[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 21 (Monday, February 5, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H1196-H1201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPACT OF THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET ON AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ellsworth). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Altmire) is recognized for half the remaining time until midnight.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are going to initiate the 30-
something Special Order, as we have done so many times in the past. I
am filling in for our colleague Mr. Meek from Florida, who usually is
in this spot leading the way. But he attended the Super Bowl, which was
in his district yesterday, and made it back today and had some things
to take care of. So we are going to do ably in his absence tonight. But
I appreciate the Speaker's generosity to give us the hour tonight.
We are going to talk tonight about the President's budget and the
impact that is going to have not only on the Nation and on the Congress
and what we are going to need to do, but I am going to talk
specifically about what this budget does to my home State of
Pennsylvania. I have some statistics on health care and veterans and
Social Security recipients, and we will go right down the line and talk
about my home State, but also what this budget is going to do for the
country and what we are going to have to deal with as a Congress.
I brought down a copy of the budget so the folks at home can see what
was dropped in our lap today. Each office got a copy of this budget.
This is what we are talking about tonight. It is the President's fiscal
year 2008 budget which we are going to talk about.
Now, as he has done in the past, 6 years in a row, now seven
including this budget, the President's fiscal year 2008 budget
continues with more of the same, the wrong priorities from the past 6
years and the same fiscal irresponsibility and misguided priorities
that have been taking our country in the wrong direction. The
President's budget is fiscally reckless and adds $3.2 trillion to the
deficit over the next 10 years when we use honest accounting.
Despite the President's claim, his budget does not achieve balance,
Mr. Speaker, in the year 2012. The President leaves out many programs
and uses accounting gimmicks to reach what he claims is a balance. But
an honest assessment of what this budget does shows an increase in the
deficit of $3.2 trillion over the next 10 years.
Now, that is on top of what has already happened over the past 6
years, which has been to increase the Federal deficit, the Federal
debt, by $3 trillion. I would remind my colleagues that when this
President took office, we had just had four consecutive years of budget
surpluses and those surpluses were forecast to continue as far as the
eye could see. In fact, the 10 year budget projection was a surplus of
over $5 trillion.
Well, now we are 7 years down the road, and let's take a look at what
has happened since then. As I said, instead of having a surplus of $5
trillion, this President has added $3 trillion to the national debt,
and from this point forward, using honest accounting, this budget which
the President has submitted here today is going to add $3.2 trillion
more to the national debt. This is fiscally irresponsible, but the cuts
that the President makes in programs are morally irresponsible, and
this is what I am going to focus my remarks on tonight.
He cuts health care. He cuts Social Security through his
privatization scheme which he continues to try to push, even though the
public clearly opposes it. He cuts $300 billion from Medicare and
Medicaid programs. He cuts terrorism funding. He cuts the COPS Program.
Mr. Speaker, this is just incredible, that the President came here
for the State of the Union and talked about what his budget priorities
were and what his goals were, and this budget doesn't represent any of
the rhetoric that we heard in the State of the Union. Unfortunately,
the reality of this budget doesn't match the rhetoric that we heard.
Now, we have been joined once again by our 30-something colleague
from
[[Page H1197]]
Connecticut, Mr. Murphy, and I would yield to him to discuss his views
on this budget.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr. Altmire. It is a
pleasure to be with my new 30-Something colleague on the floor here to
discuss what I think you set out before us very accurately is a
fiscally reckless and irresponsible budget, but also a morally
irresponsible budget.
You outlined what the problem here is. The problem here, Mr. Speaker,
is that we have got a budget that doesn't paint the whole picture for
this Congress, doesn't tell the whole story for this country. We have
got a budget which claims to be in balance.
Mr. Altmire, I remember being here for my first State of the Union
speech, I did not sit too far away from you, and we listened to the
President stand up at the podium there at the second level and say we
could work together on a balanced budget, that we could do the right
thing for the American people, do the things that Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan
and Ms. Wasserman Schultz have been talking about for 2 years in the
30-Something Working Group, and that is making sure that we don't pass
on the cost of government to our children and our grandchildren by
these massive deficits that we are racking up.
Instead, the President handed us a budget today, a pretty big stack
of papers there, that claims to balance the budget, but does so by
omitting some of the biggest costs within the budget.
At the top of the list is the cost of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. They are not in that budget. Those are emergency
expenditures, emergency appropriations, and so the President hasn't
seen fit to incorporate those in the budget.
He also doesn't include the cost of fixing what is called the
Alternative Minimum Tax, which is a tax that, if not repealed, it was
supposed to be for the wealthiest taxpayers, but because we haven't
made any adjustments over the years, this Alternative Minimum Tax is
all of a sudden not going to be much of an alternative, because
millions of middle class families throughout this country are going to
have to pay it. So that is not in there either.
By the way, it also assumes that we are going to take in billions of
dollars in revenue beyond what most reasonable economists will tell you
we are going to bring in in the next 5 to 10 years.
So, Mr. Speaker, what we have is a budget that doesn't tell the whole
story. I can balance my budget pretty easily at home if I just, for
instance, don't include the cost of my mortgage. I could spend
everything. I could buy five flat screen TVs for my house, I could get
a caretaker to mow my lawn and cut my shrubs, so long as my budget
didn't include my mortgage. But, do you know what? My family and your
family and everybody else's family in this country has to make their
budget meet, their revenues and expenditures meet, by incorporating all
of their costs. The budget that you held up there doesn't do that. It
only encapsulates parts of our costs.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Reclaiming my time on that point, what the President has
done does not coincide with what the Congressional Budget Office says
the cost of these programs is. Just because in his budget he estimates
costs and ignores issues like the Alternative Minimum Tax, which needs
to be fixed, doesn't mean those things aren't going to happen.
He can ignore some of the costs of the Iraq war and the actions in
Afghanistan and pretend like we are not going to spend as much money as
it is going to take to carry on activities there. That doesn't mean
those dollars don't add up. And the Congressional Budget Office and any
reasonable economist who has taken a fair look at this budget shows
that he is hundreds of billions of dollars below in his estimations
what it is going to cost to carry out those.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We are talking here about adding $3.2
trillion to the deficit over the next 2 years, $3.2 trillion to a
deficit that is already exploding beyond any numbers of previous
Congresses. Remember, this Congress inherited when the Republicans took
control in 1994 a surplus. They had money to spend and they have turned
it into record deficits, and now the President is going to add on to
it.
{time} 2230
Now, here is the other part, Mr. Altmire, that creates the problem.
This budget that was presented to us today not only doesn't include the
cost of the war, doesn't include fixing this middle class tax increase,
also paints a real rosy picture in term of revenues, but it also has
some tax breaks in it, but they are tax breaks for the very, very
wealthy. We have got another $2 trillion in tax breaks over the next 10
years in this budget, and as we know because we have all seen the
charts in the 30-something Working Group, because I have watched them
on TV talk about it for the last 2 years. Those tax breaks, Mr.
Altmire, are going to end up going to the richest 1, 2, 3 percent of
Americans, and the hard working middle class families in and around the
Pittsburgh area where you are and in and around northwestern
Connecticut aren't going to get the benefit of those tax breaks.
So what throws this thing so out of balance is not just that we are
not counting some massive expenditures in the war in Iraq, and
hopefully the Congress is going to do something about that, but it also
includes in it these big tax breaks that just aren't going to go to
families like yours or families throughout Philadelphia, throughout
Connecticut, in fact throughout this whole country.
So Mr. Speaker and Members, we have got some work to do on this
budget. And I am frankly upset by the budget that the President put
before us, but I am glad that we have a party in control and a
leadership in control of this House that is going to take that budget,
it is going to take that budget and twist it and turn it so that middle
class families end up coming out in the lead at the end of this
process. Because what has happened in the past is the President puts
forth one of these backwards budget, the Republicans sort of tinker
with it here and there to make sure that it ends up favoring the
special interests of the lobbyists that are currently in favor in
Congress, and in the end people that we care about don't get helped at
all.
So, Mr. Altmire, I am just looking forward to a budget process here
which takes I think what is a very flawed document and turns it around
and makes it work for regular middle class, working class families
throughout this country.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate Mr. Murphy's remarks. And for the folks
here listening, I just wanted to let them know how we are going to
approach this tonight for the remaining time that we have. I am going
to give a broad overview of the cuts that have been made in some of
these programs at the national level included in this budget that we
received today; then I am going to yield time to Mr. Ryan, who has
joined us and can ably respond to his side of things and how he views
this budget. Then, Mr. Murphy, you can go again. And then I am going to
focus my remaining time on Pennsylvania specific programs and how this
is going to affect my home State of Pennsylvania.
But for the national overview, I mentioned that this budget cuts
Medicare.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Would the gentleman yield briefly? I didn't see
where I fit.
Mr. ALTMIRE. That is because you weren't listening. I did mention
your name. I am going to give a broad overview, and then I am going to
give you as much time as you need.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You get 2 minutes, Mr. Ryan.
Mr. ALTMIRE. To complete whatever it is that you want to say.
So the Medicare and Medicaid cuts of $300 billion, that is
outrageous, that at a time when the number of Medicare beneficiaries is
growing every year, the baby boomers are starting to qualify for
Medicare in fiscal year 2008, which is where this budget takes us, and
they are going to start retiring en masse in 2011 which is during the
5-year budget, that they would reduce spending for Medicare
beneficiaries at a time when the number of beneficiaries is going up
exponentially.
Now, these Medicare cuts include premium increases for millions of
beneficiaries totaling $10 billion over the next 10 years. Let me
repeat that. Medicare beneficiaries at home, many of them, are going to
see their premiums increase to the point where it is going to add up to
$10 billion in premium increases over the next 10 years.
[[Page H1198]]
But, at the same time that this budget slashes Medicare funding, of
course it protects special interests, it leaves untouched massive
overpayments by Medicare to the HMOs in the Republican's Medicare
Modernization Act of 2003.
Now, many of the Federal Medicaid cuts simply increase cost to the
State. These aren't costs that are going away, they are just passing
the buck along to the States. So instead of assisting State efforts to
reduce the number of uninsured, this budget actually impedes progress
on States being able to insure children and others.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield for a moment on
that point? Just very quickly, I want to hammer that home. Because when
people out there in the public, and I did this too when I was watching
Congress for years, sees some of these cuts to programs here that
people up here in Washington talk about, you know, the government
tightening their belts and doing the right thing for curbing the growth
of spending programs; what they don't understand is that just passes on
the buck, as you said, to the states. Now, the States sometimes pick up
the tab and pass it along in increases in the sales tax or the income
tax. But in Connecticut what often happens is that the cuts to these
programs just get passed down again. In Connecticut, they get passed
down to the local towns, counties, and other States. And in
Connecticut, the property taxes just go up. So all of this supposed
belt tightening that happens here to programs that need to get taken
care of, whether they be education programs or health care programs,
just get passed down and somebody else pays for them. That really in
the end, Mr. Altmire, to me is one of the worst cases of fiscal
irresponsibility, because you are pretending that you are taking care
of a problem when really you are just handing it down for somebody else
to take care of. And we will take some hits up here if we need to in
order to get taken care of what needs to be taken care of here rather
than just making somebody else be responsible.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate Mr. Murphy's comments. When the President
gave his State of the Union Address, he talked about energy
independence and he always talks about energy independence and our
addiction to foreign oil, which he likes to talk about. But here again,
the rhetoric did not match the reality.
President Bush promised in his State of the Union speech that he was
committed to reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but this budget
fails to fulfill this promise. For example, and this is just a few
examples, total energy efficiency and renewable energy funding is
essentially at the level from when President Bush first took office.
That doesn't make any sense for someone who claims to want to reduce
our dependence on foreign oil.
In addition, the President's budget severely cuts weatherization
assistance and low income home energy assistance.
Now, this budget also cuts most egregiously renewable energy grants
programs. How can we expect to reduce our dependence on foreign oil if
we are actually cutting the amount of money that we are putting into
research and development for alternative fuels? It just doesn't add up.
Most alarming, under homeland security: Now, if there is any issue
where we should be able to achieve bipartisan support on funding
levels, it should be homeland security and keeping us safe at home. But
particularly disappointing is this President's request for programs
that support first responders. Under the President's budget, State
preparedness grants and training are reduced 33 percent. They are cut
by a full third. Fire fighter grants amazingly are reduced by 55
percent. State and local law enforcement grants through the Department
of Justice also have deep cuts, thereby depriving our communities of
the critical support they need to operate in this post 9/11 world. It
just doesn't make any sense.
On jobs and the economy, the folks who came before us on the other
side bragged about the economy and the job situation, but 3 million
manufacturing jobs have been lost over the past 6 years. Families
continue to struggle to pay the bills. I know that is the case in my
district in western Pennsylvania. But this budget slashes funding for
the manufacturing extension partnership which helps small U.S.
manufacturers, everything from plant modernization to employee
training, it cuts them by 60 percent.
Funding for the advanced technology program which sponsors research
to solve manufacturing programs is also slashed.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. ALTMIRE. I would. And I would say that that concludes my
overview, so the gentleman has as much time as he needs to continue the
discussion.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman. And part of what you were
saying, some of those initiatives, the manufacturing extension program
and some of these initiatives that we have had in this country that
have really been able to help small businesses kind of retool
themselves, where this budget is cutting them we have had to fight over
the last few years to get the levels up. These are budgets we need to
not only not be cutting, but we need to be probably doubling the size
of the budget because of the kind of value that they yield and the kind
of businesses that they help.
When you look at what has happened over the past 5 years, we have had
economic growth, but wages are down 3.2 percent. We are not arguing
that the economy is not growing. We all know it is. We all see the same
statistics. What we are saying is that it is not benefiting everybody.
And what does our response need to be from the President, from the
Congress as to how do we close that gap between the rich and the poor?
And some of the initiatives that are being cut are going to further
harm and aggravate and exacerbate the problems that we have now that we
are trying to fix.
So a couple points that I want to make here, and I want to thank you
guys for being down here, that the President just doesn't even address.
Here they are: Updated by Tom Manatos, one of the go to guys in the
Speaker's office. Here we have the new charts for the budget, 2008
budget authority.
Interest payments on the debt. That in the red is the interest
payments. We are talking about $230-some billion of what we are going
to spend. That is what this country will spend just on interest on the
debt; not paying the debt down, just paying the interest payments from
the people we are borrowing the money from.
This is what we are going to pay in education or spend on education,
and green what we are going to spend on veterans. This is what we are
going to spend on homeland security. So the American people, Mr.
Speaker, know quite clearly that we are spending too much of our money
on paying down the interest.
Now, it is an important point to be made that this President, Ms.
Wasserman Schultz, and the previous Republican Congress borrowed more
money from foreign interests in the last 5 years than every President
in Congress previous to them combined.
So I find it very interesting that we hear our friends talk about how
when they owned a small business they had to balance the budget. We
know that. But when you got into this institution, this is what you
did. So please spare us the lectures on fiscal responsibility.
Mr. ALTMIRE. If the gentleman would yield on that point. That is a
tax on everyday Americans. When you increase the national debt to that
extent, and we are talking trillions of dollars, not even billions of
dollars, that adds to the cost of every American's mortgage, for
example. Interest rates go up. If you have a house that is $200,000,
you are going to be paying between $1,500 and $3,000 more every single
year as a result of the interest rates going up because we have to pay
for that debt. When we have $400 billion of this budget that is
dedicated to reducing the national debt or paying the interest on the
national debt, that reduces all of our ability to meet our needs at
home, because that increases interest rates and we all have to pay for
that.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. So not only is the government not making the
investments to keep tuition costs down, not making sure that we try to
invest our money to reduce the cost of health care and Medicare and
Medicaid, SCHIP, and some of these fundamental programs that we all
believe in. We are
[[Page H1199]]
not only not making those, but here is the critical components because,
as you said, you get the additional burden of the interest rates going
up for credit cards and everything else that ripples throughout your
own than personal life.
Here is the kicker. Of that red graph there, that red bar of net
interest that we are paying interest on the debt, where are we getting
the money? That is the question that we ask. Where do we get the money
to close the budget deficit? Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: Foreign
debt held doubled under the Bush administration to over $2 trillion.
So we are not only spending money we don't have, we are not only
giving millionaires tax cuts. But in order to close the gap, we are
borrowing the money from the Chinese, OPEC countries, the Japanese in
order to close this gap. So our kids are going to be paying the Bank of
China and the Bank of Japan and the countries from OPEC, which is
totally, totally ridiculous as to what our priorities need to be. So we
need to get this budget balanced.
I want to make one final point before I kick it back to you guys. We
are going to ask people who make millions of dollars a year to pay more
in taxes, because they have benefited from this system. Here is our
option: We either go back to the Chinese and we borrow more money from
them, or we ask people who have made millions and hundreds of millions
if not billions of dollars to help us close this budget gap.
{time} 2245
Now what would you do if you were in our position? Do you ask a
millionaire to pay a little bit more in taxes or do you go borrow more
from the Chinese and ask middle class kids and lower middle class kids
to foot the bill?
There is not a decision to be made. We have got to ask the wealthiest
in our country to be responsible citizens of the United States of
America. You benefit from our military. You benefit from the stability
of our markets. You benefit from our public education. You benefit from
our public infrastructure. You benefit from the water lines and sewer
lines, clean air and clean water. All we are saying is we have to ask
you to contribute so that we do not have to borrow money from the
Chinese in order to fund it.
We cannot be afraid. We do not want to stymie small business. We do
not want to take away tax incentives from small business people to
reinvest back into the economy. We want to keep things like that
intact, but we do need to ask the wealthiest in the country to pay
their fair share.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much to my good friend from Ohio.
What is more baffling is that it is bad enough that the President is,
in this proposed budget, asking for more tax cuts for the wealthiest
few, but what is more disheartening, deflating, insulting is that he is
doing it on the backs of Medicaid recipients and Medicare
beneficiaries.
There is a $252 billion Medicare cut, a net $28 billion Medicaid cut
in this budget. Yet still there are billions of dollars in tax cuts for
the wealthy. I mean, how do you stand behind a podium at a press
conference, how do you hold up this big, thick, hulking document and
say that this is a representation of your values, of our country's
values?
Tax cuts for the wealthy and slashing health care for those who need
it most and who can least afford it. I just honestly wonder every
single day who raised these people. What were they talking about around
their dinner table? It was obviously a different conversation than what
was discussed around my dinner table.
I come from not a poor background, not a wealthy background, but you
know, I ate every night, we woke up and ate breakfast every day.
Because I was comfortable in that regard and because my family was able
to provide for us, we were taught around that dinner table that you
took care of and gave back. In the Jewish religion, it is called Tikkun
Olam. You give back to the community and help people who can least
afford it, and this budget is the antithesis of that. This is give to
the people who can best afford it and do it and take from the people
who can afford it the least.
I guess that is another example of why Democrats were successful
across this country. Why both of my colleagues were successful in
defeating Republican incumbents because the message was clear and they
wanted a new direction.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You know what is interesting, and it just hit me,
that if we were not here, if Nancy Pelosi was not Speaker of the House,
that budget would get implemented. That budget would become law in the
United States of America. The only thing standing between that budget
and the American people is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, or that stack
of paper would become law, and the wealthiest in the country would
continue to get tax cuts. We would continue down this road, borrow more
money from Japan and China and OPEC countries. There would not be an
investment in S-CHIP. There would not be all the stuff that Mr. Altmire
listed. It is interesting to just say, hey, the American people did
make a point to put us between that budget and their everyday lives.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Speaking of S-CHIP, the children's health
insurance program, there is actually a proposal in this budget document
that narrows who would be eligible for the children's health insurance
program.
Right now, I think the eligibility is twice that of the poverty
level, and Secretary Leavitt just signed off on a formula that would
narrow those children who could potentially be eligible for children's
health insurance, I mean, at a time in our country when people are
struggling to afford health care, when we have more and more people,
especially children join the ranks of the uninsured, which means when
you are sick, they cannot afford to go to the doctor and they use our
emergency rooms as primary health care. Like I said, where are their
values coming from?
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. To me, this budget does not spare anybody
in who it offends. This budget has something to offend poor people,
middle class folks, and it has a lot to offend rich people in this
country.
My district is good enough that it has a little bit of everything,
and part of the reason that some of us got sent here after having the
other party represent our districts for a very long time was that the
fiscal policies of this President, which are symbolized by this
document he sent here, are offensive to people of every income bracket.
For the folks at the bottom of the scale who need those public schools,
who need those health care programs, well it takes money out of their
pocket. From middle class families, who are trying to get their kids
through college, who are trying to fill up their tank and go to work,
it does not do anything for them either. It cuts alternative energy
programs.
For people at the top end of the income scale who admittedly are
giving a decent percentage of their income to the Federal Government,
they are looking at the charts that Mr. Ryan is throwing up here and
saying how on earth can I justify giving a big chunk of my income to
the Federal Government and the Federal Government sending more and more
control of our money overseas to Chinese and OPEC Nations.
One last thing on that point. We also do not give people at the upper
end income brackets enough credit. They see what is happening to the
poor families, to the senior citizens struggling to decide whether they
pay their property tax bill or whether they pay their prescription
drugs. Those same people who have enjoyed these massive tax breaks, a
lot of them will say to me, you know what, I cannot understand the
government who has the choice to put $40,000 in my pocket or help the
guy around the corner from me pay for his prescription drugs for
another month and he chooses to give me $40,000.
There are people of every income in this country who will find
something offensive in this budget, and Mr. Ryan is exactly right. For
the last 6 years, as you guys said over and over again, all this House
was was a big rubber stamp on that budget when it showed up here and no
longer.
We now have to stand up for all the people who have found something
to object to in that budget.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Just actually if you are momentarily at a
loss, I have the privilege of sitting on the House Appropriations
Committee, as does Mr. Ryan, and we will have a
[[Page H1200]]
chance to take this document apart pretty carefully, one of the things
that I was reviewing as we received this today was just the continuous
example that this administration provides in representing a policy in
one way and doing something completely different.
I mean, we have to be careful about the words we choose when we are
on the House floor referring to the President, but I will point you to
the section of the proposed budget that talks about how we finally are
including at least some portion of the war budget inside the budget,
instead of doing it all as emergency supplemental funding. So we have
to give the President credit for at least including a portion of that
in the budget.
However, he actually does not have any funding for the war, assumes
no funding for the war past the end of 2008. There is no funding in his
proposed budget for 2009. I think probably everyone in this country
would like nothing more than for us to be completely finished in this
war in Iraq by that point, but that is not the track that we are on and
it is not the track that the President has suggested that we are going
to be on.
So, there is a certain lack of clarity in terms of the distinction
between what his budget represents and his rhetoric. They are not
matching each other, and I think people see through that. We are
fortunately now running this institution. So, through our
accountability process, we can show the disparity between what the
budget represents and what the actual policy implementation is.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think what is important, too, is we are not
sitting here saying, and I do not want anyone, Madam Speaker, to
misconstrue what we are saying. We are not just saying we are going to
write bigger checks and all these problems are going to disappear.
Included in our analysis of that document are going to be hearing
upon hearing upon hearing. I have seen the schedule. We are going to
get into the nuts and bolts of that to figure out how we can make these
programs run better, how we can make S-CHIP with the same amount of
money or more money cover more people, how does it get executed, the
same with what we need to do with FEMA. Obviously, we saw that in
Katrina.
Mr. Murtha's having hearings and Mr. Skelton in the Armed Services
Committee about the war, and how do we make that mess go away and make
it work better, the execution of war and what we are trying to do, how
do we make this thing work better.
So this is not just about writing bigger checks. This is about making
this whole system run better and more efficiently and more effectively
and serve more people.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank Mr. Ryan from Ohio. I did want to take a moment
or two and just point out the impact specifically that these cuts are
going to have on my home State of Pennsylvania because we have talked a
lot about what the budget does for the Nation and the impact those cuts
are going to have. I wanted to bring it closer to home for some of my
constituents, and this is what they can expect out of this budget in
Pennsylvania.
We talked about Social Security and the fact that the President
inexplicably once again moves toward his privatization scheme. Well, in
Pennsylvania we have 1.7 million Social Security beneficiaries, many of
whom could see retirement savings cut if we moved in that privatization
direction.
More egregiously, the Medicare program, as we have talked about sees
dramatic cuts, $300 billion of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
In the State of Pennsylvania, I want to talk about what this does.
Pennsylvania's Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay higher premiums
for coverage of prescription drugs and doctors' services.
Reimbursement cuts are going to take effect to home health agencies,
to hospitals and to nursing homes. That is what the President's budget
does not only around the Nation but in Pennsylvania.
This administration's budget, which we talked about assumes, an eight
percentage point cut in reimbursement for Medicare physicians. I do not
think anybody thinks the cost of health care is going to go down over
the next several years. It is certainly not going to go down 8 percent.
It usually rises in double digits each year.
The number of Medicare beneficiaries, as we have talked about, is
going to go up exponentially over the next several years. Yet, this
budget cuts physician reimbursement for Medicare by 8 percent. There is
no excuse for that.
The State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is a program
that was enacted during a period of bipartisan government, one of the
ways that this Congress and the White House worked together back in the
1990s when the situation was reversed, they put together the children's
health insurance program. Well, this budget submitted by the President
gives $10 billion less than is needed just to maintain the current
level of coverage in services.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I suggest you just let the other Members know
exactly who this S-CHIP is supposed to cover, what it is.
Mr. ALTMIRE. It is covering children that are uninsured. In
Pennsylvania alone, there is 281,000 uninsured children. We are talking
about children in this country that lack health insurance, and this
program in States all across this country has gone above and beyond and
covered these children. But again, the President's budget gives $10
billion less than is needed just to maintain the current level of
service, not even moving in the direction of extending the program.
{time} 2300
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We often hear in these debates how, you know, a
certain party wants to spend money and waste money on this or that, and
we are not saying that there is not waste in government, and we
certainly want to address that. Our friends, our Republican friends,
have done absolutely nothing to try to improve that. In fact, they
borrowed more money from China to help fund the inefficiencies.
But what we are saying here is here is a program that covers poor
kids. It gives health care coverage to poor kids. So they don't go to
school and cough on your kid and get your kid sick, not to mention the
humanity of trying to make sure that they have the proper amount of
health care.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Ryan, naturally we should cut it.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes, so this is what the President is offering to
cut in his budget. And, as we said before, would pass if it was not for
Speaker Pelosi.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Now, I wanted to talk about education funding. The
President is going to talk about how he proposes an increase in Pell
Grant funding for the first time in many years. But what he doesn't
tell you is in this budget, it again cuts or freezes funds for key
college programs like work study programs, which many of us benefited
from, and there are millions of students around the country that
benefit from that today, and it zeroes out, completely eliminates,
supplemental education opportunity grants.
Now, that doesn't add up. If you are going to claim you are helping
education by increasing Pell Grants on one side, and you are going to
cut, and in many cases, completely eliminate other programs for higher
education, those two things don't balance. As tuition and fees at
schools like Penn State University and my home State increase year
after year, the administration's cuts in student aid will put college
further out of reach for many Pennsylvania students and students all
around this country.
I wanted to close my Pennsylvania portion by talking about something
I mentioned earlier, which is perhaps the most egregious part of this
whole budget, and that is the fact that funding for Pennsylvania's
terrorism prevention and disaster response is slashed under this
budget. The President's budget guts programs that help Pennsylvania's
local governments, prevent and respond to acts of terrorism and other
major disasters.
The State Homeland Security Grant Program is cut. The Bush
administration also cuts law enforcement, terrorist prevention programs
which have helped prevent terrorist attacks. They cut the intelligence
gathering, and they cut interoperability. Now, if everyone remembers
back to 9/11, the biggest issue that was exposed, the biggest flaw in
our response, our disaster response, was interoperability.
[[Page H1201]]
The police and the fire units could not coordinate and communicate
with each other, and that was what we wanted to fix. What we saw in
2005 with Katrina, 4 years later, the problem had not been addressed at
all.
Now, a year and a half, going on 2 years later, not only has the
problem not been addressed, but the President, with this budget, does
not even take it seriously, because they are cutting interoperability
to find solutions to those problems.
Lastly, with regard to Pennsylvania, this budget again proposes
elimination for two local crime-fighting tools that are used
extensively in Pennsylvania, the Community Oriented Policing Service
programs, the COPS program, COPS, and the justice assistance grants.
Now, the COPS program helps Pennsylvania's law enforcement agencies
hire police officers, enhance crime fighting technology, and supports
crime prevention initiatives, while the justice assistance grants
support State and local task forces, community crime prevention, and
prosecution initiatives.
What sense does it make to reduce funding for these programs,
especially at a time when we are trying to remain safe in our homeland
security while we have actions taking place overseas. So I just don't
see the point of what the President has tried to accomplish with this
budget. We will hold it up again one more time before I yield, just so
everybody can take a look at what we are talking about. This is what
was dropped on all of our desks today. It does not represent the values
of the American people. It slashes key funding priorities.
I would yield at this point to Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I think every Member in this House,
Republican or Democrat, can tell the same story about what this does
for their district, and it is particularly acute in Pennsylvania. But
let us hammer home what we are talking about. Mr. Ryan said it very
eloquently, we are not just talking about writing a check. You are, Mr.
Ryan.
We are talking about making choices, we are not talking about solving
these problems by putting money into health care, putting more money in
education. We are talking about where to make choices on the budget, on
who to help and who to take from, who to help and who to take.
Let's start with the health care budget for a moment. Let's start
with the premise that we need to rein in the health care budget. It is
spiraling at a cost well above inflation, it is one of the biggest cost
drivers in our budgets, in State budgets, families' budgets and small
businesses' budgets. But here is the choice that you have. You can
either raise the costs for beneficiaries for seniors and for people
within the children with within that SCHIP program.
You can cut people out of the system, you can take kids off the rolls
or seniors off the rolls, or, you can choose to ratchet down some of
the profits that you are handing to the drug companies, or you can
choose to roll back some of the massive overpayments that we have given
to the HMOs, the health maintenance organizations, in the 2003 Medicare
Modernization Act.
Common sense tells you that as you are looking at massive record
profits being wrapped up by the latter groups, that maybe, maybe, if
you have that choice, you should take a look at wiping away that little
slush fund that you gave to the HMOs, or allowing the Federal
Government to negotiate using their bulk purchasing power to just trim
a little bit off of those billion dollar profits being made by the drug
companies. Instead, this budget makes a different choice. It cuts
people off of the rolls and it raises the fees for people on there. So
this is not just about writing a bigger check.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That brings me back to my, you know, sort of
private thoughts, when reviewing the budget proposal, and the changes
in the SCHIP program formula, where are their values, where are their
priorities? If you lay out the choices they had, they choose covering
the formula and covering fewer kids.
Perhaps it is that President Bush's daughters are grown now, or that
they have always had health care coverage or that he grew up in a
family that maybe didn't understand need. But there is something
desperately wrong with the priorities and the values of this
administration in terms of the direction they are moving in this
country.
That is why, at least fortunately now, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Altmire, Mr.
Murphy, we have some balance. We have the ability to exert Congress'
role as a check and balance. We have the 30-something Working Group
that can come to the floor each night and talk about those issues, talk
about what is important to the American people, and the way we want to
continue to move this country in the new direction that our
constituents have asked for.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I find this an appropriate time, as we are wrapping
up, I think, we only have a couple of minutes left, to remember what
happened here in the first 100 hours that is in contrast to that
document there. Of all the things we talked about in the last 55
minutes or so, 45 minutes, we should make note of that in the first 100
hours the Democratic Congress raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.
We cut student loan interest rates in half that will save the average
family $4,400, so you get a pay raise. If you have a kid in school that
is taking out loans, we will save you $4,400.
We allowed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate
down drug prices so our seniors will have less cost to bear for their
drug prices, and then we repealed the corporate welfare and invested
that money in alternative energy and passed a stem cell research bill
to open up two new sectors of the economy for job growth. Compare the
first 100 hours and who we helped, and you take that document there
that cuts health care for poor kids. That is the difference between
what the American people did in the last election, and what we had to
deal with within the last, between 6 and 14 years, depending on how you
are counting.
Now I get to do this again, show you guys how to do this. If you want
to e-mail us, any of the Members, 30SomethingD[email protected] or you
can get on the Web site at www.speaker.gov/30Something and send us your
comments. All of these charts that we have here are available on the
Web site for other members.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Speaker, at this time we yield back our time.
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