President's Budget
PRESIDENT'S BUDGET -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2005)
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Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) for that kind word of introduction.
I have to observe what a refreshing contrast we have seen tonight between the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and those who occupied the previous hour of Special Orders on this floor tonight because of the great difference in the philosophy of government evidenced by all of the speakers tonight.
The gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) has outlined a conservative philosophy of efficiency with the taxpayer dollars, not taking the first answer at face value but looking for savings wherever we can find them because that is what the taxpayers expect us to do.
What we witnessed in the previous hour was an example of what we hear from our liberal Democrat friends year after year. I had to think as I was listening to them that these are the same arguments that we hear over and over again from the other side of the aisle. They say we are not spending enough. Regardless of the fact that Federal spending almost always increases, it is never high enough for our friends on the Democrat side of the aisle. They always, always want to spend even more.
Whatever tax level the President and the Republicans propose, the Democrats always want to tax more. They want to raise taxes on the American people. However high taxes might be, we can always count on our friends to make the argument year in and year out that they want tax rates to be higher. They may shed crocodile tears about deficits, but their solution to deficits is always higher taxes, always higher taxation, and their solution to deficits is never ever to find a way to make savings for the American people.
Their arguments are always the same, and I must admit more often than not their predictions are off the mark too, Mr. Speaker, their predictions about how the President's budget will affect the poor, the disadvantaged, the unemployed, the economy as a whole. We heard those predictions, those same dire predictions last year, and what has happened? As a matter of fact, what has happened is exactly what we on the Republican side of the aisle predicted: healthy growth in our economy, the gross domestic product of a sustained rate of now 4 percent continuing on now for several months, and the unemployment rate falling. Job creation is at a record high in the United States of America, and I am proud of that. It has come in spite of the dire warnings we had from our friends on the left who predicted last year when we tried to hold the line on budgeting that we would have all sorts of dire consequences for the American people.
One argument that was made previously that cannot go unchallenged is this argument about the term "withering on the vine." I think some people in this town believe if you say something often enough, it will take on truth. As a matter of fact, no Representative on this side of the aisle has ever advocated Social Security withering on the vine. It is just factually inaccurate to say such a thing. We were actually accused of saying that not with regard to Social Security but with regard to Medicare, and it was not true about Medicare.
What a Speaker of the House at one time said should wither on the vine is this HCFA program which we have now renamed CMA that could command and control a health care system where government tries to manage each and every aspect of it. That is what he said should wither on the vine so Americans could have more choices about the way they get their health care.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to challenge every time I can this allegation that Republicans wanted either Social Security or Medicare to wither on the vine; it did not.
I want to applaud the President and my colleagues for saying tonight that we believe government can do better. We know there is waste and fraud and abuse in government spending.
And every single penny that is wasted, every single penny that is subject to fraud is money that could go to programs that actually do benefit Americans. And it is money that could go to tax reduction. It is money that could go to deficit reduction.
So central to the President's budget that he submitted to us this week is the fact that the President and Republicans in Congress are dedicated to providing stronger financial management and oversight for Federal programs. This should not be controversial. It ought to be a common-sense, bipartisan approach to Federal spending, and we invite all Americans to help us.
I hope that Americans will be contacting Members of this Special Order after tonight's Special Order, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that the phones will be ringing off the walls in congressional offices with Americans giving us examples of the way they know we can save money. My constituents instinctively know that this Federal Government is so big, so large, so unmanageable that there have got to be ways that we can effect savings.
So I look forward to this Special Order tonight. We have got, I guess, around 40 or 45 more minutes. I intend to stick around, Mr. Speaker, and if the gentlewoman from Tennessee will recognize me again, we might be able to cite some very specific examples that I think she might find interesting about ways in which we believe that we can begin to look for additional savings for the American people.
I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
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Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentleman would yield on that point, because I appreciate him making that very good point.
There are programs which are designed to help those people that cannot help themselves or that are at a disadvantage for whatever reason. The gentleman makes an excellent point that when someone cheats on a program like that, they are not only cheating the government and the taxpayers, but they are cheating the neediest Americans, the most disadvantaged Americans.
I wonder if I could go back to another point the gentleman from Texas made. Did the gentleman say that there is a 25 percent error rate in the earned income tax credit?
Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, no, I think I said there was a 32 percent.
Mr. WICKER. Oh, my goodness. Okay, it is even worse than I heard. So 32 percent of the earned income tax credit is claimed erroneously or fraudulently, one or the other; is that what you are saying?
Mr. CONAWAY. Either by intention or by accident.
Mr. WICKER. The gentleman is an expert, and I am sure he can explain better than I can the purpose of the earned income tax credit, which is a worthy purpose.
Mr. CONAWAY. Well, that is right. The earned income tax credit was an attempt by this Congress to credit folks at the lower end of the earning scale for taxes that they would have otherwise owed to the Federal Government. It is a credit that is targeted directly to those who make the least amount of money in our system, or in our economy, and phases out as folks' income goes up.
Mr. WICKER. And it is designed for parents of children and for working poor parents to help give them an extra opportunity. So when almost a third of the earned income tax credit money goes to people who are not entitled to it, certainly it hurts the people who would be entitled to it. Perhaps we could give a more generous benefit to the EITC families. Perhaps we could give a tax cut to other working families, or pay down the debt.
So I just appreciate the gentleman mentioning that very good point. And when he said it, I had to go back to the earned income tax credit, a program we are not proposing to cut in any way, but would it not be wonderful if we could find that one-third that is going to people who are not entitled under the law?
Mr. CONAWAY. Well, the good news is, we found a third of them, and there should be processes in place within the Internal Revenue Service to get that money back so that it does, in fact, go either to pay off the debt or to fund other government services.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I probably interrupted the gentleman's train of thought, but I just had to jump in on that very excellent point he was making.
Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, while we are there, let me mention one other area of cost that waste, fraud, and abuse causes. Every single time we have an incident of waste or fraud, the regulatory agencies in charge put on layer upon layer of additional regulatory burdens to try to prevent it. I am not criticizing them for that, but that is just the way the system works. They try to figure out, how did this person cheat us, how can we put some additional regulations in place so that we do not let that happen again.
Every time that happens, legitimate providers of services for Medicare, as an example, or health care have to continue to comply with this increasing burden of regulations that we have put in place. This costs them money.
In a business, when you have to comply with a regulation of some sort, you either have to hire somebody to help you with that, a direct cost, or you have to allocate some resource within your organization who was previously working to help you make money and help you provide services to clients to comply with that. So either one of those costs those providers within the system money, and it is a direct result of cheaters in our system.
Now, I am not advocating that we do not go find the cheaters; let us go find them and point them out. But let us also help all of us understand that as people cheat, that increases government regulation; and all of us, particularly on this side of the aisle, campaign often on reducing government regulations, so there is a second cost that the cheaters put into the system.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I could interject one other thing at this point. We are about to run out of time, and I do not know if we have complimented the leader of this Special Order quite enough. She has been very generous in her remarks about us.
Actually, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) has been quite a champion in the area, particularly, of credit card fraud within the Federal Government. I understand this amounts to almost $100 million a year in lost taxpayers' money. The gentlewoman, I think, has introduced, along with the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), legislation to address this problem; is that not correct?
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Yes, that is correct. I thank the gentleman from Mississippi for bringing that point up, because we were concerned about the use of credit cards, primarily looking at what was taking place in DOD, and knowing that there was an opportunity there to rein that spending in.
Last year, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson) and I worked with Senator Grassley, and we did introduce a piece of legislation that would bring that into line, because we feel like there is an opportunity to save about $100 million annually by putting some proper controls and working to be certain that there is not waste and that there is not fraud in the use of government credit cards by employees. That is just one of the many ways, just one of the small ways.
As I said earlier, we can go about this one dollar at a time, because those dollars mount up to hundreds, to thousands, to millions, to billions of dollars. And over a period of 5 years or 10 years, which is really not that long a period of time, it is substantial savings for the American taxpayer as they are working to fund government.
It is so important, I say to the gentleman, as he has pointed out, that government can do better and that we realize that and that we challenge our constituents to work with us on this.
It is also important that we participate by being certain that we stop funding things that do not work. If it is not working, if it is a program that is not working or has outlived its usefulness or is duplicated in other ways, then we need to look for ways to be certain that we are not funding things that are not working.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I know also, I would say to the gentlewoman, that she finds as refreshing as I do the remarks of our new Member who came to us from a business background and who is determined to work with us on this type legislation, someone who knows of what he speaks when he says he has taken other people's money and had to invest it wisely and make sure that it was used efficiently.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a quick point, it is so refreshing to see members of the freshman class come in and join us on this issue. My freshman class made waste, fraud, and abuse its class project.
The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), who was just here, was one of the founders of a group that we call the Washington Waste Watchers to draw attention to this subject. So we are so pleased, after having put a tremendous amount of work over the past couple of years on this.
Also, the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Davis), who chairs the Committee on Government Reform, has put an incredible amount of time over the past 2 years with that committee, holding hearings and having reports, getting things on paper so that we are beginning to find out what is and is not working; who is and is not accountable for their money, what agencies are producing results, what agencies are not producing results. We can go back and look at the Treasury books from the year 2001 to see that the Federal Government cannot account for $17.3 billion. Now, to my constituents and for all of us, that is not acceptable.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield on that point, the Federal Government could not account for $17.3 billion, with a "b". That means that $17.3 billion is just gone and the Federal Government cannot say what happened to it. Can we imagine? But this comes not from some story in some newspaper of doubtful authenticity, this comes from a report of the Department of the Treasury, the 2001 financial report of the United States Government.
Mr. Speaker, $17.3 billion with a "b", and we do not know where it went.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, that is right. The Office of Management and Budget in their budget of the United States Government, fiscal year 2003, people can go to page 48 in that report and they will see how the OMB shows us that 21 of 26 departments and major agencies received the lowest possible rating for their financial management, meaning that the auditors cannot even express an opinion on their financial statements. Our colleague from Texas, who is a CPA, understands exactly what that means. We had 21 of 26 departments and major agencies that got the lowest possible rating.
Now, what we are saying, as the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) said, government can do better, we can do better. The American people, as taxpayers, expect us to do better. It is our responsibility, being a good steward of those dollars, that we do a better job, that we require government to do a better job. That is the purpose that we are setting forth.
I agree and I join each of the gentlemen who has spoken tonight in commending our President and our leadership in saying, the time has come to address this. We have to rein the spending in because we need to know what we are spending, where it is going, and what the American taxpayers' dollars are being used for.
Mr. WICKER. Well, let me just say, and these will be my final remarks and then I will yield back to the two of my colleagues for whatever they might want to say; I just look forward to working with my three fellow Representatives who have spoken on this Special Order tonight, and with the President, to say that we can be more diligent in the way that we spend the taxpayers' money, we can be more efficient, and we can continue in our effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.
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