("Quid coniuratio est?")
75 SPECIFIC DISCRETIONARY CUTS
[From the Congressional Record, Feb. 7, 1995, H1285-H1286]
THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE:
Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 1995, the
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized during morning
business for 5 minutes.
MR. GOSS:
Mr. Speaker, today I present my annual list of specific spending
cut suggestions. I introduced these yesterday in the Record [CN
-- see below]. Today I want to talk a little bit about them and
elaborate on them.
These are 75 discretionary cuts which would save an estimated $275 billion, those are taxpayer dollars, over the next 5 years. That is just about double the amount of spending cuts the President has offered us in his most recent budget package.
These savings could be produced without touching a single non- discretionary item. Let me put that into English for the rest of America. Non-discretionary item would mean entitlement, and that translates into Social Security, Medicare and so forth, Medicaid. This list of budget cuts I am submitting does not touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or any of those items that we call entitlements. It is only the discretionary items, the things that we control the purse strings on here in the House of Representatives, the power of the purse as it were.
It is imperative that before we ask Americans to sacrifice any of their earned benefits we demonstrate an ability to root out the hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful spending in this Government. And that is not just rhetoric. That is something that the Grace Commission, the GAO, anybody who has looked at our spending here will tell you, that every year we have waste by the billions, by the tens of billions, by the hundreds of billions.
How in the world are we going to balance the budget and do all of these things we have promised if we have that kind of waste at that level? The answer is we are not until we get at it, and the hard work of pinning down the specifics has got to start somewhere. That is why we submit our list of what could be cut.
Mr. Speaker, an administration official was quoted in Sunday's Washington Post as saying that, "While the deficit is not optimal, it is not out of control." Let me tell my colleagues, the national debt is $4.5 trillion. The debt service on that is about $250 billion every year, every year, $250 billion, so that is a trillion every 4 years just in interest payments. Put simply, this empty rhetoric does not put, in my view, the administration in a very good light. I wonder what an optimal debt situation would be.
The White House has consistently ignored the tremendous waste and duplicative spending in the Federal budget and our Federal Government. We have seen that in the budget that they sent up. Instead of opting to try to reduce the deficit through tax hikes and on the backs of senior citizens, they should be looking at cuts, not raising taxes.
Mr. Speaker, the American people sent a powerful message to this Congress that was loud and clear, and it was cut spending and do it now, get rid of the waste, the redundancy, the out-of-date, the off-target, the things we do not need anymore. The American people did not say trim a little here or trim a little there. The American people did not say move with caution and go slow. The American people told this Congress to look for any and all wasteful spending and get rid of it, take it out.
The Vice President complained yesterday that "Republicans haven't put any cuts on the table." Well, they cannot say that anymore, because the cuts are out there for all to see, a list of 75 totalling $275 billion over the next 5 years. I stand before this Congress with most of the same cuts I introduced in the past two terms, and some of them which we have made some progress on, but most of them have gone untouched. So we are still able to come forward with a list of waste of 75 items.
I invite the administration to debate us on the specifics. Tell us why we need to be spending $140 million on grants to prepare youths and adults to be homemakers. Explain to the American people why when 99 percent of America's farmers have electricity and 98 percent have phones we need to be spending billions of dollars in assistance to rural electric and telephone utilities.
The American people deserve better. They need answers. They deserve full debate on these and other programs that serve narrow special interests rather than the collective good of our country and all taxpayers.
Mr. Speaker, we must strive to move beyond the rhetoric, to achieve the fundamental change that we talk about here with real action and with specifics. It is time to debate real spending cuts and real fiscal reform, and I am confident if we do we actually will have taken a very important step toward restoring fiscal responsibility and, perhaps even more than that, retaining, restoring some of the credit that this institution needs to build with the American people.
We have done the balanced budget program in the House. We have passed it. We have done that unfunded mandates program in the House. We have passed it. We did the line item veto. {1}. We did it yesterday, we passed it. We are going to be talking about and going to introduce a supermajority to raise taxes. Those are all critically important tools to get a handle on spending, to make sure we do the right thing.
But the proof will come. Do we have the courage, do we have the wisdom to pick out the things that are true waste and start chopping them? That is actually the easiest part of the job. If it is not doing much for very many Americans, then why are we spending a lot of money on it? Usually the answer is political. "Well, it's in my district," or "I hate to do something to that program to cut it." That is something we cannot be doing anymore. We cannot afford it, and it is not good expenditure of money.
Accountability time has come, and we welcome accountability time, and I welcome the American people to take a look at our list of 75 cuts.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
[From the Congressional Record, Feb. 6, 1995, H1265-H1266]
Thrifty Fifty Plus: Seventy-Five Suggestions
(In millions of dollars/5 years) Savings
Cancel the National Aerospace Plane
(NASP).................................... 300
Continue partial civilian hiring freeze at
Department of Defense..................... 6,850
Eliminate below-cost timber sales from
National Forests.......................... 235
Lower target prices for subsidized crops
3 percent annually........................ 11,000 Eliminate the Market Promotion Program...... 500
End the Federal Crop Insurance Program and
replace with standing authority for
disaster assistance....................... 1,660
Limit Federal highway spending to the amount
brought in by motor vehicle fuel taxes.... 8,850 Repeal the Davis-Bacon Act.................. 3,080
Reduce Commodity Credit Corporation
subsidies for those with off-farm incomes
over $100,000............................. 660
Reduce the Attending Physician Office by
33 percent................................ 2.5
Fully implement H.R. 2452 (102nd) to
provide additional energy conservation
measures for Federal agencies............. 1,900
Enact H.R. 1620 (103rd) to prohibit direct
Federal benefits and unemployment
benefits to illegal aliens................ 27,000 Eliminate the Tobacco Price-Support Program 100 Consolidate the Bureau of Indian Affairs.... 53 Close 20 under-utilized black lung offices.. 0.3 Allow private sector investment in the Space Shuttle............................. 1,522
Eliminate Rural Economic and CommunityDevelopment (RECD) duplication with the
Small Business Administration (SBA)....... 913 Eliminate the Rural Electric Administration. 3,000 Terminate all highway "demonstration projects"................................. 2,500 Lower the travel budgets of all non-postal, civilian agencies by 15 percent........... 858
Lower by 10 percent per annum the projected
growth rate of non-postal, civilian
agency's overhead (excluding travel)...... 64,000
Abolish Cotton Price Support and Loan
Programs.................................. 12,700
Cut the Foreign Aid budget (150 Account)
by 15 percent and make all earmarks in
that account subject to a two-thirds
vote for passage.......................... 13,125
Phase out the Foreign Agricultural
Service Cooperation funding............... 150
Eliminate the Appalachian Regional
Commission................................ 690
Roll back Congressional pay raise to
$89,500................................... 118
Sell the National Helium Reserves to a
joint venture comprised of current
employees and other private investors..... 692
Reduce the "Franking" allocation to Members
of Congress by 50 percent................. 167
Cut National Endowment for the Arts by
50 percent................................ 2,600
Cut funding for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting by 50 percent................ 883 Phase out subsidies for AMTRAK.............. 2,660
Phase out ACTION (umbrella organization for
domestic volunteer activities) as a
tax-supported program..................... 660
Facilitate contracting out and privatization
of military commissaries.................. 4,170
Terminate the Interstate Commerce
Commission................................ 188 Phase out U.S. Fire Administration.......... 10 End funding for all non-energy Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) activities......... 580 Eliminate Essential Air Services subsidies.. 195 Eliminate Consumer Homemaking grants........ 140 Privatize the House and Senate Gymnasiums... 1.1 Reduce the Legislative Branch Appropriations by 20 percent............................. 2,844 Reduce the Executive Office of the President appropriation by 20 percent............... 284
Close the Bureau of Mines and merge its data gathering activities with other Interior Department research agencies.............. 140 Raise the level and schedule of the Power
Marketing Administration's debt repayment. 970 Eliminate the Clean Coal Program............ 300 Reduce the fill rate for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve......................... 1,000 End all new Bureau of Water Reclamation water projects............................ 7,400 Eliminate the Dairy Subsidy Program......... 5,000
Merge the Agricultural Research Service, the
Cooperative State Research Service, and
the Agricultural Extension Service; cut
funding by 50 percent..................... 3,950
Privatize the Government National Mortgage
Association (Ginnie Mae).................. 2,000
Eliminate the Economic Development
Administration............................ 1,140
Eliminate non-targeted vocational State
funding................................... 3,400
Consolidate the administrative costs of the
AFDC, Food Stamps, and Medicaid programs.. 6,300
Replace new public housing construction with
vouchers.................................. 610
Increase Medicare safeguard funding by $540
million over 5 years (net savings)........ 5,400 Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation.... 1,900
End postal subsidies to not-for-profit
organizations (excluding blind and
handicapped individuals).................. 2,000 Eliminate HUD special-purpose grants........ 990 Reform vacation and overtime for the Senior Executive Service......................... 540
Eliminate DOD [Dept. of Defense] payments
for indirect research and development;
substitute direct R&D..................... 14,740
Reduce DOE [Dept. of Energy] energy technology
spending........................... 2,550
Scale back Rural Rental Housing Assistance
Program................................... 1,400
Reduce mass transit grants; eliminate
operating subsidies....................... 6,250
Eliminate Rural Development Association
loans and guarantees...................... 1,380
Eliminate "Impact Aid" to school districts
with military bases....................... 3,850 Consolidate Social Services programs........ 1,000 Reduce NIH [Nat. Inst. Health] funding by 10 percent, concentrating on overhead..... 4,900 Freeze the number of rental assistance commitments............................... 5,700 Scale back Low Income Home Energy Assistance Grants.................................... 5,150 Service Contract Act reform................. 900 Reduce overhead in federally-sponsored university research....................... 1,000 Strengthen and restructure NASA (NPR proposal)............................ 1,500 Eliminate redundant polar satellite programs.................................. 250 Streamline HUD.............................. 144 Reform prison construction.................. 580 Eliminate Travel, Tourism and Export Promotion Administration.................. 1,002
-------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------- {1} Regarding the line item veto: Bill Moyers, on or about Feb. 15, 1995, in a commentary on the NBC Nightly News, stated that there are loopholes in the line item veto. He specifically mentioned that large pharmaceutical companies, big contributors to congressional campaign funds, can wriggle out of it.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"