Remarks at Truman High School in Independence, Missouri

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 27, 2001

A second temptation is to complain that the budget has been cut when, in fact, it is increased. One of the amazing things about Washington accounting is that when a budget increase is less than expected or less than anticipated or less than someone hopes for, that's called a cut. [Laughter] So if budget X goes from point A to point B and it's a 6 percent growth and reasonable folks come together and say it ought to only grow at 4 percent, that's a cut. And we're not going to let the so-called Washington cuts cause the budget to get out of balance. We're going to blow the whistle.

Then there's what they call the last minute budget raid. That's when the bills are coming, winding down the process, and in order to get votes, Members start demanding this or that. There were 6,000 last minute additions to the budget last year, some of them small, some of them large, but all of them adding up to one thing, a budget that could be out of balance. And so as the watchdog of the Treasury, as the person who's got the opportunity to bring fiscal sanity to Washington, I'm going to be watching carefully for the last minute budget additions.

Seven out of the last eight budgets submitted by the Executive and passed by the Congress have raided the Social Security or used part of the Social Security to fund the budgets. One of the temptations is to use Social Security money for something other than Social Security. Now the good news is, is that both political parties and both parties of Congress have declared that we're not going to do that. But I'm going to watch carefully, to make sure that the old temptations of the past don't come back to haunt us when it comes to budgeting your money in the year 2001.

And finally, there is a--not finally, next to finally. [Laughter] I was afraid some of you were going to fall out. [Laughter] There is a temptation not to listen to the budget in the first place. During the last session, the appropriations process created $35 billion more dollars than the budget called for. A budget's a budget, folks. We spent a lot of time working on the budget. People came together. Both parties said, "Here's the budget." And I know the American taxpayers, and I know the President in this case, expects for Congress to live within the budget we passed. We don't want the budget to be a hollow noise. We want the budget to be real, and that's why I've been given the power of the veto, to make sure that the budget--make sure the appropriations are within the guidelines of the budget.

And finally--[laughter]--and finally, one of the temptations, and perhaps the greatest temptation of all is what we call appropriations gamesmanship. And here's the way it works. We've got a budget of X amount, and you add up all the potential appropriations bills. The budget amount is X. And so they'll pass one bill of the 13, and they may add a little bit here. Then they'll pass another bill, all still within the budget. And they finally get to the last appropriations bills, and all of a sudden, if the budget amount becomes the appropriated amount, we busted the budget, because of all the previous bills have added a little here or there. And guess what generally is the last ones out? Defense--the defense bill.