Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor of the United States House
of Representatives this evening as a member of the fiscally conservative
Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 37 fiscally conservative Democrats
who are outraged, absolutely appalled by these record deficits, record
debt and the lack of common sense and fiscal discipline that we are seeing
in our Nation's government these days.
I come to the floor and raise these issues not out of partisan politics
because, Mr. Speaker, I do not know about you, but I am sick and tired
of all the partisan bickering that goes on at our Nation's Capitol. It
does not matter to me if it is a Republican idea or Democrat idea. My people
back home want a commonsense idea, the kind of ideas that make sense for
them in their everyday lives.
So I raise these issues, Mr. Speaker, quite frankly because I am concerned
about the future of our country.
As you walk the halls of Congress, it is easy to spot one of the Blue
Dog Coalition Members' offices, because we all have this poster beside
our front door. Today, the U.S. national debt, just as I got ready to come
up here this evening, the U.S. national debt is $8,270,909,436,190. For
every man, woman and child in America, including those being born as we
speak, the amount of money that each person in America shares in the national
debt is $27,000 and some change.
It is hard now, Mr. Speaker, to believe that from 1998 through 2001,
our Nation for the first time in 40 years had a balanced budget; and yet,
this administration, this Republican Congress, has given us the largest
budget deficit ever in our Nation's history for what amounts to 6 years
in a row.
This is the budget that the President of the United States has presented
to Congress. It is always presented under a lot of fanfare; a lot of publicity
surrounds this budget. This budget for fiscal year 2007 totals $2.8 trillion,
but what is alarming about it is that the deficit totals $423 billion.
If that is not disturbing enough, Mr. Speaker, as a Nation, we spend
about a half a billion a day simply paying interest on the debt we already
have, and on top of that, our national debt is increasing to the tune of
about $1 billion a day. Our Nation is spending about $1 billion more a
day than it is taking in; $260 million a day going to Iraq, $33 million
a day going to Afghanistan, and a whole lot more going not to fund programs
that matter to people because there are record cuts in this budget.
Just yesterday in Booneville, Arkansas, I was at the Dale Bumpers Research
Center, one of 26 agriculture research centers that are not being cut,
but being eliminated, under the President's budget for fiscal year 2007.
Only in America can the President give us a budget that cuts the programs
that matter to people, Medicaid, Medicare, veterans benefits, agricultural
programs, and also give us the largest deficit ever in our Nation's history
at the same time.
So as an American, I rise this evening out of concern. As a small business
owner, I rise this evening out of concern about these record debts and
these record deficits. And at the end of this hour, Mr. Speaker, we will
change this number to show how much the national debt has risen just in
the hour we have been on the floor this evening trying to talk about accountability
and fiscal responsibility.
The numbers I have presented to you are bad enough. Lord knows we don't
need to make them any worse. They are already the largest budget deficits
in our Nation's history that this Republican leadership has given us, but
what we have recently learned is, actually, when you look at America, the
way that America requires corporations to look at accounting, the deficit
is even worse than what we thought.
At this time I would call on the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper),
the co-chair for policy in the Blue Dog Coalition, who has helped discover
this little-known publication, which is very, very disturbing.
Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my friend from Arkansas, and
I appreciate his yielding to me. I am about to say something that very
few people in America know. Hardly anyone in Congress knows it. This is
not a partisan comment. I am about to reveal a document printed by this
administration that received less distribution than the secret NSA domestic
wiretapping activities of the administration.
This is a document that coincidentally was revealed sometime close to
Christmas Eve last December. It is a document that was issued without a
press release. There was no press notification about this at all. Instead
of being like the budget that my friend from Arkansas showed, that was
distributed to every Congressman, every Senator's office, with great fanfare,
this document was distributed to fewer than 20 Members of the House and
Senate. It probably went to about a dozen. It was mailed in. It was not
noticed, apparently, by anyone.
And what does the document reveal? Well, first of all, this is it. When
I called the Department of the Treasury, they laughed when I asked for
multiple copies. This is the Financial Report of the United States Government
2005. This is the closest thing our Nation has to an annual report. Most
Americans are familiar with those. All public companies are required to
issue an annual report so that the shareholders can find out how the company
is doing. Well, this is the annual report for America, and yet it was hidden
in plain sight. Hardly anyone knows about this document.
The first page is signed by the Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow,
and the first page reveals a pretty shocking fact. It reveals the fact
that for all that Mike Ross was talking about, about our terrible debt
and deficit situation, situations that are driving up interest rates and
putting a terrible debt burden on the backs of our kids and grandkids,
according to that green document my colleague from Arkansas held up, the
deficit last year was $319 billion. That is a lot of money. That is ``b''
for billion, or ``b'' as in, boy, that is a lot of money. Well, guess what
this document shows on its first page, signed by Secretary of the Treasury
John Snow? The real deficit last year for 2005 was not $319 billion, it
was, get this, $760 billion.
So there are two big questions here. Why did the administration try
to hide this from Congress and the American people? Why was there no press
release? Why did it receive minimal distribution? And, second, why is the
Secretary of the Treasury so heavily at odds with another part of the administration,
the Office of Management and Budget and the director there, John Bolton?
How could one gentleman say that the deficit was $319 billion last year
and another gentleman say it was $760 billion?
Well, the difference is this: the budget of the United States uses what
is called cash accounting, and only the tiniest businesses in America are
even allowed to use cash accounting. Why? Because it gives you a very distorted
picture of a business or of a government. This annual report for America,
the financial report signed by Secretary of the Treasury Snow, uses real
accounting. It is called accrual accounting, and it keeps the books in
a much more accurate way.
So I think most Americans would be shocked, as my colleague from Arkansas
knows, that the U.S. Government, Uncle Sam, is keeping two sets of books.
One has relatively good news, the other has terrible news in it. And guess
what, they are trying to hide the second set of books from the American
people.
I would encourage people to go to the Blue Dog Web site. We can allow
you to download this document, or you can go to the U.S. Treasury Web site
and download the document. It will not be obvious, though, on the Treasury
Web site. It is pretty well hidden on that Web site. It is pretty clear
on the Blue Dog.com Web site. So I would encourage people to check this
out and see what it says in cold hard print and ask the logical question
of why the President's budget is so radically and totally different from
the document issued by his own Treasury Department.
I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for yielding to me.
Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for bringing this to
the attention of America, the ``Financial Report of the United States Government
for 2005,'' printed by our government, signed by our President's appointed
Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow.
And as the gentleman from Tennessee has explained quite well, when our
government says we have a $319 billion deficit for 2005, that is based
on a form of accounting known as a cash-basis form of accounting. Now,
I am a small business owner; and as a small business owner, our government
does not allow me to base my business on a cash-basis form of accounting.
I am required by our government to use an accrual-based form of accounting.
And if I do not, I am in a lot of trouble with the IRS and will probably
end up in jail.
However, our government, when we talk about the budget and the debt
and the deficit and we talk about it in terms of this $319 billion, we
find in this publication, the ``Financial Report of the United States of
America for 2005,'' that it does not use a cash-basis form of accounting.
It uses an accrual-basis form of accounting, and we know this only because
the government, by law, requires the Secretary of the Treasury to print
this document. He does not print tens of thousands of copies the way he
does the budget. Only a handful are printed because they do not want the
taxpayers of this country to know what is really going on here.
The truth is this: when we look at our government, the way our government
requires businesses to report their dealings with the IRS, our deficit
was not $319 billion in 2005. Again, there is no reason for us to try to
make these numbers any worse than they already are. They are already as
bad as they have ever been in the history of our country. And these are
not our numbers. These are numbers from the Secretary of the Treasury,
John Snow. The deficit for 2005 was not $319 billion when using the accrual-basis
form of accounting; it was $760 billion. That is a difference of $441 billion.
Now, John Snow, Secretary of the Treasury, in this report said: ``Including
these future financial responsibilities in this report gives a more complete
and long-range look at the government's finances.'' That is the Secretary
of the Treasury, appointed by President Bush. That is John Snow, in his
words, which can be found on page 1 of this report.
Mr. Speaker, I yield once again to the gentleman from Tennessee.
Mr. COOPER. I thank the gentleman for yielding, because there are probably
some listeners who are confused about cash-basis accounting versus accrual
accounting. The simplest way to explain it is this way. If you were to
look at giant U.S. companies like General Motors or Ford, they would be
just fine today if you look at them on a cash basis because they are generating
cash. But if you look at them on a more accurate basis, the way the stock
market does and the way investors do, you will see that a cash basis ignores
future obligations. For example, for retirees, for health care, for other
benefits and obligations that should be kept and that have to be acknowledged.
That is what accrual accounting does. And lest people be confused, accrual
accounting is not cruel, the way it may sound. Accrual accounting is actually
the most compassionate form of accounting, because cash-basis accounting
forgets the retirees and the sick. Accrual accounting remembers them. And
it is vital we remember all of our retirees and our sick because their
health benefits matter, and we have to take them into account in this country.
I know the gentleman is about to show the rule for business. This is
a tough rule, and I look forward to the gentleman's explanation.
Mr. ROSS. Well, every business in this country is required to use the
accrual method if the business has inventory, if the business is a C corporation,
or if gross annual sales exceed $5 million. So for any corporation, any
business that meets one of these criteria, our government says you must
use the accrual method of accounting.
Our own government, however, though requiring businesses to use the
accrual method of accounting or you go to jail and get in a lot of trouble
with the IRS, that is what the government says to businesses, but the government
says, well, that makes us look like we are being even more fiscally irresponsible
than we want, so we will not use this accrual business. We will go back
and trick the taxpayers by using the cash basis of accounting.
At this time, I want to recognize a real leader within the Blue Dog
Coalition, my friend and colleague from Georgia (Mr. DAVID SCOTT).
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. It is great to be with you, Mr. Ross, and with
my colleagues from the Blue Dogs and our distinguished cochairman.
I think this startling information that you have just made known to
the American people speaks to the fundamental issue at hand, and it is,
in one word, security. Financial security. We cannot have national security
if we do not have financial security. We cannot even have homeland security
if we do not have financial security or health care security. Whatever
our security is, it is anchored in financial security.
With security comes the word ``confidence,'' and you have just shattered
that realization by bringing this information to the forefront and revealing
how badly we need to restore the confidence of the American people for
this government's ability to handle their financial security.
But I will tell you something that really adds and complements what
you have brought to the American people tonight, because I have a bit of
information that ought to be startling as well. As we look at this report,
as we basically see firsthand that the books have been cooked, so to speak,
by this revealing document, which almost doubles the $319 billion deficit,
because now we know it is $760 billion deficit by the words of the Treasury
Secretary, but let me add this to this important discussion we are having
this evening.
I do not believe the American people know that this President, President
Bush, has borrowed more money from foreign governments in his 5 years than
all of the preceding 42 Presidents in the history of this country.
I know the American people are shaking their heads and asking, is he
saying what I think he is saying? Let me repeat it.
President Bush has borrowed more money from foreign governments in his
5 years, since 2000, since he first took office, than all of the preceding
42 Presidents from 1789 to 2000, 211 years. Here are the figures. From
1789 to the year 2000 of our Nation's history, 42 U.S. Presidents borrowed
a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and foreign financial
institutions, according to the Treasury Department.
And now, just in the last 5 years, President Bush has borrowed a staggering
$1.05 trillion, larger than the total from all the previous 42 Presidents.
If that does not tell you we have a crisis here, I do not know what does.
And you combine that with this information that our co-chairman has brought
to us about how the books were cooked; and, in fact, according to the more
accurate accounting procedure, it is more than $760 billion.
It is remarkable. It is phenomenal. The American people deserve the
truth. We have got to give it to them because, as the Bible says, you should
know the truth. It is the truth that will set you free. We are going to
set America free tonight.
Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott) for his knowledgeable
input about this debt and deficit and budget process. I might add, in defense
of the President, the President, during his tenure in office, it is true
that he has borrowed more money from foreign central banks and foreign
investors than the previous 42 Presidents combined. But in fairness to
the President, he could not do that alone. It took this Republican majority
in this Congress to give him a budget to allow him to continue to raise
the debt limit to allow him to borrow more money in the last 5 years than
the previous 42 Presidents combined.
I think the American people are starting to get it at the youngest of
ages. My teenage daughter was reading the paper today and she sent me an
e-mail, and I will just read to you what my teenage daughter said after
reading the paper this morning. She wrote, ``I read that they are wanting
to increase the limit of the debt. Please do not let them do this. Make
them start paying it back.'' That is a message from a 17-year-old junior
in high school who is concerned about the reckless spending, the fiscal
irresponsibility going on in our government because it is her generation,
it is our children and grandchildren's generation that gets saddled with
these bills.
I encourage folks every Tuesday night, as members of the Blue Dog Coalition,
we are here on the floor talking about fiscal responsibility and about
our ideas to balance the budget. We have a 12-point plan for meaningful
budget reform that will allow us to have a balanced budget and allow us
to get our fiscal house in order.
For folks that are interested in e-mailing us their thoughts, opinions
or questions, I encourage them to do so at BlueDog@mail.house.gov. We are
the Blue Dog Coalition, 37 members strong, fiscally conservative Democrats
that are here to hold this Republican Congress responsible for a record
deficit and a record debt.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper).
Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, let me say amen to my friend's comments from
Georgia. That was outstanding.
I have the pleasure of serving on the Budget Committee and this week,
probably on Thursday, we will start marking up the budget for the United
States of America. That is one of the most serious responsibilities that
we could ever undertake. It is an incredibly complex document and process.
You are talking about $2.7 trillion. You are talking about not only all
the defense programs, you are talking about Social Security and Medicare
and a world of other programs, parks, agriculture, you name it; everything
that the Federal Government is involved in.
In the span of a few short hours, we will be able to offer a few amendments,
and we try to do this on a bipartisan basis. It is hard, but let me report
on what happened last year in last year's markup.
I offered a number of the Blue Dog amendments as part of our 12-point
plan for reform. They were individual, commonsense measures such as, for
example, getting a cost estimate on every bill here so we know the cost
of what we are voting on; having a recorded vote so that the members of
this body go on record when large amounts of money are spent. We were one
of the first groups in the country to go ahead and require transparency
for earmarks so the public, everyone, would know what individual spending
items were being requested. But probably, most importantly, we favored
domestic spending caps so budget spending could not keep going up and up,
and a pay-as-you-go approach so expansion of government was paid for, so
that this generation paid our obligations, so we did not saddle future
generations, including our men and women in uniform, with these terribly
burdensome debts.
I offered that last year in the Budget Committee markup. My amendment
passed on a 19-17 vote because four brave Republicans were willing to cross
over and endorse a commonsense measure like that. But then the chairman
of the committee realized that common sense had prevailed, and he leaned
over and twisted the arm of a freshman Member of Congress and forced that
gentleman to change his vote right in front of everybody. So then it was
not a 19-17 victory for our side and common sense, suddenly it turned into
an 18-18 tie, and, under the rules of the committee, you lose on a tie
vote.
That was as close as we came last year to getting some of these commonsense
principles involved. Even most State legislatures have rules like the ones
I am describing. Most Americans would be outraged to learn we do not have
these rules here.
We are going to try a similar approach on Thursday. I hope we prevail,
and I hope Americans will tune in to see what happens, because we do try
to work on a bipartisan basis. The Blue Dogs are Democrats and we are proud
of that, but we reach across the aisle.
In fact, tonight, most of the Special Order is devoted to revealing
the Republicans' Treasury report, because they did not want it to get the
publicity that it deserves. This is one of the most important documents
of government, and I have yet to meet another Member of Congress who knew
about the existence of this document. It has been required by law to be
published for over a decade now. Senator John Glenn of Ohio was the first
person to author a bill to get this done. The former Secretary of Treasury,
Bob Rubin, and the Clinton administration, championed this document. Back
then the news was good. We were headed toward surpluses, and we achieved
surpluses. But in the last 5 years, this document has been buried deep
underground. I think it is high time we brought it above surface.
Mr. ROSS. I appreciate the co-chair for policy of the Blue Dog Coalition
and a very important member of the Budget Committee bringing to the taxpayers'
attention this little-known document, the financial report of the United
States Government. Again, our debt is $8,270,909,436,190.
Now, as members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, we
do not come here on Tuesday nights to simply complain about how this Congress
is out of control with its spending without also offering a solution. As
the gentlemen from Tennessee and Georgia mentioned, we have a 12-point
reform plan to cure our Nation's addiction to deficit spending. And I can
tell you, one of the problems that taxpayers in this country have with
this debt and with these deficits is the lack of accountability. I want
to talk about that for a moment.
Some of you have heard this before and I am going to continue to talk
about it until every one of these 11,000 fully furnished, brand new manufactured
homes sitting in a pasture in Hope, Arkansas, get to the victims of Hurricane
Katrina and Hurricane Rita.
Mr. COOPER. Are those the famous FEMA trailers?
Mr. ROSS. Those are the FEMA trailers. FEMA has spent an estimated $431
million of our tax money purchasing some 11,000 brand new, fully furnished,
manufactured homes.
Mr. COOPER. Who is living in those homes?
Mr. ROSS. Nobody. Here is the story. FEMA shows up in Hope, Arkansas,
my hometown. I now live 16 miles down the road in Prescott, Arkansas. They
show up at city hall and say, we understand you have these inactive runways
as a result of World War II. We want to use them as a so-called FEMA staging
area.
The idea was these manufactured homes were going to come into Hope and
then go to the people who lost their homes and everything they owned as
a result of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. They started coming.
They started coming in October, and they came and they came, but they never
went.
So as a result of that, 25 percent of them now sit on these inactive,
closed military runways, and 75 percent of them are sitting in a cow pasture.
That is 11,000 brand new, fully furnished, manufactured homes sitting in
a pasture in Hope, Arkansas, and FEMA owns them, they have already bought
them. And FEMA at the same time is spending our tax money to provide housing
in hotels and motels for some 12,000 storm victims.
If that is not enough, we all know about the tent city that is set up
near Pass Christian, Mississippi, where families in the winter are living
in a tent while FEMA has 11,000 brand new, fully furnished manufactured
homes sitting in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas. That is an aerial photo
of some of the 11,000. There is the barbed-wire fence, and there are the
manufactured homes. Most of them are 14 feet wide, 60 feet long. Some are
80 feet wide. And now that the drought is about to end and the rains are
starting to set in, I do not have to tell you that they are going to be
sinking. They are going to be sinking. They are going to be damaged.
What is FEMA's response? Oh, no, not to get them to the people that
need them, the people living in hotels and motels and tents 6 months after
the storm. Their response is we are going to spend $6-8 million graveling
this 290-acre cow pasture so we can store these manufactured homes for
a future disaster. FEMA refuses to move these manufactured homes into a
flood zone.
Normally I would say that makes sense, but the reality is in this instance,
everybody that lost their home as a result of Hurricane Katrina lost their
home because they lived in a flood zone. FEMA says if you have land, we
will give you a manufactured home. Everybody that lost their home as a
result of Hurricane Katrina, they had land but it is in a flood zone. That
is why they lost their home.
Mr. Speaker, I appeal to the President and to the director of FEMA,
what is worse, to have 11,000 brand new, fully furnished manufactured homes
spread out over Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama with the storm victims
who lost their homes and everything they owned in a bunch of different
flood zones, or have them all grouped together in a cow pasture at the
Hope airport, an area prone to tornadoes, an area that is going to have
a tornado warning probably about every 10 days for the next 3 months?
Mr. Speaker, I am going to come to the floor of this Chamber and talk
about this until FEMA gets moving, until FEMA comes to Hope, Arkansas,
picks up these 11,000 manufactured homes they have purchased, and gets
them to the people who desperately need them, people who for the sixth
and seventh month in a row are living in hotel and motel rooms, people
who are living literally in tents in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
This ran on the front page of the Arkansas Democratic Gazette back in
December. I do not know if this gentleman is still living in this tent
or not. He was in December. I can tell you about 100 families are living
in tents in Pass Christian right now. It is appalling to know as a country
we are allowing people to live in tents. He has found a job. He is back
at work, doing the best he can for himself and his family. He is waiting
on housing, and yet we have 11,000 brand new, fully furnished, manufactured
homes purchased by FEMA, sitting in a cow pasture in Hope.
Mr. Speaker, I submit that as a member of the fiscally conservative
Blue Dog Coalition, this is the kind of government waste that turns people
off. I grew up in a little country church outside of Prescott, Midway United
Methodist Church, and I heard a lot of sermons about being a good steward,
and I can tell you FEMA is not being a good steward of our tax money with
what they are doing. It is a total disgrace. It is an outrage.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Scott.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ross has so eloquently stated
the great failure in our American government today. The whole situation
of Hurricane Katrina marks one of the darkest spots in American history.
But there is a pattern here of a lack of response. There is a pattern of
whatever it goes through, security, homeland security, national security.
Hurricane Katrina is just one example. We need look no closer than our
port security. What a debacle.
That same kind of lack of proper research, proper debate, and you are
absolutely right, a lackadaisical congressional leadership, a Republican
leadership that simply has just bent over for this administration. We have
made a mockery of what our Founding Fathers said we should be doing as
checks and balances. That is why they set three branches of government:
the judicial, executive and legislative branches.
It is our job to provide the oversight, the investigation, the enforcement
arm, to be able to make sure that there is a proper check and balance.
But this House of Representatives under this Republican leadership has
all too often just caved in and caved down, and that is why we are in the
shape that we are in today.
Now, if we can talk just for a moment, which I want to do, about this
port security situation that again points up the same fallacies.
Mr. ROSS. It is about accountability.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. It is about accountability, and it is also about
our budget. For example, if you remember, after 2001 Congress appropriated
a total of $765 million for port security programs, including $173 million
for FY 2006, to help our seaports adopt important security enhancements.
The Coast Guard came and told us they needed more like $6 billion. Yet,
like last year, the President's budget once again proposed terminating
funding dedicated to port security, and then turned right around and takes
that $6 billion and says let's give it over here to a company that is owned
by a country that has direct financial ties to terrorist organizations.
How do you figure this, that the President's budget would propose terminating
that funding that our Coast Guard, the one main element we have checking
our ports, asked for, advocate terminating it, and then turn right around
and okay a deal that he says he did not even know about?
Now, the truth is plain here, and we owe it to the American people.
There are some of us in Congress who are willing to stand up and tell the
truth and deal with this, because our financial security is vital, is extraordinarily
important.
I want to just touch upon one additional thing. I want to talk about
just for a moment, as my good friend from Tennessee pointed to, this budget
and the meanness of these cuts, but where they hurt the most are with our
military families, are with our veterans.
I do not believe that the American people quite understand this or quite
are aware that this budget would increase the health care costs for 1 million
veterans. For the fourth year in a row, the budget raises health care costs
for 1 million veterans by imposing new fees for veterans, costing them
more than $2.6 billion over 5 years, and driving at least 200,000 veterans
out of the system. That is what this budget does to our veterans.
It would double the copayment for prescription drugs from $8 to $15.
That is what this budget does to veterans. It imposes an enrollment fee
of $250 a year for category 7 and category 8 veterans, those who make as
little as $26,000 a year. If increases health care costs for military retirees.
The budget increases TRICARE health premiums for 3.1 million of the Nation's
military retirees under 65. The premiums will double.
It fails to address the strain on our troops. I just returned from Iraq
and Afghanistan. I was there talking with the troops. Despite recent reports
of the tremendous strain that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have placed
on our troops, the President's budget fails to fund and plan adequately
to recruit the number of forces that are authorized under the law to help
with that strain. The budget would fund 17,000 fewer Army National Guard
and 5,000 fewer Army Reserve than are authorized by law. But it does not
just stop there. It goes on and on.
You talk about your folks in Hope, Arkansas, and what they are faced
with. Let me tell you what my people are faced with so much in Georgia,
in one county, Cobb County alone, just from the cuts in the Community Development
Block Grant program.
This is what the President has proposed cutting: one center that is
in great need of help in terms of being built and being sustained through
the Community Block Grant program of $3.1 million, the Ron Anderson Center
over in Powder Springs in Cobb County. Another center for senior citizens
where they need it the most, cut out of this budget, another $2.5 million.
Those community block grants are the lifeblood of many communities in Hope,
Arkansas; in Tennessee; and all over.
Now, I mention this, as we will mention a few other things. There is
so much in this budget that goes at the heart of cutting out almost the
heart and the hope of our people.
You showed an extraordinary picture there a moment ago, Mr. Ross. You
showed a victim down there under just a cover, all he had, just sitting
there. It showed great hurt, great need. There is a great hurting and a
great need of the American people, and we do not need to pass this budget
that cuts the very programs that will help our people in need.
Mr. ROSS. Again, it takes a lot of skill for this administration, this
Republican-led Congress, to give us the largest budget deficit ever in
our Nation's history while also managing to cut all the programs that matter
to people at the same time. How do they do that? By tacking on tax cut
after tax cut.
Following us this evening, I am pretty confident that the other side
will show up, which I think probably is an indication that we are making
progress here in getting our message out about trying to restore some fiscal
discipline and common sense to our Nation's government, and they will probably
talk about how we had an opportunity to cut, to cut, $40 billion in spending
and how we voted against it.
But what they will not tell you is that it was $40 billion in cuts to
the most vulnerable people in our society. Medicaid, eight out of 10 seniors
in Arkansas are on Medicaid. One out of five people in Arkansas are on
Medicaid. Cuts to Medicaid, cuts to student loans to the tune of $40 billion,
followed by what are we doing this week and next week? About $90 billion
in additional tax cuts for those earning over $400,000 a year.
I wasn't real good at math back in high school or college, Mr. Speaker,
but the last time I checked, $90 billion in tax cuts from borrowed money
because we don't have a surplus and $40 billion in cuts from the poor,
the disabled, elderly and college students equals $50 billion in new spending.
Only in Washington would you entitle a bill that increases the national
debt by $50 billion the Deficit Reduction Act. Yet that is exactly what
we will probably hear more about tonight, just as we did last week.
I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper).
Mr. COOPER. The gentleman makes an excellent point. I would like to
challenge those who speak after us, if they even know about the existence
of this ``Financial Report for the United States in 2005.'' I bet that
no Republican in the House even knows this report exists, even though it
is signed by the Secretary of the Treasury, it is an official U.S. Government
document, and it reveals the true deficit for America last year as being
$760 billion.
If my friend would put back up the Blue Dog debt and deficit sign, please,
I think it is very important that people compare that. Those numbers are
truly staggering, $8.2 trillion debt; and your individual share back home
is $27,000 for every man, woman, and child.
But, guess what? That is the good news. If you look at this document
from the Department of Treasury, guess what our real debt is? It is not
$8.2 trillion. I wish it were. It is a staggering $46 trillion. That is
an unimaginable figure, $46 trillion. That is an unimaginable sum of money.
But get this: every American's share, every man woman and child in this
country, the share isn't $27,000 like you have on your sign; the share
is $156,000 apiece. For every full-time worker's family, the share is $375,000
apiece.
Mr. ROSS. If the gentleman would yield, the point is we are not trying
to make this any worse than it is. We wish it wasn't bad. We wish we had
a balanced budget. We wish the debt was being paid down. We wish we were
not deficit spending. We don't have to try to make the numbers any worse
than they already are. They already are setting records.
Just to clarify, the difference between these numbers and your numbers,
the difference between the numbers in the budget and the numbers in the
financial report of the United States Government is basically this simple:
our government, our budget uses a cash-basis form of accounting, which
gets you to these numbers.
Mr. COOPER. Which is illegal for most every business in America.
Mr. Ross. Yet our very government, which uses a cash-base form of accounting,
requires every business in America for the most part to use an accrual
base of accounting.
Mr. COOPER. This is real accounting, and people back home need to know
that for every working family, it is a $375,000 obligation already. So
what the gentleman is talking about, this $27,000, that is the price of
a pretty nice car. This is the price of a luxury home. This is what every
working family already owes to pay for the promises this Congress and this
administration have already made for our Social Security beneficiaries,
our Medicare beneficiaries, so many other good and worthy programs.
As my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, pointed out, today we are
having to borrow most of this money from foreign countries. President Bush
has borrowed more money himself from foreign nations than all previous
Presidents in American history combined. That is a staggering thing to
comprehend.
I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
Mr. ROSS. Based on the accrual-basis form of accounting, the real United
States deficit in 2005 was $760 billion.
Mr. COOPER. Over twice as large as the administration will admit.
If the gentleman will yield for one more moment, the Director of Office
of Management and Budget, Josh Bolton, says the deficit is only $319 billion;
it is actually getting smaller, it is turning up. He says the President
in just a few years will cut the deficit in half.
That is according to the cash basis. According to accrual, according
to real accounting, guess what? The deficit is $760 billion, and getting
bigger all the time. So it is going in the opposite direction from what
Director Bolton says. So who do you believe, Director Bolton of the OMB,
or the Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow?
I think the American people need to know that both of these documents
exist, both of them are official U.S. Government documents, put out by
the Republican administration; but this is the one they have tried to keep
hidden from the American people.
Mr. ROSS. A highlight from the financial report of the United States
Government, this official government publication, you can find this on
page 23, of the 26 agencies scored under the President's management agenda,
17 of them were deemed to have ``any of a number of serious flaws when
it comes to financial performance.''
Then you go on to page 28, and this is a quote from David Walker, the
Comptroller General of the United States of America: ``The current financial
reporting model cash-basis accounting provides a potentially unrealistic
and misleading picture of the Federal Government's overall performance,
financial condition and future fiscal outlook,'' which is exactly why our
government requires businesses to not use the cash-based form of accounting,
rather accrual-based form of accounting.
Yet when you hear from our government, they never want to quote this
report. They want to report the budget which uses what the Comptroller
General of the United States refers to as an unrealistic and misleading
picture, through the cash-based form of accounting.
I yield to the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Scott.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. When you combine this with the startling revelation
that half of this debt is being held by foreign countries, I go back to
that word ``security.'' Is it in our best security interest to have our
financial well-being held in the hands of foreign countries? That is about
as ridiculous as holding our port security in the hands of a foreign company
owned by a country that had terrorist dealings, that provided nuclear materials
to Iran, a country where two of the hijackers came from. This word ``security''
needs to reverberate throughout the American psyche.
We are depending too much on our financial security and our national
security and port security from foreign interests. We Americans need to
control our ports, and we need to have Americans at ports where they are
originating shipments coming in.
And we need to check 100 percent of our cargo. Mr. Ross, if Hong Kong
can check 100 percent of its cargo coming into its ports, and it checks
22 million cargo pieces a year, we check only 11, Hong Kong is not even
a terrorist target and we are. Hong Kong checks 100 percent.
They are not a terrorist target; we are a terrorist target, do not check
but 5 percent. As Ethan Hunt said in Mission Impossible, the NOC list is
out. It is out in the open. They know that we do not check but 5 percent
of our cargo.
But the point I wanted to make in terms of the foreign lenders is, because
I think it is important, Mr. Ross, that the American people know who is
holding our debt. Let me just tell them for a minute. Japan holds $682.8
billion of our debt.
Communist China, Communist China holds $250 billion of our debt. Great
Britain, $223 billion. The Caribbean banking centers, $115 billion; Taiwan,
$71 billion; OPEC countries, $67 billion; Korea, $66 billion; Germany,
$65 billion; Canada, $53 billion; Hong Kong $46 billion.
This is not in the best interests of the security of this country and
it has to change,
Mr. ROSS. The gentleman is so right in his assessments. We do need to
be borrowing money from foreign central banks and foreign investors. And,
in fact, I believe it should be an American company that manages our ports.
And with the cuts, we know what has happened in terms of our country becoming
way too dependent on foreign oil.
And yet, if we are not careful with the proposed cuts to agriculture,
we are going to become dependent on foreign countries like Brazil for our
food and fiber. Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, I submit to you that having
a safe and reliable source for food and fiber here at home from America's
farm families is every bit as much critical to our national security as
oil is.
Now, the gentleman from Georgia made some good points. And, you know,
this is not partisan debate. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue.
It may be the first time in 50 years the Republicans have controlled the
White House, House and Senate. It may be the Republican leadership that
has given us the largest budget deficit ever in our Nation's history for
the sixth year in a row.
But it is not a Democrat or Republican issue, it is an American issue,
because this debt, this reckless spending, affects all of us as citizens
of this country and as taxpayers. And, Mr. Speaker, we are all citizens
of this country, first and foremost.
But to validate what the gentleman from Georgia is saying, again I quote
from David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States of America,
found on page 28 of the Financial Report of the United States Government
for 2005, ``Continuing on this unsustainable path will gradually erode,
if not suddenly damage our economy, our standard of living, and ultimately
our national security.''
He goes on to say, ``More troubling still, the Federal Government's
financial condition and long-term fiscal outlook is continuing to deteriorate.''
And I cannot thank the gentleman from Tennessee enough for making the
people of this country aware of this little-known document. I yield to
the gentleman from Tennessee.
Mr. COOPER. Mr. Speaker, you know the 9/11 Commission did a great job
in their report. It became a best seller. It was in bookstores all over
America, because everybody in America wanted to find out what really happened
on that terrible day.
You know, this is a lot like the 9/11 Commission report, because it
is very readable, and it needs to be in every bookstore in America. And
yet hardly anyone in Congress has seen it, hardly anyone in the Senate
has seen it. Everybody needs to read this document, because it is the annual
report for America.
It reveals the terrible truth that the real 2005 fiscal deficit for
America was not $319 billion, it was $760 billion. And every living American
worker already today owes $375,000 apiece. That is what this document says.
It is not thick. If you do not find it in the bookstore yet, and it will
be months probably before that happens, take it off the Web site.
Look at the BlueDogDemocrats.dot.com. If you do not trust our Web site,
go to www.gao.gov, that is the Government Accountability Office, or download
it from the U.S. Treasury Web site. But this is a truly startling and amazing
document, and hardly anybody even knows it exists.
So I encourage folks not to take our word for it, go look at it yourself
and see what you think about the fiscal finances of our country after you
read this book.
Mr. ROSS. Now we have about 6 or 7 minutes left this evening to talk
about being good stewards of our tax money, about being good stewards of
the public trust.
But as I promised at the beginning of this hour, our national debt,
about an hour ago, was $8,270,909,436,190. In the last 60 minutes, our
national debt has gone up approximately $41,666.000.
Mr. COOPER. Forty-one million dollars in an hour?
Mr. ROSS. In 60 minutes, in 1 hour, our national debt has increased
to the tune of approximately $41,666,000 and some change. And so you can
see an hour ago what the debt was: $8,270,909,436,190. That is no longer
true. It is now $8,270,951,102,190.
Mr. COOPER. That much damage was done to our Nation's future just in
1 hour.
Mr. ROSS. In the last hour.
Mr. COOPER. And that will continue every hour, every night.
Mr. ROSS. Again, we have got to be good stewards of our tax money. We
have got to be good stewards of this country. We have got to get our Nation's
fiscal house back in order. We must restore fiscal responsibility to our
government. It affects every one of us in a lot of different ways.
For example, our Nation is spending a half a billion dollars a day with
a ``B,'' 500 million, a half a billion every day, simply paying interest
on the national debt.
We could finish I-69 in Arkansas, creating all kinds of jobs and economic
opportunities, just with 3 days' interest on the national debt, or I-49,
again with 3 days' interest on the national debt.
Many of America's priorities are going to continue to go unmet. Many
of America's needs are going to go unmet, from health care to education
to veterans to infrastructure, until we get our Nation's fiscal house back
in order.
The Blue Dog Coalition has a way to do that. It is a 12-point plan,
and the first and foremost of all of those 12 points is require a balanced
budget. Forty-nine States do. My wife requires one in our household in
Prescott, Arkansas.
The family business my wife and I own, our banker requires us to have
a balanced budget. And it is time for this Nation, it is time for the politicians
in Washington to have a balanced budget for our Nation.
I yield to the gentlemen from Georgia.
Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, it is very important to point out,
and you touched upon it, that just the interest, just the interest alone,
is nearly $200 billion.
Now just think about that. This money that we are borrowing, we have
to pay for. You got to add in the $200 billion in interest on top of that,
which is more than five times the amount that we spend on education, the
environment, and veterans care put together.
I submit to you, my friends in the Blue Dog Coalition, I just hope that
the American people have been listening to us tonight, and I believe that
they have. I hope that we have awakened a sleeping giant. Because, like
I say, we are here and we are gone tomorrow.
The President does not have to run anymore. He does not have to go out
and face the people. I believe, quite honestly, if he had to go out and
face the people, I do not think he would have made that deal with the Arab
immigrants. I do not think he would have done that.
But the fundamental question we have to go back to is from this startling
information that you have brought to us, the question has to be, why? Why
are we just discovering it and why is this great discrepancy there?
There are some serious questions that have to be answered by this administration.
But you know what? They are not going to answer these questions unless
and until we in Congress stand up and represent the interests of the American
people and put their feet to the fire. Once we do that, then we are truly
standing up for America, and America deserves that.
Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank the gentleman
from Tennessee for joining me this evening as we try to hold this Congress
accountable and urge a good dose of common sense and fiscal responsibility.
For folks with questions or comments or concerns, I encourage them to
e-mail us at bluedogs, we are members of the fiscally conservative Democratic
Blue Dog Coalition, bluedogs@mail.house.gov. That is bluedogs@mail.house.gov.
And, Mr. Speaker, we are here this evening for a simple reason and a
simple cause; that is, to try and be good stewards for this Nation of the
tax money and the trust that has been placed in us for the people.
We think this Congress is letting the American people down. I yield
back. |