[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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