[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 23 (Wednesday, February 7, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H1316-H1322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to be here on the 
floor once again on behalf of the 30-Something Working Group. I am glad 
to be joined by my good friend, Mr. Ryan, from Niles, Ohio, who has 
joined me on a number of occasions here. We have joined one another.

                              {time}  1615

  We look forward to other members of the 30-Something Working Group 
joining us here on the floor.
  There is a lot going on in the Capitol Building today, a lot of 
committees meeting, Madam Speaker. A number of bills are moving through 
the process, and the American people are being served, with a new 
attitude of the U.S. House of Representatives, especially 110th 
Congress, that we will work as every American does. We will punch in at 
the beginning of the week and punch out at the end of the week and work 
on the weekends sometimes. So that is a good attitude to have, 
especially when you have two wars going on. You have the President 
passing on a budget that the American people don't see eye to eye with, 
nor this Congress sees eye to eye with. But we will work those issues 
out, and we will talk about them a little further as we move along.
  One of the other things that I think that we can touch on are some of 
the findings, that now these committees are meeting and we have some 
level of oversight, Madam Speaker, that we are going to find out some 
things that have been happening in Iraq or what has not been happening 
in Iraq.
  We are also going to learn more about the President's budget as we 
move along. And I am having a copy of the budget brought to us here on 
the floor because I want to make sure that the American people and 
definitely the Members get an opportunity to see this big document. 
Yesterday and today the Ways and Means Committee held hearings and had 
the Secretary of the Treasury and now the Office of Management and 
Budget Director here before the committee today. And there are a lot of 
questions that are being asked, and very few are being answered. And we 
will talk about a little of that today.
  But once again, I yield to my good friend Mr. Ryan from Niles, Ohio. 
I am glad that you are here and am looking forward to talking about 
some of the issues that are facing this Congress and the American 
people.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is an honor to be with you, Mr. Meek. And I 
appreciate that you were on the floor today passing legislation 
commemorating a fine citizen down in Florida, a leader in that 
community. And I want to thank you for taking the time to come out.
  There are so many issues that we need to discuss today, Mr. Meek. The 
President submitted his budget this week to the Congress, and we are 
going to have to go through that with a fine-tooth comb and recognize 
some of the mistakes that are in there and correct them.
  And as I said the other night here, Madam Speaker, the only thing 
that stands between President Bush's budget, which would have been 
passed post the election, is Speaker Pelosi. And so we have got a real 
opportunity here to make things right and to make some real progress.
  A couple of things that we want to talk about that are in President 
Bush's budget that we need to fix immediately as we go through the 
hearing process is the tax increase that is going to be placed on 
middle-class families. The President's entire budget is balanced on the 
backs of 33 million American families who will be forced to pay higher 
taxes through the alternative minimum tax. This was a tax that was put 
on years and years ago to make sure that wealthy Americans had to at 
least pay a base level, the minimum level, of taxes. Regardless of how 
much you make, you had to pay this much. And through that process over 
the years, that AMT started creeping and creeping and creeping into 
middle-class families now to the point where it may go past the 
$100,000 point, meaning that if you make $100,000 or possibly even 
less, you will be forced to pay this alternative minimum tax. The 
President did not deal with that. We are going to have to fix that 
because the alternative is it means a tax increase on 33 million 
Americans.
  Cuts to health care and to our seniors, Madam Speaker. The 
President's budget cuts Medicare and Medicaid by over $100 billion over 
5 years, $300 billion over the next 10 years. And these are two key 
components of our health care system in the United States of America 
that cover about 80 million Americans. There have also been cuts to 
home energy assistance for poor families. As cold as it is today here 
in Washington, D.C., and across the country, the President submits a 
budget that cuts that by about 18 percent.
  There are a couple other things I want to talk about here, Mr. Meek, 
and I am glad you are paying attention and asking me to help you out 
here today. We have seen this tremendous change in the economy over the 
past couple of decades where we went from basically a national economy 
to an immediate global superpower post-World War II. And with that 
there have been tremendous changes.
  Here is one of the key components that have affected us, and as 
capital moves and globalization occurs, whether we like it or not, Mr. 
Meek, here is what has happened. This is a chart that indicates the new 
global workforce. And the increase, from the left side, 1985 to 2000, 
the increase from about 2 billion people that were considered in the 
global workforce to almost 6 billion people. That means China has been 
added to the list. That means India has been added to the list. That 
means Central American countries have been added to the list. And now 
all of a sudden we have expanded the global labor supply, which has 
driven down wages for people here in the United States. This is a major 
issue that we have to deal with.
  And, Mr. Meek, as you know, Speaker Pelosi was kind enough to appoint 
me to the Appropriations Committee, and today we had a meeting with our 
chairman Mr. Obey, and he said we

[[Page H1317]]

want our committee to be about the future, and we want our committee to 
solve future problems. And that is really what we need to deal with 
here.
  Here is another issue. As we have had the increase in labor, most 
Americans have been losing ground, Madam Speaker. And if you look at 
real median household income, and this comes from the New Democratic 
Network Web page, this is from the U.S. Census Bureau. Real median 
household income: In 1999, it was $47,500, real median household 
income. It was, in 2005, $46,500. That real median household income is 
dropping, not rising. And so this is an issue that the President's 
budget does not address, but we are going to have to address this, and 
we have already made great strides to do this.
  Two other charts I want to share with Mr. Meek, Madam Speaker, real 
quickly is people say, well, if you are productive, you will make more. 
The top line here in the red is the increase in productivity; the blue 
line is the median income. As productivity has increased by 15 percent, 
wages have actually gone down. So the tie between productivity and 
wages no longer exists because of this new global market that we are 
in, which is a major public policy issue, Madam Speaker.
  And then, finally, the share of national income in 2003 and 2004. 
This is the change. The change. The bottom 99 percent, their share of 
national income went down 2 percent. The top 1 percent, they went up 2 
percent. And the top .01 percent went up 1 percent. So you can see that 
the bottom, the 99 percent hasn't benefited from what is going on here, 
and the top 1 percent has. So the question is what do we do, and what 
have we already done?
  If you look at what the new Democratic majority has already done, Mr. 
Meek, they have already, in the first 100 hours, made strides to try to 
rectify this. Passed the minimum wage to try to give the American 
people a pay raise to $7.25 an hour, and that means thousands of 
dollars a year depending on how many minimum-wage workers or how many 
minimum-wage jobs you perform. It could mean a couple thousand dollars 
a year. In addition to that, we have cut student loan interest rates in 
half for both parent loans and student loans, which will save the 
average person taking out a loan about $4,400. So you add the minimum 
wage. And in addition to that, we were able, in the first 100 hours, 
through the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, to also repeal corporate 
welfare and invest that money in new alternative energy sources. We 
passed the stem cell research bill, and alternative energy and stem 
cells are going to open up two new sectors of the economy. And then in 
addition to that, we were able to pass and give permission to the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices on 
behalf of the Medicare recipients.

  So this package, the first 100-hour package, has done a lot to try to 
address some of these problems: Boost the minimum wage, cut student 
loan interest rates in half, and allow drug prices to be negotiated so 
that we will actually reduce the burden that is being placed on people.
  So, Mr. Meek, I think there has been a lot that has been done. There 
has been a lot that has been done here on behalf of the American people 
just in the first 100 hours, and we are going to continue to move on 
global climate change, global warming. We are going to continue to move 
on alternative energy. We are going to move on research and 
development. We are going to continue to provide the kind of oversight 
that the American people deserve in order to fix some of these 
problems.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Ryan, I am just so glad 
you had those charts to really spell out what the President's budget 
wants to do to Americans versus for Americans.
  And I think it is very, very important that we continue to march on 
and do the things that we need to do to represent the American people, 
Madam Speaker. The reason why we come to the floor to point some of 
these issues out, this is an unopened copy of the budget that we 
received this week here in the Capitol, in the House of Representatives 
and in the Senate, and it is our job to look through this budget and 
see what is good and what is bad for the American people.
  The American people delivered this people's House a change. The 
change for accountability, the change for oversight, and the change to 
be able to make sure that this country moves in the right direction. 
America said they want to move in a new direction. We said we wanted to 
move them in a new direction and that we were going to be a part of 
that atmosphere.
  The reason why we are pointing these things out, Madam Speaker, is 
because we want to make sure the Members know the work we have before 
us not only on the Ways and Means Committee, but also on the Budget 
Committee. Every Member of this House, their said committees are having 
hearings now, need it be the Secretary of Education or the Secretary of 
Labor or even the EPA Administrator, to come before their said 
committees of jurisdiction to talk about why they submitted certain 
things in the budget, need it be the environment or education or 
justice or what have you.
  But I think it is very, very important to point out how this budget 
continues to move in the wrong direction, the President's budget, as it 
relates to the growth of our country and the health of our local 
communities and States. I learned a term about 8 years ago when I was 
in the State legislature, and it is called ``devolution of taxation.'' 
Cut the taxes at the Federal level, and pass unfunded mandates down to 
the States and local government. And in this budget I see the President 
continues to embrace that philosophy, devolution of taxation.
  Let me go further on in that definition of ``devolution of 
taxation.'' Here in Washington, D.C., we have made a paradigm shift in 
this House to use the philosophy of pay as we go. We want to show how 
we are going to pay for it if we are going to fund it, not pay for it 
and continue to work on this chart and borrowing from foreign nations 
and owing foreign nations money, as the Republican Congress did and the 
President did. What we want to do is do it in a responsible way.
  But as we start talking about devolution of taxation, when you cut 
opportunities for local government, and some statistics have shown that 
as it relates to this budget, from the Center on Budget and Policy 
Priorities, they estimate the total aid to States and local governments 
will decline, has declined $12.7 billion. So we pass this on to the 
States, and they have to fill the gap that we are not willing to fill, 
or obviously the President is not willing to fill, that we are going to 
try to do our best to fill here in this House of Representatives. They 
have to rob from Peter to pay Paul. Well, who is Peter? Nine times out 
of ten, it is a person that is trying to educate him or herself or 
their family, or grandparents that are trying to educate their 
children, that the tuition at the State university system is going to 
up.

                              {time}  1630

  The assistance for the elderly in a said State may end up being cut. 
Health care to children and other opportunities that States like to 
provide for the citizens of their State will end up being cut because 
they have to fill the gap that the Federal Government is not filling.
  Then, on top of that, it continues to roll down, because, by 
constitution, by all State constitutions, they have to balance. They 
don't have the prerogative of saying, we will put it on a credit card 
or borrow from a foreign nation. They have to balance their budget. So 
they balance their budget on the backs of local government. Then the 
local government has to figure out how they are going to raise money, 
be it needed for education, school districts, or needed for local 
county or city commissions. Then they end up putting some sort of levy 
or penny tax or referendum on the local communities and voting for 
transportation needs or voting for parks and recreation.
  The reason why that is happening more and more in U.S. cities is 
because of the kind of budget that the President sent to the Hill on 
the backs of the American people.
  Now, what else is in this budget? You have to think about, this 
budget is standing for the individuals that are not even asking for tax 
cuts to be made permanent on behalf of wealthy Americans.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield, I think this is very 
illustrative of your point. Here we said earlier, the share of the 
national income

[[Page H1318]]

went up 2 percent for those people in the top 1 percent of the country. 
The bottom 99 percent, their share of the national income went down 2 
percent.
  Add on that what you are saying, okay, what you just said about the 
devolution of taxation. Okay. So now these are the same people who have 
to vote on property tax issues. These are the same people who have to 
vote on libraries. These are the same people that have to vote on the 
penny sales tax to keep their counties running. So I think they are 
getting squeezed from all sides.
  Then, when you look at what the top 1 percent have benefited from the 
globalization of America and the ability to be in the stock market and 
benefit from that, and get tax cuts and the tax loopholes and 
everything else, the bottom line is, Mr. Meek, the bottom 99 percent 
have not benefited from all of this.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Ryan, once again, thank you for your charts, 
sir, because we need to make sure the Members know exactly what was 
handed down from the President of the United States to this Congress 
and the work that we have cut out.
  Some tough decisions are going to have to be made, Madam Speaker. 
Some millionaire may not get all of the tax break they have been 
waiting and counting on from the President of the United States. We 
have hardworking Americans out there looking for a break. We have small 
businesses out there looking for a break. Meanwhile, the President 
says, make my original thoughts permanent because I had a rubber stamp 
Congress in the 109th and 108th and so on, that did what I said do, 
continue that, and let's cut assistance to State and local governments. 
Let's cut the COPS Program. Let's cut Medicaid benefits. Let's make 
life harder for veterans as it relates to their benefits and the 
clinics that are open out there, that we just did something about in 
the continuing resolution. Let's continue that philosophy.
  But for those individuals that are being driven and buying new cars 
every other year, let's continue to make life wonderful for them. And, 
by the way, let me send an escalation of more troops over to Iraq, 
where we just had a hearing just yesterday here in the House of 
Representatives that we are now getting down to the nitty gritty on 
what happened to $8 billion that no one can account for that was cash 
money. Very little of it can be accounted for, very little. Eighty 
percent can't be accounted for. Let's continue to practice that 
philosophy in Iraq.
  So, Mr. Ryan, the only, I guess, comfort that I have at this moment 
is the fact that the American people voted to move in a new direction, 
Madam Speaker, and we are willing to take them in that direction. But, 
at the same time, Mr. Ryan, the philosophy of the 30-Something Working 
Group, we want to make sure that every Member understands their 
responsibility.
  We have Veterans' Day coming up. We have Memorial Day coming up. We 
have a number of holidays that are recognizing the contributions of 
Americans that allowed us to salute one flag. The least that we can do 
is break it down to the point that every Member understands his or her 
responsibility in the House of Representatives.
  So, if you want to be on the side of the super, super billionaires 
and millionaires, you make that choice. If you want to be on the side 
of the American people that work hard every day, to give them some sort 
of break so hopefully they can pay for tuition to make sure their 
children can make it through college, and, as Mr. Ryan said, in the 
first 100 hours, we dealt with a lot of that. We dealt with the minimum 
wage, which is now coming back from the Senate that will be over here 
in the House either today or tomorrow, or is already here. We dealt 
with the issue of being able to make a reverse about face on the 
interest rates that the previous Congress put on students and their 
families. We rolled that back.
  There are a number of things that we have already put through the 
process, pay-as-you-go principles here in this House, to put this 
country on the right track.
  Yes, tough decisions have to be made. But, at the same time, we have 
to be responsible, and we can't just rely on sound bites as though, 
well, that will get us past the process.
  I believe that we can make it to the promised land, not through doing 
the same thing expecting different results, but having the kind of 
oversight and having the kind of foresight and watching out for these 
individuals.
  Weatherization. You mentioned weatherization, Mr. Ryan, as it relates 
to keeping our most frail and poor warm during the wintertime. The 
President is asking to keep a tax cut permanent for super billionaires 
but cut weatherization assistance for a lady on fixed income in 
Detroit, Michigan.
  I am just trying to understand the balance here and the priorities as 
we start to look at this. The President is asking for a cut in a number 
of the Department of Justice programs, Madam Speaker, that assist local 
sheriffs and police chiefs in combating and preventing crime. The COPS 
Program, zeroed out.
  The President last week, Mr. Ryan, had an announcement come out that 
we are going to move for the maximum Pell Grant. Then the budget comes 
out, and it is the same level of what he has recommended over the last 
4 years. So, the words don't match the action.
  So our job here in the House, Madam Speaker and Members, is to make 
sure that even if the President makes a commitment to the American 
people and we agree with that commitment, that we have to find some 
room in this budget, which I know that Chairman Spratt and other 
members of the Budget Committee and members of committees that have 
jurisdiction and oversight, will have some say in how we move in the 
new direction as it relates to America. So we are going to have a 
serious paradigm shift.
  I see Mr. Ryan here has one of our favorite charts out right now just 
to illustrate what past budgets have done, Madam Speaker, and where it 
left this Congress in spending the majority of its money, not on the 
priority that the majority of the American people would like us to 
balance on but because of bad management.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate your insight, Mr. Meek. You have 
talked about this, and we have been talking about this for a long time.
  We would love to come in, as the Democrats did in January and swore 
in Speaker Pelosi, and come in and bump the Pell Grant up two thousand 
bucks and eliminate student loans altogether as far as paying interest 
on them and all kinds of other things we would like to do. But we are 
limited by the kind of budget that we have inherited from the President 
in a 6-year presidency and a 14-year Republican control of this 
Chamber.
  Here is what they are doing: The 2008 budget authority says that the 
red on the left, $230 billion or $240 billion a year, is going to be 
spent just paying the interest on the money that this country has 
borrowed; not to pay down the debt, but just to pay the interest 
payments. We are going to have to spend $230 billion because of that. 
Look how that just dwarfs other priorities in the budget of the United 
States.
  The next one is education. The next one is veterans. The next one is 
homeland security. All pale in comparison to what we are forced to 
spend to pay the interest on the money we are borrowing.
  As Mr. Meek has said in his previous chart, this money, over $1 
trillion, has come from foreign interests. This President and the 
Republican Congress borrowed more in 4 years from foreign interests 
than all of the previous Presidents and Congresses combined. Combined. 
This is the net result, the interest that we have to pay on the debt.
  So what has happened is that we have a huge number; $2.102 trillion 
in 2006 is the amount of foreign held debt, $2 trillion. That is 
unacceptable in the most powerful, wealthiest country on the face of 
this Earth.
  So we have seen what has happened since the Clinton administration 
had some sanity. We had a $5.6 trillion projected surplus. It went down 
$8.4 trillion. Now we are in a $2.8 trillion deficit. We have some real 
problems.
  So when it goes to making the investments that we want to make in 
education, the investments that we want to make in health care, SCHIP, 
the COPS Program, making sure young kids are covered, have some form of 
health care coverage, Madam Speaker, we are limited by the budget that 
we have been handed.
  Unfortunately, we can't start from scratch, but there are some 
decisions

[[Page H1319]]

that need to be made, and I can tell you that it is not acceptable to 
me, and I know it is not acceptable to my friend from Florida, to 
continue to allow people who make millions and millions and millions of 
dollars a year to continue to get a tax cut.
  Some may say they earn it. Maybe they do. Some do. And some work 
hard. Just because you wear a white collar doesn't mean you don't work 
hard. But what we are saying is, that group of people benefit the most 
from the lavishness that this country has given them, the roads and the 
bridges and the safety and the security provided by defense, the stable 
markets in which to invest money, in which many, many do, into the 
stock market. This is all provided for by the stability that comes out 
of this institution, and therefore they owe a little bit back.
  Now, even if you don't believe that, our alternative, we have a 
decision to make: Either we borrow this money from the Chinese, the 
Japanese and the OPEC countries, which gets us to that chart where 
there is $2 trillion in foreign-held debt by this country, or we ask 
those people who are making millions and millions of dollars a year, 
Mr. Murphy, to pay their fair share, to step up to bat and help us 
solve this problem that we have so we don't have to put the future of 
our kids and our grandkids in the hands of Communist China.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio. 
As you dig deeper into this budget, Mr. Ryan, what you find is the 
financial gimmickry involved in the President's claim that this budget 
will be balanced by 2012 is accomplished by forgetting about this 
little thing that hides in our Tax Code called the Alternative Minimum 
Tax. That is a difficult concept for some people to understand, but it 
is not going to be so difficult for millions of middle-class families 
to figure out when, next year and the year after that, they are going 
to be hit for the first time with a massive new tax increase.
  The Alternative Minimum Tax was introduced first to try to make sure 
that those at the highest end of income scales were forced to pay some 
type of income tax. But because we haven't adjusted that number over 
the years, more and more middle-class families are going to fall into 
that trap.
  Mr. Ryan, you are exactly right. You and Mr. Meek and Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz have talked about the fact that, during a time in which we are 
expending vast amounts of money overseas while we have major overdue 
investments here at home, we are giving away this multi-billion dollar 
tax cut to the richest 1 percent of Americans. That is wrong. We need 
to reinvest that money back into our infrastructure, back into 
education and energy and all of the things that help regular families.
  But what we need to tell people about is, this budget not only 
decreases taxes for folks at the very top of the income echelon, but it 
also raises taxes on middle-income folks, because the President in this 
budget does nothing to address that looming Alternative Minimum Tax.
  It is kind of a difficult subject to talk about, because it is 
complex tax policy, and you have to dig a little bit into that income 
tax form to figure out how much it is going to hit you. But it is going 
to hit you.

                              {time}  1645

  And unless we do something about it, we are not just going to have a 
tax decrease for those at the top, we are going to have a big tax 
increase for those in the middle. And as we know, this budget does 
nothing to help the costs that all the middle-class families are 
facing. Their premiums go up every year from their employer, as the 
cost of higher education spirals, as we know, a 41 percent increase 
since 2001. This budget does nothing, little if nothing, to help those 
families.
  So, Mr. Ryan, this is a double whammy for American taxpayers. Not 
only are we sucking money out of the budget by giving away tax breaks 
to the very wealthiest, but we are then very explicitly hammering those 
in the middle income.
  But here is the good news. We know what the good news is, is that, as 
you have said, in previous years that budget which stands in front of 
Mr. Meek would have been delivered to Congress and would have had a 
little cursory look by the Members here and would have sailed out 
basically intact, at least when it comes to those priorities.
  This year it is very different. And by the grace of the American 
people that sent a new Democratic Congress here, that budget is going 
to have a very, very hard look, and it is going to look very, very 
different when it leaves here, Mr. Ryan.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And you are right. In years gone by, they would 
have greased that sucker up, and it would have flown through the House 
and the Senate, who knows what kind of changes. It wasn't until in the 
last year or so that the Republican majority at that point couldn't 
even agree with each other. So we have had to come in and clean up with 
the continuing resolution, which we made some great advances with 
veterans and some other issues that we were able to deal with.
  But when you look at it, we don't want to get into, and you are 
exactly right, there is going to be an increase in taxes if the 
President's budget over the next few years stays, because that 
alternative minimum tax is going to creep in and is going to creep in 
to average American families' lives, middle-income families. And so I 
appreciate you making that point.
  We have been joined by a special guest who periodically jumps in and 
joins with the 30-something Working Group, the gentlewoman from Texas. 
I would be happy to yield.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the distinguished gentleman. It is 
a delight to be here with all of my colleagues, and I might say that it 
is a pleasure to jump in and to accept the glory of the 30-something 
once in a while, particularly on this very vital and important issue.
  And I want to say to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, having 
watched the Ohio election process; if there was a State that spoke 
loudly about a decided necessity of change, it certainly was Ohio, and 
the rest of us followed. And I can't imagine that we would be facing 
this budget but for mistakes and missteps that have been made in 
foreign policy, for example the Iraq war and funding that has been 
somewhat misplaced.
  But the good news is, and that is what I wanted to just focus on for 
a moment, that we now have the opportunity; Speaker Pelosi, the 
leadership, Chairman Dingell, Chairman Waxman on the health issues, we 
now have an opportunity to address the American people and to, frankly, 
make sure that we listen.
  I want to start very briefly on tracking the reauthorization of the 
Ryan White bill that was authorized in the last Congress. But an 
authorization goes nowhere unless there is, if you will, the funding 
that is necessary. And so I just wanted to briefly highlight the fact 
that we have a continuing AIDS crisis in the United States which really 
requires a focused and concerted effort at funding. And I don't believe 
that with the President's budget, these enormous tax cuts, we will be 
able to address the fact that there are now over 1 million people in 
the United States living with AIDS, and that particular communities, 
African Americans and Hispanics, are disproportionately affected by 
HIV/AIDS, and they account for nearly 50 percent of the people living 
with HIV/AIDS.
  That means that we need more Federal funds made available to help in 
the minority health initiatives, the AIDS initiatives, and we need more 
funds to encourage testing for as many people as possible. So I cite 
that as a challenge to this budget that is going to impact many of us 
extremely negatively.
  Then I would encourage my colleagues from the various States, 50 
States, to take a litmus test or to take a thermometer and measure the 
temperature of the President's budget against the health of your State.
  Let me just share with you what is going to happen to the State of 
Texas. We have a sizable young population, the State of Texas. Most of 
our population is under the age of 25; we have an extensive population 
of under 5, and we need, if you will, a refocus on the domestic agenda 
for this country.
  I am looking forward to Chairman Spratt's, the Budget Committee's 
reforming of the President's budget because this is what will happen to 
Texas: Two million Texans could see

[[Page H1320]]

retirement benefits cut under the President's privatization proposal 
that is in his budget. And I would simply ask the question, how many 
times do we have to say that privatization of Social Security will not 
work? And it will not work.
  The President's health care proposal will squeeze Texas middle class 
of more cost and less coverage. So the President's health insurance 
proposal, which is opposed by my public health system, Harris County, 
who says, ``Are you trying to close our doors?'' We will see a squeeze 
on the middle class; 5.5 million uninsured in the State of Texas will 
be impacted.
  Let me give three other points. Huge Medicare cuts which we are 
seeing in the President's budget would endanger 2.5 million Texan 
Medicare beneficiaries' access to quality care and impose new taxes on 
seniors. The one thing our seniors said on the prescription benefit 
part D, no more burdens, no more doughnut holes. And that is what the 
President's budget gives us.
  In addition, one of the greatest tragedies of the President's budget 
is the cut in the State grants for children's health insurance could 
add some 1.4 million children to the uninsured ranks in Texas. Now, 
they say that they are going to leave this to the States. The States 
need to find out how to handle this. This is, this is, this is comedic. 
This is joking. This is completely impossible. I am lacking for words. 
We are fighting in our State to be able to insure children who need to 
be insured, and you are telling us we will give you, the State, a 
certain amount of money, and it is how you do it. It is not how we do 
it. We can't do it without the funding. So you are going to deepen the 
hole of health disparities by suggesting that we cut off 1.4 million 
uninsured children in the State of Texas.
  I would ask my colleagues to check the temperature of their State by 
taking a thermometer and measuring the President's budget against the 
needs of the American people. In Texas, 1.6 million veterans could be 
hurt by VA funding shortfalls. And I spent time with homeless veterans 
in my community at stand-down. I have homeless veterans in shelters in 
my community, as many of us do, but I see many of my homeless veterans 
under our bridges. We can't afford any more cuts in veterans health 
coverage because they are already paying the maximum amount.
  Let me conclude by suggesting that we likewise have made a 
commitment, 30-something and 30-something-plus, have made a commitment 
to America's youth. We want to ensure that the doors of our 
institutions are open. And just today I heard the fact that in our own 
community in Houston, we don't enough seats in colleges to be able to 
help educate young people. This may be a phenomenon across American in 
many communities, and that means we are closing the door to higher 
education to our children. Well, the budget that the President has put 
forward, aid for Texas college students, may be whacked again; and, 
therefore, tuition increases may go up almost 100 percent, because 
under State laws that we have in the State of Texas, we give that 
latitude to our universities. Our students cannot be whacked again, and 
they can't take the burden again.
  So I am hoping that, in addition to cutting the Department of 
Homeland Security, which we will obviously not tolerate because we are 
certainly not, we have not met the test of the 9/11 Commission Report, 
this budget needs fixing, it needs a fixing, and we need to rally 
around the American people's voice of health care, education, security, 
and the environment and affordable energy before we allow this budget 
to come to the floor of this House. And I hope that we will have the 
opportunity to be able to work our will, the will of the American 
people, and work our will on behalf of seniors, on behalf of those 
suffering with AIDS in minority populations and other, on behalf of the 
working middle-class families that struggle every day, that we would 
choose them over outrageous tax cuts that have been proposed by this 
President's budget.
  And I thank the distinguished gentlemen for allowing me to 
participate and to acknowledge that these policies are not family-
friendly. And I look forward to a budget coming to this floor that we 
pass, the majority, Democrats, with our friends on the other side of 
the aisle, that will be family-friendly, children-friendly, those who 
are suffering from various diseases, education-friendly, environment-
friendly, and certainly a new day in energy by the budget that we put 
forward on this floor.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We thank the gentlewoman. As we have been saying in 
the last few weeks here and the last few days especially, that years 
ago that budget would come and get greased up and come right through 
this Chamber and on to the other side of Capitol Hill and get signed 
into law, with the tax cuts for the top 1 percent and cuts to the kids. 
And now Nancy Pelosi stands between that budget and the American 
people, and we are going to make sure, and our friend from Florida. So 
we thank you for joining us. It is always a special treat for our 
friend to come down from Texas. And I would be happy to yield to our 
friend from Florida, who is standing to be recognized.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Thank you, Mr. Ryan, for yielding to me. And I 
just think it is important that we have this dialogue here on the 
floor, Ms. Jackson-Lee, just to make sure that we prepare the Members 
for the decisions that have to be made.
  We talk about bipartisanship a lot, and I have my information here to 
talk about some of the votes that we have moved on this floor in a 
bipartisan nature, and I know I will have it in a minute, that kind of 
set a tone through this Chamber that we can work together, Madam 
Speaker, when the ideas are good and when they are sound.
  And I know that the budget is probably one of the most partisan votes 
that we have taken in past Congresses, especially the last two that I 
have been involved in, Mr. Ryan. But the way the President's budget has 
been drawn up, with cuts of 20 percent to first responder grants and 
high-threat and high-density areas, and a cut in State grants as 
relates to training and buying equipment and conducting exercises for 
their first responders by 64 percent, for many of the Members on both 
sides of the aisle that talk a lot about the war on terror, we have to 
make sure we are prepared.
  All of these things, all of these speeches that people come to the 
floor and make, Members of Congress, this budget is not in the spirit 
of those speeches. And I think it is important that those Members on 
both sides of the aisle, and I would say mainly with my Republican 
colleagues, that they start preparing their leadership now on the 
things that they can vote for. And I know that making tax cuts 
permanent for the superbillionaires is not something that is going to 
fly back home.
  Now, I was thinking about staying in the majority always, which is 
not a bad idea, but if that was my paramount reason for being here on 
this floor, then I wouldn't say out loud that they need to start 
telling their minority party, on the Republican side of the aisle, that 
there is things that I have to vote for. I am not willing to cut 
veteran benefits. I am not willing to not do the things that we need to 
do for the children of America. I am not willing to not give the middle 
class a tax cut or give billionaires a tax cut. I am not willing to cut 
local government assistance, especially in the area of homeland 
security and other areas of law enforcement. I am not willing to do 
those things because I don't think my constituents will send me back to 
Congress.
  That is the kind of discussion they need to be having with their 
leadership, because one thing that I have seen, Madam Speaker, 
especially with the past votes that we have taken on the minimum wage, 
on taking big-time subsidies from oil companies, on the whole issue of 
cutting tuition, on the issue of a few of the other packages that we 
passed, but on the main issue as it relates to how we are going to move 
from this point of pay as you go, I have noticed that the leadership on 
the Republican side have voted opposite of the majority of the Members 
of the House, with some Republicans joining us on those votes, or we 
are voting together. I hate to say joining us, because it seems like it 
is something that was a last-minute thought.

                              {time}  1700

  No, they were great ideas, and they need to be passed, and they were 
passed overwhelmingly.

[[Page H1321]]

  But as it relates to this budget, this is going to be one of the most 
important documents that we pass in the 110th Congress' first session, 
and I think it is important that Members start talking to their 
leadership now and saying this to the Republican side about the votes 
that they cannot and the votes that they will take.
  Now, I have watched in the 109th Congress the moderate Members on the 
Republican side who went to their leadership and tried to make things 
happen, and you know something, if the leadership would have listened 
to some of the moderate Members of the Republican Party on the other 
side of the aisle, maybe, just maybe, the majority on the Democratic 
side would not be as wide as it is.
  Now, the American people want us to move as one, not just as 
Democrats and Republicans. They want us to move in a responsible way 
that will lead this country in a new direction; not in a Democratic 
direction, not in a Republican direction, not in an Independent 
direction, but in a new direction.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. For America.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Which is good and as American as apple pie and 
Chevy trucks and what have you. But I think it is important that we say 
this out loud, because when we get around budget time, there is a lot 
of interesting things that are said on the floor. Some Members are even 
gaveled down for some of these statements because they try to justify a 
good or bad vote.
  With the continuing resolution that was passed, we saw a little spike 
in Members having to reflect back on to the rules, the Parliamentarian 
running around the floor saying, you cannot say that, you cannot do 
this. Before we get all animated and excited about this budget, I just 
want to make sure that the Members understand that you have to start 
having that discussion with your party leaders, especially on the 
Republican side of the aisle.
  Now, let us just look at this. On the 9/11 Commission, 68 Republicans 
voted with 231 Democrats to do what the bipartisan Commission said we 
should do in protecting America, but the shocking part is that 128 
Republicans decided not to vote with the majority of the Members of the 
House, Republicans and Democrats. What is going on there? The American 
people cannot understand that overwhelmingly.
  Minimum Wage Act, 82 Republicans voted with the majority of the 
supermajority and every last Democrat, 233, voted to give the American 
people a pay raise after years and years and years, and as you can see 
here, Madam Speaker, over the years under the Republican Congress, 
Member of Congress did not have a problem in giving themselves a pay 
raise until the Democratic majority put a stop to it, saying that we 
will not agree to a pay raise until the American people get one. But 
116 Republicans voted against it for people who were making $5.15 an 
hour. It reminds me of the President saying, let us make those tax cuts 
permanent for superbillionaires, and let us forget about the middle 
class, and let us cut programs on the local level for the most fragile 
Americans.
  Stem cell research, again bipartisan vote. A number of Republicans 
voted against it. Medicare prescription drug price negotiating, 24 
Republicans joined 231 Democrats; 170 Republicans voted against it. 
College Student Loan Relief Act, 232 Democrats voted for it, 124 
Republicans voted for it, supermajority Members of the House, 71 
Republicans, hard-core holdouts, on the bipartisan spirit. Held out 
again on creating long-term energy alternatives for the Nation Act; 228 
Democrats voted for it, 36 Republicans voted for it, 159 Republicans 
voted against it.
  I am saying all of this, and I am not trying to speak fast on this, 
Madam Speaker, I am just saying that if we are going to come together 
as a country, and we are going to work in a bipartisan way, now here I 
am in the majority saying that it is important that we work in a 
bipartisan way.
  Madam Speaker, I know the officers of the House who have witnessed 
many of these 30-something sessions that we have had in the minority. 
They were like some of them Tivo'd it when we were on break because 
they just heard it so many times, and they wanted to hear it again. If 
I have said it once, I have said it 30 times: Bipartisanship can only 
be allowed when the majority allows it.
  Now we have the will and the desire by the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives that has said that she wants to move in a bipartisan 
way, and we still have Republicans that are saying, no, we do not; we 
want to be different, even when we are wrong. And that is not the 
philosophy that the American people have embraced. I do not care if it 
is a Republican voter or Independent voter or Democratic voter, the 
American spirit will prevail, and that is what happened last November.
  So we have some individuals that are saying, we are willing to 
continue to hold on to the old way versus moving in a new direction. I 
am not trying to be offensive. I am just saying, I am reading the 
Congressional Record and the vote chart. I am trying to encourage folks 
to work in a bipartisan way. So let us have the discussion now in the 
Budget Committee, in the Ways and Means Committee, and discussions in 
committees of jurisdictions standing. Let us have those arguments, but 
let us come together on the fiber of the budget and for us to be 
fiscally sound and for us to be able to move this country in a new 
direction.
  That has nothing to do with what the Republican leadership may 
believe what is right or the Democrat leadership believes what is 
right. It is what is right for America.
  So we are willing to do that. Pollwise, the American people are on 
the side of doing things that we are trying to outline here and that we 
are speaking against in this budget, and as we move through that 
process, I look forward to not only fruitful debate, but I look forward 
to a paradigm shift in the minority side, in a number of double-digit, 
hopefully triple-digit, Republicans voting for a budget that comes 
before this floor that this House hammers out.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I am not sure that I believe the people 
were Tivo-ing, but if they were, it was only because of your eloquence 
when you talk about issues like bipartisanship, because you should be 
right to crow.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Please mention Mr. Ryan's name. He gets a little 
jealous when folks started mentioning the fact I make a good argument 
on bipartisanship, so, please.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I hear people talk about him as well.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Will the gentleman yield? I have family members who 
have Tivo'd, okay.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. So here is what those of us who are new to 
this Chamber sort of see from the outside, and I think it probably 
matches up with what Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek keep seeing from the inside.
  What used to happen here was that the agenda that came before the 
House was decided essentially by folks sitting in the third floor of 
the Republican National Committee, a bunch of Republican Party insiders 
who decided that they were going to put a Republican agenda on the 
floor. They were going to put a party agenda on the floor at the 
exclusion of the minority party.
  So what you saw, for those us that turned on C-SPAN late at night 
when we were not watching the 30-somethings, we saw votes go up on the 
screen. And everybody sees those C-SPAN votes where they have got 
Republicans in one column, Democrats in the other column. You see all 
the Republicans voting one way, all the Democrats voting the other way, 
vote after vote after vote, because what was being put before this 
House was a Republican agenda. Occasionally you would have some people 
slide over, but by and large that is what you saw.
  Here is the difference. The agenda that was part of the first 100 
hours and the agenda that was behind the continuing resolution, as Mr. 
Meek says, if we have anything to do with it, the agenda that will 
underlie the budget that finally arrives before this body is not going 
to be a Democratic agenda. It is not going to be a Democratic budget. 
It is going to be a people's agenda. It is going to be a budget that 
comes from the voices and the concerns and the hopes and the fears of 
people back in all of our districts, Republicans and Democrat.
  That is why you see on the 100 hours agenda and even on the 
continuing resolution, which is probably maybe the most controversial 
piece of legislation that came before that, even on the continuing 
resolution, the bill that kept the Federal Government going for the

[[Page H1322]]

next few months, you have Republican votes, because no longer is the 
legislation that gets put before us a partisan agenda. It is now a 
people's agenda.
  And for someone who spent the last 2 years in my district campaigning 
to come here, talking to people that were so utterly frustrated with 
what was happening in Washington, yes, people were angry about the 
agenda here from issue to issue. They were upset that people were not 
listening to them about their concerns on rising energy prices, rising 
health care prices, why they could not send their kids to college. But 
they were maybe more overarchingly concerned with the tone this place 
had taken, and I think that is our lasting legacy, because, as I think 
I said the first time that I got to talk with you both on this floor, 
our legacy as a Congress may be that we have some small role in 
restoring people's faith in government.
  When we go around and talk to elementary schools, we are talking to 
some of the most cynical 10-year-olds you have ever seen, because all 
they think government is is a bunch of people fighting with each other, 
yelling at each other, disagreeing instead of agreeing.
  So what we do here is we are going to start putting those middle-
class families first. That is what this budget will be about. If we can 
do it with Republicans, and when you do it with Democrats, in the end 
we make people believe a little bit again in government.
  And for those of us who are in this 30-something caucus who might be 
around long enough to hopefully see government do a few more good 
things over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years, that could be one of the 
most important things we can do.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I appreciate that. As we are wrapping things up, I 
found it interesting, I saw as we are talking about budget priorities 
and the kind of investments that we want to make as a country, looking 
at what the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has to say and what 
he said yesterday and was quoted in the Wall Street Journal and a lot 
of other media outlets.
  Focusing on, and I will say, and I will quote, he said, Ben Bernanke 
said, The best way to narrow the gap between high-income and low-wage 
workers in the U.S. would be to strengthen education and training 
programs.
  That is our call, and that is the mission for us, to make sure that 
average people have the skills and the tools and the opportunity with 
the increase in the Pell Grants, with what we already did by cutting 
student loan interest rates in half for both parent and student loans, 
cutting that in half and giving thousands of dollars back to those 
families. Those are the kinds of things that we need to continue to do, 
and No Child Left Behind and everything else.
  So we need to make sure that as we reform these systems, we also 
provide the resources, as we started this, for the local level to make 
sure they can get the job done.
  We are just wrapping up. We only have 1 minute. I want to give out 
Speaker Pelosi's e-mail, 30-Something Working Group e-mail, 
[email protected], or you can come to our Web site, 
www.speaker.gov/30something.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. I thank Mr. Ryan for doing such an outstanding 
job. I thought Mr. Murphy had the assignment, but I can see you have 
taken responsibility to do that.
  Madam Speaker, we would like to thank the Speaker and the majority 
leader and majority whip and others for allowing the 30-Something 
Working Group to come to the floor once again. It was an honor to 
address the House of Representatives.

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