February 27, 2004

Senator Byrd delivered the following remarks as the Senate Budget Committee prepares to debate and vote on the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2005. The Budget Committee is scheduled to work on that budget beginning on Wednesday, March 3, 2004. Also, the chart that Senator Byrd utilized on the Senate floor as part of this speech is available.

With the release of the President's budget for the Fiscal Year 2005, and the upcoming markup of the Fiscal Year 2005 budget resolution, it's now clear that the promises made by this Administration during the 2000 election have not been kept.

Contrary to the promise made four years ago to ensure the Social Security benefits promised to our nation's workers, our retirement and disability system has become more vulnerable.

Contrary to the promise made four years ago to make health care more affordable, drug prices continue to rise and health insurance remains unobtainable for too many Americans.

Contrary to the promises made four years ago to protect our nation's vital industries, this Administration's tax and trade policies have been an unmitigated disaster, with an alarming number of jobs being lost overseas.

Contrary to its assurances that it could be trusted to act as a prudent and responsible manager of our nation's fiscal policies, the Bush Administration has demonstrated neither prudence nor fiscal responsibility.

In his February 2001 address to a Joint Session of Congress, the President promised to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. He said that's "more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history." He has not kept that promise. Since the President submitted his Fiscal Year 2002 budget, our gross national debt has increased from $5.6 trillion to $7 trillion, and deficits have risen to $521 billion in the Fiscal Year 2004.

With deficit projections mounting, the cries of alarm are growing steadily louder.

The IMF, an international organization normally concerned with the debt problems of third-world nations, has issued an alarming critique of the United States, pleading with the Bush Administration to rein in its massive budget and trade deficits. Similar warnings have emanated from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, from former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and from the U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. Even the Administration's own political allies, ranging from the conservative Heritage Foundation to private-sector economists who endorsed the President's tax cuts, have pleaded with this Administration to get its fiscal act together.

Yet these warnings fall on deaf ears in this Administration. After spending $1.7 trillion to finance three enormous tax cuts in the last three years, the President's budget proposes an additional $1.24 trillion for more tax cuts.

President Bush's assertion that his budget will cut the deficit in half by 2009 is one more in a litany of promises that will go unfulfilled. The Bush Administration's own budget documents show that if none of its proposals were enacted into law, the deficit would still be cut in half. The President's budget actually makes the deficit worse in 2009 than if the Congress took no action at all.

For the Fiscal Years 2001 - 2010, this Administration's policies have transformed a ten-year, $5.6 trillion surplus into a $4 trillion deficit. And it just keeps getting worse. The President's budget includes record deficit projections that will push our national debt to extreme limits never before seen in our nation's history.

President Bush's budget is a wake up call for working America. Under the guise of inviting middle-class workers to sit at the table and share in the tax cuts, this Administration has run up a tab that won't be paid for by those with the golden parachutes. It will be the working man who gets stuck with the bill.

Instead of ensuring the Social Security benefits promised to workers, the President's budget would spend the entire Social Security surplus over the next five years.

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