John Spratt

the aftermath of the war in Iraq has been marred by miscalculations and mistakes, made up for in many cases by our troops, who have filled the breach brilliantly by improvising, often doing duty for which they were never trained. You…

first question, what is the effect of this amendment? This amendment in simple terms will stop the slaughter or human consumption of horses, the meat of which will be exported to foreign countries. It does not stop, affect or any way…

I do not object to the amendment, but ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition. The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from South Carolina? There was no objection. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from…

the well of this House ought to be a free market of ideas. It ought to be a great national forum where we dissect legislation and debate the big issues both. And particularly today, as we take up the Defense authorization bill, with…

earlier I entered into a colloquy with the chairman, and he was good enough to clarify for me some parts of this committee report that are important to me. I would like to further build a context on which my concerns were built. In this…

This chart shows it as graphically as we can express it. There are two claws impinging on Social Security under the President's proposal. First of all, most Americans do not understand this, but when you go to retire, if you have elected…

there is one thing we have not spoken about. We have talked about the budget deficit. We did not speak about the trade deficit, $666 billion, also an encumbrance we are leaving our children. We did not talk about the jobs deficit. In the…

we can see it coming down the track. This chart depicts it as graphically as we can make it. The deficit never rises below, never falls below $350 billion, and rises to $621 billion. Tally that up and we will see a mountain of debt added…

We have a number of different deficits. One is the Social Security deficit. The actuaries at the Social Security Administration tell us that the shortfall in Social Security funding over the next 70 years is $3.7 trillion. What Mr. Bush is…

I have not been to a conference meeting where we discussed the contents of this. This is not a collaborative process, this is a unilateral process which makes it all the worse, to bring the conference report to the floor and cram it down…

I yield 15 seconds to myself. Mr. Speaker, the numbers that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) was citing come from a document that we have prepared that compares the conference report with the Congressional Budget Office's current…

I yield a minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps). (Mrs. CAPPS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

I yield myself 5 minutes and 15 seconds. Mr. Speaker, basically, the budget before us is the President's budget sent to us a couple of months ago, subject to a few puts and takes. Unfortunately, neither the President nor the Republicans in…

Most of the numbers that we have quoted, as the gentleman well knows, are net of the Social Security surpluses.

Well, as I acknowledged, terrorists and war and recession have all taken a toll on the budget. But the President has basically taken the attitude that we can have guns, butter, and tax cuts too, and never mind the deficits. The tax cuts…

It is more like $3.3 trillion deficit. We have had a swing in the wrong direction of nearly $9 trillion.

That is correct. We had a deficit last year of $412 billion. But that was after deducting $150, $160 billion surplus in Social Security. If that Social Security surplus had not been offset, there was a deficit in the general account of the…

we have a chart to prove that point. I need to get it up here. We have a chart that shows how over the last 4 fiscal years, the increases in discretionary spending and, once again, that is the money we appropriate in 13 different bills…

I thank the gentlewoman for a very effective presentation. I yield to the gentleman from Portland, Maine (Mr. Allen), a former mayor who understands what Federal grants and aids and other projects mean to cities and small towns all over…

That is correct. This time next year they will need another increase, probably in the range of $800 billion.

Well, we have to probably inflate our currency. But let us not get into that. We are still not in that bad of shape, and I do not want to get into dire predictions. But we are forewarned. We all know there are limits to which anyone can…

Ironically, there is about $20 billion there for roads, bridges, oil wells and other infrastructure in Iraq.

This chart shows the percentages of our debt that are held by foreigners. As you can see, they have steadily increased to the point where in 2004 the share of foreign-owned debt rose to 44 percent. One of the reasons that it is difficult…

that is the point I was trying to make at the opening. While these cuts may seem to be necessary to deal with the deficit, in truth, the deficits and their budget resolution are bigger than they would be under current surpluses. What they…

Here is one good chart that does just that. The gentleman can see it better than I can from his vantage point. We can see what they projected. In the year 2002 they projected a surplus of $313 billion. That was with the implementation of…