Jane Harman: “I strongly oppose the budget resolution conference report. It is not a fiscally responsible plan. It does not spend our…”

“I strongly oppose the budget resolution conference report. It is not a fiscally responsible plan. It does not spend our surplus wisely nor make any additional reductions in the public debt. Instead, it sets out a course that may well result in huge deficits by the end of the 10-11 year period. When I was first elected to Congress in 1992, the annual federal budget deficit was close to $300 billion. But I joined many of my colleagues in making the hard-fought and difficult deficit cutting votes of the 1990s. I voted for the 1993 budget, Penny-Kasich, constitutional amendments to balance the budget and to limit tax increases. And I voted for the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, which finally produced the first federal surpluses in a generation. The budget before us could well restore that $300 billion annual deficit by 2011, undoing everything I fought for. It could return us to raiding the Social Security and Medicare trust funds--despite this chamber's repeated promise not to do so. And the budget retreats from making needed investments in our citizens. For example, it eliminates 98 percent of the increase proposed in the Senate's budget for special education--a program of critical importance to educators in my district and elsewhere. The budget before us has accounting margins so precarious that any small bump in the economy will result in a deficit. It spends, for example, all but $1 billion of the FY01 $96 billion surplus.”