[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 38 (Wednesday, April 6, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E557-E559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. JOHN F. TIERNEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 17, 2005

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the concurrent resolution 
     (H. Con. Res 95) establishing the congressional budget for 
     the United States Government for fiscal year 2006, revising 
     appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal year 2005, and 
     setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 
     2007 through 2010:

  Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, throughout the year, Members often express 
support for certain policies and programs or advocate for fiscal 
discipline. However, during the consideration of the Budget Resolution 
our true commitment to those priorities comes to light.
  What this Republican Budget Resolution reveals is that the Majority 
is more concerned with advancing a narrow ideological agenda. Carefully 
making sure to allow for a total of $106 billion in tax cuts over five 
years for high-end earners, this GOP Budget Resolution carelessly 
exacts severe cuts to critical services that benefit students of all 
ages, veterans, first responders, poor and working families, and 
communities interested in economic development.
  What this Republican Budget Resolution reveals is that the Majority 
is more interested in

[[Page E558]]

advancing a reckless, unsustainable economic policy than restoring 
fiscal responsibility. In fact, the Majority's proposal calls for a 
deficit of $376 billion in 2006--$78 billion more than the 
Congressional Budget Office's estimate. This budget, which only 
accounts for five years, never reaches balance.
  The Republican Budget signifies a failure in honest accounting not 
just because of what is included, but also for what it disingenuously 
leaves out. Excluded from this Budget are the details of the 
President's estimated $754 billion 10-year Social Security 
privatization plan ($20 Billion over the next decade), the cost of the 
over $800 billion (and growing) Medicare drug bill, the longer term 
costs of the war in Iraq, the cost to stop the alternative minimum tax 
from penalizing regular families, and the implications of extending the 
tax cuts.
  Feigning fiscal discipline and fundamentally at odds with what I 
believe are the real priorities and concerns of the American people, 
this GOP Budget Resolution also offers no 21st Century competitive 
strategy for our country and further shreds what is left of our ever-
fraying safety net.
  A much needed competitive strategy would start with education, which 
is the vehicle through which students of all ages can achieve and 
become what they may never have otherwise dreamed possible. Going to 
college and attaining a degree is, unfortunately, not a right of 
passage for the vast majority in our country. Achieving this goal must 
not be minimized. Each year, a young man or woman becomes the 
first member of his or her family to graduate from college. For them, 
and for all their relatives and loved ones, obtaining a diploma means 
progress and instills pride. A college degree translates into hard 
dollars: over their lifetime, college graduates will earn on average $1 
million more than they would have if they did not attend post-secondary 
school.

  Schools continue to serve as the source where we can view the promise 
of America in progress, and our country's legacy depends upon how well 
we educate our young people. For those not completing four years of 
college, higher job skills and technical abilities acquired through 
vocational and technological training and education are the path to the 
middle class.
  The Majority's budget cuts education programs by $2.5 billion in 2006 
and $38 billion over the next five years and completely eliminates 48 
programs, including the $1.3 billion vocational education program, the 
$437 million Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, the $306 million GEAR-
UP program, and the $225 million Even Start family literacy program.
  These cuts come at a time when the cost of attending a four-year 
public college has increased more than $2,300. In fact, according to 
the 2003 National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education survey, 
Massachusetts had the largest tuition increase in four-year public 
institutions (24 percent), and the second largest in community colleges 
(26 percent). They attack our increasingly successful community college 
and vocational-technical training programs.
  These cuts come at a time when there is an increased need to college 
access programs, including GEAR-UP and TRIO, that help high school 
students prepare for, apply to, and find financial aid for college.
  These cuts come at a time when many communities across the country 
are struggling with a growing methamphetamine and opiate problem. In 
Massachusetts, according to statistics from the state's Department of 
Public Health, the number of deaths from opiates has risen over 300%--
from 108 in 1991 to 468 in 2001, which is the most recent year for 
which statistics are available.
  The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities State Grants program 
has assisted states and school districts in developing youth anti-drug 
education initiatives, which has, in turn, helped parents and teachers 
learn more about the prevalence of drugs in the community. The program 
has been a source through which Massachusetts has been successful in 
obtaining $40 million in funds over the past five years.
  It is not just those who are looking to improve themselves through 
education that this GOP Budget Resolution betrays, but it also advances 
the Administration's all-out assault against those that depend on our 
longstanding safety net, those programs that assist the poor, children, 
elderly, and people with disabilities. Meanwhile, let me reiterate, the 
Republican proposal calls for $106 billion in additional tax cuts. 
According to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy 
Center, 46% of those who will benefit from these tax cuts in 2005 will 
be households who earn $1 million, which comprise only .2 percent of 
all households nationwide. The average tax cut for this income bracket 
was greater than $30,000 in 2003.

  This GOP Budget Resolution finances its hundred billion-dollar tax 
cut for the highest income earners at the expense of the most 
vulnerable and least fortunate in society. That is wrong.
  As required by the Republican Budget, the Agriculture Committee would 
be forced to cut spending by more than $5 billion over five years. With 
the general reluctance to alter or scale back farm subsidies, the food 
stamp program would bear the brunt of these cuts. This is not a program 
that has been riddled with so-called ``waste, fraud, and abuse.'' The 
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that ``over 95 
percent of food stamp benefits go to households with income below the 
federal poverty level. Virtually all of the remainder goes to the 
elderly and people with disabilities.''
  Further, their budget makes deeper cuts in Medicaid than the 
President's budget, directing the Ways and Means Committee and the 
Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $19 and $20 billion respectively. 
It is expected that the bulk of such cuts will fall on low-income 
programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, 
unemployment benefits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, foster 
care, and Medicaid.
  According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, ``these 
Medicaid cuts are likely to push hard-pressed states to eliminate 
coverage for a substantial number of low income people, increasing the 
ranks of the uninsured and the underinsured.''
  The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that, should 
these cuts affect all states proportionally, this would translate into 
a loss of over $117 million for Massachusetts.
  This is not the direction in which this country should be headed. 
What is being proposed in the Republican Majority's Budget Resolution 
is not a blueprint for success.
  Certainly, our constituents want to know that their tax dollars are 
being well spent. There is no question about that.
  But parents also do not want to pass on huge amounts of debt to their 
children, which is what the GOP Budget Resolution does.
  Parents do not want their children to be denied opportunities to 
learn and advance in ways beyond what they achieved in life. Moms and 
dads want to ensure that their kids are educated about drugs. They want 
their kids to know how to maximize their chances of gaining acceptance 
at a college and have programs available to help minimize the cost.
  They want to know there are enough police and fire fighters on the 
street to be able to respond effectively to emergencies, they want our 
country's veterans to receive adequate care after they return home from 
service, and they want to protect the environment so their sons and 
daughters inherit cleaner air and safer drinking water.
  At the same time, they take offense to denying food stamps or 
eliminating Medicaid coverage for those who depend on such services 
just to make room for another hundred billion dollar tax cut for the 
already well-off. That doesn't meet their standard of fundamental 
fairness.
  Their Budget Resolution does nothing to improve upon our long-term 
fiscal outlook, fails students, and exploits the poor. We must do 
better. We implement solutions that honestly and effectively address 
the budget deficit, chart a course that allows our students to 
competitively excel, and adequately provide for those who need the most 
help.
  A Better Way: The Democratic Budget is a more fiscally responsible 
approach to balancing the budget. It achieves balance by 2012, while 
accumulating less debt and wastes fewer resources on interest payments 
needed to service the national debt.
  The Democratic alternative is based on essential two-sided pay-as-
you-go budget enforcement rules that led to a balanced budget in the 
1990's. The cost of any additional spending, or any new tax cut, must 
be paid for by curbing spending, offsetting spending cuts, or new 
revenues. The 1990 pay-as-you-go rules had bipartisan support, 
including the support of the first President Bush. Those rules turned 
record deficits into record surpluses in large part because they 
subjected all parts of the budget, discretionary and mandatory 
spending, as well as revenues, to budget discipline. The Republican 
budget contains no such enforcement provisions.
  The Democratic budget provides $4.5 billion more for education and 
training programs than the Republican budget for 2006 and $41 billion 
more over the next five years. It rejects the $21 billion in cuts that 
the Republican budget requires the Education and the Workforce 
Committee to make over five years, increases the maximum Pell Grant by 
$100 in each of the next ten years--twice the Republican increase--and 
eliminates the program's current $4.3 billion funding shortfall.
  The Democratic budget provides $2 billion more than the Republican 
budget for 2006 and $9 billion more over five years for community and 
regional development, blocking the President's proposal to eliminate 
the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). Cuts in food stamps, 
housing, elderly services and other safety-net protections would not be 
necessary.

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  The Democratic Budget works towards elimination of the deficit, 
paring it down dramatically in the next five years, and thus saving us 
from huge interest payments needed to service the national debt.
  We pay for all this by not extending the tax cuts for those earning 
over $200,000. According to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution 
Tax Policy Center this would provide $223.5 billion between calendar 
year 2005 and 2010.
  The tax cuts were originally promoted as temporary--if extended, they 
will cost $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Coupled with the costly 
challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan and the need to invest in our 
future, the tax cuts prove an unbalanced approach that creates huge 
deficits and shortchanges America's priorities.
  It is time to seize the opportunity to restore sanity and candor to 
the budget process and to pass a budget that promotes the security and 
values of the American people without imposing increased social 
inequities and crushing debt to future generations.

                          ____________________