John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, Norm and I came here together in 1983, and we sat beside each other for 18 years on the Committee on Armed Services and on several of its subcommittees. He was tough-minded, tough-talking. When he asked questions, there were no punches pulled. Any witness who came before our committee with Norm on the top row had better be on his toes. But at the same time, he was, as everyone who has spoken here today has said, gracious, generous, thoughtful, a gentleman to his very core. He was always the first to see the humor in everything, always ready with a quip, his ready wit. He came here rather late in life for a freshman Member of Congress. He stayed. I do not think he ever thought he would be here for 18 years when I first met him in 1983, but he stayed because he loved it. Not only that, Norm knew just what we have testified to here today, he knew he made a difference. He made a difference in this institution, he made a difference in the Armed Forces of the United States, he made a difference in this country. He took great satisfaction in serving his country. He had great wealth, but I do not think it gave him nearly the pleasure that he got from serving here in the House of Representatives for 18 long years. He was well into his seventies, and despite a bout with colon cancer, despite his advancing age, he was in the saddle riding herd literally every day, tireless. He never quit. He virtually died with his boots on, which I am sure is the way Norm would have wanted to go. Sitting beside him all these years, I was privy to his commentaries. When witnesses were testifying, we would get a subtext from Norm Sisisky. He would provide a commentary: where the witness was coming from, where the question was coming from. I used to listen to the witness with one ear and to Norm with the other ear, and marvel at what he knew. He understood the big picture. He understood the institutional aspects. He understood the Pentagon, with the four military departments, but he also understood the nitty-gritty, because he was out in the field, both in his district, down in Norfolk, and Hampton Roads and Fort Monroe, out in the country and traveling all the time, and learning as he traveled. This was not a pleasure trip for him. What he acquired from all of that was just enormous. We have lost a treasure-load of institutional memory with the passage of Norm Sisisky. The House will go on without Norm, but it will not be quite the same without him. Certainly the top row on the Committee on Armed Services will not be quite the same. The questions will not be quite as hard, the inquiry will not be quite as searching, and the glue that hold us together, builds coalitions across the aisles on different issues, will not be quite as binding without Norm there putting the deals together. It was my pleasure for all these years to know him as a friend. It was my privilege to serve with him as a colleague. My only regret is that I did not have a chance to say good-bye. But my heart goes out to all his family, whom he talked about, whom he loved dearly and spoke of often. If it is any consolation to them, I hope they will know that a little of Norm lives in all of us who served with him, who admired and loved him, who emulated him, and will still continue to emulate him as what I consider a model Member of Congress. They should know and the whole country should know that he served here and made this great institution of the Republic the kind of institution the framers intended for it to be. He was a great American, a great patriot, and we will all miss him dearly. Mr. WOLF Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Luther).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I have stated the reasons that I oppose this resolution before, but I will state them in a nutshell again. First of all, in its single-minded zeal for tax reduction, this resolution cuts so close to the bone that it leaves no margin of error. If these projections do not pan out, we are in deficit again. Secondly, it makes so much room for tax cuts that it leaves little room for other priorities. If my colleagues want to see those other priorities, look at them, tick them off: Medicare, prescription drugs, education, conservation, down the list. It does an insufficient amount. Finally, it does nothing at all for Social Security and Medicare, nothing at all. In fact, it actually deducts funds from the Medicare program by siphoning off money from the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund to pay for a meager and inadequate prescription-drug insurance. For all of that, if the bottom line is debt reduction, it achieves less debt reduction to the tune of $915 billion than the resolution that we have just presented which covers priorities across the board. We can do better. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the minority leader.

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

Mr. SPRATT. Let me also, Mr. Chairman, if I might, thank my staff, who have worked arduously. I am not sure about the Fair Labor Standards Act, our compliance with it, with the hours they have worked. But we could not have pulled this together or brought this to the floor or made this presentation had it not been for the diligent work of our staff.

Mr. SPRATT. I very much appreciate the gentleman yielding. Mr. Chairman, we have had a different working relationship, more methodical, to the problem this year than in years past, and I appreciate that. I do, however, look forward to the day when the well of the House becomes a free market of ideas again, and we can hope to meet on common ground and negotiate our differences and come up with a final result that has something for the gentleman and something for us both in it. I am sorry to see us diverge on this occasion rather than converge, but I hope some day soon, and perhaps this year before this process is all over, we will sit down and try to find common ground.

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I have served in this House for more than 18 years; and for most of these years, the deficit has been our dominant concern. It has actually been a fixation. It has taken us almost 20 years and $4 trillion in debt to escape the fiscal mistakes we made in the 1980s and turn this big budget around, out of deficits and into surpluses. Today I have one priority, one overriding objective, and it is simply this: to make sure that we do not backslide into the hole we just dug ourselves out of. That is my overriding objective and that is why I have a problem with the Republican resolution, because it leaves so little room for error. I hope that these blue-sky projections that total 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. This chart says it all. That is how thin the ice is on which this budget skates for the next 10 years. We, at least, avoid or lessen that problem, that risk, by setting aside one-third of the surplus, or $910 billion, if these projections pan out. To the extent that these projections do not pan out, that share of the surplus serves as a buffer to protect Social Security, Medicare and their trust funds from being raided again. So we have downside protection; they do not. The next problem I have with the Republican resolution is that it gives so much room, so much room to tax reduction that it leaves almost no room for anything else. If we want to see the consequences of that, if we have not been listening to this debate up until now, just go through the major accounts of the budget. We are both committed, at least rhetorically, to providing Medicare prescription drugs, but we provide a real Medicare benefit with $330 billion in real money. They provide a meager $153 billion and take that, siphon that out of the Medicare trust fund. We provide for education. We believe in education. We provide $130 billion more than they do, because we have a balanced budget. We provide for the environment, parks, conservation. We had a bill out here last year where we increased the amount of money we are spending there significantly. We fully fund it; they do not. Finally, this resolution does nothing to save or make solvent Social Security and Medicare for the long run. For years and years now, we have known that we face a shortfall in both of these programs looming in the future, just over the horizon of this budget. But we have not had until now the resources to do anything about that problem. The $2.7 trillion surplus in the general fund which we hope we now have over the next 10 years gives us that opportunity, and we dare not do anything else with it if we are going to be true to the commitments that have been made to the beneficiaries of the Social Security and Medicare program, and that includes almost all Americans. The question is, will we uphold this great compact on which the country has stood, the intergenerational compact for 65 years, or will we slough the problem off to our children. To keep the promises that we made, we set aside $910 billion, one- third of the surplus, and transfer it in equal shares, half to the Medicare trust fund, half to the Social Security trust fund, making Social Security solvent until 2050, and making Medicare solvent to 2030. By contrast, the Republican resolution siphons money out of the Medicare trust fund, shortens the solvent life of that program, and does nothing at all for Social Security. If Members want to save Social Security, if they want to provide a real prescription drug benefit, if they want to do something for education and scientific research, for successful programs like COPS, if Members want to provide $740 billion in tax relief over 10 years and $60 billion over the next several months, if Members want to pay down the debt by $900 billion more, their choice is clear: Vote for the Democratic budget resolution.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge). (Mr. ETHERIDGE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar). (Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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 Massachusetts (Mr. Capuano).

Mr. SPRATT. I do not have the time to yield. It is in our budget. If the gentleman votes for it, the money will be coming.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I might consume. Mr. Chairman, I respect the position of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and his knowledge of this position, but let me say we have something in our budget that the other side does not have. We have put in the 150 line for foreign aid and assistance $450 million to fund the supplemental for Israel because of the dire straits in which Israel now finds itself.

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek). (Mrs. MEEK of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, in response to what the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu) just said, I do not know what resolution my colleague is talking about, because the resolution now before us sets aside fully one-third of the surplus from the years 2002 through 2011 for tax reduction, and targets that tax reduction at those taxpayers that need it the most. That is a tax cut of more than $750 billion. Mr. Chairman, in addition we say because we know there will be a substantial surplus this year, let us take two-thirds of that surplus that we can foresee coming on the end of this year, $60 billion, and give it to taxpayers now both because they deserve it, because we know that it is available, and because we believe that it will be a stimulus to this sagging economy. Mr. Chairman, that is what is in our resolution, and what the gentleman from New Hampshire said is 180 degrees out from what is before the House at this time. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), who is the ranking member of the Committee on Small Business. (Ms. VELAZQUEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen). (Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman I would emphasize once again what I have said throughout: What we do today in deciding on this budget resolution may be little noted in all of the country, but it will be long remembered, because the consequences of this budget resolution will flow on for years to come. I have three basic problems with the resolution that the majority has brought to the floor, and the conservative alternative which is being presented now only worsens those problems. In the first place, in making so much room for tax cuts, their budget leaves very little room for anything else. Over the last 18 years, we have deferred and denied many needs and priorities of this country. Education is one. Now that we finally have a surplus, surely some part of it ought to be dedicated to those things that not only we want to do, but the American people clearly want us to do. Look at any poll, any opinion chart. Everybody ranks education as number one. Between us and them, the difference on education is like night and day. We provide $130 billion more than the base Republican budget resolution. I have not done the calculus on this resolution, but I am sure we provide substantially more than that for education. There is one other thing that makes me back off from the proposal they are making here today. That is that for years now we have been able to look into the future and see that Social Security and Medicare faced a shortfall. It is just over the horizon of this budget. The baby boomers begin to retire in the year 2008. We will not actually see the effects sometime after the time frame of the budget we have right here, but we know it is coming, and 77 million baby-boomers are marching to their retirement right now. They are not going anywhere else. They expect their benefits. We are not in a position to fully provide for them, at least in the third and fourth decades of this century. We have not been able in the past to do anything about it. We did not have the sort of surpluses that are now projected. But now that we have those surpluses, now that we have the opportunity, we have the obligation. I would fault this resolution and the base Republican resolution because both of them slough off that obligation, leave it to our children to pay for the baby boomers' retirement. I think that is not only a budgetary problem, I think it is a moral problem. That is why I opposed this resolution and the base Republican resolution as well.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.