we all were part of that process last year, the President, the Congress on both sides of the aisle. Let me direct our attention to this budget. I have said from the start that my concern with this budget is, first of all, it is a watershed budget. It will affect what we do, not just in 2002, it will frame what we can do for the next 10 years, because we are making fundamental watershed decisions in this budget. In dealing with a budget of that gravity, that importance, the numbers ought to be real. I am not worried about a couple of missing pages. I am worried about plugs and placeholders and numbers that I do not think are real. Let me tell my colleagues which ones. First of all, defense spending, the largest account in the budget other than Social Security, the largest appropriation bill that we handle on the floor every year. $325 billion is a number inserted for defense spending in the year 2002. But we all know that is not the number. That is the Clinton-coined budget number. That is a placeholder. We also all know that Mr. Rumsfeld has been working for months now behind closed doors, 18 different committees, making a comprehensive review of our national security requirements. We have seen leaks in recent weeks in all kinds of publications and some directly from him by way of television, indicating that his request will be substantial, I mean 2 to $400 billion a year over the period that we are talking about. $25 billion a year at least in the way of an increase in defense spending over and above what this budget provides. That is why the defense number is patently unreal. In fact, we have given the chairman of this committee unprecedented unilateral authority, once he gets the numbers from Mr. Rumsfeld, without consulting with anybody else, to come over and adjust the allocation to defense by up to $400 billion. I cannot recall any kind of authority like that that we have given any single individual before, but that shows us we explicitly recognize in this budget that the defense number is not a real number. It will be jacked up considerably before this fiscal year is over. Emergency spending. To his credit, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) tried to deal with this spending. He tried to put it in the budget because, historically, we know from experience every year we have emergencies. Hurricanes, tornados, you name it, we have them. And we pay for it out of this budget through FEMA. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) provided $5.6 billion after a tussle with the appropriators that was taken out. But if we add it back, that is $60 billion that is not in the budget but ought to be provided in the budget. Discretionary spending. This budget purports to have a tight limit, a tight tether on discretionary spending. In the outyears, 2003 to 2011, the purported rate of increase is 2.6 percent. That is not even inflation. Over a 10-year period of time, for nondefense discretionary, this provides less than inflation, $50 billion less than inflation. Now, that is a tough challenge to the appropriators at a time when we have a massive surplus. It used to be we could say we have got this deficit, and you could deter people from pushing their spending request; but now we have this surplus, it is a lot tougher to beat back the people who want to add this and add the other. Does one think that we are going to hold discretionary spending to $2.6 percent at the same time we are taking the budget and favoring things like transportation? We have allowed transportation a special niche in the budget, giving them substantially more than inflation. We have allowed NIH and other favored activities like that a much bigger than inflationary increase. When we allow those favored programs their extra share of the budget, it means we have got to cut everything else. That is the reason, Mr. Speaker, when we look at this budget, we should realize that all the numbers down to function 920 called allowances are not real. If we look at function 920, we will see a number called $67 billion. That is $67 billion in unspecified cuts. The conference labored hard to come to a final conclusion, but they effectively threw in the towel. What they effectively adopted as the spending level for every function was just an inflationary rate of increase. My colleagues know and I know that is not the way the appropriations process works. But if they cannot resolve at the function level where the cuts are going to hit, how in the world will we resolve it and bring in total spending at a 2.6 percent rate of increase for 10 years? I do not believe it will happen. I do not believe this is a real number. Function 920 is the ultimate tip-off. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the tax cuts are real. As soon as the compromise at $1.35 trillion for tax reduction over 10 years, as soon as it was announced, Senator Lott said there are other ways to do tax cuts. This is round one. Secretary O'Neill was on the Hill. He testified that this is more of a floor than a ceiling, that there are other ways to skin this cat and provide additional tax relief. Look at what is on the cutting room floor. Once we trim this $1.6 trillion request to $1.3 trillion tax cut bill, it will have to be increased. Look at the charts and realize that the bottom line here will soon be gone. It puts the bottom line in jeopardy. Two numbers I would say to my colleagues. $342 billion invasion of Medicare, $255 billion invasion of Social Security is the arithmetic. That is where this budget leads us.

Mr. SPRATT

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

Mr. SPRATT. I want to suggest there are many things you ought to do and one of my biggest concerns is the way defense has been treated in this budget. When it left the House, we provided $70 billion more than the rate of inflation and gave the chairman of the committee the authority, I did not agree with this, but the authority willy-nilly to come back and plus that up by even more. You got to conference and took $30 billion of that away in order to get the discretionary spending number down. Let me tell you what my big concern is. Looking at this fairly complicated chart here, if you come to the bottom line, it is the line, the amount of money that remains after all the puts and takes in the conference agreement have been made. There is $12 billion in 2002, 19 in 2003, 24 in 2004; but we have read in recent weeks about the likely defense request that Mr. Rumsfeld is going to send once he figures out how to transform our military. And the numbers run 2, $300 billion, $25 billion a year. We have factored that into this budget. That is this line right here, defense increase. You know it is coming. I know it is coming. This budget explicitly anticipates it by giving the Committee on the Budget chairman the authority to adjust this number, however it takes. But what you have got is a thin bottom line here that will not sustain the kind of increase that Mr. Rumsfeld is talking about. I would suggest if you are going to take it back to the conference committee, you might see if you can get these numbers to mesh. Look, for example, at the year 2003. The Rumsfeld request in that year, if it is $25 billion, plus let us add the previous year, would be about $33 billion. But what is left in the contingency reserve? Just $24 billion. Every year for the next 6 years, there is too little money left over to provide for what the likely defense increase is going to be. So I think this budget needs a huge rework. Let me mention one other thing. Buried in this budget without any debate in the Committee on the Budget is a provision that prohibits the use of advance appropriations. It so happens that there are entities around here that can make good use of advance appropriations. The United States Navy would like to have that authority so they can move from full funding to incremental funding. This will prohibit them from doing that. It was put in the budget resolution because you shut the doors, you shut us out, there was no constructive discussion of this. And certainly not of the education increase. The Senate provided a nearly $300 billion plus-up in education over and above inflation, a huge increase, as a result of three amendments on the Senate floor. A majority of the Senate passed the budget resolution with that increase included; and, bam, it went to conference, it disappeared. Not only did it disappear, the President requested $21.4 billion more than the rate of inflation for education. It is gone, too. This was supposed to be an education budget. The President told us from that podium right there a couple of months ago that education would be the account in his budget increased the most. You are bringing this budget back to vote on in the House with nothing more than inflation. Zero inflation. You have maintained real purchasing power. Recommit to the conference, you bet. But take it back to the conference and put it through a real conference. Put it through an adversarial process and bring us a budget that is worth consideration. This has too many missing numbers, too many unreal numbers, too many plugs and placeholders. Mr. Speaker, I include a chart pertaining to the budget conference for the Record.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, there are many reasons this budget ought to be sent back to conference. It needs a total overhaul, a complete rewrite. I would like to ask the gentleman from the Committee on Rules if there is a possibility if we send it back if you might reconsider concurrent receipt for veterans disability pay which was passed in the Senate but struck in conference. Is there any chance we can redeem that?

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, the budget that the Republicans brought to the House late last Thursday has more than just two pages missing. It is a budget full of plugs and placeholders, and what is really missing are real numbers. Take defense, the largest account in the discretionary budget. This budget allocates $325 billion to defense, basically what Clinton and Cohen would have spent. But $325 billion is not a real number. It is a placeholder, pending Mr. Rumsfeld's review of what is needed to transform our military. Reports indicate when the time is right, after the tax cuts are enacted, Mr. Rumsfeld will request at least $25 billion a year more than this budget provides. Take next the rest of all appropriated spending. This budget holds discretionary spending to an increase of 3.8 percent next year and in years thereafter to 2.6 percent below inflation. This is tight, really tight, a lot stricter than any limit to which spending has been held in recent years. If spending is capped at these levels, and a few favored programs such as NIH and transportation get outsized disproportionate increases, then many others will have to be cut. Rather than indicate these unpopular and, some would say, unlikely cuts now, the Republican budget simply increases discretionary spending by the rate of inflation in every function across the board, except defense, which gets more. Then they bury in the last catchall function of the budget $6 billion of unspecified cuts in 2002 and a total of $67 billion in unspecified cuts over the next 10 years. Now, if we want to see what happens, what results from indiscriminate budgeting, look at education. Remember how the President said in his State of the Union that education would get the largest increase in his budget? That turned out to be a modest increase of $21.4 billion above inflation over the next 10 years. When the budget was open to amendment on the Senate floor, Senators voted three times to debit tax cuts and credit education to the tune of 294 billion additional dollars for education. It was a great victory, but short-lived. Once Republicans got the budget in the closed conference, they not only deleted all the adds made in the Senate but also cut the President's request of $21.3 billion. This budget now treats education like every other function; inflation only for 10 years, nothing more. Consider finally the initiative to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare. The President asked for $153 billion over 10 years to pay for drug benefits. In Congress, key Republicans in both Houses called this amount inadequate. Senate Democrats moved to raise the provision for drugs and prevailed. In their conference then, the Republican leadership did not pare down this increase. In conference this was not pared back. The next worst thing was done to it. Instead of setting aside some of the surplus, general fund surplus, to pay for this added benefit, they allow the $300 billion for drug benefits to be drawn from the Medicare Trust Fund. In the long run, this trust fund, the Medicare Trust Fund, faces a serious shortfall, as we all know. If the cost of prescription drugs is drawn from the trust fund, it will only hasten the day of insolvency. It is tax cuts that drive this budget, and tax reduction is the most understated number of all. The budget calls for tax cuts of $1.35 billion, $300 billion less than the President first requested, but Republicans from Senator Lott to Secretary O'Neill have said this is just round one for tax reduction, and I credit them for their honesty because more tax is surely coming. This is not the final number for tax reduction. When all of these numbers are added up, all of these plugs, all of these placeholders, and add up the likely action that will be layered on top of it, the bottom line in this budget goes negative as early as next year. Within the next 10 years, we will be $342 billion into the Medicare Trust Fund, $255 billion into the Social Security Trust Fund. Maybe that is why the conference was kept secret and the budget was not shown to us until midnight last Thursday.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, President Bush will outline today his plan for national missile defense. I reserve judgment until I hear the speech, but I have been following SDI and NMD, National Missile Defense, for years; and I have a few thoughts of mine that I want to share with the House, for whatever they may be worth. I think National Missile Defense, NMD, is worth pursuing, and if it works, I think it is worth deploying. But we have not proved that it works, not yet. In fact, after spending more than $60 billion on missile defense, we have learned as much about its limits as about its potential. Every form of defense we have explored at great expense has been found to be an Achilles heel of one sort or another. Boost-phase interceptors can be thwarted by fast-burn boosters or ablative covers. Space-based systems, whether they are lasers or kinetic interceptors move in fixed orbits and can easily be targeted and taken out. Sea- based systems are constrained by an obvious factor, the finite space availability on ships available. We for now settle on ground-based, mid-course interceptors, which I consider to be our clear first choice, the right way to go, but I will be first to tell you that the problem of discriminating warheads from decoys and chaff is a daunting problem that is a long way from being resolved. We have spent 18 years and $60 billion since Mr. Reagan made his speech; and if we have learned anything, it is that missile defense is not likely to render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. It may enhance deterrence, I believe it will; but it is not likely to replace deterrence. There is, however, a threat, a threat of an unauthorized or accidental attack, a threat of a rogue attack, existing and emerging, and I think it would be wise to have a missile defense system to meet that threat. But we have to recognize, we have to be realistic and recognize that a rogue or unauthorized attack can well come in an unconventional manner and probably will, rather than by missile with the sender's signature written all over it, and that threat, the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of parties undeterred by our ability to strike back, is a very real threat best opted at its source. If we strike ahead to defiantly on our own abrogate the ABM treaty and deploy any defense systems that we want to deploy, we may very well jeopardize the arms control measures that make us secure and make ourself less secure rather than more. Now, I think that ground-based interceptors are the first right step. We build the SBIRs-Low system anyway. We are working on a technology here with ground-based interceptors that are complementary to the technology we use for theater missile defense systems. Everybody agrees that is a need we need to develop; and it will be proved to be useful, I think, to have a system on the ground which can be tested continually and improved incrementally. But having said that, having said that, I want to say, I do not think we should be so zealous to deploy any system that we deploy a substandard system that has not been tested and tested rigorously or else we will find ourselves on a rush to failure. Finally, I think we need to be realistic. We are soon going to get a defense budget from the Pentagon. We are told it could be to $200 billion to $300 billion to $400 billion more than the $2 trillion we have already provided in the FYDP for the next 6 years. We need to be realistic about not only the acquisition costs but the life cycle costs of a ballistic missile system. I do not think NMD deserves a trump card in our budget. It is time, I think, that we in the Congress and elsewhere in the government stopped treating BMD, ballistic missile defense, as a political totem. That is what it has become, a political totem like no other weapon system we have ever seen. It is time for us to start treating this just as any other weapon system. It does not need cheerleaders. It does not need pallbearers, what BMD, what NMD needs is candor. It needs to be held to the same standards of feasibility, cost effectiveness as every other weapon system we buy and deploy. If we are going to sell this system to others, our allies, our adversaries, our former adversaries, to Russia, we need to have unity or some cohesion among ourselves, bipartisan unity. I think if we stay within these bounds, we can build that kind of bipartisan consensus. We should never lose sight of this fundamental fact. We have got a rough, rocky relationship with the Russians right now, but we are making progress. While we can work with Russia, we should work with Russia to secure their missile systems, to secure their nuclear and fissile materials. And bear this in mind, a critical point, through programs like Nunn- Lugar and the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, we have helped to deactivate so far 5,288 Russian warheads, 419 long-range missiles, and 367 silos. These numbers, what we have accomplished under these cooperative programs, dwarf the number of warheads that even the most robust NMD system could have handled or could have stopped. We have only begun in that effort. We do not want to diminish that effort and leave ourselves less secure rather than more secure, that is why I plead to the President not just for the statement of policy, but also for balance and also ask him to make a bipartisan effort founded on consensus and not just on the unilateral position that his administration is pursuing.