Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 12, 2007)

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I want to build on the comments by my colleague from Wisconsin, but I also want to talk a little bit about this amendment and the previous amendment. I tried to talk about it, but did not get recognized by the chairman, unfortunately.

Mr. Chairman, I am very much concerned about the need for us to restore fiscal discipline to this House. I have only been here a little over one term. I am in my second term. I came here with the notion that Republicans would be people who cared about fiscal discipline. We did not care about fiscal discipline as much as I would have liked for us to, but we made a start in the right direction, and I was pleased about that.

Now what we are trying to do is bring more fiscal discipline to this House and to spending. We do have a broken process.

I find it really interesting that the gentleman on other side of the aisle, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is talking about our trying to shut this place down. I think that he has a very funny definition of this open process and this open rule and our being able to offer amendments. That is the way I thought a democracy operated.

Saying that we are trying to ``shut the place down'' by doing our jobs is a little disingenuous, I think. I think that is coming because in the last 5 months you all have become so used to ramming things through with no opportunity for amendments that you find this a very unusual process. Well, we intend to use the opportunity available to us to offer amendments every chance we get.

He also made the comment that we are taking up the time of this body to do frivolous things. Well, again, this is the job that we are elected to do. We are not taking up the time of the body. We are doing what we are supposed to be doing.

You spent 3 months dealing with what we considered a frivolous exercise in talking about not funding our troops serving overseas, trying to protect us so we can do the very things that we are doing; and you didn't want to give them the money that they needed in order to be able to do that. That is where a lot of time was wasted, as far as I'm concerned.

I want to also talk about some comments that have been made by members of the other party that show that there were some people who made promises that have not been kept.

This quote is from 1-5-2007 from the gentleman from Alabama. ``Today, we made a strong commitment to returning fiscal responsibility to Congress. It is vital that Congress improves its stewardship of the taxpayers' money so we do not pass along today's spending tabs to our children and grandchildren.''

That is a Democratic Member from Alabama. That is what we are talking about here today. We want to make cuts in this unnecessary spending so that we're not passing along these bills to our grandchildren and children.

From the chairman of this very subcommittee, ``This bill mandates that all grants and contract funds be awarded through full and open competitive processes, except when other funding distribution mechanisms are required by statute. This approach creates a level playing field and also ensures that there are no congressional or administration earmarks in the bill.''

Well, that is very different from what we know is going to be happening on this bill, where these earmarks are going to be ``air dropped,'' as we say, later on, after the bill has already been passed, and people don't get a chance to react to those earmarks.

Another Member from Arizona: ``The American people deserve nothing less than a government that is fully accountable and completely transparent. They need to know that their elected Representatives are focused on the public interest, not the special interests and not the lobbyists' interests.''

In the last amendment that was offered, we wanted to do more to increase what is happening in national security. No. You all prefer to spend a lot more money on bureaucracy.

I am very pleased that you are going to take this amendment offered by my colleague from Iowa. I think that is a step in the right direction. But we need to do a lot more of that. We need to cut funding here, and we need to make sure that you fulfill the promises that you made so strongly last fall and at the beginning of this session.

Let's make this earmark process transparent. Let's know what is going to be funded in these bills. Let's put it all out there. And let's have the open debate that you promised we would have.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I was just back in the cloakroom getting a little bit of the news of the outside world. And the outside world is focusing on what we are doing here.

There was a long segment on Fox News about the issue that we are discussing here today. And they actually did a fairly good job of characterizing what is happening here. They talked about the fact that, as a result of a lot of discussion about the plans by the majority to take away our opportunities to have transparency in the earmark process, one person is going to be making those decisions as to whether or not the earmarks are right. We are not going to be able to vote on them.

They said, I think very correctly, that that is not what the American people were promised last year. And one of them, not known as a flaming conservative, I have to say, said what the American people wanted was maximum scrutiny and maximum sunshine on the process.

And I again want to bring some quotes to our discussion to remind people of some of the things that were promised. The Speaker of the House said last December, ``We will bring transparency and openness to the budget process and to the use of earmarks, and we will give the American people the leadership they deserve.''

Well, I don't think the American people deserve what they are being given by the majority party. I call it the ``house of hypocrisy'' and an ``attitude of arrogance.'' The attitude of arrogance is so pervasive on the other side that it has become something that even the press is talking about. We don't normally get that kind of coverage on what is happening here in the kind of detail that they are coming out with, and I think it is good for the American people.

Another quote by the majority leader: ``We are going to adopt rules that make the system of legislation transparent so that we don't legislate in the dark of night ..... We need to have earmarks subject to more debate. That's what debate and public awareness is all about. Democracy works if people know what's going on.''

Earlier this evening the chairman of the Appropriations Committee accused us of simply wanting to slow down the process by our bringing up amendments and raising the issues about what this bill does. And yet his own leader says, ``Democracy works if people know what's going on.''

But the majority party wants to keep the people from knowing what's going on. They have an attitude of arrogance. They know best. The people don't know best. Our side of the aisle doesn't know best. Only one or two people know best in here.

Some other Members, some of the freshman Members actually, who were elected last year on the basis of openness in government and reform in government, the gentleman from New York: ``Mr. Chairman, we have a responsibility to the American people to spend their hard-earned tax dollars in a fiscally responsible way.''

Some of my colleagues have just outlined the deficit problem that we have and how pretty soon almost all the Federal dollars are going to be spent on Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, with nothing left. We are spending ourselves into a terrible deficit situation.

Another freshman, this time from Florida: ``Congress will not reestablish its credibility and trust with the American people until accountability and oversight is established in Washington.'' A grammatical error there, but that is the quote.

That is what the American people want. That is what they were promised last fall. They are not getting it.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would reduce the Office of General Counsel in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management account to the FY 2007 level representing a $1.241 million reduction from $14 million to $12,759,000. The bill's current funding level for this office represents a 10 percent increase over FY 2007, enacted.

There has been at least $105.5 billion in Federal spending over 5 years authorized by the House Democrat leadership this year. The current Federal debt is $8.8 trillion, roughly $29,000 for every U.S. citizen.

This is growing by over $1 billion a day. We know that because every day we walk down the halls of these buildings here, and we see the signs that the Blue Dogs have put out, which remind us what the current Federal debt is and how much it is for every single U.S. citizen.

Spending on the programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, is out of control, and within a generation will force either significant cutbacks in services and benefits or massive tax increases. We know that is already happening because the Democratic majority has already recommended the largest tax increase in the history of this country through their budget they adopted earlier this year.

The Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have been warning Congress that the growth in direct spending, for instance, spending that is on autopilot and outside the annual spending process, is occurring at an unsustainable rate due to well-known demographic trends and other factors. That spending, subject to the annual spending process, has also grown exponentially and must be brought under control.

This amendment is one step of many necessary steps enforcing fiscal discipline and sanity upon the Federal Government and out-of-control Federal deficit spending. We must restore fiscal discipline and find both commonsense and innovative new ways to do more with less. The Federal budget must not grow faster than American families' ability to pay for it.

We have been hearing a lot here tonight about fiscal responsibility and spending, taxes and deficits. There was a lot of talk about these things during the last election. I think there is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there right now, and I want to take a few minutes to give people a heads-up on what's going on.

This debate and all this talk need some context and some simple facts. Speaker Pelosi said on September 12, 2006, ``Democrats are committed to ending years of irresponsible budget policies that have produced historic deficits. Instead of piling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore pay-as-you-go budget discipline.''

If you want to know exactly what's not going to happen to the Federal budget under this Congress, listen to that statement. PAYGO will not touch a cent of the trillions of dollars with which we have saddled our children and grandchildren. Furthermore, new spending will be proposed and taxes raised to pay for it.

That's what we are seeing here, and that's what this debate is all about. The plan is to spend more than ever, repeal tax relief and allow the trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities to go on unreformed, all under the veneer of fiscal responsibility called PAYGO.

I am down here now because I want people to know this, and to know what it means. I want to put this debate in context.

This bill and the others we will debate in the coming weeks mean that the Federal Government is going to cost you more. You are going to pay more than you ever have before in taxes. I think we need to talk about that.

People can deny it and spin it any way they want, but the cost of the Federal Government is going to increase under the current fiscal plan. This is in spite of the fact that Americans already pay a staggering amount of money, but Democrats want more. They always do and they always will, even though the average American worked about 125.6 days in 2005 to pay for Federal, State and local spending.

Guess where the largest part of it went. To the politicians right here in Washington. In 2005, the average American worked about 83 days to pay for Federal spending. Guess what, it's not enough. These numbers are set to increase as far as the eye can see.

Now, let's just put Federal spending into context.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman's time has expired.

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent, since the House was not in order, for another minute.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman will have another minute, but the Chair will, for the edification of all Members, point out that the very able timekeepers do stop the clock when Members are interrupted.

Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from North Carolina?

There was no objection.

Ms. FOXX. Let's just put Federal spending into context. Do you know that the United States Federal Government is on track to spend more money next year than Germany's entire economy in 2005? Germany is and has been the third largest economy in the world.

There are only two countries in the world with entire economies larger than the U.S. Government budget, the United States itself and Japan. Do you know that next fiscal year, the fiscal year we are considering now, the U.S. Government is on track to spend $700 billion more, $700 billion more. That's more than the entire Chinese economy in 2005.

We are on a spending spree that needs to stop. It's called a tax-and-spend policy. That's the model. It hasn't changed.

So I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment and make a very small dent in this unsustainable fiscal policy.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I thank my colleagues for coming and supporting my amendment tonight. I thank them for the points that they are bringing up.

The gentleman from Tennessee is doing an excellent job in his first year here in the Congress.

I also want to thank my colleague from California who made a really excellent point that is something that needs to be made over and over again. When we try to cut back additional spending, it is always a cut, not raising money. Not raising spending is a cut to Democrats. And I think that's a point that needs to be made over and over again. Not increasing spending is a cut. That's not the way the general public sees it.

I also want to point out the fact that we are working very hard to bring us to the point where we could have a balanced budget.

Americans do have to live with a balanced budget. Individual Americans have to. They have to live with the money they have now. But Congress doesn't do that. And this Congress particularly is looking for every way it possibly can to spend additional money and to tax the American public, which is certainly taxed enough.

This seems like, to the majority party, that this, again, is a cut. But Everett Dirksen, one of my heroes, said, a million here and million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. That was during the time when they were not billions.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my colleague from Ohio's yielding to me, and I appreciate the comments that he made.

I want to also echo how much I appreciate our colleague from Indiana, who has been in the House for several years and came through a time when the Democrats were in the majority. And as he points out, they were in the majority for 40 years, and they did spend this country almost into a situation where we could not get ourselves out of it. And I appreciate his bringing that up again. We need to do it over and over and over again, reminding the American people what they did.

I, frankly, thought that when they took the majority this time that they would act differently as they had promised in the election. But we now have what we know is a house of hypocrisy because they promised a lot to the American people and they have not fulfilled those promises.

I have been particularly disappointed in the Blue Dogs. As somebody has said, there are these charts all over our office buildings, and they tell us over and over and over that the current Federal debt is $8.8 trillion, roughly $29,000 for every United States citizen, and growing by $1 billion a day. But where are those Blue Dogs when we need them? Where are they, calling for fiscal restraint? They are going right along with their leadership, going ahead and increasing the deficit every day and doing all that they can to increase the deficit. I would like to know where they are and why they aren't being responsible, as they promised they would be.

And I want to give us another quote to tie into what my colleagues have been saying. This is from Speaker Pelosi in a floor speech she made on January 7: ``After years of historic deficits, this new Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: pay as you go, no new deficit spending. Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt.''

And yet, as has been pointed out over and over and over again, there has been at least $105.5 billion in new Federal spending over 5 years that has been authorized by the House Democrat leadership this year. That doesn't sound to me like we are committed to a higher standard of ``pay as you go, no new deficit spending.''

I am also concerned about what this is doing to the American public and how cynical it is making the people. They can't count on the Democrats to do what they said they were going to do.

We have also heard tonight that we are trying to slow down the process, and I checked about that in terms of what happened last year on this bill. It took 2 full legislative days to debate this bill last year during this process, and the Democrats offered over 70 amendments to that bill. I find it really ironic that the chairman of the Appropriations Committee now says to us, as the Republicans, that we are trying to slow down the process when we are exercising our responsibility as American citizens to try to slow down this incredible spending that the Democrats want to do, increase the deficit, increase taxes. They are saying to us, you are trying to slow down the process.

They wanted this week to do four complete appropriations bills. They frittered away their time for 3 months, blamed it on the minority, saying they are not in control of what is going on here.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, there's been a lot said tonight by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee about how the numbers of earmarks have gone up over the years, or went up over the years that Republicans were in charge. But nary a word has been said about the fact that the Democrats were getting a large proportion of those earmarks. So I think we ought to talk a little bit about the fact that Democrats were getting some of those evil earmarks that they campaigned so hard against last year.

For example, actually, in 1996, the first year that Republicans were in charge and did the budget, the number of earmarks actually went down. The last year that the Democrats did their budget, the earmarks were 1,439. The first year that Republicans were in charge, the earmarks went down to 958. Of the 958, the Democrats had 40 percent, 383.

Now, it is true that the number of earmarks went up over the years. In 1997 they went to 1,596. Democrats had 638 of those earmarks.

In 2005 the number did go up to 13,996, and Democrats had 5,599 of those. So if they were so evil in those days, it's hard to understand how you could have been claiming such a large proportion of them.

Obviously you all missed the point in the debate about these earmarks. Many Republicans believe in earmarks. We think that it is the right of the Congress to appropriate money to certain projects. That's not the issue.

The issue is you campaigned on transparency and changing the system.

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