[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 055 (Monday, April 7, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H2839-H2845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICA NEEDS A BALANCED BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, I would like to open up by saying when the 
President sent us his budget this year the Office of Management and 
Budget, OMB, acknowledged that the surplus of the $5.6 trillion which 
we all hailed 2 years ago is gone. It has vanished. In fact, OMB now 
says there never was such a surplus when they, the Office of Management 
and Budget, adjust the surplus to account for the economy as they see 
it now. The 10-year surplus is no longer $5.6 trillion. It is $2.4 
trillion. And all of that $2.4 trillion has been committed, or I should 
say overcommitted, by policy action to the tune of $129 billion. That 
is what we would incur if we did not do anything else, mostly due to 
the tax cuts passed in June of 2001.
  So any additional tax cuts and any additional spending beyond current 
services will go straight to the bottom line. There is no surplus 
anymore to mitigate or cushion or offset that deficit. It goes straight 
to the bottom line and adds dollar to dollar to the deficit. The 
arithmetic is simple.
  Knowing that, the President of the United States nevertheless 
proposes $2 trillion in additional policy actions, legislative actions 
here, mostly, once again, in new tax cuts that will add $2 trillion to 
our national debt over the next 10 years.
  Now, when the Congress Budget Office sent us their analysis of the 
President's budget as they are required by law to do, they saw deficits 
out as far as they forecast. As a matter of fact, when you back out 
Social Security as I think you should because I do not think we should 
be spending Social Security, and everybody on this House floor who was 
here just a couple of years ago foreswore the practice of ever again 
spending the Social Security surpluses, so when you back it out and 
look at what CBO portrays and depicts the President's budget to 
produce, you will see that over the next 10 years they forecast 
deficits, without a Social Security surplus to offset them, deficits of 
$400 billion at least every year for the next 10 years.
  So when you remove the Social Security surplus from the equation, the 
accumulation of deficits is $4 trillion over the next 10 years. As a 
consequence of this budget that the President sent up here, in a way 
both Houses repudiated the President's budget. Both Senate Republicans 
and House Republicans rejected what the President sent. When the House 
Republicans saw the President's budget, they warmly embraced his tax 
cuts. They were ready for another round of tax cuts, despite our 
experience with the last round; but they at least acknowledged the 
responsibility to go find some offsets, some spending offsets that 
would help mitigate, reduce, cushion the impact of these huge tax cuts. 
The President was seeking another $1.4 trillion in tax cuts as much 
again this year as he did back in 2001.
  They went back looking for some offsets; and they came up with $470 
billion in what we call, in budget parlance, reconciliation tax cuts. 
These are reconciliation spending cuts. These are directives to the 
committees of jurisdiction that write legislation that deal with 
Medicare and Medicaid and school lunches, a whole array of entitlement 
programs, to go change that permanent law so that they can save a 
certain sum of money by a certain date.
  In this case, as I said, the total of all those reconciliation 
instructions came to $470 billion. Our Republican colleagues wanted to 
cut Medicare over the next 10 years by $262 billion, Medicaid by $110 
billion, veterans by $15 billion on the mandatory side, the entitlement 
side and 15 more on the veterans health care side, education by $9.4 
billion on the mandatory side. That would have to come out of school 
lunches and student loans, government pensions $40 billion, the 
railroad retirement program, a vested benefit if there ever was one, 
$3.7 billion.
  Well, those offsets had a short shelf life. They survived attack in 
the Committee on the Budget. They all voted for it on the Republican 
side of the committee; but during the markup, the chairmen of these 
different committees who were about to be the object of these 
reconciliation instructions came forth and they said, you have got to 
give us some relief. We cannot do it. So the number was cut from $470 
billion to $265 billion.

[[Page H2840]]

  Then when we got ready to go to conference, we came out here with a 
motion to instruct the conferees. And what we said is, even though you 
have cut this number from $470 billion in Medicare and Medicaid and 
education and veterans cuts, even though you shaved this somewhat, you 
are still taking $107 billion out of the Medicaid program in all 
likelihood. You could wipe out the children's health insurance program 
with the budget in the form you have got it right now.
  So we said let us have a vote of the whole House on these and see if 
this really is the sentiment of the House. And guess what? By all of 
300-and-some-odd votes, 22 nays, we said we do not want to cut Medicare 
and Medicaid and these other programs, education, veterans, by this 
amount. The Senate took a totally different tact, but they likewise 
repudiated the President's budget. The President in effect wants 
another $1.4 trillion dollars in tax cuts this year even though they 
all go straight into the deficit and swell the deficit. So the Senate 
said, no, the first half of your tax cuts, Mr. President, which would 
make the tax cuts you did in June of 2001 permanent, right now they 
expire on December 31, 2010, rather than make that permanent now, we 
will put them on the back burner. We will come back to that one. That 
will take at least $650 billion out of the tax package. And as for the 
rest, they said, let us cut it about in half. So they shaved it to $350 
billion.
  So the House rejected the President's budget request by seeking to 
offset it and failed. The Senate rejected it by coming up with a much, 
much smaller tax cut; but we have still got tax cuts looming. You have 
still got the problem of sunset of the 2001 tax cuts. You have still 
got something call the alternative minimum tax which 30 million tax 
payers will confront over the next 10 years, and it will have to be 
adjusted. There is no question about it. These two actions alone, 
making permanent the 2001 tax cuts and adjusting the alternative 
minimum tax, could take another 1 trillion, $1.3 trillion out of 
revenues over the next 10 years and make resolution of the deficit all 
but impossible.
  So here we are talking tonight because this is a serious problem; and 
it has received very, very little attention. We want to call it to the 
attention of both Houses because, as we see it, we are positioned right 
now between two fatally flawed alternatives. The House and Senate 
resolutions, the one that passed the House and the one that passed the 
Senate, framed the conference such that there is no responsible way 
out. Both resolutions lead to large intractable deficits: $2 trillion 
in additional deficits if you back out Social Security, $4 trillion if 
you back out Social Security. And both lack any plan or process for 
wiping these deficits out.
  This was not necessary, Madam Speaker. That is the first point to 
make. All of this pain, all of this confusion, all of this deviation 
from the straight and narrow path of fiscal responsibility we were 
following just a couple of years ago could have been avoided if we 
simply recognized that we could have tax reduction, but not the massive 
tax reduction that was passed in 2001 or that the President would have 
us pass again. All of these cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and veterans 
and education would not be necessary but for these tax cuts. They are 
made necessary to make room for the tax cut. If you simply left the 
budget alone and let current services be provided at the current level 
and left the tax cut alone, by the year 2008 the budget would be in 
unified balance including Social Security. Instead, under the budget 
alternatives we have now, we have the equally unpalatable choices of a 
budget that we hope gets to balance in the year 2012, that is so far 
out hardly anybody can validate it, or maybe 2013. That is how bad a 
situation we find ourselves in because we have not faced reality.
  And we offered an alternative here on the House floor. The Democratic 
resolution would have adequately provided for education, would have 
provided $528 billion for Medicare prescription drug benefit, and would 
have provided some tax cuts. We wanted to put some money in the pockets 
of American consumers likely to spend it to give this economy a boost, 
a jump. We wanted to give some money to businesses to encourage them to 
invest, some tax cuts to businesses to encourage them to invest. We had 
tax cuts too, just not as massive as those included in the President's 
proposal. And we got to balance in the year 2010. We accumulated a 
trillion dollars less debt than the Republicans. We had a budget that 
was commendable. It was rejected. But we have not given up, and that is 
why we are here tonight.
  To begin, we want to talk about veterans benefits, not the biggest 
item in the budget; but I would say one of the most important. If there 
is any promise we should keep, particularly in a time of war, it is the 
promises we made to our veterans. And those promises, under the two 
budget resolutions, one passed by the House, House Republicans, the 
other passed by the Senate, are in jeopardy.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Price).
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding and for taking out this Special Order tonight to discuss the 
fiscal folly that this administration and the Republican leadership of 
this House are engaged in.

                              {time}  2000

  The President's budget and the budget passed by Republicans in the 
House really give us the worst of both worlds. The Republican budget 
takes us over the cliff fiscally, with $2 trillion being added to the 
publicly held debt over the next 5 years, by 2008. At the same time 
there are deep cuts in basic domestic obligations and priorities that 
we simply must meet. All this is to make room for the President's tax 
cut, mainly benefitting the upper bracket taxpayers.
  I appreciate the gentleman giving us a chance tonight to hear from a 
number of Members who will talk about various aspects of this budget 
and the way that it will affect our constituents and the American 
people.
  As a member of the Committee on Appropriations subcommittee that 
oversees veterans affairs, I am especially glad that we are bringing 
much-needed attention to the issue of veterans benefits. The budget 
adopted on a party line vote in the House on March 21 includes cuts of 
more than $28 billion in veterans benefits over the next 10 years. That 
includes cuts in both entitlement funding and in discretionary funding, 
and these cuts, Mr. Speaker, come at a time when the VA health care 
system is already in a state of crisis.
  Indeed, there are more than 200,000 veterans waiting 6 months or 
longer now for their first medical appointment with the VA.
  The cuts are in both entitlements and discretionary spending.
  The House Republican budget cuts appropriated programs for veterans 
below the level needed to maintain 2003 purchasing power over the next 
10 years by a total of $14.2 billion. This would necessitate major cuts 
in veterans health care, because health care makes up 96 percent of the 
discretionary spending that we do for veterans.
  The Department of Veterans Affairs projection shows that there is 
going to be no decrease in the core population of eligible veterans 
over that time period, nothing that would reduce the demand for health 
care, and the population of noncore, that is, Priority 7 and 8 
veterans, is projected to increase over that period.
  So the funding reductions in veterans health care in the House 
Republican budget would reduce the number of veterans that the VA could 
treat; our estimate is a reduction of an average of 280,000 persons per 
year, or about 5.7 percent, over the next 10 years. That is a drastic 
cut. That is a slap in the face to people who have served this country 
honorably and well and whom we have promised would have their health 
care needs met.
  Our Republican friends are also wanting to cut entitlement spending 
for veterans. The so-called reconciliation instructions in the 
Republican plan require $14.6 billion in unspecified reductions in 
veterans benefits to root out the waste, fraud and abuse that House 
Republicans apparently believe can be found in veterans programs. This 
$14.6 billion cut represents a cut of 3.8 percent in mandatory 
spending, far below the levels in current law.

[[Page H2841]]

  The Republicans have claimed that this is a 1 percent reduction. The 
red line on this chart is what it would take to maintain the current 
purchasing power of these veterans entitlement programs. The blue line 
is the claimed 1 percent reduction, but the green line is what the 
Republican budget actually would do. Those are the cuts that we would 
see, the erosion in present purchasing power of programs for veterans.
  What would we have to do to achieve these savings? Well, maybe one 
option would be to eliminate burial benefits for veterans, or maybe we 
could reduce the cost-of-living allowances or compensation payments for 
veterans with service-connected disabilities for the next 6 to 10 
years. Our Republican friends do not say, but with numbers this 
drastic, cuts this drastic, there is no question that we would be 
seeing a serious erosion in benefits.
  I would like to recognize the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), a 
member of the Committee on Veterans Affairs and a champion of veterans, 
and would invite her to comment on the situation that we are facing.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague for 
yielding to me.
  I think this is a time when we are sending and have sent our young 
men and women into battle, and what better way to honor them than by 
honoring our current veterans, and it is important that we restore 
these cuts.
  I mean, I look at our own VA hospital in Portland, Oregon, where we 
have cut 10 percent of our budget already before this budget. We have 
something like 6,000 veterans waiting to get an appointment. Even the 
veterans who have been disabled during war are taking 6 months to be 
seen, and now we are talking about cutting health care benefits.
  This is a promise we made to people when they said they would serve, 
that we would provide health care to them, and we are still making that 
promise. I have a young gentleman working in my office who was a 
recruiter for the service, and he said, I was told when we recruit 
people to tell them that they would get health care benefits for the 
rest of their lives.
  If we are making that kind of a promise, we need to keep that 
promise. We cannot keep that promise if we are cutting $28 billion out 
of the budget; and why, I want to ask my colleague, why are we cutting 
$28 billion out of the budget? Why is this necessary?
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, let me just read what the 
national commander of the Disabled American Veterans says about that 
very subject. He says it better than I could.
  ``Has Congress no shame?'' he said a couple of weeks ago when this 
Republican budget was before the House. ``Is there no honor left in the 
hallowed halls of our government that you choose to dishonor the 
sacrifice of our Nation's heroes and rob our programs, health care and 
disability compensation, to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy?'' That is 
his diagnosis, and I think it is hard to argue with.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. These tax cuts are not for stimulating the 
economy.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. On the contrary, I do not know of any 
economist who believes that the tax cuts this administration is 
proposing would have a stimulative effect on this economy. These are 
tax cuts that would exempt dividends from taxation and rate cuts that 
would affect mainly the top brackets, people who would not be spending 
the money and stimulating the economy.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that we have a 
situation where they are cutting money out of health care benefits at a 
time when the population is increasing the need for health care 
benefits more and at a time that we already have huge waiting lists, at 
a time that we said we are sending our young men and women into battle 
and we said we would provide health care to all veterans for the rest 
of their life.
  It is a promise we need to keep. If we can no longer keep that 
promise, then we need the tell the new people coming in that we cannot 
keep this promise and give them a different promise or different 
assumptions.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, we had before our 
subcommittee a couple of weeks ago the Secretary of the Department of 
Veterans Affairs, Secretary Principi, and so I had an opportunity to 
ask him what he thought of the House Republican budget and what they 
had done to his Department. I also asked what he thought of the 
accusation that there was that much waste, fraud and abuse in his 
Department. He hesitated a moment and he said to me, ``Congressman, 
what we need at the Veterans Administration is an increase, not a 
decrease.'' He went on to cite the aging of the World War II veteran 
population and the kind of pressures that his Department is under to 
deliver quality health care.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. It is hard to cut waste, fraud and abuse when 
we are talking about compensation to disabled veterans and when we are 
talking about health care where there is not enough money and where 
they are already making cuts and the number of people on the waiting 
lists grows and grows and grows.
  I know my colleague from Texas visited her veterans hospital this 
week.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Our colleague, the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), indeed does have a veterans hospital in her 
district. So she is well-acquainted with the good work that they do in 
these facilities and also what these cuts might mean.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join, maybe 
painfully delighted to join, my distinguished friend from North 
Carolina and the distinguished gentlewoman from Oregon, because I could 
not agree with them more, and to express my great disappointment in 
real terms, if you will.
  I visited my friends at the veterans hospital this morning. I wanted 
to go by and thank the professional staff for the work that they are 
doing under these very hard times, and I also wanted to acknowledge the 
veterans who were hospitalized there, the staff that was hospitalized, 
and what did I get but a real-life picture of what they were facing.
  My hospital personnel leadership told me they had 3,400 on the 
waiting list, but with a little belt tightening and no money, they were 
to get that number down to about 1,000. But at the same time, since 
January, they have seen an 18 percent increase in demand for service, 
they painfully told me.
  And I do not think most Americans may be aware of this, when we talk 
about de-enrolling of individuals, there is some crafting or 
characterization that these are high-income individuals that we are de-
enrolling; that the reason why they cannot get the service is because 
they make a lot of money. They make $30,000 a year. That is sort of a 
cutoff, as I understand it, and that is certainly not a lot of money.
  As I said, my voice was raspy going through, but they were so 
important, and I went from bed to bed saying hello to veterans; and 
what they were telling me is, we are getting good care here, we would 
not have had anyplace else to go.
  Just this last Friday I was with homeless veterans, Vietnam veterans 
in particular, and the shelter that they were in was referring them not 
only to the hospital because they needed hospital care, but also to the 
services of the Veterans Department.
  So what shocks me is, I am seeing here that on April 1 virtually 
every Republican Member, as I understand it from the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), voted in favor of a Democratic motion to 
instruct conferees to reject that $14.6 billion cut from veterans 
resources. Now I am confused because I believe we are coming to the 
floor again with our conference report, and we are still in the same 
predicament.
  My colleagues made a very good point, and I just want to add to this 
and mention that we have 200,000 veterans who are currently waiting 6 
months or longer for their medical appointment, but when I went to the 
hospital, the reason why I wanted to thank them was because I noticed, 
as our troops are bravely fighting in Iraq, these valiant young men and 
women,

[[Page H2842]]

some of whom will be needing these services, some of whom will become 
veterans almost immediately right now in the hospitals. Here in this 
region, the military hospitals, I have got constituents from Texas who, 
I understand, have lost limbs; the services that they will ultimately 
need will be at veterans hospitals.
  How can we say no to them and the existing veterans? So I guess, when 
I ask the question, I am shocked at where we are.
  And I want to throw into the Record, as well, a comment that I think 
is quite appropriate, again from the Disabled American Veterans. Let me 
read this. The quote is specifically:

       ``You are asking veterans to swallow a bitter pill, to 
     remedy an illness of your own making. While we all like to 
     see taxes reduced when prudent, cutting already underfunded 
     veterans programs to offset the cost of a tax cut is 
     indefensible and cowardly.''

  I guess I ask the question, and I visited with the Disabled American 
Veterans. We all have; they come to our offices. Are my colleagues 
telling me that after the motion was voted on unanimously, am I to 
understand that we may see a budget resolution coming out that does not 
restore these cuts? When any one of us as Members, it does not matter 
whether Republican or Democrat or an Independent, can go into our 
hospitals in a nonpartisan posture and ask them what they need, and 
they will tell us that they are turning away to-be patients or what-
could-be patients because they have no money?
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and 
I would like to address our ranking Budget Committee member. Is there 
any way that our Republican friends, who voted for this motion to 
instruct conferees, saying quite specifically, do not touch these 
programs, is there any way that they can now consistently vote for the 
Republican budget resolution?
  Mr. SPRATT. There are deep cuts that have been made in veterans 
programs on both sides, mandatory entitlement programs and the veterans 
health care service, which is discretionary. We fund it every year in 
appropriations bills.

                              {time}  2015

  By the way, we are talking about just getting them just up to the 
level the President provided. We actually provided more in our budget 
resolution. We have up to the level of current services, so there would 
not be any loss in purchasing power.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. If the gentleman will yield, that is an 
important point. It was the Democratic budget that made the needed 
adjustments in veterans health care and other funding to meet the need. 
The President's budget fell far short of that. The veterans 
organizations made the case for much more adequate funding. And then 
our Republican friends in the House cut it even below the President's 
level.
  Mr. SPRATT. That is exactly the point. They claim they were actually 
allowing the veterans budget to increase. And in nominal terms it does 
go up. But of course a dollar today will not buy the same thing as a 
dollar tomorrow, number one. Number two, in all events if you want some 
sort of benchmark to determine how much their cut was, we used the 
President's request. And what we were saying is that they were cutting 
the budget first $30 billion below the President's request, and then 
they modified that a bit and reduced it to $28.6 billion. But they left 
it in that position until we had our motion to instruct here on the 
House floor.
  Now, we all know how much regard those motions to instruct get when 
there is a conference, particularly a conference like the one going on 
now. We do not go to those conference meetings. We had a big photo-op 
at the beginning, where everybody got to make a passionate statement 
and pound the table. But it is the last time we will see the budget 
conference report making these critical decisions until it comes here 
on the House floor to be voted upon.
  That, of course, is a time when everybody can take assessment of it; 
and if it does not do right by veterans and education, then, by golly, 
if we are true to what we said in the motion to instruct, we should 
vote it down.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I just 
want to add that people need to understand that we have made cuts 
already. We already have these waiting lines for health care, and this 
will be on top of that. We sometimes forget that there are waiting 
lines. There are 6,000 people waiting at our hospital. The gentlewoman 
from Texas had how many?
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. 3,400.
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. 3,400 waiting at her hospital. I suspect 
everyone here who has a veteran hospital can talk about the number 
waiting already before the tax cut.
  It seems to me when any soldier comes home, he or she should not have 
to worry about whether or not they are going to get health care. That 
is not something they should be worrying about right now.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I 
would like to build on what the gentlewoman said.
  I think there needs to be what we call mutual sacrifice, and it does 
not seem to have penetrated for the administration or the Republican 
majority that we are at war. We are spending billions of dollars on the 
war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we have made a promise to these young 
men and women who may be returning, along with their colleagues who 
have already served us in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other 
places, the fact that they have actually stepped up to the plate and 
said I am going to serve my country.
  Let me just share with my colleagues this quote, and I think this 
answers the question. The Paralyzed Veterans of America said, ``We do 
not consider payments to war-disabled veterans, pensions for the 
poorest disabled veterans, and GI bill benefits for soldiers returning 
from Afghanistan and maybe Iraq to be fraud, waste and abuse.''
  So I want to really thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. 
Spratt) for his leadership on that motion, and my friends on the floor. 
The gentleman from South Carolina made it very clear. He pulled the 
door open and put the light on the process of the conference, where we 
should be engaging vigorously and fighting for our veterans. He is 
putting the light on it because he did his work, he provided us with a 
solid motion that could instruct these conferees. And lo and behold, in 
the dark of night, we are hearing there is a conference and they are 
all going past this idea of restoring these benefits.
  I would only challenge my colleagues to go to one of their hospitals, 
there is probably one in a neighboring community, and look at those 
vets who are hospitalized, look at the staff. Some of the staff members 
that I met were nurses in the military service. Look at the waiting 
lines at clinics, and ask yourself is it better to give a tax cut to 
the 1 percent of the population or to give to those who are willing to 
step up to the plate and sacrifice their lives, their bodies, their 
health on behalf of the American people. I cannot imagine that they 
would do that.

  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will 
continue to yield, I want to thank the gentlewoman for her comments. We 
will be hearing in the remainder of this hour about many, many 
deficiencies and defects in this Republican budget, but I must say none 
of them match the sheer insensitivity and callousness of cutting 
veterans health care funding. It is just beyond belief that our 
Republican friends would attempt to do this, especially in a time of 
war.
  They are driving the budget as a whole over the cliff while at the 
same time squeezing these vital programs. As we said, it is the worst 
of both worlds. I do appreciate the fine work of our ranking member on 
the Committee on the Budget, and particularly his effectiveness tonight 
in highlighting the differences, and believe me there is no comparison, 
between the alternative he put forward on this floor and the Republican 
budget.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman, and I 
wish to yield now to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird) to talk 
about Medicare and Medicaid, which if anything serve even more people 
than veterans programs and involve even deeper cuts.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his 
leadership on the Committee on the Budget, and I want to thank my 
friends who spoke so

[[Page H2843]]

eloquently about the needs for veterans health care. Having worked in a 
Veterans Hospital, I know well the needs of these fine individuals, and 
I know their sacrifice to this country.
  Mr. Speaker, if it were not for the war today, there is no question 
in my mind that the two most important priorities with the American 
people would be the economy and health care. Fifty percent of 
physicians in my home State of Washington have said that they will not 
take new Medicare patients. There were doctors in my office today 
saying, Congressman, we cannot afford to see Medicare patients because 
in Washington State, as in Iowa, as in Wisconsin, as in Oregon and many 
other States, the compensation rates for our doctors are lower than 
elsewhere. And doctors are leaving. These doctors cannot only not 
afford to see patients, but we cannot even attract doctors to 
Washington State.
  Sadly, the Republican budget does nothing to remedy this. In the 
Committee on the Budget, the Democrats offered an amendment to correct 
the inequities in rural hospital payments to try to fix this. The 
Republicans voted this down universally.
  We also face Medicaid problems. Not just Medicare, but Medicaid 
problems. What is the Republican solution? To propose a $107 billion 
cut in Medicare spending. Now, admittedly, Medicaid spending will go 
up. But the problem is it will not go up sufficiently to keep pace with 
the demands of the people in need and with the demands caused by 
inflation. Washington State alone would stand to lose $1.7 billion over 
the next 10 years.
  Our State has been ravaged by budget cuts already. That $1.7 billion 
is not just a number. It is children who cannot see a doctor, and it is 
working parents who have no health care for their families. That is 
fundamentally what is wrong with this budget.
  Now, I could understand and support the need to control increased 
costs, and I have supported that all along; but not for the sake of 
passing some of the largest tax cuts in history that will go to the 
people least in need at the expense of those most in need. Someone who 
has worked so hard and so diligently on the health care issue is my 
good friend and colleague, the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. 
Baldwin); and if the gentleman will yield to her, I know she would like 
to make a few comments.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin 
(Ms. Baldwin).
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for 
his comments, and I also want to express my appreciation for the 
distinguished ranking member for yielding to me this evening.
  Mr. Speaker, this Republican budget is the most irresponsible I have 
seen. Their proposal makes deep cuts in numerous important programs, 
such as veterans health, as we have heard earlier this evening, and 
education programs to make way for a tax cut that was custom designed 
to benefit the very wealthy, a tax cut that would give almost 2 million 
Wisconsinites less than $100 each.
  This budget will also add more than $800 billion to our national debt 
over the next decade. An average family of four would pay $4,500 in 
taxes this year just to satisfy their portion of the interest on our 
rising debt. Do not tell my constituents in Fort Atkinson or Beloit, 
Wisconsin, that deficits do not matter. Deficits are a hidden tax that 
affects the bottom line of every household.
  But to make matters worse, the Republican budget fails to address the 
health care crisis that plagues our cash-strapped States. While the 
Republican budget impacts a number of important health programs, 
perhaps one of the most negatively affected is Medicaid. Republicans 
have proposed cuts totaling nearly $100 billion to Medicaid over the 
next decade. If enacted, these cuts will be nothing short of 
devastating to some of America's most vulnerable citizens.
  Nearly 5 million of our poorest seniors currently rely on Medicaid 
for nursing home care, prescription drugs, assistance with Medicare 
out-of-pocket expenses, and other services. An increasing number of 
seniors will need Medicaid in the coming years as your baby boom 
generation retires. Republican cuts could leave millions of seniors 
with nowhere else to turn.
  Medicaid is also the Nation's single largest payer of children's 
health care. Combined with the State Children's Health Insurance 
Program, or SCHIP, Medicaid is the Nation's foremost health care safety 
net for children. Today, in America, over 6.7 million children lack 
health insurance. To me, this is simply unacceptable. These children 
need immediate preventive care and regular medical care to set them on 
a path to become healthy adults. The proposed Republican cuts would put 
dangerous obstacles along this path.
  With States facing record deficits of nearly $80 billion this year 
alone, now is not the time to pare back the Federal government's 
commitment to helping States improve the health of their communities 
with these devastating cuts to Medicaid. Republicans recently buckled 
under intense pressure from their constituents and restored over $200 
billion in proposed cuts to Medicare just hours before the resolution 
was taken up before this House.
  While the House-passed budget appears to back away from earlier calls 
for Medicare cuts, it still requires the Committee on Ways and Means to 
make undesignated cuts of $62 billion and the Committee on Energy and 
Commerce to make undesignated cuts of $107 billion over 10 years. And 
there is absolutely no language in the budget resolution that protects 
the Medicare program against these cuts within those committees.
  The cuts to Medicaid and possibly to Medicare to pay for another 
large tax cut has been justified by Republicans who say it will 
stimulate the economy. Well, I have talked to small business owners and 
most have not mentioned dividend tax cuts at all. Instead, they have 
pleaded for Congress to do something about the high cost of providing 
health insurance to their employees. They have explained to me that 
they may not be able to afford coverage for much longer. And when I 
have talked to unemployed workers, they have not asked me to accelerate 
tax cuts. Instead, they have asked me how they can afford to maintain 
health coverage for themselves and their families and how Congress 
plans to help them put the rest of America back to work.
  It is my hope that conferees emerge this week with a budget that is 
better for all Americans, one that makes progress on the difficult 
challenges that face our Nation, problems like the rising cost of 
health care, problems like the loss of quality jobs, rather than 
providing a tax cut that few are asking for and far too few would ever 
receive.
  Mr. Speaker, I once again would like to thank my distinguished 
colleague, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird), who is a champion 
of health care for all.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from South Carolina would 
continue to yield, I thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin, who has been 
so eloquent in her comments about why we need to provide health care 
and the damage that can be done by the Republican budget.
  I mentioned earlier the challenge we face in our State and so many 
States finding and retaining qualified physicians to treat the 
patients. Someone who has been a champion of another critical issue 
dealing with the nursing shortage that is harming our health care 
system throughout the country is the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. 
Capps); and if the gentleman from South Carolina would be willing to 
yield to her, I know she can add to this colloquy.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California 
(Mrs. Capps).

                              {time}  2030

  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my concerns with the 
Republican budget. It is critically important that we raise these 
issues and we raise them now, because the conference on the budget is 
meeting right now to determine the shape of the budget for the Federal 
Government for the coming year.
  Despite the adoption of our Democratic motion to instruct last week, 
which called on ignoring the cuts in the Republican bill, I am not 
particularly heartened by the progress we have seen so far. For 
example, much is being made of the Senate's action to cut back the 
President's tax cut to a

[[Page H2844]]

mere $350 billion. That is certainly a better result than what we got 
in the House, but it is far from fiscally responsible or appropriate.
  Mr. Speaker, I would remind the House that the Federal budget is on 
record deficits. Every nonpartisan look at the budget numbers comes up 
with the same result, budget deficits of $300-400 billion for as far as 
the eye can see.
  We must not forget that in this budget process, we are a country at 
war. As I speak today, men and women in uniform are risking their very 
lives on the front lines in Iraq. This war has already cost us young 
lives, and we can only hope and pray it will not cost us more. We know 
that our commitment in Iraq will not end soon, and we know that without 
a doubt the war in Iraq and its aftermath will continue to cost our 
Treasury. Just last week we passed legislation to provide nearly $70 
billion in emergency funding, which was not part of the budget, and 
that will grow this year and the next.
  My point is that we have enormous commitments facing our country and 
we cannot ignore them. These tax cuts are crowding our ability to deal 
with issues on the table.
  The Republican budget resolution embraces the administration's 
irresponsible tax cut package at the expense of our Nation's health 
care needs. Our health care security is part of our national security. 
Despite the protests of many Members of this Chamber, the majority's 
resolution still requires Medicaid, Medicare, and veterans programs to 
be cut. Medicaid is to be cut by $93 billion, the appropriate 
committees are charged to either cut Medicare by $200 billion or to 
shortchange an already weak prescription drug coverage benefit.
  The Committee on Veterans Affairs is supposed to cut $15 billion from 
their programs, the vast majority of these are health- and benefit-
related. These types of cuts would endanger health care for the most 
vulnerable millions of Americans, those who have worn the uniform, 
those who have been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. It is 
unconscionable, and it does not reflect American values.
  And I think of the sidewalk office hours I held in Santa Maria, 
California this past Saturday. Veterans came to me and implored me not 
to cut their benefits. Senior citizens came showing me their 
prescription medication costs, and telling me they are on fixed incomes 
and they cannot pay for these. But this is inevitable if we follow the 
Republican plan for huge tax cuts. Cuts to these vital programs are 
inevitable even if the tax cut is set at the Senate number.
  I hope as the conference moves forward this week, some sanity will 
reign. The choice seems very obvious: tax cuts or prescription drug 
coverage; tax cuts or health care for the low income; tax cuts or 
veterans benefits. It does not seem to be much of a choice.
  We cannot afford these cuts, $700 billion or $350 billion; they will 
endanger our ability to meet our commitments to seniors and veterans.
  We should honor these commitments and keep our promises.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Baird).
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. 
Capps) for her comments and her leadership on dealing with the nursing 
shortage.
  Our friends on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, captured 
the White House and held the majority in this body and retook the 
Senate based in part on a slogan of compassionate conservatism. Based 
on what we have heard tonight on cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and cuts to 
veterans benefits, I am not sure I see the compassion; and based on 
earlier comments about their budget having a $4 trillion deficit, I am 
not sure where I see the conservatism.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and yield to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the work he has 
done on this year's budget and in attempting to speak about the facts, 
not the political rhetoric, but about the facts.
  Tonight, as we speak, we both know that the Committee on the Budget 
of both the House and the Senate are attempting to work out the budget 
resolution, and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) is here 
on the floor, and Democrats are being completely excluded once again 
from making any of the decisions.
  I have been here for 24 years, and for most of those 24 years I have 
been labeled here and at home as a tax-and-spend Democrat. I have 
looked forward to the day, really I did not look, I looked forward to 
shirking that title, and we have done that. We have done that. But now 
we have borrow-and-spend Republicans, and my grandchildren do not 
differentiate between either one.
  What we have attempted to do now, over the last several years is, and 
we were successful up until last year when once again we began to 
experiment with the idea that there is no such thing as a bad tax cut 
as far as the economy and jobs are concerned. We experimented in 1981 
and we borrowed $4 trillion, and it took us until 1997 to get us to a 
balanced budget. I was proud to stand on the floor in 1995 when we 
passed the balanced budget constitutional amendment which would have 
required this body to balance its budget every year except when we are 
at war.
  Let me make this point right now. Tonight we are at war; we are at 
war in Iraq. We are losing some of our youngest and finest. The House 
last week voted to borrow the money necessary to fight that war, and we 
will borrow whatever is necessary to fight that war because every dime 
that is required for tax cuts or for fighting the war will be borrowed 
money.
  But tonight I want to focus in this brief period of time on where we 
are regarding debt and debt limits and to express my strong opposition 
and complete disappointment in this House going back and trying to hide 
increasing the debt ceiling. Instead of doing what we were accused of 
doing for years, and we Democrats did it, we hid the debt ceiling 
increases in a budget resolution, and we were chastised for doing that, 
and I was not for us doing it, and I am not for us doing it today. And 
the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) was not either.
  But now we are faced with a vote in which we are going to vote to 
increase our debt ceiling. If we take the budget that passed here last 
week, we are going to increase the debt ceiling to $11 trillion in the 
next 10 years. That is obscene. In the next 5 years, we are going to 
increase it by almost $3 trillion.
  What are we here tonight talking about? What I am here tonight saying 
is, we are at war and we are behind the troops, and it was almost a 
unanimous vote of the House supporting our troops and our commander in 
chief, almost unanimous.
  This is the first war in the history of our country that we are 
arguing about how big a tax cut we are going to give to the American 
people, not all of the American people, in order to fight the war. That 
does not make sense to the people I represent. I have yet to find the 
first person at home, and I am sure I might find one now, that says, 
you bet, borrow that money. Borrow that money for a $700 billion tax 
cut, borrow that money to fight the war so those men and women doing 
their best for America today, when they come home and they go back to 
work, they will get to pay the interest on the debt.
  Friends on both sides of the aisle say this is not the time to be 
arguing how big a tax cut and whether we are going to make it 
permanent. This is a time to hunker down and say, How can we in fact 
manage our fiscal affairs in wartime and do it in a way that does not 
do damage to our veterans, that does not do damage to Medicare and 
Medicaid recipients. We had an opportunity to vote on that, but we did 
not vote for it. We voted for the economic game plan that was put in 
place 2 years ago that folks apparently still believe is working even 
though by their own plan, their own budget shows that if everything 
works exactly like they have it planned, exactly like the dynamic 
scorers believe it will work, we will end up owing $11.564 trillion in 
2013.
  Things changed on September 11, 2001. I do not understand why the 
other side of the aisle cannot admit that things changed on September 
11, 2001, in a lot of other areas other than in our necessity to fight 
a war. It caused a change in our economy. It caused a change big time 
in our economy. That, to me, requires another look at the economic game 
plan; and the budget that the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. 
Spratt) put on the floor, that

[[Page H2845]]

the Blue Dogs put on the floor, would have recognized that change, but 
we lost.
  Now let me say again, I hope that the wisdom of this House is not 
that we will attempt to hide increasing the debt ceiling in a budget 
resolution. If Members really believe the economic game plan is what 
they say it is, have the courage to come out with a clean bill; as 
Secretary Snow has asked us to do, on April 4, have a clean bill to say 
to the American people, we believe you ought to borrow the money in 
order to give us the tax cuts, all of them that we are talking about. 
There are good tax cuts, marriage tax penalty relief, child tax credit, 
estate tax relief, things that we can agree on, and we have agreed on 
in a bipartisan way, that can be paid for.

  But I am getting a little bit tired of hearing everybody talk about 
these tax cuts we are now talking about and compare it back to what 
John F. Kennedy did in 1960. Sure, when you cut the marginal rate from 
90 percent to 50 percent, we change economic behavior.
  But I challenge Members, and we are unable to find a reputable 
economist who says cutting the marginal tax rate on today's corporate 
CEOs from 38 to 37 percent is going to change economic behavior and is 
going to create jobs and economic activity in the United States. And 
that is what we are arguing about. I do not understand it.
  But if Members do believe it, let us have an honest debate, no more 
canned speeches from political campaigns. Let us talk about how we are 
going to borrow $3 trillion in the next 5 years and we are going to owe 
$11 trillion at the end of 10 years, following the economic game plan 
that some believe cannot be changed in this House. We are not doing a 
service to our grandchildren when we make that argument. We are darned 
sure not doing a favor to those who are out defending the freedom 
tonight as we speak. We are not doing them a favor when we are saying 
we must borrow money for an economic game plan that has already shown 
it cannot possibly work in the economic climate we are in.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Scott).
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me. A great political philosopher once said, if you do not 
change directions, you might end up where you are headed.
  Let us look at where we were headed; as we look at the budget 
deficits over the course of the years, we see the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, 
Carter, Reagan, and Bush deficits. When President Clinton came in, we 
passed a budget in 1993 without any Republican support in the House or 
Senate. The Republicans took over the House and Senate after the 1994 
election, but remember, when they passed massive tax cuts similar to 
the ones that they passed in 2001, President Clinton vetoed those 
bills.
  They threatened to close down the government if he did not sign them. 
He vetoed them again. They closed down the government. He vetoed them 
again, and it was essentially the Clinton plan that ran us up into 
surplus.
  Within 1 year of the Bush administration, we are back down into 
deficits, and everything that we are spending on the war, since there 
is no way to pay for it, adds on to the bottom line, so this chart 
really might go off the chart.
  What is the plan? In 2000, we had a surplus. By 2001, we have spent 
all of the Medicare surplus. September 11 is 3 weeks before the end of 
the fiscal year. The fiscal year ends September 30, so this was done 
before September 11, 2002, we are spending all of Medicare, all of 
Social Security, and $160 billion in more debt. If we keep going at the 
rate we are going, it is going to be all of Medicare, all of Social 
Security, $300 billion in additional debt as far as the eye can see.
  Now this has consequences. We have heard of the debt tax. A family of 
four's proportion of interest on the national debt, when you run up all 
that debt, $4,400. It was going to be down to zero if we had kept going 
in the direction we were going; but instead, since we were piling on 
new debt, by 2013, a family of four, over $8,400.

                              {time}  2045

  We were told we had to run up all this debt and ruin the budget to 
create jobs. This is the number of jobs in millions for each 
administration: Carter, 9 million; Reagan, second administration, 9 
million; Clinton, 10 million. We are losing more jobs than we are 
creating after that budget was created.
  With no money, you have an effect on education. About a year and a 
half ago, the administration ran all over the country with a bipartisan 
group of leaders in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce 
and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
because we had passed No Child Left Behind. We have a two-step process 
in Washington about spending money. The authorization, No Child Left 
Behind, and then the appropriation. Here is the authorization. In 2003 
we spent $23.8 billion; and this year's budget, we are going to spend 
less, about $10 billion less than we promised in No Child Left Behind. 
At the same time, we are eliminating education programs like 
comprehensive school reform, dropout prevention, elementary school 
counseling, eliminating those programs, eliminating arts programs for 
disabled students. We are funding at less than inflation after-school 
programs, safe and drug-free school programs, bilingual education. 
Those are the kinds of cuts that are necessary because we do not have 
the money.
  We are also cutting education generally. Over the last few years, we 
have been increasing education 12.3 percent. This budget that we are 
looking at now cuts education 2.7 percent, and what gets cut? Head 
Start, 28,000 if Head Start takes its proportional share of the hit; 
28,000 students will not get the ability to get a head start. That 
program has been proven to give those not born to privilege a fair 
chance in life, and now because we are giving tax breaks, they will not 
have that opportunity.
  If the money comes out of school lunches proportional to the way the 
budget is cut, 500,000 students will not get school lunches. That is 
what happens when we cut the budget. We have to cut something. School 
lunches is what gets cut.
  We are also cutting access to college. We know that college tuition, 
particularly State college, is going up. States are having fiscal 
problems, every State. I know my State is increasing student tuition. 
Of the last count, over 400,000 students every year qualify for 
college, take the right courses, take the college entrance exams, have 
good enough grades to get in, but cannot afford to go because they 
cannot afford it. And here we are in this budget cutting student loans, 
cutting Pell grants so that the maximum amount is less than it is this 
year. To add insult to injury, we are also cutting programs that 
encourage low-income and minority students to attend college, and we 
know that college is one's ticket to success in this country.
  Also in special education, several decades ago we promised to spend 
40 percent of the cost of educating students under the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act. At the rate we are going in this budget, we 
will never get to 40 percent.
  This budget cuts important programs. We have heard about health care. 
We have heard about veterans. We have heard how deep in debt this 
budget goes, and we just have to wonder how bad it has to get before it 
is time to change directions again and go in a better direction.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his 
leadership in responsible budgeting.
  Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

                          ____________________