Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
February 3, 2004 -- Page: S536

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Arizona talking about some of the statements that have been said on the floor today and really setting the record straight, which I think is very important.

I would like to continue to talk about the President's budget. I heard people say the budget is too much; we are going to have bigger deficits. And then I hear people say: Oh, but it is not compassionate; we are not spending enough.

What the President of the United States has submitted to Congress in a budget is very bold, but it is also very simple. The President of the United States is doing what every family and every small business would do when they are in a budget crunch, when their revenues are not meeting their expenditures. He is prioritizing the spending.

He put as his very first priority the national defense of this country. He raised the spending from last year on national defense by 7 percent. He made a priority the homeland security of our country, protecting our homeland. He increased spending 10 percent on homeland security needs.

He decreased the growth in spending. We never decrease spending in Washington, DC. He holds discretionary spending to below 4 percent and nonsecurity-related spending to .5 percent--less than the rate of inflation.

The President is saying we are going to prioritize our family budget just like families all over our country are doing. We are going to protect our country in national defense, we are going to protect the citizens of our country in homeland defense, and we are going to cut back in areas that are not absolutely necessary.

I wish to talk about what the President has done and let the people of our country decide who is being responsible in our budgeting.

He advances the ongoing efforts in the war on terror by providing $1.2 billion for rebuilding Afghanistan, continuing to build the broad coalition. NATO is now in Afghanistan in force to try to defeat that center of terrorism where the Taliban took hold and was helping al-Qaida. We are making the commitment and keeping our word in Afghanistan.

There is $5.7 billion in military and economic assistance to front-line States supporting the United States in the war on terror.

The President is strengthening and transforming our defense capabilities by providing $402 billion for the Department of Defense, an overall 7 percent increase.

The President's budget is providing a 3.5 percent pay raise for our military personnel; improving housing, which is something that I as the chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee in the Appropriations Committee want to do, working with the President to assure that we have a quality of life improvement for our military personnel who are on the front lines every day protecting our country and in harm's way in many instances.

He also provides a 10 percent increase in homeland security. We are providing $5.3 billion for the Transportation Security Agency, a 20 percent increase; $6.2 billion for the Coast Guard, a 9 percent increase, because the Coast Guard is being called on today to step up to the plate to patrol our borders and our shores. They are doing a great job and we are making sure they have the capability to do that job.

It doubles the level of first responder preparedness grants, targeting the high threat areas that face greater risk. These are the policemen, the firefighters, the front line first responders who can save lives if we have another terrorist attack. In many instances, it is those people who are outside our Senate Chamber today working on perhaps a new terrorist attack that has occurred in the Senate as we speak. The first responders are there trying to go through our buildings, gathering the unopened mail to see if there is any more of this ricin that was found in the Dirksen Office Building. We need to prepare those first responders so that everyone in America who might be vulnerable will also have an immediate response with trained personnel.

It protects our food supply by providing $553 million, a 180 percent increase in funds for a new agriculture and food defense initiative; $274 million for a new vital surveillance initiative; $5.1 billion, an 11 percent increase, for the FBI, to make sure we have the counterterrorism effort that our FBI can give.

So these are the defense initiatives and the homeland security initiatives the President of the United States is providing for our country. That is exactly what I hoped he would do, focus on the big things that only the Federal Government can do to secure our country. That is his first responsibility, and he met the first responsibility in the budget that is being criticized today.

Let us talk about the discretionary spending. Where are we putting the priorities in discretionary spending? We are cutting back on the increases in discretionary spending but we are holding the priorities that are so important. We initiate a job creation plan. We are looking at an economic recovery that is just in its initial stages, but we have not seen the jobs yet. The President is very concerned about people not having jobs. We are talking about a $250 million grant program for our Nation's community colleges. These are the places where we can train for jobs in the future. These are places where we can train for the high-demand occupations that are identified as the places where we can put people to work if they have the training.

Our community colleges are the unsung heroes and heroines in our country because they can put people back to work with training. They can take people who have lost jobs in one sector and train them for something else. There is $333 million to help students make the transition from high school to college.

He provides for a national energy policy, one of our best job creators, to ensure affordable, reliable energy supply; upgrading our Nation's electrical grid so we will not have blackouts and brownouts in any part of our country; promoting energy efficiency and increasing domestic energy production, which will protect the environment and put people back to work.

The budget will also spur job creation by providing more than $20 billion in small business lending and equity programs. Small businesses are the economic engine of our country. If we free small businesses and help them with the capital they need to expand their businesses and grow, we will be able to create the jobs that will stabilize our country.

So through the President's budget we are trying to increase job creation in our country. We will not have a true recovery if we have a jobless recovery. The President understands and knows that, and he is trying to make sure we address that very important issue.

Let us talk about education. President Bush is the education President. He wants to make the commitments that will allow every child to reach his or her full potential in our country. His budget increases title I funding by $1 billion, 52 percent more than in 2001; it provides $1 billion more for special education, a 75 percent increase since 2001; it increases funding for early reading programs, a 12 percent increase over just last year. The President knows that if you can catch a child early, you will be able to correct that child's reading problems and allow that child to absorb the education that allows the child then to reach his or her full potential. The budget helps 5 million students pursue postsecondary education by providing $12.9 billion in Pell grants, an $856 million increase.

He is fulfilling his promise to increase the funding for historically black colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions, by 30 percent, $394 million by 2005. That is this year's budget. It provides $57 billion in direct and guaranteed student loans to postsecondary students and reforms higher education student aid by raising loan limits for first year students, expanding options to offer courses online and increasing loan forgiveness for those teaching certain subjects in high poverty schools, a great trade, a win for everyone. If we can put teachers in schools that have teacher shortages and forgive student loans, we will make up the interest that would be paid on those student loans by giving more children a chance for a quality education.

So how can one say the President is not doing right by education when he is focusing on the increases in spending in education that will fund No Child Left Behind, the act we passed to try to increase options for education so that our public school education can compete with private school education and give parents all the choices they could possibly need to do the best for their children?

We know every parent has the dream for his or her child that that child will be able to get a great education and send that child off into America, into the world, fully ready to earn a living, raise a family, and have a good life.

Let us talk about health care. Let us talk about what the President's priorities are in the budget in health care. The President expands health care coverage by making it more affordable for small businesses to purchase coverage for employees through association health care plans. It is very important that we lower the number of uninsured Americans. We can do that by making health care coverage available to small businesses that want to cover their employees and help their employees but they cannot afford the premiums if they are a small business. If we can pass association health care plans, as the President has requested us to do, we can take millions of Americans off the uninsured rolls. That is what we are asking our colleagues to help the President do.

It implements the prescription drug discount card to give immediate discounts of 10 to 25 percent to cardholders. In the next couple of months, our seniors will be able to take those prescription cards and buy drugs with a 10 to 25 percent discount. So that is immediate help.

That is while we are also building up a system that will give even better choices and more options for prescription drug coverage to our seniors. The President's budget will give $600 annually in immediate assistance to low-income individuals to pay for prescription drugs. So the low-income people are going to get that $600 direct, immediate assistance. And then the drug benefit plan should be implemented by 2006.

The President does provide incentives in his budget that will provide immediate help for our seniors for prescription drug discounts now, and to work toward the options that will provide real help for a prescription drug benefit for our seniors.

Environment: The President has several things in his budget to enhance the Nation's supply of clean, affordable energy by increasing funding for clean energy resources, by trying to have more research into hydrogen and fuel cell research and development. He wants a zero emissions coal fuel powerplant and he wants to fund development of that in this budget he is presenting.

He presents the President's Healthy Forests Initiative to prevent the catastrophic wildfires we saw raging through western America. It was just horrible to see what was happening in California this last year, the forest fires that were raging and taking people's homes as well as their property. The President has a $58 million increase to remove excess wood and brush that fuel these fires.

He would accelerate the Great Lakes cleanup by providing $45 million, a fivefold increase over previous levels to clean up the Great Lakes.

He tackles the remaining Superfund sites. We all know the toughest sites to clean up are these Superfund sites. But he is willing to take this on and increase, by 50 percent, the funding for Superfund cleanup so we will be able to get a handle on the worst environmental hazardous areas that we have in our country.

I have heard all the talks on the Senate floor today that have criticized the President's budget. I think the President has a balanced budget. He is prioritizing where we need to prioritize. He is providing for the national defense for our country. He is providing for the homeland security of our country. He is putting the money in education. He is putting the money into job creation and job training, and he is helping to meet the health care costs of our senior citizens and people who work for small businesses.

Our President presented to Congress a balanced budget. Everybody can find something to criticize, something they would not prioritize the same way. But the President is leading and the President has presented us a budget that will cut the deficit in half in 5 years while maintaining the homeland security and defense our people have asked him to provide. I think we should work with the President to pass this budget and have some budget authority that will keep us from overspending and increasing the deficit further.

Mr. President, this should be a team, not a critical debating society. We should be teaming together to help America get through the war on terrorism, fund our priorities, cut the deficits, and be responsible to the people who elected us, as the President is trying to do.