30-Something Working Group
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - April 06, 2006)
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You asked why we were unable to vote on the budget. It is simple. Finally, finally, it obviously became clear to many of our Republican colleagues because we were all unified on the Democratic side, there was not going to be a single Democratic vote for this budget because we are not going to put a vote up for increasing the deficit or maintaining the deficit or increasing our national debt. We are not going to put a vote up on that board that makes drastic cuts in education or cuts in veterans health care. We are not going to put a vote up on that board that fails to protect the environment.
This Republican budget would have done all of those things. I have been here 15 months. I am a freshmen. This is my first year. I just completed my first year in Congress, and finally someone found a conscience on the other side of the aisle. Finally, it was not that they just put that bill out there and you saw enough arms being twisted and the board being held open long enough so they could wrench the votes that they needed.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Let's just look at the record here. What we are talking about and what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would have been faced with is going home for the next 2 weeks and looking their constituents in the eye and having to tell them if this budget had gone forward and they had supported it, that they would be supportive of the five largest deficits in history. The top-ranking deficit in history was in 2004 when we had a $412 billion deficit.
Number two was in 2003 when we had a $378 billion deficit.
Number three was 2006, the current year, when we had a $372 billion deficit.
The fourth largest year is 2007, still a $348 billion deficit.
And the fifth largest deficit, 2005, the year that just ended, with a $318 billion deficit.
Now these numbers jump all over the board, but if you go in order, the deficit is going in the wrong direction. 2006 is when you had the third highest deficit in history.
If, like the President said he was committed and his Republican leadership was committed to cutting the deficit in half, I don't know. It does not appear like it does. Is 318 half of 412? Are any of these numbers half of any other number here? I am not very good at math, but not the math I am familiar with.
Now let us look at the debt limit because we have also been careening every year towards the debt ceiling. You have held up letter after letter after letter from Secretary Snow, the Secretary of the Treasury who begs us, who was begging us recently to please increase the debt limit so the United States of America does not default on its loans, the loans that you were just outlining that cover the country. Can you pull those up?
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Lest people think that the increases we are talking about are small and insignificant, let's go through the kind of numbers that we are talking about and the increases we are referring to.
The Republicans have increased the debt limit by $3 trillion since 2002. That is since 2002. This is 2006. In 2002 they increased it by $450 billion. In 2003, May of 2003, by another $984 billion.
In November of 2004, the month I was elected, another $800 billion.
Now, where is the planning? I mean, what is going on? They are spending like drunken sailors. That is what is going. They have no self-control.
Let's go to March 2006, which was just last month. $781 billion. And you know it would be nice if we could have some transparency and some clarity and honesty in this Chamber, which would mean that we would have had a straight up or down vote on the debt limit. But this last time it was tucked into legislation. I bet you most Members, I can assure you, most Members had no idea that the increase in the debt limit was in there.
They do everything, the Republican leadership does everything possible to avoid us taking a straight up or down vote because, oh, my God, I mean, if they have to go home and face the families that they represent, who every day are struggling, Mr. Ryan, to make ends meet and not run up debt on their credit cards, and not spend more than they take in, well, it is a little tough to face your constituents when you don't do that with their money.
There is no regard here for the use of the American taxpayers dollars because it apparently doesn't matter to the Republican leadership here that we are spending more than we have. Clearly, it is baffling. It really is. And this is the party, supposedly, at least in name only, of fiscal responsibility, of smaller government, of reducing spending.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And when you are dealing with the facts staring you in the face like that, then even their former leader, the chief architect of what was then called the Republican revolution that began in 1994 and the run up to the 1994 election, when he begins to use ``us'' and ``they'' terminology, then you know they have really made some serious mistakes. They, the Republican leadership here has really made some serious mistakes.
And let's just go through what former Speaker Gingrich has said about what they are doing. He cited a series of blunders. Our third party validator for this evening is the Knight Ridder news papers. And Speaker Gingrich was quoted in their papers on Friday, March 31, 2006. He cited a series of blunders under Republican rule, from failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to mismanagement of the war in Iraq. He said, the government has squandered billions of dollars in Iraq.
But that is not all he said. He also noted that a congressional watchdog agency, and I will note that I can recall watching Speaker Gingrich on the House floor a number of times, and when he was in the minority, would cite the congressional watchdog either when the facts helped him, and then when he was in the majority, disparaging what the congressional watchdog that he was referring to said, depending on which side he felt like taking.
But in this case he noted that a congressional watchdog agency recently smuggled a truck carrying nuclear material in the country to test security. He said, why isn't the President pounding on the table? Why isn't he sending up 16 reform bills?
And that is the lack of outrage that we have talked about here on the House floor in the 30-something Working Group. Where is the outrage? I mean, if we have nuclear material being smuggled into this country, and no one knows it, where is their outrage? Where is the oversight? Where is the committee hearing?
Another thing he said, here is where he calls them ``they''. In the same article, he says, they are seen by the country as being in charge of a government that can't function.
Now, if the architect of the Republican revolution is calling the Republican leadership and the rank and file here ``they'', then I think it is clear that it is time for a change. It is time that we restore the PAYGO rules. It is time that we restore some fiscal responsibility. It is time that we make sure that actions match words. The American people, in each of their families, they struggle to spend only what they have.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. We have been talking about the pay-as-you-go needs that we have here. Because we are the 30-something Working Group, what we try to do really often is explain the multi generational impact that these fiscal policies and decisions have.
Let's take a look at the economic impact on college students, Mr. Meek. We are talking about, in this chart, you have the average tuition and fees, which is this line here that has gone up and up and up. Yet, the Pell Grant average award has remained completely flat. The maximum award has also remained completely flat and doesn't even come anywhere close to meeting the needs that the students who are trying to attend college and who are struggling to get a higher education need the two to coincide. There is an impact seniors, an impact on college students.
I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
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