CONFERENCE REPORT ON H. CON. RES. 95, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (House of Representatives - April 28, 2005)
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 9 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, before I begin with the opening, let me just thank our staff. We have to make a lot of decisions around here, and we put together the policy and make the votes, but the staff makes it all come together in the document that we review today, as well as the work of the Committee on the Budget. I thank Jim Bates who is the majority staff director, who has done an excellent job this year, and Tom Kahn on the minority side who has done an excellent job. Both their staffs do a great job on behalf of the budget, the Senate staff in putting this together working with Chairman Gregg and the Senate Budget Committee, and our leadership staff that is here that works the floor and helps us put this all together. They do an excellent job. It is a big job putting together a budget.
But if there was ever a time that we needed a plan and we need a budget, this is the time. We have seen what it is like in years past when we do not have budgets, when we are not able to come together. And yes, the House has been able to manage the process. We have been able to keep the line on discretionary spending, but we need to do more this year. We need a fiscal blueprint. We have enormous and quickly growing sets of challenges, and we do not have infinite resources with which to meet them. We can and will meet those challenges with a fiscal blueprint, with a budget.
But in order to do that, we have to make some tough choices. We cannot say yes to everything. There is going to be a lot of debate today where Members say you did not say yes to this, you did not say yes to that, you did not give enough here, you did not give enough there, or you gave too much over here. That is the whole budget in a nutshell, is that no one is going to be perfectly satisfied with either how much you spend on one side or how much or how little you take from the other side of the ledger. No one will be satisfied, but it needs to be put in writing. It needs to be a fence around our process. We need a plan.
I am extremely pleased that we have brought our plan and our conference report here today. It was not easy to get to this position. I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert); the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader; the members of my committee; the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), a member of the conference. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), my friend and colleague. He will remind us that he was not a party to this conference in the way that either one of us would have liked, but I would like to thank his partnership and the way we run the committee.
Mr. Speaker, we have work to do, and I believe it can continue in a very positive way today if we pass this resolution.
Last year we were able to reduce the deficit 20 percent. We need to continue that work. We need to continue the strength of this country. We need to continue the growth of our economy. We need to continue the restraint of spending for deficit reduction. These are our highest national priorities, and if these priorities are not met, none of the rest of the priorities will be met.
All of the programs, all of the areas of government, none of them can happen if our economy is not strong, if our Nation is not strong, if our freedom is not protected, and if we do not have a fiscal blueprint to surround us. These are our fiscal priorities as we move forward.
Let me talk about the conference report that we are bringing today. First, the budget fully accommodates the President's request for defense and homeland security. That is our number one job. None of the rest of the discussion matters if we do not protect the country. In addition, it provides for $50 billion in emergency supplementals looking forward, recognizing that we have a continuing obligation in our global war on terror.
Second, the budget continues our successful economic policies, including tax relief, spending restraint, and deficit reduction to ensure a strong, sustained economic growth and job creation dynamic. This is why we are doing it, so that people can continue to find the opportunities to earn the money to take care of themselves and their families and their communities first before the IRS and the Federal Government takes a portion of that out here for the national priorities. People have an obligation to manage their affairs first, and we allow that here.
Finally, the budget takes a critical, I think, next step, because we made the first step last year in reducing the unsustainable rate of Federal spending and our deficit. We take the next step this year to reduce that deficit.
Last year we wrote and passed in this House and actually stuck to a budget that for the first time in a long time called for a little restraint in our discretionary spending. When the books were closed at the end of the year, we saw the deficit go down. The deficit went down. In fact, the reduction of the deficit last year alone was 20 percent, still way too high, a deficit still way too high by my count, by the count of my colleagues, by the President, and by the other body. But during a war, during a time of new national priorities such as homeland security, it is not unusual that we made a determination to borrow some money in the short term to shore that up. But we also have to continue the work that we started last year on reducing that deficit.
This year this budget takes the necessary steps to get our spending back on a sustainable path and to continue to reduce that deficit. On the discretionary side, this budget will actually reduce the overall amount of nonsecurity discretionary spending. The nondefense discretionary spending will actually be reduced, something we have not seen done on this floor or in this government since Ronald Reagan was in town, the last time that we had an actual reduction in the nondefense discretionary.
But more important than that, this budget begins the process of addressing the growth in the automatic spending, what we call mandatory spending, the spending that continues year after year unless we reform the programs that underlie that spending. And this year this is a reform budget. This is a budget that allows us to continue on the path that we need to head. Mandatory spending is growing out of control. We know it, Governors know it, the President knows it, the other body knows it, our committees know it. What we have not had is the mechanism to do something about it.
Let me show how mandatory spending is growing. If we look at this chart, we will see that back in 1995, the automatic spending was almost half of the budget. Now it is over half, about 55 percent of the budget. And if we do nothing, it will eventually take two thirds of the budget by 2015 alone, meaning mandatory spending will crowd out things like national defense, homeland security, education, transportation, the environment, health care. A number of important issues that we need to be focusing on will be enveloped by the mandatory spending side of the ledger without reform. And these programs in many instances are plainly not working.
I think of a senior citizen sitting in a hallway of a nursing home in Iowa and wondering whether or not that senior is getting the best quality care for the huge increases and the unsustainable growth that we find in Medicaid. And I do not see that being the case. Is the quality there? Is the program being delivered in the best possible way? And for that one instance and thousands of others that are out there we need to focus programs on doing a better job for the money that is put forth in order to meet the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens; children who are poor, people with disabilities, seniors who are either locked in poverty or unable to meet their needs. We have got to handle the mandatory growth in this budget and do so in a way that provides the reform to make sure that the needs of the people that these programs were intended to meet, that those needs are met. And that is the reason that we bring this budget forth.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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