Pat Toomey

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. We have had a spirited debate here this afternoon about this, and I would simply close by reminding my colleagues that if we were to pass the provision that is proposed here, it would certainly result in very, very large tax increases in this year, next year, the following years of a very huge magnitude; and I am gravely concerned that the result of that would be to, at a minimum, diminish the growth of our economy and quite possibly even turn us down into an economic downturn, back from whence we came. We are on the right path. The economy is growing. It is growing strongly. It is actually growing at a nearly record pace. We have job growth that has kicked in in a very impressive way, and that is the most important part of this; and that is really manifesting itself in recent months, likely to continue, likely to generate a self-sustaining momentum for the economy. This is exactly what we should be trying to work for. It is the tax cut package that helped us get here. We have now seen so much economic growth that, as my colleagues on the other side have acknowledged, even in recent months and recent quarters, revenue collected by the Federal Government is growing. It is accelerating. That means if we stick to the budget resolution that we passed with votes on this side of the aisle alone, where we put a freeze on nonsecurity discretionary spending, if we maintain that spending discipline, while we continue to have the strong economic growth, we will, in fact, see a dramatic reduction in this deficit. That is what we should be working towards, maintaining the tax law, keeping the tax burden as low as we possibly can on the American people, with some spending restraint. Again, we proposed that we freeze this nonsecurity spending, unfortunately. My colleagues on the other side would not go along with that freeze. That is the kind of discipline that will get our budget in order. What we need to do is reject this proposal today, vote ``no'' on the motion of the gentleman from Kansas, and stick to some discipline on the spending side. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would just make one additional point, and that is the point that has been made for us at our committee by CBO Director Crippin, and I think this is a very important one. When we look at how best to get our deficit under control, he makes the observation that a one-tenth of 1 percent increase in GDP growth accounts for about an additional quarter of a trillion dollars, $250 billion, in additional Federal revenue over a 10-year period. This is why economic growth is so important. The real reason it is mostly important is for the benefits that accrue to the American people who produce this growth; but if we want to figure out how do we get our budget house in order here, a strong economy gets us there. One-tenth of 1 percent, going from 4 percent growth to 4.1 percent growth, just that small difference amounts to an extra quarter of a trillion dollars in Federal revenue. If we can maximize economic growth and have some discipline on the spending side, we get this budget back to balance. We are moving in that direction, and I think that is a direction we should stay in. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TOOMEY. May I ask a question of the gentleman from Kansas. Does the gentleman have any additional speakers?

Mr. TOOMEY. Reclaiming my time, I would be thrilled if you and your colleagues would vote with us on this budget resolution that freezes non-security spending, that just says let us hold it at last year's level because we really cannot afford more than that. But we never got the votes to do that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TOOMEY. Do you think that there are the votes anywhere in this Chamber to have spending cuts when the Democrats in this Chamber would not vote for a Republican budget?

Mr. TOOMEY. They have to be offset with equal tax increases or spending cuts; is that correct?

Mr. TOOMEY. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. TOOMEY. Reclaiming my time, but the mechanism by which you choose to make that decision is precisely this, it is to say that we have to treat, even maintaining existing tax law, as though it were equivalent to launching a new spending program because you want to impose the exact same mechanism on both those activities as though they are equivalent. And my point is they are not equivalent. One, the new spending, leads to lower economic growth, lower productivity, fewer opportunities for American workers; and the other, maintaining this lower tax burden that we managed to pass in recent years, leads to stronger economic growth, more jobs, higher wages, and we are seeing it in the numbers. We are seeing that this economy has turned around. We are seeing the strength of this economy. We are seeing it producing new jobs. And, in fact, as the gentleman has acknowledged in recent months, we are even seeing a growth in revenue to the Federal Government. It is true. It has not yet reached the level that it was at before the recession and before the war and before September 11. It will get there. It may take a little bit longer but the fact is revenue to the Federal government is growing. It is growing at an accelerating pace. But, frankly, that is not my highest priority in life. My highest priority, and what I think it should be here is, are we creating an environment where we create the maximum opportunity for Americans, the most job opportunities, the greatest chance for new businesses to flourish. I know that is what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) would like to see accomplished. I think we differ about how to get there. But I strongly believe that making it essentially impossible to maintain the existing tax law and instead having a higher tax regime does not get us there.

Mr. TOOMEY. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. TOOMEY. We are getting a bit far afield. I think one of the fundamental areas of disagreement that we have is the idea that my colleagues who offered the proposal, equate new spending with new tax relief, including maintaining existing tax law.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the gentleman from Texas, for introducing an outstanding budget and for his hard work in making a point, in producing a budget that really goes a long way towards achieving the fiscal discipline that we need here. It seems to me the goal of the Federal budget ought to be primarily to create an environment in which we allow the American people to maximize their prosperity, to maximize their opportunity, to maximize their chance to realize the American dream. If the American people could actually individually vote on this today, I think this is the budget that would win because the American people know that our taxes are too high to achieve the maximum level of prosperity that our country is capable of, and they know that here in Washington we spend too much money. We have for years, and it has been accelerating in recent years; and so this is the budget that addresses those two issues best. It cuts spending a little tiny bit. That is all, one small part of the total government spending. We actually propose in this Republican Study Committee budget a 1 percent cut, one penny out of every dollar in the nondefense, nonhomeland security discretionary spending area. We think that there is at least that much waste and fraud and abuse and unnecessary and duplicative programs, and so we are saying, how about one penny out of every dollar in just this category? What else did this budget do? It says that the existing tax law ought to be permanent, that we should not, at a time when we are just kicking in a strong economic recovery, we should not raise taxes. This is a budget that shrinks the deficit, holds spending growth to a modest level and lowers taxes. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly), as well as my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) for kindly yielding time. Certainly I rise in strong support of this amendment. I want to congratulate the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly) for her leadership on this issue for a number of years. This amendment simply is going to help small businesses. It is going to help small banks. It is going to help promote a rational allocation of resources and a free economy. It makes a lot of sense. In fact, it is hard to believe we ever passed a law that said it ought to be illegal to pay interest on deposits, any kind of deposits. But that is the fact. It is on the books. And I am hoping that today we take a big step in the direction of repealing this ban. This amendment itself really reflects the confluence of two separate bills, one that I had introduced, one that the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly) had introduced. And together they really simply amount to a commonsense reduction of long-outdated, unnecessary regulations. Again, the people that are most harmed by the current regulation are the people operating small businesses, the people who have modest accounts, the people who have not got sophisticated Treasury operations to circumvent the regulations, and the people who therefore really need this help. It will help small businesses do a host of things that they could do with a little more resources, whether it is hiring another employee, whether it is buying some more equipment, defraying other costs, it just makes a lot of sense. I should observe that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department both fully support this legislation for a variety of reasons, not the least of which it will make banking services less expensive, more directly responsive to customers' needs, and basically every industry group that has looked at this legislation supports it as well, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the NFIB, America's Community Bankers, to the Association for Financial Professionals. Pretty much there is a broad consensus that this is just a commonsense thing to do. So I, again, would like to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) for his cooperation, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly) for her years of service on this issue. I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the support of the Chairman. I appreciate the support of the author of the bill. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and the underlying bill.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me we have had considerable debate about the substance of this bill today, and there is substantial evidence that the mandatory source status that is enjoyed by FPI is a policy that is harmful to a variety of American industries and workers, including the furniture manufacturers and the garment-makers in my district. The core objective of this bill is to eliminate the status, the FPI status as a mandatory source supplier and, thereby, require the FPI to compete for Federal contracts rather than have the opportunity to simply claim them. I am a cosponsor of this bill, and I applaud this effort and I support the bill. What my amendment would do would further define the FPI's role in competing with private sector small businesses. Specifically, my amendment would prohibit the FPI from bidding on any contracts that are intended to be exclusively set aside for small business concerns. This Congress and many Congresses before us have established, for a variety of reasons, that a certain percentage of Federal Government procurements should be made through small businesses, and we call those small businesses set-asides. The whole idea has always been to ensure that small businesses, mom-and-pops, local people struggling, in all of our districts and in all of our communities, to get a business off the ground and to employ some people, that they get a shot at some of the business that their tax dollars pay for. It seems abundantly obvious to me that the Federal Prison Industry does not in any way qualify as a small business nor fit the descriptions that most of us have in mind when we think about small businesses. With $500 billion in annual sales, with 20,000 employees, with this network within the Federal penitentiaries in America, that is not what we mean when we talk about small business. It was never the intent of Congress that the Federal Prison Industry should be able to compete for the contracts that are intended to be set aside for small businesses. Yet, last year, when we repealed the mandatory source status for the FPI with respect to DOD procurements, unfortunately, regulations were promulgated that specifically allowed the Federal Prison Industry to compete for small business set-asides within DOD. My amendment would correct this error with respect to DOD, but it also would apply to the other Federal agencies, and it is based on a simple premise: that small business set-asides should in fact be for small businesses, not for the FPI. It is tough enough for small businesses to compete against large businesses. I do not think they should have to compete against the Federal Prison Industry. This is a good bill.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the gentleman from Ohio for introducing this legislation and for his leadership on this, and I want to thank God today that we will finally pass, and send to a President who will sign it, a bill banning a barbaric, brutal procedure for killing unborn babies. It seems to me having a legal ban on partial-birth abortion just strikes me as a minimal sort of threshold level indication of human decency for our society. To take an unborn baby, induce a partial delivery, kill the baby, then pull it out and discard it, demonstrates such a wanton contempt for human life, it really should be chilling for all of us. This bill establishes what I see as at least a minimal level of respect for human life; but, frankly, we have got a long way to go. I would like to address the Roe v. Wade decision which has come up repeatedly. I think we just need to speak candidly about this decision, Mr. Speaker. The fact is it is a terrible decision that has resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn babies. But even if the immorality of the decision does not move someone, I would think the contempt for the Constitution that it demonstrates ought to. Because let us face it, you can read the Constitution. It is written in English, and it is very clear. The Constitution does not guarantee a right to have abortions. A few Supreme Court Justices on the other hand, decided that they would rather be legislators than Justices and so they invented this right. They wrote it in a decision. And unfortunately, as unaccountable legislators, it is now the law of the land. But that is what it is. It is a terrible misreading of the Constitution. I commend the conferees for striking the reaffirmation of Roe v. Wade from the bill that was passed in the other body. I commend them for bringing this bill to the floor today, and I urge my colleagues to support the rule and to support this conference report.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding but also for organizing this special order. I think this is extremely important. Others have said it more eloquently than I will. I think the fundamental reality here is we have an opportunity as well as a responsibility to win the peace just as we won the war, and the President's proposal is about winning the peace. The $20.3 billion that will go towards rebuilding Iraq is about one winning the peace in Iraq. It is about helping the Iraqi people build a viable society that will not be a threat to its neighbors and to us anymore. The President's determined that this money is needed soon after the decades during which Saddam Hussein's tyranny and the wars that he has brought on the Iraqi people has made this need urgent, and I hope we will all fully support this President's request. I do, however, want to introduce an idea that I think is perfectly consistent with funding this request, and that is an idea that goes to the heart of what we ought to be doing here in Congress, and I think that is establishing our priorities, funding our priorities, and tightening our belts and living with some fiscal discipline throughout our budgeting process. Today just happens to mark the first day of a new fiscal year for the Federal Government, and, unfortunately, it is a fiscal year in which we are going to undoubtedly run a several hundred billion dollar deficit. Given that situation, I think it is all the more important that we exercise the fiscal discipline and identify the priorities that we need to. This is a priority. So I have proposed, together with our colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), that we fund this, and we fund this fully but, at the same time, over the next several years, we find offsetting spending reductions in other foreign aid proposals, programs, areas that are not as high a priority, frankly, as rebuilding Iraq; and we reduce that spending by an amount that will, over time, add up to the amount we are spending in Iraq so that at the end of the day, the American taxpayer is not paying any additional net new sum of money to do this vital function. I think it is about priorities. There are a number of areas that I would not suggest that we reduce funding in our foreign aid budget. For instance, our aid to Israel and Egypt is fundamental and very important. For other reasons, diplomatic and embassy security. There are a number of programs we should not touch. But frankly, if we were to trim by about 15 percent a year for the next 4 years, the next 5 years, I correct myself, for the next 5 years, we could fully offset this critical $20.3 billion expenditure that we need to make for our own security and for the security of our troops in Iraq and for the sake of the security of that region. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. Again, I am very supportive of the President's request, but I would urge my colleagues to join me in an effort to find the appropriate offsets over the next several years so that this vital priority gets funded and some less important foreign aid programs wait until we have the resources to do it.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank and congratulate my friend from Virginia because I think this is one of the most important amendments we will debate this entire year. This is a tremendous opportunity for us to give a little bit of freedom to the people who clearly need it the most. The fact is the Washington, D.C. public school system is not up to par. We know that. The Washington, D.C. school system spends more money per student than almost any other school district in America. Test scores are routinely towards the lower end of the spectrum of test scores across America. We all know this. In fact, we, my colleagues, affluent people in this community, we know it and we act accordingly; because in disproportionate number, what we do is we send our kids to the private schools. Democrats, Republicans, Congressmen and Congresswomen, Senators, administration officials, we send our kids to the private schools. Why do we do that? Because they are better schools and because we can afford it and because we want to give our kids the best possible opportunity in life. And how dare we deny that same opportunity to people who just do not have the same level of income that we have? How dare we deny these kids the one chance they are ever going to have in life to build the best, most solid educational foundation they can to create the opportunities that they deserve for their futures? I say we dare not deny them this opportunity. Give these kids in the D.C. school system, give them hope, give them a chance and do it by giving their parents a choice. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. TOOMEY

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of our time. I would just remind my colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations that in addition to the Committee on the Budget, I offered an alternative budget that actually would significantly restrain the growth of mandatory spending. Very specifically, I frequently vote against many mandatory spending programs as well. But what we are here today to try to do is not cut a dime out of FEMA. What we want to do is just say, let us offset this. It is 29 cents out of $100. It is not for two months, it is over 14 months, and any single individual line item, if the President thinks it is unreasonable to try to find 29 cents out of the $100 because there are only two months left, and no doubt there are many categories in which that would be difficult, there are another whole 12 months, all of fiscal year 2004, to find those offsets. This is not that hard. Any family can find 29 cents out of $100 in their family budget. Any business can do likewise. We have an obligation to do the same thing for our taxpayers, especially at a time when we are running the kind of deficits that we are. So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment, and when this amendment succeeds, which I hope it will, and I am sure every Blue Dog is going to vote for it, because I hear them all the time talking about how upset they are about the deficit; well, here is an absolute, straightforward way to reduce the deficits. I am looking forward to a lot of votes from that side of the aisle. I am looking forward to the passage of my amendment, and then passage of the underlying supplemental. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Chairman, on that I demand the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays are ordered.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, let me start by saying we do need to fund FEMA properly; but we also need to offset it, as we often have done in the past, and that is what this amendment proposes to do. I want to follow up on the comments of my chairman, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, who was exactly right about how we got to this point. I would like to explain that a little bit and make sure that my colleagues understand that for fiscal year 2003 the President requested $1.8 billion for FEMA disaster relief. This is routine annual spending in anticipation of the fact that we know we will have disasters in America. In October of 2002, the House Committee on Appropriations approved $1.8 billion in committee. In January of this year, the Senate passed an omnibus with only $800 million, $1 billion below the President's level. In January of 2003, the White House issued a statement of administration policy pointing out that this underfunding of FEMA by $1 billion would cause a problem and we would need to go back and address this. But despite that, despite the fact that everybody knew that we were intentionally and consciously underfunding FEMA by about $1 billion, we passed an omnibus at the lower level, $1 billion below the House Committee on Appropriations level, $1 billion below the President's request. And what happened to the $1 billion? As the chairman of the Committee on the Budget correctly observed, it was used so we could spend more money in other areas and still pretend we were living within the overall discretionary level that we had all sort of agreed upon. Well, the fact is, this emergency is an emergency that we have created by virtue of the fact that we chose not to fund this one category, and we all knew that low-balling FEMA would not stand. So now, predictably, we are all back to back-fill the hole that we dug for ourselves in February. As I said before, FEMA needs the money. That is not the issue about this amendment. What we are simply saying is we ought to offset this so that we do not have just a net increase in the total amount of spending. We are just trying to stick to the budget that we agreed to. So what this amendment does is it says let us take this $984 million and let us offset it with an across-the-board reduction in all discretionary spending programs except defense, homeland security, and veterans programs. That adds up to about five one-hundredths of 1 percent of the total spending for 2003, about three-tenths of 1 percent of the spending in the categories in which we are going to make this tiny cut. It is about 29 cents out of every $100 dollars. Now, some people will say, well, even that is too much to cut, especially since there are only 2 months left in the fiscal year. So we have gone on to say, okay, we'll leave it to the discretion of the President to decide whether we cannot find that amount of waste, 29 cents out of $100 is too hard to find; and if that is the case, he has all of 2004 to offset any individual accounts he so chooses. It strikes me, Mr. Speaker, as a very reasonable and very doable amendment. Over the next 2 months, agencies would be asked to come up with 29 cents out of every $100. And if they cannot, they get another 12 months to do it. We have a history of offsetting non-defense supplementals; and I believe with a deficit of $455 billion, here is a way to reduce that deficit. It is what we ought to do.

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleagues that we have 14 months to find these offsets, not just 2. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget. (Mr. NUSSLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) and remind my colleagues that we have enacted across-the-board spending cuts in 3 of the last 4 fiscal years. (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)