Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2006
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (House of Representatives - March 16, 2005)
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, today we are here to debate the budget resolution for 2006, the Federal Government spending blueprint that will guide all of this Congress' spending and revenue decisions for the coming fiscal year.
Let me start by thanking my staff on both sides, Republicans and Democrats. What Members will hear today, this is probably one of the heartiest debates of the year when we talk about the priorities for the coming year. As Members might imagine, because we come from different backgrounds and different States and different philosophies, we have different ideas of what is important, Members will hear quite a bit of debate from time to time that will sound rancorous. It will sound like we do not agree on anything and everything is going to be difficult, and I do not think it is quite that bad.
We have some pretty important priorities that we all agree upon, and we share a number of the goals. How to achieve those goals is in part the budget process: how are we going to get it done, and how are we going to accomplish it. That, unfortunately, gets into the details where we may disagree.
I thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), my partner and friend who will come forthwith his own budget today, and we appreciate that. Members will hear his ideas and our ideas. We will get to debate those ideas, and we will come out at the other end with a better understanding of exactly how both sides will approach the problem, the challenges we will have; and we will hear about some of the ways to solve this.
Long before today, long before this debate started and quite honestly before we received the President's budget, we knew what the priorities were going to have to be. If you attend any town meeting in Iowa or across the country, Members are going to hear these same kinds of themes: we have to keep the country strong and defended. If we are not strong, we are not free; and if we are not free, we have lost everything. We have lost the most important gift we have been given, that has been bestowed on us, and that we feel so passionate about being able to bestow on generations to come here in this country and around the world. We need to continue to be strong.
Second, we need to continue to grow the economy. We really do. We need to create jobs and keep the opportunities flowing for our kids and grandkids because we know when we are strong and growing, we are able to accomplish so much in the world. Our economy must continue to grow.
Last but not least, and I can tell Members this is true wherever you go, people around the country are frustrated by the attitude and almost arrogance that government can solve all of our problems, that somehow another government program will solve the problem, or more government bureaucracy or more government regulations or just another law or more employees working in fancy white buildings downtown, if we would only do that we would solve the problem, and that means spend much more money, too much money.
So America's continued greatness comes from, I believe, the unlimited opportunities that our freedom provides, but we have to get our hands around this out-of-control, unsustainable spending. Right along with our well-meaning folks who come along, we have created a government that is too big and spends too much, and we have to get control of that spending if we are going to be successful.
As I have said, these must be our Nation's highest priorities, continued strength, continued growth, and making sure we can restrain spending because none of the rest of it, all of the good things that the Federal Government does in so many areas such as education and health care and veterans benefits and agriculture and transportation and energy and science, I could go on and on, we all have our favorite areas where we think the government ought to invest, but none of that continues to happen, none of that will be achieved if we are not strong, if our economy does not grow, and if we cannot get our arms around the spending.
So we chose to write a budget that ensures that first and foremost our needs must be met, gives all other priorities a fair shake, that is what the budget process does, it puts in a $50 billion what we call a place holder, recognizing that we need to fund next year's likely emergency request for the war on terror, we have to plan for that; and it continues the progress that we have made in reducing the deficit and getting our spending on a sustainable path.
Last year was really the first year that we have been able to move beyond the crisis mode that we have had in our budget in response to September 11, 2001. We began a path to get hold of our out-of-control spending and to reduce the deficit. We had, I think, some pretty good success. We ought to recognize that we made some progress last year and realize how it happened. Despite cries from many different quarters in the country that all we need to do is just raise some taxes, tax the wealthy is always what people say, tax all those small businesses that are creating jobs, tax those farmers, tax those families that are sending their kids to college and are trying to make ends meet around their kitchen table, just give them more taxes and we will solve the problem. We decided we were not going to raise taxes. As a result of that, the economy continued to expand, and, due in large part to those economic policies, we now have strong, sustained economic growth and job creation. We also, for the first time in a long time, managed to slow the rate of this nonsecurity spending that has been out there, for the first time below the rate of inflation. I think that is a whole lot more reasonable than what we saw in years past.
Let me just show my colleagues what we did last year. This is what happened in just one year. The President when he came in, almost a year ago right now, the budget deficit was going to look like this, $521 billion. We all said that was not what we wanted, that we did not want to do that. We wanted to see if we could get our arms around it last year.
We knew it was going to be tough. We knew there were going to be all sorts of complaining, claims that we were not keeping the priorities straight, but when the President started, this is where we started, at $521 billion. In one year alone, 20 percent, $109 billion was reduced on that deficit. $109 billion or 20 percent in one year.
Why? Two reasons. Number one, the economy grew. The economy grew faster than anybody expected, because when you unleash this 10-plus-trillion-dollar economy and allow it to just chug along and create jobs and have people investing and creating those opportunities for our young people around the country and others to make money for themselves and deal with their own problems and their own challenges, our economy is a wonderful thing and when it has just a little bit more growth than we expect, that brings in a lot of revenue to our Treasury. In one year, we reduced the deficit 20 percent. In that same year, even with tax reductions, more money came into the Treasury than the year before. This is not a science experiment. It is a fact. When you reduce taxes and you cause economic growth, oftentimes, and last year was an example of this and already we are seeing it this year, more money comes into the Treasury. That combined with holding the rate of growth of spending, we were able to reduce that deficit and get back eventually to balance. We took the first steps by keeping the economy growing, creating jobs, beginning to restrain this out-of-control spending.
But while both of these items are critical alone, they are not going to get the job done. We have so many Members who understand that every year we come down to the floor on appropriation bills and we battle over a million here and a million there, and I know it all adds up, but there is a part of the budget that is not being addressed. I will get to that in just a moment.
This year in the budget, much like the President's budget, we take the necessary next step for slowing spending, at the same time ensuring that our priorities are met. This includes reducing the top line number for all the nonhomeland, nondefense spending by eight-tenths of 1 percent. What we are doing is we are saying we are going to take the President's number for defense and for homeland security, we want to keep the country strong, but in all other areas of our discretionary spending, we are going to start weeding the garden. We want to look through all of those programs and find ways to save money, find ways for us to reform programs, find places where we are wasting money, where money is not being spent appropriately, and as a result of that be able to reduce some of those increases.
Additionally, and probably more important, this budget begins to address the unsustainable growth on the other side of the budget, the 55 percent of the spending that simply operates automatically. This is the dirty secret of budgeting that most Members do not want to talk about and that is what we call mandatory spending. What is mandatory? What could possibly be mandatory about spending in Washington? When Congress sets up a law that says a check is going to be written if certain eligibility is met and regardless of any other changes in demographics or anything else, money just keeps going out, the program keeps chugging along, without any checks, without any balances, without any opportunities to take a look at whether the program is meeting the needs. That is automatic spending. That is the mandatory spending.
What we did a number of years ago in welfare reform is we said the program is not helping people, it is not helping families, it is locking people into the dependency on government, asking no personal responsibility in return. Unless we reform the program, we are not going to get our spending under control. People are just going to keep getting the checks and nothing is going to ever change. Generation upon generation was going to be locked in this spending. And so what we did just 10 years ago and what we want to do again here is tackle some of that automatic spending.
Let me show you what is happening to it. The yellow area here is the portion of the budget that back in 1995 when we tackled welfare reform was about half of the budget, this entitlement spending or automatic spending. We tackled it back then. Thank goodness we did because it was growing out of control in the welfare programs. We now need to look in other areas because look what has happened in just 10 years. In just 10 years, more than half of the budget is now done automatically, is not going to be done on the floor here, in our appropriations process, is not going to have the oversight, is not going to have the opportunity to reform because we are not paying attention to it in our budget. This year we are. This year we are going to. This year we are going to ask the committees to reform the programs and begin weeding the garden, looking for ways to deliver these programs more efficiently.
Why? Because as we see, if we do nothing, it grows unsustainably out of control, which is the word the Governors use for Medicaid, unsustainable. The Medicaid program is unsustainable. They know it is growing too fast. They know that on an average year, Medicaid grows 7.5 percent. Out of control. 7.5 percent. And so this year what we are going to do is we are going to begin to tackle this automatic spending. Our current rate of growth of spending in this mandatory area is 6.4 percent. All of it is growing at 6.4 percent. Nothing changes. 6.4 percent. Again, every year, another 6 percent, every year growing and compounding and growing and Congress is doing nothing. Our constituents are getting frustrated. And so what we need to do is we need to go in and reduce that growth just one-tenth of 1 percent. That is all we are asking for. We are saying instead of growing at 6.4 percent, it is going to keep growing at 6.3 percent. But let us get the committees and let us get the Congress and let us get the Governors into a room and let us begin talking about these programs, reforming them and getting them under control.
I will note that there is a very interesting phenomenon about this decision to slow the rate of growth which ends up being about one-tenth of 1 percent over the next 5 years. It has created a very interesting phenomenon, because what happens about this time of year is people come to the floor and they start saying things like, oh, these cuts are outrageous, these cuts are unconscionable. Why do they keep calling it cuts? Because in Washington, a cut is a decrease in an anticipated increase.
Let me explain what I am saying here. What I am saying here is that in Washington, if you do not get what you expected from one year to the next, if you do not get the increase you thought you were going to get, they run to the floor, they run to the press conferences, they run to wherever it is they can run and complain and suggest that they are being cut. It would be as if your son came to you and you have been negotiating your lawn mowing fee, his allowance maybe over the last number of years and you were able to pay him 10 bucks every time he mowed the lawn. This year he came to you and he said, ``Dad, I want 15.'' You said, ``Son, I love you. You're a great son. You do a great job. I'd like you to trim a little bit more, but you're doing a pretty good job with the lawn.
I'm not going to give you 15, I'm going to give you 12.'' If he ran to the microphones with a lot of people around here, they would claim he was cut $3. My goodness, what an outrage. You should love your son. You should love what he does to your lawn, that he should get an increase to $15. My goodness, what an outrage, instead of recognizing that it was a $2 increase. That happens so often around here.
I understand that we are going to hear some of that rhetoric today, but we are slowing the rate of growth. We are just saying it needs to be slowed down. Just slow it down. Let us reform the programs. Let us get the people in a room who need to be part of the discussion to reform these programs and let us slow down the spending and make sure that the programs that we are talking about, which are so vitally important to people, take the food stamp program. That is for people who are hungry. Take the Medicaid program. That is for people who do not have health care. Take a number of these programs and suggest that they should grow out of control? Or suggest they should meet the changing needs of a population, and that is something that we have to continue to do and it requires constant weeding of the garden and constant attention if we are going to get that done.
The problems facing our mandatory spending did not happen overnight. We are not going to fix this overnight. We are not suggesting this is being fixed overnight. It is like going from 60 miles an hour to slam on the brakes to zero? No. That is not what we are doing. We are just saying, slow down, figure out a way to make these reforms.
One thing I will guarantee you is that if there is no budget, if you do not put these kinds of instructions into the budget, if there is no budget or if an entity or a Member comes to the floor with a budget today that does not have these serious kinds of instructions in the budget to reform the programs, I will guarantee you they will not get fixed. I would suggest to you doing nothing is not an option. You cannot complain about Medicaid and offer no solution. You cannot complain about the error rate in food stamps and say there is no solution. You cannot complain about these programs and say there is no solution.
We do not think there is a silver bullet but we want to set up a process to begin the discussion to fix these programs. We can do this. It is going to take time. The budget recognizes that, the budget we brought to the floor today, that we need a reasonable pace to get there. We set September as a deadline so we can invite all of the interested parties in to begin this. It builds on the critical work that we have done over the past number of years to shore up and strengthen national defense and create jobs and make sure that we continue our reduction in spending. I believe it is a doable, a fair and honest budget, one that we can work with the President in order to make sure it gets put into place.
I want to end with this. We plan to enforce this budget. This is a good budget. Just like last year, we plan to enforce this budget. Whether this is by way of announcement or however you want to do it, do not worry if we do not get an agreement with the Senate, with the other body. I understand that the other body has decided to walk away from the President on the budget. They are not going to do real reform. It does not look like they are going to try and control spending. I am very frustrated with what I see over from the other body. They are watering it down every step of the way. The courage unfortunately does not appear to be there in order to make some of these big changes that I think our Nation demands at this time. But I will tell you that in the House, just like last year, we enforced the budget. There was a controversy for those Congress watchers that have been brewing on the floor this week about people who wanted to really enforce the budget. Thank goodness we do that. Last year we enforced the budget. The Speaker did. I did.
We were able to hold the line on spending, keep within that budget. As a result, we got the deficit reduction that we needed. Just like last year, we will do that again this year. I do not need any special rules. I do not need any Member to tell me that that is how we ought to do it. That is my commitment. That is the Speaker's commitment. That is the majority's commitment. When we pass something, we mean it. That is what we lived under last year.
We have had terrible extra budgetary spending in an emergency basis. I understand people are frustrated with all the extra spending. I want to show it to you. Every year we have had to do extra spending. I understand that. On September 10, 2001, we had a surplus.
There is no question, we had a surplus on September 10 of 2001. We all know what happened the next day. And we all know and we all joined in the spending to meet the needs of our changed world. None of that was in the budget. We knew we had to do it. We knew we had to keep the economy strong. We knew we had to support our troops. We knew we had to combat terrorism. We knew we had to protect the country.
We decided we would do whatever it took. That is whatever it took. And it meant we had to run deficits. But just like last year, we made a commitment to reducing the deficit.
We did it 20 percent last year. We are going to do it again this year. We will get to cutting the deficit in half by 2009. We will get that accomplished and then some, and we will get back to balance. But we have got to stick to a plan.
We will do whatever it takes, not only to protect the country, but we will do whatever it takes not to pass on that legacy to the next generation. We cannot do it all in 1 day. We cannot do it all in 1 year.
We made progress last year. This budget builds on that progress, meets the needs of our country, and it is a good budget that I hope my colleagues adopt.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to have our Members talk a little bit about our continued strength as a Nation.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw), a member of our committee, to talk about national defense.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.
I say they have demanded and we are responding; but I do not hear any of them saying we want a tax increase like the Blue Dog budget is going to offer. That is not what they are saying.
We do not need more taxes to come into Washington from this oversized government. We do not need that from the Democratic substitute. We do not need it from the Blue Dog budget. We do not need a tax increase. There is not anybody balancing their checkbook around their kitchen table in Iowa saying, gee, Mom and Dad, let us figure out a way to pay more in taxes.
They want us to control spending. So we will talk about controlled spending.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam) to talk about the discretionary part of the budget.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, we do not need a Democratic tax increase. We need to keep the economy growing.
Mr. Chairman, to speak about that issue, I yield 10 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), vice chairman of the Budget Committee.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Portman) having assumed the chair, Mr. LaTourette, Chairman of the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 95) establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2006, revising appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal year 2005, and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2007 through 2010, had come to no resolution thereon.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.
Just to punctuate what the gentleman from Ohio and the gentlewoman from Connecticut said, we believe in local control; and we want to be partners with these communities in solving problems. We disagreed with the President in his budget with the changes that were made to the Community Development Block Grant; so we made that value judgment and change in this budget. We are supporting our mayors. We are supporting our communities. We want to be good partners, and we believe in local control in solving those problems. The big Federal Government cannot solve all these problems that these local folks are dealing with. We want to give them the opportunity to do that.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.
First let me compliment my friend from Texas (Mr. Cuellar), a new member of the committee. I appreciate his service. We have worked together on a number of issues. But let me give a slightly different tack from what he was suggesting with regard to our record on education because I think it is important for us to see what has come before.
First, with regard to education totals, as you can see, we have grown on an average of 9 percent a year for the last 5 years. There are not many programs around Washington that have grown that fast. Homeland security is the only other department that has grown at that rate. Nine percent. This is the total we have spent for education.
Again, is it enough? You might say no. Could we always spend more? Of course. But I want to put it in perspective. Nine percent annual growth over the last 5 years.
Title I, the main program that affects No Child Left Behind, has grown 10 percent per year since 2000 and was funded at $12 billion for fiscal year 2005. That annual growth, again, every year has gone up. Pell grants has grown 10 percent per year since 2000 and $12.4 billion in this fiscal year. No Child Left Behind has grown at 40 percent under President Bush. I understand there will always be this debate that programs are authorized at one level and then they are appropriated at yet another level. Everyone around here knows this, but it is a game that we play with our constituents. There is almost no program that is funded at its authorized level. That is not a floor. It is a ceiling. That is always the way it has been approached in Congress.
Special education, a program that I feel a personal affinity toward and it was a personal goal and leadership that I took with regard to special education to our States and to our schools and to our classrooms and for our kids with special needs, I am proud of what we have done. These green charts do not mean anything compared to what it has meant in the lives of the kids that are receiving a quality education and it has unlocked opportunity for them that is boundless. That is because we have invested some resources there.
I just want to end with this. It is not only about the money. We come down here with these green bar charts as if to say, if I spend this much it means that I don't care and if I spend this much it means that I care a little more, or here I am caring a little bit more now. Watch out, here I am caring some more. It is getting higher. I am caring even more.
And the more we spend, the more we care. And the more we invest, the more we care. And we measure by green charts the compassion, the caring, the value, as if money alone is the only measure.
I have got to tell my colleagues something. Take special education. Go talk to any one of their teachers back home in the special education classroom and ask them whether they have seen these increases in their classrooms. Do the Members know what is going on, Mr. Chairman? The States are taking that money, and it is not getting through their bureaucracy. We are getting this money out of Washington, but it is not getting to the classroom teacher teaching our child.
So their chart may look a little bit bigger; our chart may look a little bit bigger, and our charts look great, and if I care at $5 and they care at $6, maybe they care $1 more, and we get into all of this. And we are not looking at the results. We need to look at the results of these programs and find out whether they are getting to the kids in the classrooms. And I have got to tell my colleagues right now it is not. So we have got to provide the oversight. It cannot just be about the money.
And that is the last chart I want to show. For all of the chest beating about education and the priority, see that little red line of the total amount spent on education in our country? That is what the Federal Government kicks in. We are talking, on any given day, like about 6 percent. The people who are really doing the work here are our local school boards, our local State legislators, our local parents and community leaders. They are kicking in all this amount right here. That is what is being kicked in. It is this little red part that we all of a sudden think is so important and that we beat our chests about.
The Federal Government is not going to solve education, Mr. Chairman. Not with a big red line or a little red line or with this money or that amount of money. It is not about the money. It is about results. We have got to focus on results in education, and this budget accomplishes that.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the answer is yes to start with. First and foremost, I appreciate her leadership and concern about the research programs that we have for NASA. She does an excellent job there, and we really appreciate the leadership she takes in that.
The gentlewoman knows that the resolution, while it tracks the President's overall number, it does not make any specific decisions about the different funding levels that we have in some of these major categories. It goes actually back to what the gentleman was saying on education. We cannot find in the budget any of what the gentleman from Wisconsin just talked about in education. It is a great speech, but we cannot find it in the budget. And the same is true with so much of this.
So the Committee on Appropriations is the one that is going to make these determinations. The same is true for NASA. And we appreciate that her advocacy and mine is going to have to be brought to bear as we work on that.
So that being the case, I do commit to the gentlewoman to bring back from the conference language clarifying that the budget does not make these specific assumptions regarding the President's proposed level for these programs and urging that the levels for NASA should be reassessed. There is no question that R&D is important, and I know the appropriators agree with that. I know the gentlewoman from Virginia agrees with that. I agree with that, and I have no doubt that they will bring back a bill with that in mind.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
In response to my friend from Massachusetts, he is right and I agree with him. Let us get that in the RECORD right now. There are those moments in time. In fact, he was not here for our colloquy earlier; so let me just report to him. I am sure I am not going to get his vote, but I will report to him anyway. We agree with the local control aspects of CDBG. There are so many on our side, including myself and so many others, who agree that this is local control, local decision-making, getting this back to communities.
In the budget that we have, we did not take the President's assumption with regard to CDBG. We do not necessarily foreclose the ability to look at the program and make improvements. But we plussed-up the function for CDBG by $1.1 billion, and we increased it for that purpose; and we also did not make any assumption with regard to the President's new proposal of the Strengthening America's Communities Block Grant or transferring the program from HUD, Housing and Urban Development, to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The bottom line is there are many things that we will disagree with on budgets, and like I said, I doubt I am going to get the gentleman's vote, but I do think we have a bipartisan commitment to this. It is one area that I know we will continue to work on. And there may be other disagreements, but this is an area that we have worked on together.
I commend the gentleman for his leadership, and we are providing that leadership as well. And we hope the President can come forward with a little better rationale as to why this program, in particular, needed the changes that he proposed in his budget. If there are reforms that are needed, then let us reform the program. We will work together. If there are bad apples spoiling it for the rest of the bunch, then let us get rid of those bad apples. Let us figure that out. But let us not throw the baby out with the bath water. I agree with the gentleman.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to just respond and say it is fascinating. It is fascinating how we got into this situation. And if you heard the gentleman who just spoke, if you wondered whether or not he maybe had been reading the newspaper and may be forgetting all of the things that have been happening to our country over the last going on 4 years, you might wonder if anyone has been paying attention, because he is correct.
On September 10, 2001, we were running a surplus. There is no question that that was a good thing, something was very positive about that. But, unfortunately, we learned the very next morning that we had a homeland security deficit, that we had a national defense deficit. Our economy was already in a recession, and we found out we had an economic growth deficit. So even though there was more cash in the Federal Treasury than we were using, and you can call that a surplus, that did not mean we were meeting the needs of our country. There were many other challenges that we had to meet, and that next morning we found out.
And all of the votes, all of the spending votes, I will go back to the record, all of the spending votes that the gentleman was just talking about under our management, the gentleman from Illinois voted for; voting for our troops, voting for homeland security, voting for education. I will go back to each one of those appropriations bills and the gentleman from Illinois voted for each one of those. The only one he does not like, if you take away all of the clutter, is he wants to increase taxes. He did not like that part. But all of the spending he voted for.
So, let us just boil it down: There are people who want to increase taxes, and that is fine, and there are people who want to control spending, and that is also fine. But it is not all of this mismanagement.
People say Republicans did all of this mismanagement. I think Osama bin Laden had a lot more to do with where we are today with the deficit than anybody else, than anybody else.
Mr. Chairman, the purpose of me taking this time was just to remind everybody that it was not just Republicans that were here voting for those things, and there were probably a lot of reasons why we got into this situation that had nothing to do with JIM NUSSLE or the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel). It probably had more to do with Osama bin Laden than just about anybody else.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to my friend the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume to just respond gently, firmly in some respects to some of the characterizations I disagree with of the budget that I am presenting and the Republicans are presenting.
I definitely respect the Congressional Black Caucus in their effort to put together a budget. I admire anybody who tries to go through this process and comes out of the other end with an actual work product that they can come to the floor to defend.
So, as a result of that, I am pleased to yield time so that they can present that budget.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield) so that we can continue this discussion.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, first let me say to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), there is absolutely no one on the Democratic side that I admire more than the gentleman and the partnership we have in working on these budgets. This is the culmination when we come to the floor and have these debates, and I really respect the way he handled the debate. We appreciate that.
We disagree how we are going to accomplish the goals that our Nation needs to set, but we know the goals are pretty important. We have to keep the country strong. There is no question about that. It is really nonnegotiable. There is not a constituent I talk to that would suggest at this point in time in our history we do not want to protect the country. Our borders, everything from terrorism to illegals and drugs and all sorts of things coming into the country, we have to protect the country, number one.
Number two, we have to make sure that the economy keeps growing. That should not be an item up for negotiation. It is so important that families have the resources to deal with the challenges that they face every single day.
We come out here and talk about other people's money very easily on the floor of the House, what the taxpayers send us in order to solve problems; but we really do need to be mindful of the fact that the most important budget that we ought to be focused on is the budget decided and discussed and sweated over and argued about around kitchen tables across the country. That is such an important budget.
We worry about education here, but parents do that every night after their kids go to bed. We worry about health care here, but seniors do that every night when they are laying in a bed in a nursing home. We worry about creating jobs, but small business people do that every night in the quiet of their closed shop. They try and make sure their cash register all added up.
It is funny, I have heard people say we should not worry about the error rate in the food stamp program, which is now 6 percent. Mr. Chairman, 6 cents on every dollar in this country in food stamps is wasted. We say that is an improvement because it is down from 19 percent. The interesting and fascinating thing about that is if a small business person ended the night, closed that shop door and turned the open sign around to closed and rang up the cash register and they were missing six pennies, they would stay all night to find it, all night long to find those six pennies that did not add up in their cash register. But we say, oh, that is an improvement. Amazing. It really is amazing. That is what I turn to first.
This is the record of Federal Government spending over the last 10 years. In these numbers is what I was talking about, the concern of education, the concern of homeland security, the concern of national defense, the concern of job training, the concern of our environment, the concern of transportation, the concern of research and development. All of the concerns that we have talked about are embodied in numbers because in Washington we define compassion from one year to the next, solutions from one year to the next of spending more.
We have all seen that. If I spend just a little bit more from one year to the next year, I must care, I must be solving problems, I must be dealing with real solutions. If I just spend a little bit more money, I will solve all of the problems in the country. Every problem that every family ever addressed around their kitchen table can be solved with just a little bit more Washington spending. That is the fallacy of what we are debating tonight, and that is that if we believe, truly believe that all we have to do is take more money to Washington in the form of taxes and define and design and develop just one or two more programs that hires a number of more bureaucrats, that builds maybe a few more office buildings to be filled with those bureaucrats, and they drive in from Virginia or Maryland or wherever they drive in from, so that they care more about what is going on than the families back home, if we really believe that is solving problems, then Members are going to have a budget to vote for.
It spends more money, it increases taxes, and it purports to solve problems. Unfortunately, we are not solving those problems by doing that. My favorite saying that I heard on the floor, and I do not remember who said it, a long time ago, if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.
If Members think about it, we have been trying to solve problems in Washington with more spending for quite some time now, and those problems do not seem to go away. Last year we decided to put the brakes on spending. We said yes, we have had the excuse of September 11, of the war on terror, of needing to deal with homeland security and needing to deal with our economy; but it is time to be done with all of that. And so what we did was we said let us put the brakes on spending just a little bit.
What happened? When the economy grows and when we control spending, just like the Republican budgets in the late 1990s when we got back to balance, and President Clinton can take credit for anything he wants, that is fine. But everyone who has studied government knows that the buck stops here when it comes to spending. When it comes to fiscal responsibility and article I of the Constitution, we are the ones in charge of the budget. Members know that.
As a result, last year with fiscal discipline and a growing economy, we were able to reduce the deficit 20 percent in 1 year. That is good news, but we need to build on that.
What our budget does is it says, let us continue to build on that success every year with more and more deficit reduction. That is what we accomplish with the spending discipline within this budget. We say not only should we hold the line on discretionary spending, that is the spending we will argue about every day out here during the appropriations process. We want to actually reduce some spending there. We want to have the first reduction in non-security spending since Ronald Reagan was in town back in 1980. That is good news. We also know that we have to start tackling what we call the mandatory spending, or the automatic spending. And so we accomplish that because we know that mandatory spending, that is this yellow part, the part here that back in 1995 was half the budget and now is more than half the budget and is growing to even more than half the budget, almost two-thirds of the budget if we do not start controlling our spending in these accounts.
I want to give you an example of what we would have to do. As much as there will be all sorts of discussion today, and there has been, and tomorrow about Medicaid, you cannot find the word Medicaid in the budget. The reason is because what we do is we say the committees of jurisdiction, in this instance the Committee on Energy and Commerce, should be given responsibility to look through the programs and see if they cannot only find savings but reform the program, to do a better job of delivering the product to the people who need it. If it is true that people sit up at night worrying about how they are going to pay their bills, how they are going to meet their health care needs, then let us help them figure that out. But let us not continue to do a program that every single Governor would admit is unsustainable. We have got quotes from here to the end of the day from Governors who have written us that have said, This program cannot continue. It cannot continue.
All right. So what do we have? We have one budget on the Democratic side. We actually, I think, will have two or three budgets on the Democratic side that do nothing with regard to Medicaid. No reforms. No changes. Let us continue to always do what we have always done, and that is continue what has been what some people say is fraudulent transfers that are going on at the State level, where Governors and State legislators are put in a position where they actually have to figure out how to game the system, how to manipulate the system so that they can get more money from the Federal Government. I have heard of situations that colleagues of mine have told me from around the country where we actually have a situation where kids, teenagers who are eligible for foster care, good kids, good teenagers, that are difficult to find families for so that they can integrate and become part of a family again, but the State, a couple of States in particular, what they have done is they have devised a way to lock those kids into mental health residential treatment centers. Why? So they can get more money from the Federal Government. If you are a foster parent or you are someone who is thinking about adopting, opening up your heart, your family, your home to a child, to a kid, to a teenager and giving them a life, try doing that with a stigma of having mental health problems, of having challenges in that regard, because of the stigma of being part of that State program, not because they were helping the kid but because they wanted more money. We are hurting people with some of these programs.
I realize if you measure your compassion from one year to the next with spending, I cared at $92 billion this year. Oops, there I went and I cared a little bit more that year. Then I cared at $101 billion. Then I really cared at $108 billion. Boy, my caring and compassion is going up. That is not how we should measure it. We should measure it on results. Are these programs working? Are they helping families? Are they helping kids? Are they helping communities? Are they solving the problem that Medicaid ought to be solving for people with long-term health care concerns, people with disabilities, people who require indigent care? That is what we ought to be asking.
What do we do in this budget? We say, Commerce Committee, go to work. Invite the Governors to come to Washington to give us their proposal. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) and I sat in a room with Governors where they said, ``Don't arbitrarily let the number drive the policy.'' That is exactly right. The number should not drive policy. This number should not drive policy any more than it ought to determine compassion. But there is only one way to get the Governors to come back to Washington.
They were here the first time. The only way to get them back the second time is to have a process that requires reform and that is exactly what this budget does. It says, by September, we want you to come back with ideas for reform. Just as a result of this, they have committed to come back by June with a reform proposal that the Governors are going to offer that we can work together with the administration to try and come to a solution and try to come to some agreement on. That is a positive step forward. That helps us with a program that most people think is unsustainable and that helps us solve the problem of making sure that this goes to people who cannot help themselves.
What does the so-called reduction in growth look like? We have heard all the complaints on the floor today. One would think we were just eliminating the Medicaid program. I want to show you the chart of what this looks like after we are all done. This is what the Governors would complain about. This is what some of the advocates are complaining about. In other words, we are asking for just a little sliver, just slow down the growth. But it is growing every year. Every year it grows. We are just asking for a little bit of change, just a little bit of reform, make the program work better, less it help seniors, let it help people with disabilities, make sure it is solving the problem for families that do not have the resources to meet their health care needs. Let us also instill some personal responsibility. Do not just hand it out and give people first dollar Cadillac coverage without saying in return, Folks, you have got to be healthier, you have got to practice prevention, you have got to be personally responsible. That is what reform can give you and a budget without that reform will not give you.
I understand that between today and tomorrow we have got a big decision to make. The decision as it boils down to me is very simple. If you believe that taxing a little bit more, taking a little bit more out to Washington from all of these hardworking families across the country and hiring more bureaucrats and inventing more programs and trying to solve more of these problems from Washington, if you believe that is the solution, you need to vote for the Spratt budget. You need to vote for the Democrat alternative budget because that is what it does. It says increase taxes, increase spending and you will begin to solve these problems.
But there is an alternative and it is the majority. What the majority is saying, Stop the madness. It is the spending. We have got to get the spending under control. We know the other body left to their own devices may not do it on their own. We have already seen in a kind of a disappointing way that they have not really stepped up the way the President has and how we believe the way I have.
In closing, let me just say that we will be able to give, I believe, our kids and our grandkids the opportunity of a debt-free world if we begin with a small step again this year. I ask Members to support the majority budget.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I will vote against this budget, and let me say why. It is because of my responsibility and duty to protect the base bill, the base resolution, the product that was worked and crafted in a very genuine way through the committee process, one that has the support of our majority, one that has the support of our leadership, one that has the support of our chairman, and one that I dare say has, and I believe has, the support of my friends who bring forth the budget resolution tonight.
As I said before when the Congressional Black Caucus came forth, anyone who has the guts to come out here with their own budget I have to applaud. I may oppose it, but I have to applaud it because I know what it takes to put together a budget. Whether the alternative budget has one person who supports it or 80 Members or 218 Members to support it, I commend the coalition for coming forth with their budget. I said the same to the Congressional Black Caucus because they have done this in a very responsible way every year I have been in Congress and for many year before. I really mean that. Anyone who is willing to put the sweat equity into it gets my admiration.
I reluctantly oppose this alternative because if given the opportunity to have a perfect world could we, should we work for more spending control? Yes, there is no question. For all of the haranguing that happens out here about the cuts, we know there are a lot more weeds in the garden we could pull; we know there is more reform that we could drive. We know we could work harder and probably find more spending to control.
We have some practicalities, however. One is we have some committees that have to do the work of achieving those reforms. I have worked with each one of those committees and the committee chairmen to arrange the agreements which bring the base resolution here today; and I respect that process, and I will support that process.
In addition, we have a President who is for really I think the first time since I have been in Congress willing to step up during a very challenging time in our Nation's history when we are at war and say even though it would be easy to use the war as an excuse and not worry about what is happening on the domestic side, the President of the United States has said we are going to control spending, work on the entitlement programs, and try to reform the programs and to meet the needs out there.
The fact that the RSC comes forward with a budget that goes a little further, as I say, I respect that; but I do not think that we are going to get the support behind it that we need in order to get it done. At the end of the day, that is what we need. We need the budget to pass so we have something to enforce.
I want to speak to that briefly because as congressional watchers may have seen or misinterpreted, the intramural discussion that went on and fighting that may have seemed to be happening between friends and colleagues, I interpret what the RSC was doing, the Republican Study Committee was doing with regard to enforcement to be the exact right attitude to have. That is if you are going to do the work of having a budget, then let us enforce it.
The good news from my standpoint is last year when we were not able to get a budget through both bodies, the House took the version we passed, we deemed it, and we enforced it. We stuck to it. At the final analysis of the Congressional Budget Office when all of the smoke cleared and they finally were able to close all of the books, you know what we blew that budget by, a $2.4 trillion budget, and we missed it by $400 million.
Now Members could say we missed it, but I would say for not having a budget in both the House and Senate and not having the budget being the force of law with the President, I would say that is a pretty good track record and one that I give a lot of credit to our Speaker, in particular, for having accomplished. I give them much credit not only on the work product of coming forward with a budget, but also their desire to enforce it. I stand ready to work shoulder to shoulder and side by side with them as we not only get that budget done, but enforce the budget the rest of the year. I commend them on their work product, and I reluctantly will vote against their budget.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
As I said before, I rise with reluctant opposition. What the RSC has done is bold; it is worth consideration. It will be part of the consideration as we go through the process, I am sure, throughout the rest of the year as well as we consider the budgets in years to come. But I would ask, as the author of the amendment just did, that while consideration be given that we adopt the underlying bill. And, therefore, I oppose the amendment, but with a great amount of respect and admiration for the work that has been done.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mrs. Drake) having assumed the chair, Mr. LaTourette, Chairman of the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 95) establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2006, revising appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal year 2005, and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2007 through 2010, had come to no resolution thereon.
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