Charlie Stenholm

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. But not for 10 years?

Mr. STENHOLM. So we are not exactly following House rules. Let me ask then, is it true that this resolution that will follow this same-day rule that will follow the other rule will increase our national debt by approximately $900 billion in the next 12 months?

Mr. STENHOLM. Nine hundred billion.

Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I wish to ask the gentleman from Washington if he might respond. I want to ask the gentleman a question regarding this resolution. As I understand it, this is the martial rule, and this is necessary in order to bring up the budget resolution that just came out of the Committee on Rules. I would ask the gentleman, is that correct?

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I wish we could avoid speaking untruths on this floor. As the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) knows, the Blue Dog budget balanced without using Social Security in 2013. The budget you have on the floor tonight will not balance without using Social Security by 2013. You will not come within $300 billion. And to the last speaker from Florida, you cannot borrow and spend your way to prosperity, either. That rhetoric, that dog, will not hunt. You are going to borrow $984 billion. Under your budget, you are going to borrow more money in the last year than we borrowed in the first 205 years of this country. We cannot borrow and spend our way to prosperity, either. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. STENHOLM. The debt limit for next year, everybody increases the debt limit for next year. The reason we do it is because the budget you voted in place in 2001 and 2002 has dug us this hole. We are suggesting in the Blue Dog budget to stop digging the hole deeper. We have got to stop digging the hole deeper. You want to keep digging it deeper and deeper and deeper, but you misrepresent totally the Blue Dogs because we do not spend one dime more than you propose spending in your budget tonight. We also have $1.8 trillion less debt over the 10 years, and $120 billion next year. That is not small potatoes.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the work he has done on this year's budget and in attempting to speak about the facts, not the political rhetoric, but about the facts. Tonight, as we speak, we both know that the Committee on the Budget of both the House and the Senate are attempting to work out the budget resolution, and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is here on the floor, and Democrats are being completely excluded once again from making any of the decisions. I have been here for 24 years, and for most of those 24 years I have been labeled here and at home as a tax-and-spend Democrat. I have looked forward to the day, really I did not look, I looked forward to shirking that title, and we have done that. We have done that. But now we have borrow-and-spend Republicans, and my grandchildren do not differentiate between either one. What we have attempted to do now, over the last several years is, and we were successful up until last year when once again we began to experiment with the idea that there is no such thing as a bad tax cut as far as the economy and jobs are concerned. We experimented in 1981 and we borrowed $4 trillion, and it took us until 1997 to get us to a balanced budget. I was proud to stand on the floor in 1995 when we passed the balanced budget constitutional amendment which would have required this body to balance its budget every year except when we are at war. Let me make this point right now. Tonight we are at war; we are at war in Iraq. We are losing some of our youngest and finest. The House last week voted to borrow the money necessary to fight that war, and we will borrow whatever is necessary to fight that war because every dime that is required for tax cuts or for fighting the war will be borrowed money. But tonight I want to focus in this brief period of time on where we are regarding debt and debt limits and to express my strong opposition and complete disappointment in this House going back and trying to hide increasing the debt ceiling. Instead of doing what we were accused of doing for years, and we Democrats did it, we hid the debt ceiling increases in a budget resolution, and we were chastised for doing that, and I was not for us doing it, and I am not for us doing it today. And the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) was not either. But now we are faced with a vote in which we are going to vote to increase our debt ceiling. If we take the budget that passed here last week, we are going to increase the debt ceiling to $11 trillion in the next 10 years. That is obscene. In the next 5 years, we are going to increase it by almost $3 trillion. What are we here tonight talking about? What I am here tonight saying is, we are at war and we are behind the troops, and it was almost a unanimous vote of the House supporting our troops and our commander in chief, almost unanimous. This is the first war in the history of our country that we are arguing about how big a tax cut we are going to give to the American people, not all of the American people, in order to fight the war. That does not make sense to the people I represent. I have yet to find the first person at home, and I am sure I might find one now, that says, you bet, borrow that money. Borrow that money for a $700 billion tax cut, borrow that money to fight the war so those men and women doing their best for America today, when they come home and they go back to work, they will get to pay the interest on the debt. Friends on both sides of the aisle say this is not the time to be arguing how big a tax cut and whether we are going to make it permanent. This is a time to hunker down and say, How can we in fact manage our fiscal affairs in wartime and do it in a way that does not do damage to our veterans, that does not do damage to Medicare and Medicaid recipients. We had an opportunity to vote on that, but we did not vote for it. We voted for the economic game plan that was put in place 2 years ago that folks apparently still believe is working even though by their own plan, their own budget shows that if everything works exactly like they have it planned, exactly like the dynamic scorers believe it will work, we will end up owing $11.564 trillion in 2013. Things changed on September 11, 2001. I do not understand why the other side of the aisle cannot admit that things changed on September 11, 2001, in a lot of other areas other than in our necessity to fight a war. It caused a change in our economy. It caused a change big time in our economy. That, to me, requires another look at the economic game plan; and the budget that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) put on the floor, that the Blue Dogs put on the floor, would have recognized that change, but we lost. Now let me say again, I hope that the wisdom of this House is not that we will attempt to hide increasing the debt ceiling in a budget resolution. If Members really believe the economic game plan is what they say it is, have the courage to come out with a clean bill; as Secretary Snow has asked us to do, on April 4, have a clean bill to say to the American people, we believe you ought to borrow the money in order to give us the tax cuts, all of them that we are talking about. There are good tax cuts, marriage tax penalty relief, child tax credit, estate tax relief, things that we can agree on, and we have agreed on in a bipartisan way, that can be paid for. But I am getting a little bit tired of hearing everybody talk about these tax cuts we are now talking about and compare it back to what John F. Kennedy did in 1960. Sure, when you cut the marginal rate from 90 percent to 50 percent, we change economic behavior. But I challenge Members, and we are unable to find a reputable economist who says cutting the marginal tax rate on today's corporate CEOs from 38 to 37 percent is going to change economic behavior and is going to create jobs and economic activity in the United States. And that is what we are arguing about. I do not understand it. But if Members do believe it, let us have an honest debate, no more canned speeches from political campaigns. Let us talk about how we are going to borrow $3 trillion in the next 5 years and we are going to owe $11 trillion at the end of 10 years, following the economic game plan that some believe cannot be changed in this House. We are not doing a service to our grandchildren when we make that argument. We are darned sure not doing a favor to those who are out defending the freedom tonight as we speak. We are not doing them a favor when we are saying we must borrow money for an economic game plan that has already shown it cannot possibly work in the economic climate we are in.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, I would just say there are 35 Blue Dogs that stand ready to work with the gentleman's side on every one of the issues in the blue books that my colleague had up. If we would have the same spirit on those issues that we have had by allowing us to have this 1 hour this year, which we were not allowed to have last year, we would have made a lot of progress on this. The fact that my colleagues were kind enough this year to allow the Blue Dogs to have 1 hour of debate so we can have this discussion, we do think it is a better plan, but it is up to the will of the majority of the House as to whether our plan is better than my colleagues. We will stand by the will of the majority.

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

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

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, I do not want to leave the impression that the Blue Dog budget is doing anything more than spending what President Bush has asked the Congress to spend, not 1 penny more. We sometimes get the rhetoric around here, you would think we are big spenders in our budget. We are spending what the President has asked us to spend, and no more. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, I have waited 24 years for this day to shuck the tax-and-spend Democratic label and transfer it to the Republican borrow-and-spend label. I say this with a smile on my face, and I am one of those that believe when I am pointing the finger of partisanship, there are always three pointing back at me. I will take the three best shots of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), but I insist the gentleman takes my one at this time. The gentleman said we have a difference between our two philosophies today. This chart shows it. Our budget is the green budget. The yellow budget I ran against in 1978 because I thought deficit spending was bad. I voted for the Reagan tax cuts; and this is what we got, following the same economic theory that we once again are being asked to support today. I am for the green. The Blue Dog budget will accomplish that based on the estimates. The gentleman's budget today will keep us in Social Security for the remainder of the 10 years the gentleman is talking about. I commend the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), as the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) did. The budget he brought out of committee was an honest budget. It told this conference and this Congress and the American people that if they want tax cuts, they have to pay for them. They have got to do the spending cuts that they suggested. However, the gentleman's own conference said, no. As I told the gentleman privately, and I will say publicly, if the gentleman would reconcile the cuts in a public manner on this floor first and then go to the tax cuts, he would have some support on this side. But I am skeptical, when they bring a budget that even their own conference will not support to the floor on the spending cuts, but yet we are going to have a tax cut on the floor in a very short period of time, that this is what we are going to get. Our budget balances without using Social Security by 2013. As the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) said a moment ago, it is immoral what this Congress, these last few Congresses, are doing to our children and grandchildren. When we talk about spending cuts, I have heard it explained that in the agricultural function it is just 1 percent. But let me remind all of us, we took 2 years writing the farm bill that passed with two- thirds support, equally divided Democrats and Republicans, and the President signed it. We stayed within the budget that they asked us to last year. Anyone that suggests we can make the cuts that the gentleman is suggesting, assuming that it passes, without reopening the farm bill and rewriting it, is totally misinformed as to what the facts are regarding the authorizing of various programs. I find it very interesting that today in the Committee on the Judiciary we were supposed to have passing out a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. As many know, I am for it. I am a cosponsor of it. One of the happiest days in my life was when we passed it on this floor; one of the saddest days was when it went down by one vote in the Senate. Had that passed in the Senate, they could not bring their budget to the floor today. The only budget we will vote on today is this budget right here, the blue one, the Blue Dog line, that shows that we will balance without using Social Security in 2013. They could not do it had we had a constitutional restraint. Yet some on the gentleman's side have the audacity to suggest that the budget is a good one; but yet we want to have a constitutional amendment to require us to do what we are not willing to do when we have a chance of doing it. In 1999 the Republican leadership issued a statement pledging to protect the Social Security surplus: ``As leaders of the House of Representatives, we will not schedule any legislation that spends one penny of the Social Security trust fund. This leadership is committed to ending the 30-year raid on seniors and paying down the debt.'' We could not help 9-11-01, and we cannot help the fact that our economy has gone south, but we can stop digging the hole deeper as of today. That is what the Blue Dog budget does. It is the only budget that stops digging the hole deeper. Now, one area we cut below the President, and our spending levels, I repeat, in this budget we do not spend one penny more than President Bush asked us to spend, one penny; but there is one area we want to cut below the President. We want to cut $420 billion out of the President's budget and somewhat less out of the chairman's budget for interest on the national debt. They can bring out all of the blue books, they have been there when the gentleman's party has been in charge, and some of us on this side would like to work with them. But they constantly and consistently deny us that opportunity, which, if they pass their budget today, once again, they deny us the opportunity. We had a better budget 2 years ago. The economic situation of this country would not be as bad. I ask Members to support the Blue Dog budget.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding, but I want to use a portion of my time commending him, but I wanted to ask the gentleman a question.

Mr. STENHOLM. I will when it comes my time, but I will do it on my own time, but I am curious because it seems to me over the last 8 years you talk about your party has been in control. So all of the points that you make with the blue books, why have we not done it?

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5, of which I am an original cosponsor. I cosponsored this bill because I believe that it will help ensure the availability of vital health services for patients in this country. Listening to the debate today, the average citizen would assume that it is necessary to choose sides. Either one is for the docs and other health care providers or they are for the patients. I simply reject that premise and assert another, which is this. We must have a system where good doctors can practice good medicine if we are going to have healthy patients. Does creating a good system mean that no doctor will ever fail again? No patient will ever again be injured through negligence or poor practice patterns? Of course not. But when those injuries occur through clearly bad behavior on the part of a health care team, I want the health care professionals to be responsible for their action. I sympathize with the case examples brought to the floor by my colleagues on my own side of the aisle. There are a great many tragedies which occur when health care is poorly delivered. I have no interest in removing appropriate avenues of redress for those injured people and their families, but I do not believe these cases have much, if anything, to do with the bill before us today because it retains a great deal of legal redress for plaintiffs. No one can claim that the system we have now is good for the doctors or the patients when doctors must pursue expensive defensive medicine rather than doing what they think is right. No one can think it is good for places to have doctors leaving the profession in droves because of the financial and physiological strains of caring for people under current malpractice realities. The bottom line is that the failure of the medical liability system is compromising patient access to care. More than half of Texas physicians say that they are considering early retirement due to skyrocketing insurance premium, and nearly one-third are reducing the kind of services they provide. Spiraling medical liability insurance premiums are forcing many hospitals to consider difficult decisions from cutting services to closing clinics. Some hospitals find it difficult to appropriately staff emergency departments, recruit and retain physicians in high-risk specialties. Where is the victory for patients in that scenario? This situation is further magnified in rural communities where there are fewer hospitals and health care professionals. These hospitals and clinics already operate on narrow profit margins, and skyrocketing medical liability insurance push them closer to the brink of closure. Ignoring the litigation problems we have now is a recipe for disaster. Many States, like my own, are already on the precipice of disaster, especially in fields like obstetrics. It is for these reasons I join my fellow colleagues as original cosponsor of the HEALTH Act of 2003. The bill is not perfect. It can be improved but it will not be improved if it is defeated today. I urge my colleagues, especially those who represent rural America, to support H.R. 5, which will have a chance of stabilizing our Nation's shaky medical liability system.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, this week the Blue Dog Coalition expressed our deep concern over the announcement that the Federal Government had reached the debt limit just 9 months after increasing it by $450 billion. The Federal Government hitting the debt limit so soon after raising it by so much merely validates our concern of the fiscal policies we are now following. Due to the debt limit being reached, the Department of the Treasury announced it will dip into Federal retirement programs to circumvent the debt limit, an action for which House Republicans severely criticized Secretary of Treasury Bob Rubin for taking in 1996. Less than 6 years ago, 225 of my Republican friends voted to soundly reprimand and prohibit then-Secretary Rubin from taking precisely the actions announced this week by Secretary Snow. The silence of the Republicans in Congress about the announcement made by the Bush administration stands in stark contrast to the reaction from many of my same Republican colleagues to Secretary Rubin's action. A 1995 resolution, authored by a then anti-deficit Republican majority, insisted that a balanced budget would ensure lower interest rates, a faster rate of economic growth, increased national wealth, increased rates of savings and investment, faster growth in the capital stock, higher productivity, and improved trade balances. I agreed with my Republican colleagues 6 years. I wish they agreed with me today. Now, we can disagree about what has put us in the deficit hole today, but we should be able to agree that digging the hole deeper is ill- advised. Yet the President's budget proposes policies that would increase the deficit by more than $2 trillion over the next 8 years. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the tax cut signed by the President and new proposals in his budget are responsible for 45 percent of the $7.9 trillion deterioration in our budget outlook. Now, that is 45 percent. Fifty-five percent is the recession and the war and other things that are occurring today. Not the upcoming war. The suggestion that we will be able to grow our way out of the deficit was contradicted in testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan earlier this month. Even under the most optimistic, dynamic estimates of the President's tax cut, large deficits will continue as far the eye can see. And the projections of the economic benefits of tax cuts ignore the economic harm caused by government borrowing to finance deficits, higher interest rates, and lower investments in American businesses. Now, contrary to some suggestions, my concern about the budget deficit has always applied to spending, increased spending, as well as unfinanced tax cuts. Even before many of my House Republican colleagues, I volunteered to help hold the line on spending at the level last year requested by the President. I hope the President, Mr. President, that you will send to Congress a list of pork-barrel items that you believe should be eliminated from the funding bill endorsed by the House leadership and recently signed into law. If you do, I will support those spending cuts. But the reality is that under the President's budget the deficit hole will be dug deeper. Now, the rhetoric from my Republican friends about controlling spending just does not hold up to factual examination. In the 8 years since Republicans took control of the Congress, discretionary spending has increased by an average of 6.5 percent per year, compared to the previous 8 years of 1.6 percent. Those are the facts, not the rhetoric we hear on this floor every time someone stands up and questions the economic direction that we are going. Now, some days, some of us ignore the most wasteful spending in the Federal budget, the $332 billion collected from taxpayers simply to cover our national interest payments. This debt tax consumed a whopping 18 percent of all Federal tax dollars last year. Under the budget, the economic game plan that I hear we are going to have on the floor in 2 or 3 weeks, the debt tax will increase 50 percent in the next 5 years. A 50 percent increase in taxes, the debt tax, is what is being advocated. Now, I do not understand the logic of that. I agreed with the President, and I do agree with the President, and I believe him to be sincere when he says this Congress should not pass on to our children and future generations our debt. That is what we are doing under the proposal that is before us today. To my friends on this side of the aisle, there are many on this side of the aisle that are ready to reach out and accept the hand and are beginning to work and to recognize that we need a change in direction. Yes, we need to restrain spending. And, yes, we need to restrain our desire to give tax cuts to the current generation, just as we anticipate sending our youngest and finest over to fight a war. It is not fair to them. It is not fair to our children and grandchildren.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this tax and spend bill before us today. This bill will force States to increase taxes to pay for the increased spending necessary to meet the costs of the bill's unfunded mandates. The Republican bill would impose mandates that would force States to change their existing welfare programs. Welfare reform has been a success in Texas and across the country in large part because of the State flexibility. I do not understand why the majority wants to force States to scrap the programs that have produced this success in order to comply with a Washington-knows-best approach. The States and folks at the local level know what works and what doesn't work in their local communities. They do not need Washington telling them how to run things. According to a survey conducted by the National Governor's Association, 41 out of 47 States who responded would have to significantly alter their welfare program in order to comply with the requirements of the bill. This will require a costly redirection of resources. States will have to dismantle effective programs that have met the individual needs of their citizens. For example, Texas's program helped them achieve a 61 percent reduction in welfare recipients since 1996. The Texas welfare program establishes time-limited benefits and requires welfare recipients to participate in work activities. The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) oversees the Choices employment program, as well as child care, through a system of 28 local workforce development boards. The Department of Human Service is responsible for client eligibility determinations. If the bill proposed by the majority passes, Texas will have to dismantle this successful program. They would have to drastically scale back its vocational education program which has been successful in matching welfare recipients with business needs, and implement a subsidized wage program that the State previously rejected as being ineffective. Texas would have to end its current practice of levying a reduction in cash benefits in order to comply with the mandate that States terminate assistance completely for families out of compliance with work requirement. The Republican plan proposes radical waivers and block grant options what would affect the basic structure of the Food Stamp Program. It puts at risk the Program's effectiveness as a work support for families leaving cash assistance, ignores the considerable flexibility States currently have to run the program, and would undermine essential protections for the program's vulnerable clients. Congress instead should maintain the Food Stamp Program structure affirmed in last year's bipartisan farm bill reauthorization. The Republican bill would create an unfunded mandate of $8 billion over 5 years according to the Congressional Budget Office to meet the work requirements in the bill. CBO estimated that if States actually meet the 40 hour work requirement with meaningful, structured requirements instead of self-reported activities, the unfunded mandate would increase to $11 billion. For Texas, the equates to a sum of up to $668 million over 5 years. Texas cannot absorb these costs. Faced with a $9.9 billion budget shortfall, and now a sagging economy that continues to reduce state revenue, the State will have no other option than to explore alternative ways to fund the government. This will mean cutting back on basic services or raising taxes. In would be the height of arrogance for me to stand here in Washington and vote to require Texas to increase taxes or cut spending on other programs to implement policies that the Texas legislature has already considered and rejected in favor of other policies which have been proven to work. Many other States will face the same problem, as they face an $85 billion combined budget shortfall. Republicans do not often like the term ``unfunded mandate'' because States would have the option of terminating current, nonmandatory services like child care to working families to cover the additional costs, rather than spending new State dollars. However, child care is a necessary component of a welfare-to-work program, and terminating these programs are not a real option for States who want to help working families afford child care. The Democratic substitute increases funding to States for child care assistance to match the CBO estimate of increased child care costs resulting from the work requirements in the Democratic substitute. The Democratic bill provides an additional $11 billion for mandatory child care over 5 years. The Democratic plan focuses on moving welfare recipients into work and keeping them employed. The majority talks about their bill being tougher on work because of the 40 hour work requirement, but the reality is that 16 hours of that work is in unsupervised, unstructured activities that are not defined and could include helping children with homework or other self-reported activities. On the core work requirements, the Democratic substitute matches the Republican bill with 24 hours of work. More importantly, the Democratic substitute provides a credit for moving welfare recipients into employment, whereas the Republican bill allows States to reduce the work participation requirements simply by reducing the caseload for any reason. The Democratic plan aims to equip welfare recipients with the knowledge and skills necessary to escape from poverty and welfare, and into a paying job, while the Republican bill does not. The Democratic plan allows for education and training to count toward the participation rate for up to 24 months, while the Republican plan limits them to 4 months. Republican plan eliminates vocational education from the list of work-related activities that count toward the State's participation rate--for the first 24 hours a week. If you want States to be able to continue succeeding at the necessary job of helping folks get back to work, vote no on H.R. 4.

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4, and I do so with extreme disappointment today. As one that worked awfully hard in 1996 with both sides of the aisle in coming up with a welfare reform bill, working with my own State, working with the providers of welfare, working with the recipients of welfare, working with the business community, we came up with a good compromise bill. Now, I am disappointed that we are taking the same bill that was passed last year, without legislative input, and bringing the same bill up today without committee action and the nonrecognition that the economy has changed since last year. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 4 would severely restrict the flexibility of States such as Texas to continue the activities that have been successful in their welfare reform bills. According to CBO, it will cost Texas $688 million over 5 years to pay for the Washington-mandated policies in this bill. Texas cannot afford these enormous expenses at the same time that we face a $9.9 billion budget shortfall and a sagging economy that continues to reduce State revenue. This will force Texas to drastically cut back on basic services or raise taxes, and they are not going to do that. It would be the height of arrogance for me to stand here in Washington and vote to require Texas to increase taxes or cut spending on other programs to implement policies that the Texas legislature has already considered and rejected in favor of other policies which have been proven to work. Vote down H.R. 4; support the Cardin substitute. It will be much better for the State of Texas and other States.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, just a few days ago the President stood in where the Clerk of the House stands and told the Nation that we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other Presidents and other generations. I stood and applauded that statement because I agree with my President. I agree with my commander in chief. Then I was somewhat disappointed, considerably disappointed, when the administration's budget came through projecting a $307 billion deficit for next year and deficits as far as the eye can see. The President's budget protects cumulative deficits of over $2.1 trillion from 2002 through 2011. That is a $7.7 trillion deterioration of our fiscal matters of this country in 2 years. The Blue Dogs stood on this floor and opposed the economic game plan that we are now under. We were not prophetic. We agreed with the majority party on the spending, but we were not even allowed to have our budget on the floor, and we have heard nothing but rhetoric ever since. But now the results of the economic game plan are coming in, and I want everyone to understand, 60 percent of the deterioration has occurred because of 9-11-01 and the military homeland defense needs of this country and the recession. But 40 percent of that deterioration has occurred because of the economic game plan that we are now under. I personally happen to agree with the President's leadership regarding solving the Social Security problem while we still had a chance. Again, I am ready to step forward in a bipartisan way and work with my colleagues to take care of that debt for our children. But that is not what we are talking about today. That is not what is being proposed and talked about in the budget. After 4 years of reduction in the debt held by the public and warnings by administration and Republican after Republican in Congress that the government would pay off the debt too quickly 2 years ago, debt held by the public will exceed $5 trillion by 2008, a 50 percent increase, a debt tax increase on the American people that every taxpayer will have to pay, a debt tax increase under the administration's budget that is being proposed. The administration requested the statutory debt limit be increased for the second time in less than a year. That ought to tell us something. When we are having to increase the debt limit so we can borrow more money, it ought to tell us there is something wrong with the game plan that we are now following. The greatest danger of the deficits in the President's budget is that it will make it harder to address the challenges facing Social Security and Medicare when our baby boom generation begins to retire in the next decade. Instead of saving money to prepare for those costs, we will already be in a deep hole when the $18 trillion liability facing those programs begins to come due. The analytical prospectus volume of the President's budget, the administration warned us, as the baby boomers reach retirement age in large numbers, the deficit is projected to rise steadily as a percent of GDP. Deficits will grow from 2.2 percent of GDP in 2020 to 5.4 percent in 2030 to 8.8 percent in 2040 under the President's budget policies. How can we continue to ignore that today? The debt tax is real. It is an increase. But instead of our paying for it today, what are we saying? We are going to give this generation another tax cut. And no one, including the President's own budget analysis, shows that it is going to do anything other than increase the debt. And we are not even talking about paying for the war, the war that we all pray will not come, but it looks like it is; and I am behind my commander in chief 100 percent. But the rhetoric of the economy in the budget does not match the rhetoric of what is needed as the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor) spoke so eloquently on a moment ago. The debt tax consumed 18 percent of all government revenues to pay interest on the $6.4 trillion debt last year. That debt tax will go up to 19.5 percent by 2008 under the economic game plan that we are being asked to support. I ask my colleagues as one Democrat who used to vote with you and we passed the balanced budget constitutional amendment in 1995, what has happened to you? What has caused you to suddenly start saying, deficits do not matter, balancing the budget does not matter? The Blue Dogs stand ready to work with our President and with the majority in seeing that we do not increase the taxes on our children through the debt tax.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution today. It is a sad honor to come to the House Floor today to speak about the lives of seven heroes who put a face and personality to the United States space program. And what a face it is--one of strength, optimism, discipline, adventure, humor, compassion--in other words, much of what we strive for as the best of the American Spirit. These brave Americans gave their lives for the good of our Country and we will never be able to repay them or their families for the sacrifice they made. They were our brightest and best and their passion for advancing and improving our Nation has inspired us all. Once again, we Americans find ourselves responding to national tragedy with a mixture of strong emotions. We feel great sadness as we mourn this loss of human life and noble endeavor. We know that no matter how great our own sadness might be, it cannot compare to the great weight of grief the astronauts' families and coworkers bear. Our hearts have broken as we have watched the spouses and children deal with their private grief in such a public way. In response, we simply hope that the families can sense the warm embrace of our thoughts and prayers. But we also feel a great sense of admiration, respect and gratitude. How many of us have stood under a canopy of stars, looked to the heavens and wondered ``What is up there?'' We have admired our space explorers as heroes since before the first launch of the Mercury program. Perhaps some of us have even dreamed of becoming a part of this intrepid cadre of astronauts. The Columbia crew belonged to that special family of explorers who dare to risk themselves in the name of exploration, discovery and knowledge which will benefit all of humankind. Over the past five days, as we have learned more about that crew of seven individuals, we also have learned about the heart and soul of the space program and also about ourselves. Just as the planet Earth is home to a diverse people, the Columbia carried a crew of numerous nationalities and ethnicities. They learned, as we all must, that it is our diversity, our different skills and traits, which become our strength when focused towards a common goal. When we humans find ourselves grappling with so many strong emotions, we turn to the Divine Comforter to help us cope and understand; that is precisely what our Country has done this week. Even these astronauts who traveled to the stars understood that they were not the master of those stars. The held a deep and abiding faith in the One who created all which they longed to explore. And now, we must content ourselves in believing that each of these brave men and women is home with that Creator, discovering still more wonders beyond our wildest dreams. On behalf of the residents of the 17th Congressional District of Texas who I am privileged to represent in the House of Representatives, I extend both sympathy to the families who have lost so much and gratitude for their indomitable spirit. You will never be forgotten.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rules package before us today. While it contains several items which I support, particularly the deeming resolution setting spending limits for the unfinished appropriation bills, the package contains two items which tilt the rules in favor of policies which will more easily send our Nation further into red ink. I would ask the majority to reconsider both of these proposals. One of the reforms the majority made with great fanfare as part of the Contract with America in 1995 was repeal of the Gephardt rule, which would spin off separate legislation increasing the debt limit upon passage of the debt resolution without a separate vote or opportunity for debate on the amendments. Now that our national debt is growing at a record pace under their policies, less than 6 months ago the administration asked us to increase the debt ceiling by $400 billion; Christmas Eve, the administration is asking us to increase the debt ceiling again to $6.4 trillion. The majority now, under their rules package, has decided that greater openness and accountability regarding our national debt perhaps is not such a good thing after all. I ask Members to reconsider that. Just as credit card spending limits serve as tools to force families to examine their household budgets, the statutory debt limit reminds our Nation to more closely evaluate taxing and spending policies. Reviving the Gephardt rule will allow Members to avoid taking responsibility for paying the bills we incur by our votes. Now, the implementation of dynamic scoring also should raise a red flag to those who call themselves conservative in this body. Under the logic of those advocating dynamic scoring, the tax cut we passed last year should have resulted in greater surpluses than was being projected last spring. We can disagree about the extent the tax cut contributed to the return of the deficit, but it is clear that it did not have a dynamic effect on producing higher surpluses and revenues. The conservative approach, to me, is to be conservative in budget projections. If we err on the side of being conservative and cautious, Congress can easily deal with the problem of having more money than was projected. But when we err on the side of being too optimistic, we have a much greater challenge in dealing with fiscal problems such as those before us now. We are paying the price today for ignoring the warnings of experts in the past. We should not ignore the warnings of those that say changing to dynamic scoring will contribute to further problems of the deficit and debt of this country. Vote ``no'' on the rules changes; vote ``yes'' on cutting the interest taxes on the American people.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I want to make it very clear that I support the bill before us today, but I urge opposition to the previous question for the reasons of which the gentleman from Tennessee amplified on a moment ago. The frustration that many of us have felt over the last 6 months, as the gentlewoman spoke of a moment ago about the Senate, the time is limited now in which this body can blame the other body for not acting. Unfortunately, the bill before us is not going to get acted on either and yet we are going to set up one last time in which we are going to have the blame game in which we can point to somebody else for us not doing our work. If the previous question is voted down, then we can take care of nursing homes, hospitals, home health care, and other health care providers exactly like the majority side said we should do it that was included within the budget this year. Nothing changes regarding what was passed in the House if we vote down the previous question. All of the good things in this bill, all of the other things are in. It has just as good a chance of passing as the simplified, watered-down bill we have tonight. It is unfortunate we have gotten ourselves into this position; but we have, for all the reasons, many of which were very successful politically. But that does not help the rural hospitals in my district. That does not help the one-third of the nursing homes in the State of Texas that are now in bankruptcy, and another one-fourth that are hanging on bankruptcy if we do not act, and act sooner, not later. Excuses and finger-pointing are not going to get the job done. All we encourage is a vote against the previous question so we can send the package to the Senate, to the other body, that will do exactly what the majority wanted to do and a lot of folks on this side of the aisle also wanted to get done. But Members should not deceive themselves that they are going to accomplish this with a finger-pointing exercise today. I encourage a vote against the previous question, allow the Tanner amendment to then come immediately back with everything, and then let us see whose fault it might be.

Mr. STENHOLM

Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, a year ago the Blue Dogs warned about the danger of making long-term commitments for tax cuts or new spending programs. We were concerned that the projections were based on unrealistic assumptions and that the projected surpluses could vanish as quickly as they materialized. We were concerned that the large tax cuts and increased spending would drive up the deficit and the national debt. Our warnings were ignored, and now we are told we will be borrowing virtually all of our Social Security surplus for the next decade and beyond. After passing legislation that would rack up an additional debt of $127 billion next year alone, Congress is considering legislation that would wipe the slate clean to remove all those costs from the ledger. The bill before us wipes the slate clean not just for this year and next year but for each of the next 5 years, allowing us to avoid responsibility for legislation adding over $550 billion in new national debt. I do not want to cut Medicare or veterans benefits, farm assistance, or child support enforcement. However, we object strongly to clearing the scorecard for the next 5 years, which allows Congress and the President to ignore the impact of legislation that will increase the deficit for the next 5 years without working to plan to stem the tide of red ink. I agree with what the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle) said a moment ago. This is not the time to be talking about spending cuts or tax increases. I agree. But why not in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008? Why do we feel compelled tonight to say we are going to wipe the slate clean for the next 5 years when we have constantly and the motion to recommit tonight will allow us to do just that? The motion that the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) will offer will say we do not object to wiping the scorecard clean for 2002 and 2003. Obviously 9/11/01 has made a big change in the economics of this country. But let us sit down in the next Congress and let us work out the details of how we are in fact going to deal with these exploding deficits. Let us not exempt new tax cuts or new spending increases from the hard decisions that this body should be trying to make in order to bring our budget back under control. That is what we object to. I do not understand the rationale of why we need to do this for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. And I would be glad to yield to the chairman if he could answer that question because he made a very compelling argument a moment ago of why we should not do it now. I do not want to cut Medicare right now. In fact, we need to do just the opposite. We do have to recognize the rationale of the situation we are in today, but why do we want to do it for these outyears? I do not understand that. Just yesterday Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan reiterated the importance of restoring the budget enforcement rules for the Federal budget. We should not ignore the chairman's request of this body. ``It's important for Congress and the administration to have a long- term budget structure which we continuously update and evaluate so that we have a mechanism to make judgments . . . relative priorities within the overall budget choice process or with respect to the economy . . . we need to get the process back to where it was. We need to reestablish the basic caps on discretionary spending, on PAYGO, introduce new things like triggers or other things which give us a vehicle to function with.'' I believe the chairman has agreed with that in the past. I certainly do. Earlier this year Chairman Greenspan told the Committee on the Budget that failing to preserve budget enforcement rules would be a grave mistake. Tonight we are about to do just that. We are about to make a grave mistake saying we are going to waive all PAYGO rules, all discretionary caps, everything for the next 8 years in order to do what? Accomplish somebody's political agenda? Or are we going to seriously roll up our sleeves in the next Congress and deal with it? Vote for the motion to recommit. Let us wipe the PAYGO slate clean for 2002 and 2003. Wipe it clean. We all will agree, but do not do it for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. That will not be a fiscally responsible thing for this House to do.