Fiscal Responsibility

Floor Speech

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Ms. FOXX. Thank you so much, Congressman Garrett. I appreciate your putting together this Special Order tonight and focusing on spending and on where we are here, as you said, in the second week of December in the greatest country in the world.

I was listening for a few minutes to our colleagues who preceded us, who called themselves the Blue Dog Democrats, and I was really fascinated to hear them talk about how fiscally responsible they have been, and I know that you're going to talk a little bit later about the total tax increases that they have proposed, the total spending that they have proposed. And I am fascinated that our colleagues can stand
here and talk about being fiscally responsible, I think, and assume that nobody is adding up what it is they are doing. And they show their charts about the debt and how much each person is responsible for that debt, and I am intrigued that if you look at the record, you would see that most of the Blue Dogs vote every time for these fiscally irresponsible bills that are being brought up. So I want to say to the American people, if they believe that these folks have been fiscally responsible, then I have got some swampland in Mexico that I'd like to sell them.

I felt like, in listening to them, that I was like Alice in Wonderland, where the language means the opposite of what it is, or 1984, particularly 1984, where white is black and black is white. That is what it feels like when you're listening to them talk about being fiscally responsible. It's unbelievable.

One thing I do agree with them, it is about priorities, and it's obvious that their priorities and our priorities and the priorities of the American people are two different things. For one thing, our colleague used the example that we could be building 12,000 new elementary schools. Well, the Federal Government has absolutely no business building elementary schools. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution which gives us any right to be involved in education, and particularly in building buildings at the local level.

I am astonished at some of the things that they say, again, and assume that nobody is going to question them.

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Ms. FOXX. Well, I hope you will repeat that 22 more times tonight, and we need to be repeating that every single day. It's one of the issues I talk about over and over again, what are our priorities, what is the role of the Federal Government. As you say, we could be seen as a 51st State and be trying to deal with every single issue, but the Constitution is really clear about what our role is, I think.

As you point out, here we are in the middle of December, and what has this Congress accomplished? So much was promised by the majority last year when they were running for office and condemning Republicans for being profligate spenders and being irresponsible about the way we spent money. I will tell you that we can't hold a candle to what it is they want to do.

I think it was bad enough that Republicans before I got here ballooned the budget beyond where it should have been. And I have to say that I understand why the American people got upset with us last year, why we lost our majority. They felt that we were profligate spenders, as I said. But the Democrats promised something different. We are standing on our principles now, and they are stunned by that. We are earning our way back into the majority by living up to the image and the reputation that Republicans have had over the years of being careful with the way money is spent.

And, of course, today I heard other Democrats talking about the fact that this was going to be a cut in the budget. Well, only in Washington is a smaller increase than what they want considered a cut or level funding considered a cut. The increase in what the President asked for, and again I know you are going to go into much greater detail about this, a 3.1 percent increase in spending overall was requested by the President; and yet, the majority party is saying that the fault is with the White House and it refuses to negotiate, that the President won't negotiate with them. They say we are engaged in political posturing. If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, I certainly have never seen that. They are totally surprised by the fact that the President and we are standing on our principles.

They think they can get by with simply increasing spending. They asked for $22 billion plus a lot of money in emergency spending; so then they come back and say, well, we will just split the difference. It will only be $11 billion and you should compromise with us. And the fact that we don't want to increase spending that much more over the 3.1 percent requested by the President stuns them. So the way they get around it is, here we are again the middle of December, and they have not passed the appropriations bills that we should have passed. And I want to talk some about what they promised they would do and what they have done. And we have compiled a list of promises.

On November 8 of last year, Speaker-elect Pelosi said: Democrats are prepared to govern and ready to lead.

Here we are, only one appropriations bill that has passed, and that is the Defense bill. Thank goodness that has happened.

Another Democratic promise: open, honest, and ethical Congress. Speaker-elect Pelosi: we will make this the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history.

And what do we get? We get bills brought on the floor at the last minute, thousand-page bills. We get no time to read them, and we are asked to vote on them.

We are also told by the Blue Dogs and by others that they believe in something called PAYGO. Now, PAYGO, they would have you believe, is a way for us to get back fiscal responsibility. Well, I want to say that if you look up PAYGO in the dictionary, it means new taxes. That is what PAYGO means to them, new taxes. It doesn't mean cutting spending. And it only applies to a very small part of our budget, but they want to try to fool the American people into thinking that it means something different than what it means.

They criticize the Senate for having passed an AMT bill last week, which is a clean bill. It simply delays the increase in taxes that would go to about 23 million Americans, something they have never paid. And to the House, the fiscally responsible way to do this is to add new taxes to other Americans to, quote, pay for, that is, offset, taxes that have never been paid by another group of Americans.

That is some of the most twisted logic that I have ever heard in my entire life. I know that these people never could have taken logic in high school or in college.

They also promised no more borrowing from Social Security. But what that means is that the money that is currently being spent from the Social Security fund will not be spent from the Social Security fund. But that is not what they are doing. They are spending that and a whole lot more. And Rob Andrews last year, or this year, promised that we would not borrow any more money from the Social Security fund. Every one of their promises has been broken, and they are taking us down a very fiscally irresponsible budget.

The energy bill that was passed last week is a no-energy bill. It included nothing to increase domestic energy production. As Christmas approaches, 5,000 troops are going to return from Iraq; but they are holding hostage the bipartisan legislation to fund key benefits for them and their families. It has been 6 months since the House overwhelmingly passed the veterans and troops funding bill and 3 months since the Senate did the same, but they have put that bipartisan bill into this omnibus bill that we are going to be dealing with, which will have billions in wasteful, unrelated pork.

We are seeing a tremendous problem here with only one of the 12 appropriations bills passed, a year wasted while they have brought before us unnecessary bills to vote on and while they have voted 41 times on measures to withdraw from Iraq, and they have let the important work of this Congress go by the by.

I hope again that the American people are paying close attention and reading between the lines on the things that they are saying, and I am going to yield back to my colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

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