The Official Truth Squad

THE OFFICIAL TRUTH SQUAD -- (House of Representatives - March 08, 2006)

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Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia and appreciate the gentleman from Georgia inviting me here tonight to allow me to share this time with him.

Almost 16 years ago I participated in a Midland introspective. This was a look at what was going wrong and what was going right in Midland, Texas, where I am from, led by the United Way and a bunch of other folks who helped fund the introspective. We did a statistically valid survey of the community to find out what the needs were. This was a needs assessment, and we asked people what was happening in their neighborhoods and their cities and their homes, and to come up with some sort of sense as to how we should be addressing the social issues within our communities.

Once we got the data back, again, it was statistically valid, we came up with our top 10 list of needs that Midlanders told us were Midland's needs, as opposed to those of us in certain organizations trying to decide on behalf of Midland what it was. Anyway, it was an idea that we could do this periodically to try to track how we were doing.

If you look at the top 10 needs within our communities, nine of those needs would have been positively impacted by a job. The needs were family needs and needs for child care. The needs were health care. Every single one of them except one, and I probably ought to remember what that one was that was not directly associated with the solution being a job, because when a family gets a job, those 4.73 million jobs, I suspect, are associated with probably half that number or better, families, moms, dads, children whose lives are better every single day because someone in that family now has a job, someone's bringing in a paycheck, someone is creating an environment within that family so that the children see mom and dad working, the children understand responsibility, the children understand how families work. The families are so much better off when they have got a job.

So we have 4.73 million jobs, and the number of families that are affected by that cannot be understated. In a body on the floor where hyperbole and overstating and overreaching and puffing is an art form, I probably ought to be able to come up with some flowery language that would help communicate how important job growth is, but I am burdened, though, by being a CPA, and we just do not puff and brag and all those kinds of things very well, and other folks it do it much better than us.

What I really want to talk about tonight is what I see as the single biggest threat to our way of life that we face. I serve on the Armed Services Committee. We are a country at war, and I suspect most of our colleagues in the House tonight would think I would talk about the war being our single biggest threat to our way of life.

I think it is the growth of Federal Government and the growth of spending that represents the single biggest threat to our way of life. Federal spending is a drag on the terrific economy that we have got going. Federal spending does not create wealth. As we all know, it may create a few jobs, but those jobs are dependent upon programs. So the real effective jobs that create wealth and help families are those created in the private sector.

The CBO, Congressional Budget Office, has recently published a study that is posted on their Web site that anybody can go to, cbo.gov, that looks at the 50-year trend in the growth in this Federal Government.

If you look at 2050, and they have several different scenarios that they run through, but the one that seems to make the most sense to me would show that by the year 2050, 45 years from now, that the Federal Government, left unchecked, left unchanged, will consume 50 percent of the gross domestic product of this country.

We are currently at about 20 percent, and in my mind that is about the gag threshold for a Federal economy. So at 50 percent plus, there has never been a free market, free enterprise system anywhere in history that has allowed the central government to take half and allowed the rest of us to prosper on the other half, prosper in terms of an improved standard of living, of opportunities, of the kinds of things of the America that, quite frankly, my colleague and I inherited from our moms and dads and our grandparents.

I have six grandchildren, six terrific grandchildren, and it is unfair of me as an adult to pass on to them a world that doesn't look better than the one I inherited. That ought to be our role as parents and grandparents, to make this world better for our children and our grandchildren. Well, in 2050, my oldest grandson will be about 53 years old. He will be where we are right now. Maybe he will be in Congress. That would be kind of cool. But he and his colleagues in that bracket will be where we are today. And if we don't do something beginning now to address this issue, then they will inherit a world that is radically different than ours, that is fundamentally different than the one you and I currently enjoy. And that is just wrong.

Let me drive this point home. Who among us as grandparents, or any of us who want to be grandparents, would take, in my instance, my six grandkids down to the nearest bank and say, Mr. Banker, I want to borrow every single dollar in your bank, and I want you to prepare notes that my six grandchildren will sign. I am going to take the money and I am going to spend it the way I want to. I will spend it on some good stuff, but I am going to spend all of it, and you are going to have to look to these six grandkids for repayment of that debt.

In all the times I have used this anecdote, or used this story, I have never found one grandparent who would say that they would in fact do that with their grandchildren. But collectively, somehow this mob mentality, that is exactly what you and I and our colleagues are doing in America, is that we are spending money today that we don't have and we are creating debt that our grandchildren are going to have to pay off.

I spoke earlier today to a trade association and was asked for questions. And one of the guys in the audience asked about the budget deficits that we are experiencing and should we, in effect, continue to borrow this money that our grandkids are going to have to pay off; shouldn't we do something to address that? Well, I said, yes, we should, but it should not be a tax increase.

Now, you and a couple of our colleagues have already talked about this. We do not have a revenue problem in America. The Federal Government does not have a revenue problem. We will have record tax collections this year. We had record tax collections last year. And our tax revenues, our ability to grow those is growing at about 5 percent a year. Collectively, we should be able to live within that spending frame. So I would disagree with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who call for increased taxes, who call for a bigger share, a bigger take out of our working families and working people's take-home pay to help with our spending problem. So we don't have a revenue problem; we, in effect, have a spending problem. We just are simply spending too much.

I know that my colleague and I belong to an organization that is going to bring forth a pretty radical budget scenario that could balance the budget within 5 years, and it is going to call for some pretty radical changes. The problem with cutting Federal spending, whether it is discretionary spending or mandatory spending, every single dollar that the Treasury writes a check for winds up on somebody's deposit slip. Somebody gets that money. They feed their families with it and do things with it that they think are important. They believe the Federal program that generates that check or that dollar is probably the single most important Federal program that we have going out there.

It is much like surgery. You are a surgeon. If we are cutting on one of our colleagues, then it is minor surgery. But if that same surgery is being performed on me, it is major surgery. So cutting Federal spending is much the same way. We are going to see, once this budget is prepared by the Republican Study Committee, once it is published, and we have already seen it from the President's budget, we will see an awful lot of people who represent every single one of those dollars that are going out and the constituents for those dollars, the special interest groups for those dollars are going to be in pushback mode trying to convince you and I and others that we need to cut somewhere else. Not their program, some other program needs to be cut.

This is going to be a little self-serving, and I don't want to intrude on your time tonight, but I introduced a bill last week that would require you and I, every Member of the House, every Member of the Senate, and our senior staffers to once a year read the Constitution. Now, it is going to be interesting as I begin to make the rounds and try to get our colleagues to agree with that to see what kind of pushback I get.

As a physician, you had continuing education hours that you had to do every year to stay current in your profession and your field. I had, as a CPA, about 40 hours a year to keep current. It seems to me, and you and I have taken an oath to defend and protect that Constitution, you and I who write laws that implement some of the powers that are granted to the Federal Government under that Constitution, you and I who propose amendments to that Constitution, that this is kind of a novel approach, that we ought to know what is in it.

So reading the Constitution once a year may help us begin to think about just big areas that this Federal Government should not be associated with. Not denigrate the area itself. That is not the issue here. Our Founding Fathers were incredibly brilliant. As modern-day Americans we have a pretty jaded view of other peoples and certainly other times, and we think we are the brightest and the smartest generation to have ever lived. But as you read our founding documents and read the Constitution, and as you think about what people did 230, 240 years ago, there were some pretty bright folks that put this thing in place.

And I think every single one of them, including Alexander Hamilton, who wanted the most expansive Federal Government he could think of, would be really shocked to see what collectively you and I and all of us have done with that document, with those authorities and powers. They had envisioned a pretty limited Federal Government, a pretty limited role. Everything else was to go to the States.

Clearly, some of the roles we would all agree on, national security, homeland defense, border security, those are things everyone agrees is the Federal Government's job, period. It is not the States' job or local municipalities' jobs. It is ours, as representatives of the Federal Government, to get that done well. But we have an awful lot of areas that the Federal Government has crept into. And in order to make substantive changes in that growth in government, in that

growth to 50 percent of GDP that CBO thinks is an inevitable track, that we are going to have to make some very strong substantive changes in the way we are doing business.

As your colleague talked about earlier today, there are probably 10,000 reasons in that budget that is going to be proposed for every single Member of Congress to vote against it. I have got six reasons why we ought to seriously consider it. Reason number one is named Michael; reason number two is named Caleb; reason number three is named Cameron; reason number four is named Emily Kate; reason number 5 is Conally, and reason number six is Alexandria. Those are the first names of my six grandkids.

So that is what we ought to be about doing. It is going to be hard work and it is going to require some tough, tough choices, some tough things to tell people. Some folks are going to have to figure out a different way to feed their families and they will have to figure out ways to provide the goods and services that they think the Federal Government is currently doing that we don't think under our Constitution is an appropriate role. And it is going to be hard. We are going to have to ask people to make some sacrifices and do things in a whole lot different way than they have been doing it.

Almost every one of us have grandchildren or will have grandchildren. And the path we are on, the path you and I inherited and that we are perpetuating, is one that leads to a very ugly conclusion.

Now, as a CPA, that sounds like pretty standard stuff we say, and it is awfully downer talk, and it is not particularly uplifting, but it needs to be a clarion call. Our issue is that you and I and our colleagues are pretty good at handling stuff tomorrow, next week, and maybe some into 2007. But when we look beyond that, that is an eternity. This issue, this growth in Federal Government is 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road. And so because it is far enough down the road, it is very easy for us to stick our heads in the sand and let it be someone else's responsibility, let it be someone else's decisions as to how to fix it.

So if I don't do anything else tonight, hopefully I can scare some of our colleagues into at least taking a look at that CBO study. Don't take my word for it, go look at it for yourself. And, look, if the number is only 40 percent of GDP, if it is 60 percent of GDP, it is a number that is unsustainable. It is a world that is fundamentally different than the one you and I currently enjoy, the opportunities we have and our colleagues have, and it is just patently unfair for us to hand that off to our children.

I want to thank my good colleague for letting me rant tonight and share with you and other members of this Truth Squad, and I thank you for organizing this and getting it done.

Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Thank you so much, Congressman Conaway. You said you didn't have the flowery speech, but you do. And in addition to that flowery speech, you speak the truth. Because so oftentimes here we don't refer to that document, the Constitution, that I carry with me every single day and that highlights our principles; that is the founding document that says what our guidelines ought to be.

Where are our walls and fences? What should we be doing? We ought to hear every single day on the floor of this House, is that the responsibility of the Federal Government? We ought to be asking ourselves that on every single thing we do.

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a moment, your good colleague from Georgia was sharing with us last night an experience he had with a town hall meeting. Somebody asked him about a proposed cut of the President, and I will not name the particular policy area because I don't want to get off into that kind of thing, because it just distracts us. But anyway, they asked, why are you in favor of cutting whatever?

His great answer back, and I am going to steal it from him, was to look at them and say, okay, how many in here think that is the Federal Government's responsibility; that particular area of public policy? And not one person raised their hand. And this is an area that is very important to our country, very vital to our country, but it is just not the Federal Government's role.

And he did it again. Somebody else brought up another area. And he thought, well, it worked once so let me try it again. How many people here think that is a role that the Federal Government should be doing? Not one hand raised.

So I think Americans are like that. They understand that if we begin to pose things in that frame, questions just like that, that we will begin to get the political will and the political backbone and support for getting back to basics and getting back to the constitutional Republic that we have.

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