[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 13 (Tuesday, January 23, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, this evening the President, in bowing 
to the electoral reality of last November and, with finally some 
recognition of real problems confronting our Nation and our citizens, 
is about to begin, in his State of the Union, to address the issue of 
the need for an expansion of health insurance. Forty-six million 
Americans lack health insurance, 1 million more per year every year 
this President has been in office. He will also address the issues of 
energy efficiency, energy independence, and global warming; and we 
welcome some remarks from the President in those areas. And he is going 
to address the debt and the deficit.
  We welcome this new focus on these extraordinarily important and 
difficult issues that have been pretty much ignored during his 
Presidency. Unfortunately, his rhetorical U-turn is not going to be 
matched by the reality of his proposals. In order to provide health 
insurance to 46.1 million people who don't have it, he says we should 
tax people who do have health insurance.
  Now, that is interesting because the President, of course, gets his 
health insurance for free. And his proposal would also extend tax 
benefits to the wealthiest among us because many people who don't have 
health insurance can't benefit from tax breaks. They don't pay Federal 
income taxes.
  That is not a real solution. A real solution would be to take on the 
antitrust immunity of the insurance industry, estimated to raise $45 
billion, saving consumers that money. That is the cost of uninsured 
health care in America.
  Energy efficiency and independence, well, we will wait and hear what 
the President has to say. But remember a year ago, he talked about our 
addiction to oil, and all his policies have been designed to further 
that addiction thus far.
  On the debt and the deficit, he still wants to cut taxes for the 
wealthiest among us. He wants to extend, to make permanent, all of his 
tax cuts; exempt all estates from taxes; and says he is going to 
balance the budget. Well, if he was really going to do that by the year 
2012, he would have to eliminate the Federal Government except for the 
Department of Defense, a little bit of the Department of Homeland 
Security, because the projected deficit is as large as about the rest 
of the discretionary budget if his tax cuts are maintained. You have to 
begin to raise revenues from the wealthiest among us to address this 
gaping maw hole, the deficit.
  And then there is one very important problem where he isn't even 
pretending to change direction, one where a majority of the American 
people and a majority of the United States disagree with the 
President's nostrum, and that is his desire to escalate the war in Iraq 
as a way out. Defying his own Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior 
officers and advisers in the military; defying the Prime Minister of 
Iraq, who said we shouldn't put more Americans into Baghdad; defying 
the American people; and defying this Congress, the President is going 
to offer us more stay the course in Iraq and try to spin it into a new 
policy that will lead to success.
  We want to succeed, but to succeed, the Iraqi Government has to be 
willing to take on some of its own problems. The Shiias and the Sunnis 
have got to stop slaughtering each other trying to settle a 1,400-year-
old grudge and putting us in the middle of their civil war. They have 
got to begin to meaningfully share power, and they have got to begin to 
resolve their own issues. And the U.S. sending more troops is not going 
to lead them down that path.
  So I fear that what the President is proposing there will lead to 
more conflict. It may look good in the short term, but long term it is 
not going to resolve this very difficult issue.
  I hope that the President offers us some real changes in direction 
tonight and not just a rhetorical U-turn to bow to the reality of the 
elections.

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