Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004 - Continued

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004—CONTINUED

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, my understanding is that there is a first-degree amendment by my distinguished ranking member, the former chairman of our Budget Committee, that I very vigorously favor with respect to the National Guard and the Reserve. I know that the Reserve officers at the C-17 unit under General Black at the field in Charleston, SC, were alerted on September 12, the day after 9/11, and they are still flying. Now, that is quite a burden. Many are straining to make their rent payments and their house payments.

When we had a hearing about 2 months ago and the distinguished Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, came, after listening, I said: Mr. Secretary, what you need is not a money supplement but a manpower supplement.

In that vein, I want to say as much as I can in support of my chairman, but I deter for the simple reason that the money is not in this particular Defense appropriations bill for Iraq, and there is a good reason for it.

Now, there should be gratitude for little things that happen. I first express my gratitude to the distinguished editor and publisher of the Washington Post, Mr. Donald Graham. I complained in an op-ed piece some weeks ago that they were not covering the budget amounts and that we ought to have truth in budgeting, and because we have come to the highest budget deficit in the history of the U.S. Government, that ought to be covered as front-page news. Today it is. We have moved from page A4 to page 1. I have my copy of today's Post, and front and center on page one are the articles: "The Budget Deficit May Surpass $450 Billion" and "Budget Woes Trickle Down."

I happened to be a State Governor, and I received a AAA rating from Standard&Poors and Moody's, and we have maintained that in South Carolina. We have to have a balanced budget.

I coauthored Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, which happened under President Reagan. I have been in the vineyard. But the headline here states: "The Budget Deficit May Surpass $450 Billion," and I want to thank Jonathan Weisman, the author of this particular story, and Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor, for including this.

I said we just move up in inches. Let's look at the Mid-Session Review of the Budget of the United States Government by the Office of Management and Budget, the Executive Office of the President, signed by Joshua Bolton, Director, as of yesterday, July 15.

We find out why Mitch left town. Mitch Daniels is gone. Now we know why Ari Fleischer is gone. Both Mitch and Ari skipped town. Why? Just look at this document. They have no tricky answers for this one. This is the Administration's writing, and I am reading on page 1 their statement:

The deficit for 2003 is now estimated at $455 billion.

That is on page 1. One learns, after years up here, how to read these things. So on page 57, you get to the actual deficit, how much we get in revenues and how much we spend, and if spending exceeds revenues, then there is a deficit. If we look at table 20 on page 57, we will find the total gross Federal debt for 2002 was $6,198,000,000,000 and it will go up to $6,896,000,000,000 this year. That is why Mitch left town. Compute that and the deficit will not be an estimated $455 billion; it will be $698 billion. They estimate a $698 billion deficit for the year 2003.

But, wait, we have actual numbers as of this minute. As of July 14th, yesterday, the Treasury says the debt to the penny is $478 billion. So it is already more than the $455 billion they say it will be at the end of the year. I guess that is why Paul O'Neill left town, too. They are all leaving if they have anything to do with fiscal matters, and so now we have John Snow as Treasury Secretary.

What did President Bush say when he came to town? I have the exact quote, taken from his first address to a Joint Session of Congress in 2001:

To make sure the retirement savings of America's seniors are not diverted in any other program, my budget protects all $2.6 trillion of the Social Security surplus for Social Security and for Social Security alone.

Well, he is spending the trust funds when he says on page 1, $455 billion. He is spending $163 billion of Social Security,
plus another $30 billion of other trust funds.

What we have is a Social Security trust fund, the Medicare trust fund, the military retirees trust fund, the civil service retirees trust fund, the highway, the airport, the railway trust fund, the unemployment compensation trust fund—which will be drained, incidentally; we will have to fill that back up. We are spending it on any and everything but unemployment.
This is Enron bookkeeping. We are spending Social Security moneys on any and everything but Social Security.

But the President, when he was speaking when he was speaking right after he took office in February 2001, said that wasn't
all he was going to do.

He goes on and says:

We should approach our Nation's budget as any prudent family would, with a contingency fund for emergencies. We are going to have a contingency fund for emergencies or additional spending needs. My budget sets aside $1 trillion over 10 years for additional needs. That is 1 trillion additional reasons you can feel comfortable supporting this budget.

Now, Iraq and Afghanistan and the whole kit and kaboodle, put in Liberia and whatever country he wants to run to, we
have 14 peacekeeping missions, then we have Kuwait, then we have Afghanistan, then we have Iraq, and now he is looking for another country to send the military to. We don't have enough National Guard or anybody in uniform to get to that country, I can tell you that right now.

But that has not cost $1 trillion. It has not cost $1 trillion. But he had $1 trillion set aside before September 11, so why can't he pay for this out of that?

Now, let's find out what he said last year in the State of the Union:

Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible manner.

Well, all the spending bills were signed by President George W. Bush. So I take it since that was his admonition to us, he must have had that in mind for himself. And he signed only fiscally responsible budgets.

He also said:

The way out of this recession, the way to create jobs, is to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories and equipment and by speeding up tax relief so people will have more money to spend.

There were plenty of tax cuts, but he hasn't created any jobs.

One more—let's go to January of 2003, to what he said in his State of the Union then:

We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations. Tax relief will help our economy immediately.

Immediately? He got yet more tax cuts, and we still have 3.8 million Americans, the highest in 20 years, receiving unemployment compensation. There have been over 3 million Americans who have lost their jobs since President Bush took office.

I think of President Clinton. He created 20 million jobs, and President Bush already has lost 3 million. Where is the immediacy that his budget is going to take care of?

We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents and other generations.

That is exactly what we are doing—$698 billion in bills. Mark it down. Poor Mitch, he got free. Mitch Daniels escaped to Indiana. He did not want to come before the Budget Committee and answer any questions, I tell you, and Ari Fleischer says: This is enough for me, I'm gone. Everybody is going to run—out of Washington.

I have worked with the Senator from West Virginia and my chairman, Senator Inouye, who is most responsible on budget matters and we balanced the budget. They want to forget that. Eight years under William Jefferson Clinton and we came from a $403 billion deficit in 1992 to finally getting in the black. We gradually got it down. I voted to increase taxes on Social Security. I voted to increase gas taxes. I voted for all of those tax increases and we acted responsibly.

George W. Bush comes to town and what does he do? He says: Tomorrow, don't worry about it. He has some fellow hidden out in the Pacific, he is far enough from Washington, out in California and Boston who says, don't worry about deficits and all. The youngsters are keeping IRA savings accounts and when their IRA savings accounts trigger you will not have to worry about deficits. There is no conscience with this charade. This is the best off-Broadway show you will find going on in the National Government, the National Congress.

I hope we can sober up and pull in our horns. We have so much manpower. We do not have the manpower of the Chinese. We have to maintain our security on the superiority of technology, and Iraq proved that. We had the superior technology. But we have been cutting back on that.

I have a hearing tomorrow morning where we are going to be cutting back the advanced technology. We are cutting back on education programs. We are cutting back on all the important investments.

I ask unanimous consent to print page 1 and page 57 of the Midsession Review for the fiscal year 2004 of the budget of the U.S. Government in the RECORD.

Mr. HOLLINGS. There you go. Instead of $455 billion in deficits, we are running right this minute, according to the Secretary of the Treasury, in excess of $455 billion. We do not have to wait until the end of September. We are already up to $470 billion.

The "Public Debt to the Penny," I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Otherwise, you have heard the comments. It is going up to $698 billion, and it will probably be even more than that. They are trying to be as conservative as they can, I take it.

I appreciate the distinguished author of the amendment yielding me time to talk on a peripheral matter. But it goes right to the heart of why they do not include money for Iraq in the Defense appropriations bills.

Mr. BYRD. That is right. What the Senator has been quoting isn't included either. They don't include the cost of the war.
Mr. HOLLINGS. No, they don't put in the cost of the war.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. I would be delighted to yield to the Senator.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I think the point just made by the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from South Carolina is most important. With this misinformation about the budget, isn't it curious that it comes at a time when we are discussing the Defense appropriations bill? There is not one penny in this bill, as pointed out by the Senator from West Virginia, for the war in Iraq. Just in Iraq, the war is costing $1 billion a week—$4 billion a month. That doesn't include all of the other necessary military expenditures, such as in Afghanistan and in Bosnia. Yet we are considering a Defense
appropriations bill that does not have any money in here for the war in Iraq.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield right there?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from South Carolina controls the time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I have the floor. I would be glad to yield to the distinguished Senator from Alaska for a comment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina has the floor.

Mr. STEVENS. The money to pay the salaries for everyone in Iraq is in this bill. The money to pay for operations is in this bill. The problem is the special money for the deployment costs were in the supplemental which we already passed. There was more than was necessary. We have already taken $3 billion out of that. They are operating on what is left. We appropriated $60-plus billion before.

Let me assure the Senator that there is money in this bill for Iraq. There is money to pay the salaries and support for the military personnel. Some 60 percent of the money in this bill is support for them. It is there. No matter where they are in the world, they are paid from money in this bill.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Let me yield the floor so the Senator from West Virginia can straighten the point out.

Mr. BYRD. The men and women are being paid their salaries, even if they are from West Virginia. If they were all from West Virginia, they would be paid their salaries. We are talking about the additional costs, the incremental costs, and how much it costs this country to wage war in Iraq per month. We are not talking about the salaries. They get paid no matter where they are. We are talking about the additional costs of Iraq. Let us be clear about that. Additional costs are almost $1 billion a day for Iraq.

Mr. STEVENS. No.

Mr. BYRD. One billion dollars a week. That was a misstatement. I know better than that—$1 billion a week.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator from West Virginia yield?

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, this Senator would like for the Senator from West Virginia to clarify, since the Senator from South Carolina has pointed out that we are talking about an annual deficit not close to $500 billion but now it might be approaching a $700 billion annual deficit, is that not all the more the responsibility of the Senate, which is part of the legislative branch? Under the Constitution, it is supposed to control the purse strings. Would that not make it all the more incumbent upon us to insist on what is going to be the supplemental bill to pay for the war so that we exercise our constitutional duty?

Mr. BYRD. Absolutely. The American people are entitled to know that. They are going to pay the bill.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the distinguished Senator yield so I can bring this into focus?

Mr. BYRD. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, if you took the cumulative deficits from President Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Nixon, and President Ford—if you took the deficits for all of the 30 some years which these six President's ran up—it would add up to $358 billion. The deficit this year, according to this President, is going to be almost at $700 billion.

Look at page 57 from the Mid-Session Review released today. See where the gross debt from 2002 to September 30, 2003, is in black and white; that is almost $700 billion. We are doubling the 30 plus-year deficit of Republican and Democratic Presidents—paying for the cost of World War II, all the costs of Korea, all the costs of 10 years in Vietnam. We always paid our way.

Abraham Lincoln, the father of the party over there on the other side of the aisle, put a tax on dividends and on estates in order to pay for the Civil War.

Now you folks come and want to take the tax off dividends, saying there is no tomorrow.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. I would be delighted to yield.

Mr. INHOFE. I know it is a difficult thing to deal with when you talk about the benefits of reducing taxes and giving people more choices to do with it what they wish. A great Democrat President, John F. Kennedy, back in the 1960s, said: We need to have more money to put these programs together, and the best way to increase revenues is to decrease marginal rates. He did that, and increased revenues nearly a third.

In 1980, the total amount of money that was raised from marginal rates was $244 billion. In 1990, it was $466 billion. It almost doubled in the period of time that the greatest reduction in rates took place.

Every time since World War I, this has happened when we did that.

This Senator doesn't like to sit here and hear somebody talking about reducing rates and, therefore, that is the reason for the
deficit.

Mr. HOLLINGS. According to the Concord Coalition—let me refer first to them—you have diminished revenues $3.12 trillion in 3 years and three tax cuts.

I know the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma doesn't want to refer to the loss of all those revenues. But when the market sees that, they say: Well, wait a minute. Yes, you can cut the interest rate a quarter of a point under Alan Greenspan. But that means the Government will be crowding the financial market with its sharp elbows crowding out corporate finance, and they freeze in place. And we run huge deficits in the balance of trade. We are running trade deficits of $500 billion, that is $1.5 billion a day. The foreign investors who helped cause that bubble are frozen in place. Then the poor worker finds as he opens his mouth that his job has gone overseas, so he gets lockjaw and freezes in place.

This is not like Jack Kennedy who inherited almost a balanced budget. We started this fiscal year with $428 billion in
budget deficits from last year. This year, it is $698 billion, according to the President of the United States.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator will yield on that point.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. This Senator wants to bring up the point that there is no reason to come in here and talk about which party was responsible. We all know, and the Senator from South Carolina knows, that the recession we are in right now began in March of 2000.

Mr. HOLLINGS. It only lasted for 3 years.

Mr. INHOFE. Not under a Republican administration. If the Senator feels strongly about believing the Concord Coalition over that great former President John Kennedy, it is his option to do that.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right. It is bipartisan. Kennedy wasn't bipartisan. He was a Democrat. This is bipartisan.

Mr. INHOFE. I didn't say he was bipartisan. He said he advocated a reduction in tax rates to increase revenue, and it worked. Look at the Democrat Governor out in New Mexico who did the same thing. It is one of the very few States that is increasing revenue right now. He is the only Governor I know—Democrat or Republican—who is reducing marginal rates.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I am sure these other nine Republican Governors quoted in this "Budget Woes Trickle Down"—I am sure they would love to be able to reduce rates. I know my Republican Governor of South Carolina would love to reduce rates. They are not given that option. This "Budget Woes Trickle Down" and those nine Republican Governors are having to raise taxes. Kentucky let the prisoners out. They are cutting back all the programs. Higher education is decimated. Every college president is increasing tuition.

"Budget Woes Trickle Down." They are not cutting taxes.

Let's get right to where we are.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator will yield, I agree they are not cutting taxes. One of the Democrat Governors is cutting taxes and look what is happening to the revenues out in the State of New Mexico. They are going up.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Bill Richardson is the only exception I have been able to find.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I want to ask the Senator, when this Senator was assigned to the Budget Committee and the administration came forth with a budget, I questioned the figures because what was expressed was that we were not going to raid the Social Security trust fund to pay the normal expenditures of Government. Clearly, that is what the people in the country do not want. They do not want the Social Security trust fund raided to pay for expenses.

Now, the Senator has come up with a new budget document that is saying the annual deficit could be as high as $500 billion
but it could also be, by the words on the paper, $700 billion?

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right, $698 billion—spending Social Security tax moneys. That is the revenues. That is how they get to the $455 billion on page 1.

But let me point this out because we were here in 1983, and the distinguished Chair remembers this, we had the Greenspan commission. That really started over on the House side with our good friend Wilbur Mills, who had been chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He upped the ante along with President Nixon, decimating the trust fund.

So by the end of the 1970s we appointed the Greenspan commission. After a 3-year study, they came with section 21. It says we are going to have an inordinate increase in payroll taxes, graduated up so as to take care of the baby boomers in the next generation. Section 21 says: And put this money in trust and don't spend it on anything but Social Security.

Now my friend from Florida, what happens is, it took us from 1983 to 1990, I think it was. It was on November 5, 1990, George Walker Herbert Bush, President Bush's father, he signed into law section 13301. Section 13301 of the Budget Act, says: You shall not report a budget, either the President or the Congress, spending Social Security trust funds on anything other than Social Security. We put that into law and they continued to violate it. They continued to spend it. That is 13301.

The vote in the Senate was 98 to 2 for that particular provision. It is in the law today, in the Budget Act. But that is what they are doing. That is when the distinguished President started off and he took office in 2001 and he said: I am setting aside $2.3 trillion to take care of the needs of Social Security.

He was following through on a pledge that he made in the campaign. But we spend Social Security moneys on any and everything but Social Security, and run around like a dog chasing his tail saying we have to fix Social Security, we have to fix Social Security, we have to fix it, and they have all kinds of plans: invest in the stock market, get an IRA, take this percent, that percent, retire early, don't retire—you know, on and on.

All they need do is obey section 13301 of the law, the Budget Act, and not spend Social Security revenues on anything and everything but Social Security. That is all they have to do.

I yield the floor.