Remarks at Truman High School in Independence, Missouri

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 27, 2001

Our budget is in strong financial shape, despite an economic slowdown that began last year. The slowdown is serious, folks. Make no mistake about it. It's real. Since last summer, the economy has grown by a little over one percent. That's a slowdown. Inevitably, the slowing economy has resulted in slowing tax revenues, lower corporate profits, and in some cases layoffs.

Yet despite the year-long trend, despite the fact that this has been on for a year, the Federal budget will have the second largest surplus in history, in part, because this administration took immediate action to address the downturn. We took exactly the right action, at the right time, by pushing the largest tax cut in a generation. You will hear people say that tax relief is going to make it hard to meet the budget. But reality is, tax relief is important to make sure our economy grows. I believe there are some who resent tax relief because they wanted more of your money in Washington, DC. It's a fundamental, philosophical difference.

And the fundamental question is, who do you trust? I trust the people with their own money. I'd rather you spend your own money, than the Federal Government spend your money. I think you can do it more wisely than we can in Washington, DC.

No, this tax relief has laid the foundation for expanding economic growth, And now we must resist the temptation of a bigger threat to growth, and that's excessive Federal spending. The biggest threat to our recovery is for the Congress to overspend. We have the funds to meet our obligations, so long as they resist the temptation to spend.

You know, every new way to spend money can be made to sound urgent, important, but we've agreed to budget limits. That's what a budget is. You set budgets at your house; the Congress set a budget that we all agreed upon. And I expect the Congress to live within the limits of the budget that we all agreed on. I am optimistic that we can avoid the--this business about shutting down things and not getting things done. I am optimistic, because we've made good progress so far, and both political parties deserve credit.

Congressman Young of the House and Senator Byrd of the Senate have done a good job on the appropriations process thus far. We passed two supplemental spending bills: one focused on agriculture, one focused on defense. These supplementals in the past were usually nice platforms for people to load up the spending with additional programs, things that might sound good, but all of a sudden end up busting the budget. And both bodies of the Congress stuck to the limits that we agreed to. It's a good sign. It's a sign that fiscal responsibility is now an important part of the psyche in Washington, DC.

However, even though I'm optimistic, there are some temptations that will face the Congress when they come back. I'd like to share some of the with you. The first temptation, when it comes to budgeting, is what we call the temptation of the false emergency. Now, our budget system provides for special consideration for emergency, as it should. We've bad natural disasters, and we need to have money set aside. That's an emergency, and we need to get money quickly into the communities when there's a natural disaster. An economic recession is an emergency. A declaration of war is an emergency. But far too often in the past, the normal has been declared an emergency in order to increase the budget. Far too long in the past, well meaning Members have declared that such-and-such pet project in their district is an emergency, and therefore we need to spend that money under the emergency provisions. That's going to end.