[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 11 (Tuesday, February 3, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H280-H282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE BUSH BUDGET IS WHOLLY DEFICIENT AND IMMORAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) is recognized for 5 minutes.

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  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to discuss the President's 
proposed budget for fiscal year 2005. The Bush Budget boasts $521 
million in deficits and takes the audacious step of increasing the 
budget by 50 percent in 1 year while promising to cut that same 50 
percent increase in half within 5 years. Is he joking? Does he think 
the American public has no discerning ability to think about the state 
of our affairs logically? To create such a huge deficit and place it on 
the backs of our children is morally indefensible. The interest expense 
of the deficit will mean higher taxes and will also mean that future 
taxpayers will be hamstringed to provide for national security, 
homeland security, and education for our kids or healthcare for our 
parents. Moreover, Bush's budget represents the largest deficits in 
this Nation's history. To make this statistic even worse, he took 
office with a $5.6 trillion surplus.
  Cuts to Education: The Bush budget fails to provide $9.4 billion in 
promised funding for education, which means that 2.4 million children 
will not get the help in reading and math they were promised. Bush's 
budget freezes funding for rural education and provides only half the 
funding promised to after school programs. This shortfall in funding 
means that 1.3 million children who were promised after school programs 
will not get them. The Bush administration has frozen funding for Pell 
grants at the maximum level of $4,050 and results in a lower average 
award of $2,399. The administration's budget also cuts reading programs 
by $22 million, even though the President touts a new $100 million 
reading program for high school students and an increase of $129 
million for Reading First, however, in order to pay for these 
increases, the President budget eliminates $247 million in the Even 
Start literacy program. Despite the administration's attempt to 
highlight its community college job training proposal, the Bush budget 
cuts job training programs by $286 million. These cuts total $36 
million more than the $250 million proposed for the community college 
program. In addition, the budget would cut $316 million in vocational 
training funding in the Department of Education. All of these cuts are 
on top of $1.4 billion in spending reductions President Bush has 
proposed for job training and vocational education since he took 
office.
  Cuts in Veterans Benefits: While almost all veteran programs provide 
medical care and hospital services, President Bush's budget for 
Veterans programs of $29.8 billion is $257 million below the amount the 
CBO estimated it needs to maintain current benefit levels. Over 5 
years, the budget is $13.5 billion below the amount needed to maintain 
benefits at the current level. Bush's budget also fails to repeal the 
Disabled Veterans Tax, which forces disabled military retirees to give 
up $1 of their pension for every dollar of disability pay they receive. 
Also, the budget imposes a $250 annual enrollment fee on non-service-
connected Priority 7 (higher income, non-service-connected) veterans 
and all Priority 8 veterans who wish to receive medical care from the 
Department of Veterans Affairs. The budget assumes 5-year savings of 
$1.5 billion from this proposal. The budget also assumes 5-year savings 
of $747 million from increasing pharmacy co-payments for Priority 7 and 
8 veterans from $7 to $15. Both of these were proposed in last year's 
budget and rejected by the Congress. The President's budget raises 
health care costs for veterans, imposing new co-payments and enrollment 
fees that will cost veterans over $2 billion over 5 years.
  Cuts in Healthcare: The Bush budget reflects a difference of $139 
billion, a total of $534 billion over 10 years to fund the Medicare 
Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernation Act. The Bush budget 
cuts Medicaid spending by 23.6 billion over 10 years by curbing 
intergovernmental transfers and the use of the upper payment limit and 
by limiting Medicaid provider payments to the cost of providing 
services. When these cuts are combined, the total impact on Medicaid 
results in $15.7 billion over 10 years. This year's budget once again 
proposes block grant Medicaid. Under this proposal, States have the 
option to cut benefits to certain Medicaid populations and to roll back 
benefits.
  Tax Cuts: The President makes his expiring tax cuts permanent at a 
cost of $131.6 billion over 5 years. Over 75 years, these tax cuts 
exceed the combined shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare. The 
budget squanders an additional $1 trillion over the next 10 years in 
additional tax cuts for the wealthy, but does not expand the tax credit 
to cover millions of military and working families. Instead of helping 
small business growth, the Bush budget cuts funding for Small Business 
Administration by 10 percent. President Bush continues to push for tax 
breaks for companies that move American jobs overseas instead of 
helping American small businesses.
  Glaring Omissions: No funding in 2005 for the ongoing military 
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Supplemental funding which will 
further increase the deficit will be required to pay for the costs of 
these operations. The budget avoids long-term reform of the alternative 
minimum tax (AMT), even though the AMT will soon force millions of 
middle class families to pay more taxes, contrary to the original 
intent of the AMT.
  Record Job Losses: President Bush enjoys the worst jobs record since 
Herbert Hoover. This is the third budget that Mr. Bush has produced 
which claimed that jobs would be created. Instead, the exact opposite 
has occurred, over the past 3 years, the United States has lost more 
than 2.3 million jobs. The Bush budget cuts $286 million from job 
training and employment services, these cuts come on top of the $1.5 
billion in cuts to job training and related services that President 
Bush proposed when he took office. The Bush budget for the Labor 
Department does not keep pace with inflation and cuts desperately 
needed programs. Two million individuals over the coming months are 
expected to exhaust their Federal and State unemployment benefits, due 
to objections from Republican leaders to extend these benefits. The 
Bush budget block-grants adult and dislocated worker programs under the 
Workforce Investment Act (WIA), jeopardizing critical training 
resources just as workers look to gain new skills to compete in an 
increasingly tight job market. Dislocated workers will be hurt the most 
because there would no longer be dedicated funding guaranteed to help 
them find new jobs. The Bush budget also eliminates the Employment 
Service--the very program that connects unemployed workers with jobs. 
This termination comes at a time when millions of workers continue to 
struggle to find jobs.
  Mr. Bush's tax cuts which promised to increase jobs has not come to 
fruition. Not only have the losses been massive but $1 trillion of new 
debt has been created. Last month, only 1,000 jobs were created by the 
economy. However, in his last State of the Union address, President 
Bush stated that ``jobs are on rise.'' Based on this type of progress, 
it would take 192 years and 8 months for the economy to return to the 
number of jobs it had at the beginning of Bush's presidency.
  Additional Domestic Cuts: Domestic appropriations are held to a 1 
percent increase which reduces funding for transportation, 
environmental protection, and small businesses and other priority 
series that the American people want and respect.
  The President's budget is a bad dream beyond belief. It is evasive, 
inefficient, poorly thought and most egregiously hurts the people who 
can least afford to be hurt. The Democrats have priorities and we are 
going to fight for them. We want to create good paying jobs and help 
small business to grow, to improve education, lower health care cost, 
support veterans and military retirees as well as to do more to protect 
our ports and borders from terrorism.
  In another sly move, President Bush presented a 5-year budget instead 
of a 10-year budget to further conceal the true cost of his policies to 
the American public. This budget includes policies that have long-term 
costs that need to be looked at over longer periods of time. Examples 
of programs that meet this criteria include the President's Mission to 
Mars and the Lifetime Savings and Retirement accounts which will incur 
significant costs past the 5-year time frame. To further put the 
deficit in perspective, be aware that in 1998, we achieved the first 
balanced budget in 29 years. In 1999, we achieved the first balanced 
budget without reliance on the Social Security trust fund. In 2000, we 
achieved the first balanced budget without relying on either the Social 
Security or Medicare Trust Fund surpluses in the history of those 
programs.


     MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL THAT WOULD BENEFIT ALL SENIORS

  Mr. Speaker, I also rise tonight because I am concerned that while 
millions of senior citizens struggle to pay for their prescription 
drugs, Republicans once again have joined forces with HMOs and big drug 
companies to pass legislation that does nothing to bring down the 
skyrocketing costs of drug prices.
  The real winners of the new GOP prescription drug law are not the 
seniors, but the drug companies, who will make billions in windfall 
profits; and the big insurance companies who will benefit immediately 
from the billions in HMO overpayments, and a special $12 billion 
Medicare HMO slush fund.
  You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the GOP 
was more concerned about protecting the profits of big drug companies, 
rather than controlling the prices of prescription drugs so more 
seniors could afford them. Just look at the fine print of the law.
  The bill explicitly prohibits the government form negotiating lower 
prescription drug prices from the big drug companies, and prohibits the 
legal importation of drugs from Canada. Mr. Speaker, prohibiting the 
government

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form lowering the costs of prescription drugs, when Nation is 
experiencing a growing budget deficit, and is experiencing a sluggish 
economy, makes no sense at all.
  Furthermore, there is a doughnut hole in the GOP bill that is large 
enough to drive a Mack truck through. Under the Republican bill, in the 
first year, millions of middle class seniors with drug costs between 
$2,250 and $5,100 will receive no help at all, even though they must 
pay premiums. This is not fair. Experts have concluded that most 
seniors will end up paying more for their prescription drugs in the 
near future, even if they enroll in the new program.
  Tonight, I ask a very straight forward question: how in the world can 
millions of seniors citizens afford to pay, out of pocket, anywhere up 
to $2,850 dollars in prescription drug costs, because of the doughnut 
hole in coverage in the GOP bill.
  The answer is clear: seniors will continue to struggle, day after 
day, just as they have for decades, to figure out how they can afford 
to purchase desperately needed prescription drugs. Many will have to 
continue to endure their aches and pains because they will not be able 
to afford prescription drugs under this ill designed program.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think it is fair for senior citizens to have to 
go through this nightmare any more. Mr. Speaker, I think this is a 
moral outrage, and I urge the Congress to adopt a new Medicare 
Prescription drug bill that would benefit all seniors, not just the 
drug companies and the HMOs.

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