Gene Taylor

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I am under the impression that the Chair has to yield for a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order on that.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I am sure the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) will note that in the 6 years that our Republican colleagues have controlled the House, despite the talk of desiring a balanced budget, they have scheduled but one vote on a balanced budget amendment. I regret to say they are not as serious about a balanced budget as they promised the American people. But then again, they make a lot of promises that they do not keep. I remember this one in particular. I remember flying up from my district in 1995 around Christmas when there was a government shutdown going on. The children of folks who had a mom or dad in a veterans' hospital were concerned. People in the shipping business wanted to know if the channels were going to get dredged. Americans were worried about illegal immigration and if the staff of a veterans' hospital were going to show up. There were a lot of concerns about shutting down the government. One of the ways that the Republican leadership tried to mislead the American public that everything was fine, they ran this ad. This is Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Party, a fellow Mississippian. It starts off, heard the one about the Republicans cutting Medicare, and he is holding a check for a million dollars, your name here. It says, the fact is the Republicans are increasing Medicare spending by more than half. I am Haley Barbour, and I am so sure of that fact that I am willing to give you this check for a million bucks if you can prove me wrong. Sounds simple, right? So here is the challenge. Here is why you have no chance for the million dollars, and it is a form to be filled out. It says, ``The Republican National Committee will present a cashier's check for $1 million to the first American who can prove the following statement is false: In November, 1995, U.S. House and Senate passed a balanced budget bill. It increases total Federal spending on Medicare by more than 50 percent from 1995 to 2002 pursuant to the Congressional Budget Office standards.'' Responses must be postmarked by December 20, 1995. I guess I am one budget wonk, I do follow these things, and I knew from the minute that he printed that ad, that it was a lie. You see, the budget that passed in 1995 was projected to be $200 billion in deficits; and let us remember, we are not talking a small amount of money. A lot of Americans pay $1,000 a month on their house or rent note. If you made that payment 1,000 times, you have spent a million dollars. If you made that payment a thousand more times, you have then spent a billion dollars. The budget that he is calling balanced was $200 billion in deficit. So I called the Congressional Budget Office, and I got a copy of their budget projections; and I went over to the Republican National Committee and left a letter for Mr. Barbour saying you have misled the American people. As a matter of fact, it is false, and I would like the million dollars. And since I used my office to do this research, I do not think it would be fair for me to keep the money, so I am going to give it to the University of Southern Mississippi to train people to be better mathematicians than you are. That was in December of 1995. At the time Mr. Barbour said this, our Nation was $4.973 trillion in debt, but he promised the American people to have passed a balanced budget bill. At the end of that year, their budget added $250 billion to the deficit. A year later, $190 billion more. A year later, $113 billion more. A year later, $146 billion more; all of the way up to year 2000, another $20 billion. What particularly irks me is after answering Mr. Barbour's challenge, and about 80 other folks around the country did so, the Republican National Committee, instead of saying gee, we misled you or maybe admitting they made a mistake, they sued us. I had to hire a lawyer to defend myself for filling out their form. The case is still now in court, interestingly enough. But Mr. Barbour, not only did you not balance the budget, but since the passage of that bill, we have added over $1 trillion to the national debt. See, like the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), I was appalled when a year ago a lot of my colleagues, the Speaker of the House, the majority leader, the majority whip were running around saying Washington is awash in money, huge surpluses as far as the eye can see. We do not know what to do with the money; therefore, we have to pass these tax cuts. When the President said that a year ago right now, our Nation was $5,661,347,798,002.65 in debt. Since the passage of the tax cuts, the debt has increased by $323 billion. For those following this debate, I am going to do something a little different than what the Speaker or the majority leader and the President of the United States did. I am going to ask Americans to check my numbers. They are available to every American at www.publicdebt.treas.gov/, and see for yourself just how broke America is. What is particularly galling, for those with teenagers who have a job, and who look on their pay stub and say, What is this FICA?, that is your Social Security taxes; and they are taken with the solemn promise that they are to be spent on nothing but Social Security. If we could find the mythical lockbox that a lot of presidential candidates talked about, and opened it up, all that would be there is an IOU for $1.260 trillion. Further down on the pay stub we see money is deducted for the Federal health insurance program, Medicare. In that lockbox all we would find is $263 billion is owed. The money has been spent on other things. If you work for the Department of Defense and wanted to find their so-called lockbox, $167 billion is owed to it. The Civil Service Retirement Fund, a lot of people work for our Nation, border agents, people in the Customs Department, Coast Guard, $527 billion is owed to their trust fund right now. Mr. Speaker, you have been the Speaker for almost 4 years. You come from the party that claims to be for fiscal responsibility. Yet in the 4 years you have been Speaker, you have not scheduled one vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Almost every city has that. When I was a city councilman down in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, I remember the city attorney telling me next month we are going to put together the budget and it has to balance. If it does not balance, you and other council members are personally liable for the difference between what is collected in taxes and what is spent. I can assure Members, we balanced the budget. A couple of years later I was elected to the State senate. Mississippi has a balanced budget amendment to its constitution. Again we were informed that if we spent more money than we collected in taxes, that we could be thrown out of office. Those are good rules. They are very good rules because it prevents this kind of nonsense from happening. What is particularly distressing about this $5.984 trillion debt that the President wants to raise by another $750 billion, if the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) were on this floor on January 1, 1980, that number would have been less than $1 trillion. What is particularly disturbing is that the children of the greatest generation, if they do not change the way they are doing things, could be remembered as the worst generation. I do believe that my parents' generation was the best. They survived the Great Depression, got us through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, built the highway systems, the Intercoastal Waterway; and they did it all for less than $1 trillion in debt. As a matter of fact, if we went all of the way from the time George Washington became President until Ronald Reagan became President, our Nation was less than $1 trillion in debt. Now 20-something years later, we are almost $6 trillion in debt, and yet we cannot have a vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Speaker, I know you are a busy man, and I know the time on this floor is very busy. But you know what, today you scheduled a vote on the Nutria Eradication Act, and it is important to protect the marshland on the Chesapeake, it is important to those folks, and I know that they are doing a lot of damage to the marsh; but you scheduled 40 minutes of debate on the Nutria Eradication Act, and yet we cannot have a vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. You scheduled another vote on concessions maintenance and wildlife refuge repair, and wildlife refuges are very important to a lot of Americans and seeing that they are properly maintained is important. You scheduled 40 minutes of debate on that, and yet you cannot find time to have a debate on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. We found time to talk about the Waco Mammoth Site Area Study. They want to see whether or not they want to put a park there. You scheduled 40 minutes of debate, yet you cannot find time to have a debate on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As a matter of fact, you found time for all of those things, yet you did not have time to let this body decide whether or not we wanted to vote to kill the whole base closure process. I particularly think base closures is a particularly dumb idea. It is not saving the taxpayers a dime; it puts a heck of a lot of people out of work. It has lost us vital defense installations like Cecil Field outside of Jacksonville, Florida. Three 8,000-foot runways, another 10,000-foot runway. Right now our military is looking for a place to put the new Joint Strike Fighter, they are looking for a place to put the F-18 E and Fs, and they are going to spend billions of tax dollars to build a brand new field for them when Cecil Field would have been a perfect match. The problem is that a previous round of base closures closed Cecil Field, and we gave the property away. That was not done just once or twice; it was done over a hundred times around the United States of America. Places like the Presidio in San Francisco, given away. Places like Governor's Island off New York City, just a month ago the President gave it away. I was stationed on that island. It is probably worth half a billion dollars. The President gave it away. Time after time, the so-called savings of BRAC were not; but there was one thing they did not tell the American public, before they gave these properties away, they had to clean them up. And we spent over $13 billion of money to clean up bases that were given away so that the local governments could do what they wanted with them. In many instances, they sold them, and their city reaps a profit. Mr. Speaker, you find time for a lot of fund-raisers and charitable events, and that I applaud. I would hope in the time remaining when you are Speaker, and you are guaranteed to be Speaker until December 31, that you would find time for this House to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution so this generation can start digging itself out of the label of being the worst generation. There is not one parent in America who would walk into the local Cadillac or BMW dealership and say, I want the most expensive car on the lot, and you can bill my 5-year-old 20 years from now when they are working, and let them pay the interest on it, too. There is not one American who would say I want the most expensive house in the county, I do not care what it costs because I have a 4-year-old grandchild, let them pay for it. But that is precisely what this generation of Americans is doing by running up $5 trillion worth of debt in the past 22 years. There is no end in sight. Mr. Speaker, if you care about kids and grandkids, if you really care about the future of this country that so many other Americans sacrificed their lives for, why not schedule a vote to see that it is here for our kids and grandkids? What is so terrible is not only owing that money, but until it is paid off, every single day, $1 billion of the taxpayers' money is squandered on interest on that debt; and one- third of that interest is owned to German and Japanese lending institutions. If the thought of two lending institutions of two foreign countries owning one-third of the American debt and being in a position to wreck our economy anytime they want, if that does not frighten the gentleman, I am sorry. It does frighten me. I applaud the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) and the Blue Dogs for writing the Speaker and asking for a vote on a balanced budget amendment. Mr. Speaker, I am putting you on notice right now: I will not vote to raise the debt. Enough is enough.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my colleague and friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), for his kind words and for his good work on the procurement portion of this bill. Along with every other Member of this body, I want to compliment the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump) for being a great human being and a great American and a phenomenal chairman to our committee. My colleagues have noticed a lot of anger on the floor today, which is completely contrary to just one week ago in the Committee on Armed Services where every single Member who wanted to offer an amendment to that bill was allowed to do so. Today, there are a number of us who felt like we could make a good bill a heck of a lot better and save some American lives by offering amendments. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump) actually went to the Committee on Rules and told them he wanted most of those amendments put in order. I thank the chairman for that, and I deeply regret that the Committee on Rules chose not to make many of these amendments in order. I thank the gentleman for his efforts, particularly from the day he was 16 years old, serving in the United States Navy till now serving us, and I also wish he would change his mind and stick around for a while. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) talked on many of the needs of our Nation, and we have incredible pressing needs, about 940 Huey helicopters in inventory, the newest of which was built in 1972, that need to be replaced. As the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) pointed out, the fleet has now shrunk to 314 ships which is the smallest it has been since 1933. That is unacceptable. The President only asked for 5 ships this year which, incidentally, is 2 ships fewer than the Clinton administration asked for. I am pleased Chairman Weldon chose to add an additional destroyer to that. That will take a step towards keeping the fleet at the bare minimum size, and hopefully, the Senate will do even better. I want to point out that the bill does contain almost a billion dollars for the development of the next generation of destroyers, the DDX. I want to point out the new attack submarine at $1.6 billion was partially funded. The committee, I think, wisely chose to fund the Crusader program at about $475 million, and I do agree with General Shinseki, who is the chief of staff of the United States Army, on the important need for this program, and I have to take issue with the Secretary of Defense. I think it is necessary. I hope the committee will stick by its guns. I want to take this opportunity to thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump) for the way they have handled this committee and put this bill together.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri for yielding to me and giving me this opportunity. For about 12 hours now I have asked my colleagues, who were all elected by roughly the same number of people as I have been, for an opportunity for an up-or-down vote on whether or not we ought to have another round of base closures. I am adamantly opposed to base closures. After the first three rounds of base closure, we cannot name one weapons system that has been purchased with base closure money. We cannot find one general, one admiral, one Secretary of Defense, one undersecretary, who would name one base that they think ought to be closed. Yet my colleagues, particularly on the Republican side, have steadfastly refused even the simple courtesy of an up-or-down vote. Last year the Senate, by the narrowest of margins, passed base closure language. The House never voted on it. It was part of the defense authorization bill which was brought to this House in the conference report well after September 11, when we were given the opportunity to say we are for the troops or against base closure. That really was not a fair fight, and they knew it was not. Base closure ruins the lives of those military retirees, and over half of them, over half of them have retired near a base so they can use the commissaries and the hospitals. When we close the base, the commissary goes, the hospital goes; and we basically have ruined their lives. They are too old to move again. Base closure puts every single employee in the Department of Defense wondering, starting tomorrow, whether or not his job is in jeopardy, whether or not he ought to borrow the money to send his kid to college or buy another car or fix up their house. For all the reasons that Members oppose A-76, they ought to be against base closure. All I have asked is one simple thing today, because I think it is real fair that the business sections around America, all those cities and counties that we all used to serve in the local government that are spending millions, if not billions, of dollars trying to save those local bases from closure, all we want is an up-or-down vote. We asked for the opportunity to stand up for our constituents. As a matter of fact, most of us begged for the opportunity to stand up for our constituents: send me to Washington so your voice can be heard loud and clear. Why is it tonight that they hide behind the Speaker? Why is it tonight that they hide behind these silly rules, nine members of the Committee on Rules who will not give a straight up-or-down vote whether or not they think it makes sense to close bases? We are in a war. How many times have I heard it tonight? Every one of the service chiefs says they need more people, not fewer. Right now, the military is looking for a base to put the Joint Strike Fighter. They are looking for a base to put the F-18E and F. There is a base in Florida that has three 8,000-foot runways. It has a fourth runway that is 10,000 feet long. The planes can take off and they go straight out over the Atlantic Ocean. They can make all the noise they want. They can do all the dogfighting they want. God forbid, if something goes wrong and they have to eject, they know they can eject without fear of that plane falling on someone's house or a busload of kids. That base is called Cecil Field. It is outside Jacksonville, Florida. It was closed by a previous round of base closures, and now the taxpayers of America are going to spend over $1 million to replace it because we gave the property away, just like we gave away the property at Governor's Island, just like we gave away the property at the Presidio, and just like we spent $13 billion, let us remember, a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand times 13 to clean up the bases that we gave away from the first three rounds of base closure. If Members think that is a good idea, then have the guts to vote for it. But if Members think it is a bad idea, or if they think those of us who think it is a bad idea, who got elected by just as many people as them, ought to have an up-or-down vote on it, I thought I would ask just once tonight to give us a vote. That is all I ask. If we lose, I understand the rule of the majority. But I think the Members of this House, when those bases start getting padlocked, ought to have the opportunity to look the citizens who are going to lose their bases, who are going to lose their jobs, I think we ought to have the opportunity to look them in the eye and say, I voted to keep this base open, or I voted to shut it down. But do not hide.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I move the Committee do now rise.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.