Blue Dog Coalition and the Budget

BLUE DOG COALITION AND THE BUDGET -- (House of Representatives - February 28, 2006)

Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about our budget, to talk about our debt, to talk about our deficit.

As a member of the fiscally conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 37 fiscally conservative Democrats, we are here as a group to hold our government accountable for the reckless spending, the record deficits, and the lack of fiscal discipline that we see in our Nation's government these days.

A good example of that, Mr. Speaker, can be found in my district, in fact, in my hometown where I grew up and finished high school, Hope, Arkansas. As you may know, we had the most costly natural disaster ever in our Nation's history hit us about 6 months ago, that of course being Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you that my heart goes out for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, many who remain homeless today. I am real proud of the people of my congressional district, the 4th District of Arkansas, who opened up their arms and their homes and their communities. Some people referred to them as evacuees. We called them our neighbors, our neighbors from Louisiana and Mississippi who came to Arkansas to seek refuge.

A few weeks, perhaps a couple of months, after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, showed up at city hall in Hope, Arkansas, and explained that they were aware that Hope owned an old World War II airport, airfield and accompanying pasture, and they understood that many of those runways were now inactive. And they proceeded to explain how they were buying some 20,000 manufactured homes, and they wanted to use the old World War II airport, the inactive runways at the airport there in Hope, Arkansas, as what they called a FEMA staging area, and that manufactured homes and they would be coming and they would be going, going to the people who lost their homes and everything they owned in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Well, Mr. Speaker, they did come. Here is an aerial photo of what has come to Hope, Arkansas. According to FEMA's most recent count, 10,777 manufactured homes have come to this so-called FEMA staging area in my hometown where I grew up, Hope, Arkansas. I now live some 16 miles from there in Prescott.

I have been there, Mr. Speaker. I have seen these 10,777 manufactured homes. They came. But not a single one left, not one. Not one home left for the people they were intended for. To put it another way, it is $431 million worth of manufactured homes sitting in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas.

Now, originally what FEMA had intended to do was use this as a staging area and homes would be coming and homes would be going. They would have room for them on these inactive runways. But today only 25 percent of them sit on these inactive runways. As you can see, many of them, in fact 75 percent of them, are sitting in cow pastures around the airport.

If you were to stack these manufactured homes, a few of them are 80 feet long, most of them are 60 feet, if you were to stack them end to end, they would stretch 172 miles. They would stretch from the Texas-Arkansas border at the Red River all of the way to the Arkansas-Mississippi border at the Mississippi River.

These manufactured homes, every single one of them, are fully furnished, beds, mattresses, box springs, dining room, sofa, end tables, coffee tables, fully furnished. Yet at the same time, FEMA has announced that they are planning on March 1 to evict, or in early March, they plan to evict some 12,000 people from hotel rooms, and yet FEMA is sitting, sitting on 10,777 brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes. They are just sitting on them at the Hope airport in Hope, Arkansas, some 450 miles from the eye of the storm.

Stanley McKenzie is from the New Orleans area. I have been talking with Stanley. Stanley is one of the victims of Hurricane Katrina who, some 6 months after the storm, remains in a hotel room in Monticello, Arkansas. Stanley and I talked this evening. Stanley explained to me that he did not want to be in a hotel room. He wanted to be in a manufactured home and has a location in Monticello to put one of these manufactured homes which are being stored about 2 hours west of Monticello.

And yet FEMA says he cannot have one. FEMA says he cannot borrow one for the next 18 months, as the program calls for.

They do not give these things away. They let people use them for up to 18 months, which is a whole other issue; that being, FEMA says the 18 months start from the date of the Federal declaration, not the date that the people actually receive the home. So every one of those 10,777 homes have an expiration date on them. The date does not begin, the 18-month window for people to live in them while they try to sort through their life and find a place to live after losing everything they own in Hurricane Katrina, does not start from the time they receive a home, it starts from the time of the Federal declaration.

So each day those homes sit at the airport and at the pasture in Hope is a day that no one can ever live in them. So I am calling on FEMA to revise their policy for the 18 months to begin at the time in which people are able to actually obtain one of these homes.

Now, what they tell Stanley is, he cannot have one, even though he has got a place to put it, because he has got a place to put it in Arkansas, that he would have to move back to Louisiana in order to be able to use one of these manufactured homes for 18 months. And they say that they will not put them in Louisiana because FEMA refuses to put these manufactured homes in a flood zone.

Well, you know, I have got news for FEMA. Everybody that lost their home and everything they own, there is a reason for it. They lived in a flood zone. And so they are saying, if you want to get a manufactured home, FEMA says we will let you use one for up to 18 months, but you have got to provide land. And people who own land own land in what? A flood zone.

And FEMA refuses to place these temporarily in a flood zone for 18 months, and yet they have amassed 10,777 of them just sitting in a pasture in Hope, an area that is prone and will probably be under a tornado warning about once every 10 days for the next 3 months.

It is time for FEMA to get their act together. And they are now saying that they are going to move some of these, some 300 to 400 as I understand will be moved from Hope, some 450 miles from the eye of the storm, to Louisiana. That is good. But they also announced they are getting ready to move another 2,200 homes into Hope on top of the 10,777 we already have.

I am asking FEMA to move all 10,777 of those homes out of Hope and to the people who need them, people who lost everything they owned in Louisiana and Mississippi as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

The last response I got from FEMA was, the travel trailers work great. They put out 72,000 travel trailers and are getting ready to put out 10,000 more. They have purchased another 10,000 travel trailers.

If that is not enough, they are now accepting bids. They are getting ready to spend between $6 and $8 million laying gravel, on up to 290 acres at the airport in this cow pasture at Hope, Arkansas. There have been reports that these manufactured homes are damaged, that they are sinking. Not yet, but it is true that they are literally sitting in a pasture, or at least 75 percent of them are sitting in a pasture.

And that is what they look like. You can see the fence, the cow pasture. They are just sitting there in a pasture, some 10,777 manufactured homes sitting in a pasture, when we have got 12,000 families about to be evicted from hotel rooms all across this country by FEMA.

It is time for FEMA to get its act together. And my response and my plea to FEMA is, you know, do not spend $6 or $8 million laying gravel in a cow pasture. Let us get these manufactured homes to the people who need them, to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Now, I raise this issue because as a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, we have a 12-point plan for budget reform. One of those plans is to require agencies to put their fiscal house in order.

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is time for FEMA to put their fiscal house in order. There is a lot of talk about the President's budget. As you may know, Mr. Speaker, the President has submitted to Congress a $2.8 trillion budget. This budget provides us with the largest budget deficit ever in our Nation's history for the 6th year in a row. $423 billion in red ink; $423 billion in deficit spending. Compare that to fiscal year 2006 when the budget deficit was $318 billion.

The current national debt today, just a few moments ago, was $8,251,355,000,000. For every man, woman, and child in America, including those who have been born since I got up here this evening, each person's share of the national debt is $27,674.

With each passing year this President and this administration and this Republican Congress have given us the largest budget deficit ever in our Nation's history.

It is hard to believe now, but in 1998 through 2001, President Clinton gave this Nation its first balanced budget in about 40 years. In 2001, we had a surplus and every year since we have had a deficit, not only a deficit but the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history.

Mr. Speaker, the total national debt from 1789 to 2000 was $5.63 trillion. But by 2010 the total national debt will have increased to $10.98 trillion. This is a doubling of the 2011 year debt in just 10 years.

Interest payments, this administration, this Congress is borrowing nearly $1 billion every single day; $260 million every day going into Iraq; $33 million every day is going to Afghanistan. Other money that we are borrowing is going to pay for tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 a year. But if that is not enough that we are borrowing some $1 billion a day, we are also spending about a half a billion dollars a day simply paying interest on the national debt. That is what we call the debt tax, D-E-B-T; and it is one tax that cannot go away until we get our Nation's fiscal house in order.

A half a billion dollars a day going to pay interest on the national debt. Give me 3 days' interest on the national debt and I can build I-49 through Arkansas. Give me another 3 days' interest and I can build I-69 through Arkansas. I could build 200 brand-new elementary schools every day in America just with the interest that we are paying on the national debt.

Mr. Speaker, if that is not enough, if that is not enough, this President, this administration, this Republican Congress in 5 short year has borrowed more money from foreign central banks and foreign investors than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

At this time I would like to recognize the co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, Congressman DENNIS CARDOZA of California, who just happened to have been on the trip with me to Hope, Arkansas, to see those 10,707 manufactured homes just sitting in that cow pasture and 450 miles from the people that really need them in Louisiana and Mississippi.

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Mr. ROSS. I appreciate the gentleman from California for his leadership as co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition for joining us this evening for this discussion of the budget, the debt, and the deficit. I appreciate your traveling to my district and witnessing something that is absolutely reprehensible. To have 10,777 brand-new manufactured homes, fully furnished, sitting in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas, when FEMA is getting ready to evict 12,000 people from hotel rooms in this country and their only response is, well, we are not going to put them in flood zones and everybody that needs them lives in a flood zone so we will spend 6 to $8 million putting gravel on the cow pasture so we can store them for a future natural disaster.

That is the craziest thing I have ever heard of, and that is the kind of example of how we must require agencies to put their fiscal house in order and to get their act together. That is part of the 12-point plan for meaningful budget reform that is being offered up by the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition.

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Mr. ROSS. If the gentleman would yield, you make a very valid point. I have a chart here to demonstrate the fact that I mentioned earlier, this administration, this Republican Congress has borrowed more money from foreign central banks, from foreign investors in the past 5 years than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You want to talk about something that is critical to our national security, you let these foreign countries like China and Japan and OPEC, you wonder why gas prices are so high. If we let these countries continue to buy our debt, they are going to have a huge influence on our monetary policy. There you can see Japan, this is as of November 2005, it has gone up since then. Japan, $682.8 billion of our loans that they own. China, $249.8 billion; United Kingdom, $223.2 billion; Caribbean, $115.3 billion; Taiwan, $71.3 billion; OPEC, $67.8 billion; Korea, $66.5 billion; Germany, $65.7 billion; Canada $53.8 billion.

To put it another way, if China decides, as my friend and founding member of the Blue Dog Coalition says so eloquently, we are in such a mess right now that if China which is loaning us money, if China decides to invade Taiwan, we will have to borrow even more money from China to defend Taiwan. That is the situation our Nation is in today as we continue to borrow about half the debt, which is running about a billion a day which means we are borrowing about a half a billion dollars a day from foreign central banks and from foreign investors to fund tax cuts in this country for those who earn over $400,000 a year.

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Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from Georgia and welcome him to stay and join us in a conversation about the budget and the debt and the deficit as the evening goes on.

As I mentioned earlier, the Blue Dog Coalition is a group of 37 fiscally conservative Democrats. What we are all about is trying to restore some common sense and fiscal discipline to our Nation's government.

For those who have questions or comments for the Blue Dog Coalition, we are here every Tuesday night. It is not always the same time, but every Tuesday night, we are here. I am here with different members of the Blue Dog Coalition. If you have got a question or a comment for us relating to the budget, the debt, the deficit or my manufactured homes stacked up in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas, you can e-mail us at bluedog@mail.house.gov.

At this time, it is with great pleasure that I recognize a new Member of Congress, a real leader in Congress, a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, someone who came to Congress and said our budget, our debt, our deficit is out of control; I want to help restore some common sense and fiscal discipline. She is someone that has recently become an outspoken advocate for restoring common sense to our government, a new member of our fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, Congresswoman MELISSA BEAN from Illinois.

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Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois for joining our discussion and debate this evening.

As we look toward the fiscal year 2007 budget that the President recently submitted to Congress, and this is what we are referring to here, the ``Fiscal Year 2007 Budget of the United States Government,'' I cannot help but think about the fact that over the last 4 years this administration has produced the four largest deficits ever in our Nation's history.

The 2006 deficit of $423 billion is projected to be the largest of all, $105 billion larger than the 2005 deficit. The 2006 deficit, without the Social Security surplus, is over $600 billion. They always like to count the Social Security trust fund to make it look like the deficit is really less than it really is. No wonder that I could not get a vote or a hearing on the first bill I filed as a Member of Congress, a bill to tell the politicians in Washington to keep their hands off the Social Security trust fund.

When this administration took office, it inherited a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. This surplus has become a $3.3 trillion deficit, which now brings this to a total of $8.2 trillion in deficit, an embarrassing reversal of some $8.9 trillion. If that is not enough, the fiscal year 2007 proposed budget includes cuts to education, Medicare, Medicaid, transportation, justice, law enforcement, housing, urban development, health and human services, while increasing fees paid by veterans and Medicare premiums paid by seniors.

The President said in his State of the Union that he was committed to providing affordable health care for Americans. However, this budget includes increases in Medicare premiums, cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, and a misguided plan for health savings accounts that will shift more of the cost of health care onto beneficiaries.

The fiscal year 2007 budget includes tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 a year, but it fails to include a repair to the alternative minimum tax, which affects way too many middle-income people year after year after year after year, and should be addressed by this Congress.

In fact, the only good news I can find in the budget is, according to the President's budget, we will have won the peace and brought the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan by October 1. What I mean by that is, the President, according to his budget, has not provided for a single dime in funding for our operations in Afghanistan or Iraq beginning October 1, which obviously means one of two things: that he has provided us with a phony budget, one that is not meaningful; or that he really believes that we are going to actually have brought all the men and women in uniform home and completed our mission and won the battle and created peace and democracies in those regions in Afghanistan and Iraq between now and October 1.

The Blue Dog Coalition used to offer up a budget every year. It is difficult for us to do that now because we refuse to provide a budget that is not meaningful; and it also does not make sense for us to provide a budget that compares apples with oranges. If this administration and this President would give us a meaningful budget, one that accounts for the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, one that addresses Medicare and all the other pressing issues in this Nation, then we could do the same.

But what we believe must happen as fiscally conservative Democrats, we are tired of all the partisan bickering that goes on in this place. It does not matter if it is a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. I want it to be a common-sense idea, and I ask myself does it make sense for the people that send me here to be their voice and to represent them.

What we believe must happen, before either party can offer up a meaningful budget, is, we have got to have budget reform, and that is what the Blue Dogs are offering up, 12 points to budget reform. We have discussed them in the past. If time permits, I will discuss them even more here this evening, but I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

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Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

I might mention part of our 12-point plan for meaningful budget reform, and we are still waiting for the first Republican Member of Congress to sign on to our bills that address these issues, but point number one is real simple: Require a balanced budget.

I spent 10 years in the State Senate. Forty-nine States in this Nation require a balanced budget.

I know in our home in Prescott, Arkansas, my family and I, we sit around the kitchen table and work out our family budget. My wife and I own a family pharmacy and home medical equipment business in our hometown, and our banker requires us to have a balanced budget. I don't believe it is asking too much for our Nation and its leaders here in Congress to do what 49 States do, what most companies and businesses, large and small, in America do, and what most families sitting around the kitchen table struggle to do but must do and do, and that is have a balanced budget. That would address a lot of our problems.

Another is don't let Congress buy on credit. The gentleman from Georgia mentioned earlier PAYGO. That is Pay As You Go. If you want to create a new program that is going to cost money, you have to show us at the same time where you are going to cut spending somewhere else. If you are going to cut taxes, you have to show us in times when we don't have a surplus where you are going to cut programs to pay for those tax cuts. It is called Pay As You Go.

And you can see here we did not have PAYGO rules in place in this body, in this United States House of Representatives Chamber; those rules were not in place during the Reagan years. You see the red. We had deficits ranging from $128 billion in 1992. They hit $221 billion in fiscal year 1986. It was $290 billion under former President Bush in fiscal year 1992. And then under President Clinton we started seeing the debt, the deficit, come down. Finally, in fiscal year 1998, we had the first balanced budget in about 40 years, $69 billion in the black. In 1999, $125 billion in the black. The year 2000, $236 billion in the black. Fiscal year 2001, $128.2 billion in the black.

Then, under this Republican-led Congress, this administration, $157.8 billion in the red, $377.6 billion in the red, $412.1 billion in the red, $319 billion in the red, $323 billion in the red; and, of course, for fiscal year 2007, we all know that unfortunately the deficit is projected to be $423 billion. And that is not counting what it would be if they counted the Social Security trust fund. If they were to count the Social Security trust fund, it would be well in excess, well in excess of $600 billion.

It is time to restore some fiscal discipline to our Nation's government. We have a 12-point plan that will accomplish that.

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In this new budget the President has given us, domestic non-homeland discretionary spending is cut by $5.3 billion below the 2006 level and $16.8 billion below the level needed to maintain the purchasing power at the 2006 level.

Over 5 years this budget includes reductions or eliminations in 141 Federal programs, 91 of which are eliminated in their entirety, and 42 programs in the Department of Education alone. That is 42 programs within the Department of Education that are eliminated under the President's budget for fiscal year 2007.

The budget includes $77 billion in gross mandatory spending cuts over 5 years through a combination of service reductions and fee increases, as we talked about, increasing deductibles and copayments and premiums for our Medicare beneficiaries, and increasing prescription drug copayments and enrollment fees for America's veterans. For America's veterans.

I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is time for this Nation to keep its promises to our veterans, especially at a time when we are creating a new generation of veterans that are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans that we should embrace and support and provide them the health care that they deserve and that they were promised when they signed up to serve and protect and defend our Nation.

I mentioned Medicare. The President's budget calls for cuts to Medicare to the tune of $36 billion over 5 years and $105 billion over 10 years. Meanwhile, Medicare part D, as we all know, is failing our seniors and has serious flaws in the system that must be ironed out. And Medicaid, in addition to last year's budget reconciliation package that just passed this body, budget cuts to Medicaid include $17 billion more over 5 years and $42 billion over 10 years. That is in the President's budget for fiscal year 2007.

In my home State of Arkansas, half of the children are on Medicaid. Eight out of 10 seniors in a nursing home are on Medicaid. One in five people in my home State of Arkansas, at some point during the past 12 months, have been on Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid are the very programs we should be funding, not cutting.

And I submit to folks that if you think Medicaid is something that provides health insurance for folks on welfare and that it will never apply to you, think again. If you have a quarter million dollars in the bank the day you retire, and most people where I come from don't, and if you go in the nursing home the day you retire, not 10, 20, or 30 years later, in less than 8 years you are on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. That is wrong.

It is wrong to cut taxes for those earning over

$400,000 a year when you have to cut Medicaid, whereas eight out of 10 seniors in my State are on Medicaid if they are in a nursing home. It is wrong to cut health care for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly to pay for tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 a year.

And, look, back in times of surplus, when we had a surplus before 9/11, before Iraq, and before Afghanistan, I voted for the largest tax cut in over 20 years. We had a surplus. We really were giving people some of their money back. But we no longer have a surplus. We have had 9/11, we have had Iraq, and we have had Afghanistan. It may make for good politics, but it makes for horrible fiscal policy to borrow money from China to give those earning over $400,000 a year a tax cut and leave our children with the bill.

No Child Left Behind is funded at $15.4 billion below the authorized level. And you know how things work in this town. If it were a Democratic idea, I would understand the President cutting it; but this is his plan. He came to Washington on this idea of No Child Left Behind and reforming education. It is his plan. He told us what it would cost, and now he has even cut his own program by $15.4 billion below the authorized level.

Schoolteachers, parents, students, every weekend when I'm home, talk to me about how No Child Left Behind has failed them and failed their school. It is time for this Congress to properly and adequately fund education. Because I can tell you, as we continue to lose these muscle jobs to places like Mexico and China, it is the brain jobs, the jobs that are going to require our children to be competitive, that are the jobs of the future in this Nation, and we've got to better prepare our children for them.

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Mr. ROSS. If the gentleman will yield. Let me make sure I understand this correctly. If you serve your country and earn a pension, but you also are injured while you are serving your country, then you have to choose one or the other? You cannot receive both?

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. That is what it is right now, yes.

Mr. ROSS. So the gentleman is telling me that over 300 Members of this body have signed onto legislation to fix that?

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Yes, both Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. ROSS. And it only takes 218 to pass a bill?

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROSS. And yet the Republican leadership fails to bring the bill to the floor for a vote?

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Absolutely. And the President of this country has not lifted a finger to move it. If they did, it would move. At a time when we are depending so strongly on these veterans, on our military.

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Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for joining us this evening, and I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois for joining us.

As members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, we are 37 strong. There are 37 of us in this town that are committed to trying to get our fiscal house in order, to once again have a nation that knows how to live within its means.

If you have questions or comments that you want us to answer next Tuesday night, you can e-mail them to us at bluedog@mail.house.gov.

At the beginning of our hour, I pointed out that the debt as of today is $8,251,355,000,000. That is $8,251,355,000,000. Every man, woman, and child in America, their share of the national debt is $27,674. And it continues to grow. It continues to grow. In fact, just in this last hour our Nation's debt has increased by $41.666 million. So, obviously, you see when we started an hour ago it was $8,251,355,000,000, and, unfortunately, it has increased to $8.293 trillion. Just another example of how our Nation must get its fiscal house in order.

I think it is very appropriate that we spend a little bit of time changing these numbers and letting people see that in the hour that we have stood here talking about our Nation's debt and deficit and getting our fiscal house in order, we have seen the Nation's debt go up by $41.666 million. The debt now in our Nation $8,251,293,000,000.

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