[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 19 (Wednesday, February 6, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H603-H610]
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 Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
[[Page H604]]
Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Speaker, we're here this evening as part of the
Speaker's 30-Something Working Group, and I'm going to be joined by
some other members of that group who will be familiar faces to our
colleagues who have participated in these Special Orders presentations.
We're going to talk specifically tonight about the budget that the
President dropped on our doorstep on Monday. Now, this was an exciting
series of days for the American people. We, of course, had Super Bowl
Sunday, one of the most exciting Super Bowls we've ever seen. We had
Super Tuesday last night, very exciting for all the American people to
watch the unfolding for the Presidential election for this year. And in
the middle of that, we had Monday.
And what happened on Monday? Most Americans say, well, not a whole
lot happened, but in Congress a lot happened because the President put
before us a $3.1-trillion budget. Now, the American people may say,
well, that sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money. But
what does it look like? What does $3.1 trillion look like? Our
colleagues may be interested to see that. This, Madam Speaker, is what
$3.1 trillion looks like. This is what the President sent us, both
electronically and in paper format. This is a very big document, the
entire Federal budget as proposed by the administration for the coming
fiscal year 2009.
I'm going to talk a little bit about what's in this budget, but
before I did that I wanted to take a little walk down memory lane for
our colleagues. And many don't need to be reminded of this fact, but in
the last 4 years of the previous administration we had four consecutive
budget surpluses. And those surpluses, at the end of that
administration and the beginning of the current administration, budget
surpluses were forecast as far as the eye can see. And there was every
reason to expect that the budget was going to be balanced throughout
the next administration. The projection over 10 years by the
Congressional Budget Office was $5.5 trillion of budget surplus over 10
years. That was the projection.
Well, now we're 7 years, going on 8 years, into this new
administration. This is the eighth and final budget that President Bush
is going to send to this Congress. And what has been the outcome of
this $5.5 trillion surplus? And we talked about the Presidential
election, Madam Speaker, and I would remind my colleagues about the
debate of the 2000 election. The number one issue that was discussed in
that election was, what are we going to do with this surplus? We have
an enormous budget surplus, $5.5 trillion, and all the ways that that
money could be used. Are we going to pay down the debt? Are we going to
shore up Social Security, put that money into the trust fund? How are
we going to use this enormous surplus that's facing us over the next 10
years? That was the debate in the year 2000.
Well, in this Presidential election year we're not having that debate
anymore because, you see, Madam Speaker, that surplus is gone. That
surplus was gone in the first year of this administration. Instead of
$5.5 trillion of budget surplus over a 10-year period, we've had $3.5
trillion of deficit spending over the first 7 years of this
administration. And I'm going to talk in some detail about what this
fiscal year 2009 budget says, and it includes an enormous amount of
deficit spending.
What we have before us is a budget that for the eighth time in 8
years continues enormous deficit spending. But we can't lose sight of
the fact that when this administration first came into office, that
wasn't the projection. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be and
that wasn't the way it had to be. But, unfortunately, decisions were
made in a fiscally irresponsible manner, and now before us is a budget
that is $407 billion over budget. We have a $407 billion deficit for
one year, fiscal year 2009, the third highest single year budget
deficit ever submitted to the Congress behind only the budget that was
sent to us last year by this President, which was $410 billion, and the
2004 budget also submitted to this Congress by the President.
So we have a record here of destroying projected surpluses and
creating record deficits. $9.2 trillion of debt, Madam Speaker, faces
this country before this $400 plus billion deficit that's been
submitted to us.
We can't continue to charge things to the credit card. The way the
previous administration turned the all-time record deficits of the
1980s into all-time record surpluses in the 1990s was through pay-as-
you-go budget scoring. And that's very simple: It's what we all do in
our own home checkbooks. It's what every business in America is forced
to do. You have to have money on one side of the ledger to spend it on
the other. And if you want to increase spending or if you see a
decrease in your revenue, you have to have an offset on the other side
to balance it out. Well, those are the rules that this Congress
operated under from 1991 through 2001.
Unfortunately, this administration did away, and the Congress, in
conjunction at that time in 2001 going into 2002, did away with pay-as-
you-go budget scoring. And since that time, before this current session
of Congress, every penny that was spent through the Federal Government
was charged to the national credit card. We're going to let somebody
else worry about it. We're going to transfer this funding to our
children, our grandchildren, and our grandchildren's grandchildren.
Well, unfortunately, the problem with using credit cards that way is
the bill comes due, and the bill has come due, Madam Speaker.
We're going to talk about the coming economic crisis that this
country faces, the possibility, if not the certainty, of a recession,
and the economic stimulus package that this Congress came together in a
bipartisan way to put forward to help resolve that issue. We're going
to save that discussion for a little bit later.
But in the discussion over the budget, it can't be lost that in
presenting a $407 billion deficit budget before this Congress, that
this President has made incredibly deep cuts in some very important
programs that mean a lot to a lot of people in this country. Veterans
programs, veterans health care, slashed. Medicare cut by $556 billion
over 10 years, a cut in Medicare at a time when you're exploding the
deficit by $407 billion. And we're going to talk specifically about the
misplaced priorities included in this budget.
Before we go line by line and get into that level of detail, Madam
Speaker, I do want to turn it over at this point to my 30-Something
colleague, Mr. Murphy from Connecticut, who has joined us and is going
to give us some detail on what he views this budget to be.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Mr. Altmire. I don't
want to take too much time because I know the American people are eager
to hear your detailed line-by-line analysis of the President's budget,
so let me be brief.
You hit it on the head here. I mean, this budget that the President
has proposed to us is the worst of both worlds. It cuts spending on
programs that everyday middle-class families and seniors and the
disabled use to simply grab hold of the apparatus of opportunity that
has been stolen from them, and at the same time, it continues to spend
wildly in other parts of the budget. It continues to give away massive,
unjustified tax breaks for the richest 1 percent of Americans that
aren't even being asked for by many of those people. And it results in
a pretty ugly picture over the next several years for this country if
we were to adopt the budget that the President put before us.
It would mean massive cuts, as you've already laid out, to health
care programs, to law enforcement programs. And, Mr. Altmire, this
budget has got a 100-percent cut to the COPS program. The COPS program
is the acronym for the community policing initiative that was started
by President Clinton over 10 years ago. It is one of the most
successful law enforcement programs that this Nation has ever seen. Any
Member of this House on the Republican side of the aisle or the
Democratic side of the aisle can just go down to their local police
department, any one of them, and ask their local cops whether or not
community policing has worked. It has. That's not me saying it, that's
not just the statistics saying it, that's the experiences of thousands
of community policemen who have been on the beat for years.
Now, what's happened over time is the Republican Congress year after
year slashed and burned that line item, and so many communities either
had
[[Page H605]]
to take cops off the community policing beat or start picking up the
tab themselves. That means increased property taxes for people because
somebody has to pay for it. And this budget that we're looking at right
now takes out the entire amount for community policing. I guess I just
don't understand how you justify that. I mean, I would love to have
somebody from the administration on this floor try to explain in a
commonsense way why they don't believe that the experiences of
thousands of communities and thousands of police officers is true,
which is that community policing works.
But here's the other side of this equation, Mr. Altmire, and I know
we're going to talk about this. At the same time, it's not like we're
getting anywhere for all of the cuts in this budget because this budget
envisions the Federal deficit continuing to explode. Now, this is a
small little chart, you probably can't see it, but this is a pretty
dramatic, but accurate, representation of what's going to happen to the
Federal debt.
In 2001, we had about $5.8 trillion in Federal debt, and you can at
least see that it only is going in one direction. Under the President's
budget, by 2013 we're going to owe $13.3 trillion to foreign nations,
Mr. Altmire.
We are cutting funding for programs that matter, we are spending
money wildly in other parts of the budget, primarily in the defense
budget, and what we get in the end is a Federal budget that is more out
of whack, more out of balance than it ever has been, and families who
are struggling, amidst this economic slowdown, who are going to see
less services and less help from their government.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I'm sure the gentleman from Connecticut would agree that
it's ironic, given the fact that it was a week ago that we sat here
together in this Chamber and listened to the President's State of the
Union Address. And I liked some of what the President had to say on
fiscal responsibility, challenging the Congress, challenging his
administration to take the budget and make tough decisions and be
fiscally responsible.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me stop you there for a second,
because I liked what he said, too. But I would have liked it if he had
said it for the last 7 years of his administration. I mean, you know, I
hope it wasn't lost on anyone watching that State of the Union speech
that for the last seven Congresses, as the Republican-led majority has
spiraled spending out of control, has added on political earmark after
political earmark, the President was absolutely silent on that matter.
And it is just incredibly convenient that in the year in which the
Democrats take control of the House of Representatives is the first
year that we hear in a State of the Union speech the President talking
about grants in Federally approved budgets.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Well, and again, the things that were said as far as
fiscal responsibility made some sense, and I was happy to hear them.
And you're right, we had not heard them over the past 7 years, and that
led to the deficits that the gentleman and I have both talked about.
Now, we sat here and we heard that. And I thought that hopefully that
would translate to the President submitting a budget where the actions
actually matched the words that we had heard a week ago. Unfortunately,
it didn't. The President, a week later, submits to Congress a budget
that's $407 billion out of balance. And we're living in a time when the
second largest line item in the Federal budget that is before us is the
interest on the national debt, which is $9.2 trillion. The second
largest line item in this budget is interest on the national debt. Now,
that alarms me, Mr. Murphy, and I'm sure it alarms you. And I would
want to do something about that if I was submitting a budget before
Congress. And I would want to show, having just talked about fiscal
responsibility, that I was committed to fiscal responsibility. But,
unfortunately, we have a budget that makes all the wrong decisions
because it is fiscally irresponsible, it does have misplaced
priorities, it does move in the wrong direction as far as increasing
the deficit at a time when we already have a record debt, but it cuts
programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
This is at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to
afford health care, especially senior citizens. And to propose a budget
that cuts Medicare by $556 billion over a 10-year period, at the same
time freezing payments to hospitals, to nursing homes, to hospices, to
home health agencies, it just doesn't make any sense because health
care costs aren't going to stop. Health care costs have been going up
above the rate of inflation every year for as far as anyone can
remember.
{time} 2100
The technology that's used for health care, the increase in the
amount of baby boomers that are qualifying for the Medicare program for
the first time this year, in 2008. The costs of Medicare are exploding.
So to just say we are going to cut Medicare over the next 10 years by
$556 billion doesn't mean health care is going to be less expensive,
fewer people are going to qualify for Medicare, and fewer people are
going to use the program. And certainly it doesn't mean that home
health agencies, hospices, and hospitals are going to have fewer
expenses just because we are going to be reimbursing them.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ALTMIRE. I would.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let's hammer that home in a real world way
for people. What does it mean when the President's budget reduces
payments to nursing homes? In Connecticut, we have had a real crisis
with a particular nursing home group that has gotten a lot of attention
in the paper, Mr. Altmire, in the last several months regarding some
really inexcusable conditions in those nursing homes, low levels of
staffing, no remediation when violations had been found. And that
problem is not going to get better if the solution from the Federal
Government is to cut the funding that goes to those nursing homes.
These nursing homes are already stretched very thin. There already
isn't enough staff to cover the residents and make sure that seniors
that are staying there are living under safe and humane conditions at
all times in some places.
This cut that the President is talking about in the cut and
reimbursement rates to nursing homes is going to have a direct effect
on the care that many thousands, hundreds of thousands of seniors get
in this country. Your loved ones, your neighbors, their care is going
to be compromised by this.
The safety of your community is potentially going to be compromised
by a zeroing out of the COPS budget. Communities will be less safe
because there will be fewer community police on the beat. Those are the
real world consequences of the budget that the President is putting
before us.
And the question is just a matter of choices. And that's what I hope
that every Member of this House goes out and endeavors to ask over the
next month or so as we debate this Bush budget, which is are you sure
that your community wants to spend another $70 billion in Iraq rather
than put cops on the beat or put staff in your grandmother's nursing
home? Are you sure that the constituents in your district want to give
away another massive tax break to the richest 1 percent of Americans
instead of putting cops on the beat or putting staff in your
grandmother's nursing home? Those are the questions that people are
going to have to ask. And I think, Mr. Altmire, there's only one answer
to that in any district in this country whether you are represented by
a Republican or a Democrat.
Mr. ALTMIRE. And the gentleman knows that there are three legs to
this stool that we are talking about. One is the increase in spending
leading to the deficit. One is the misplaced priorities of the cuts to
programs that are critically important. The third is what's left out of
this budget that we all know we have to deal with, and I'm going to
save that discussion for a little bit later as we walk through some of
these programs. But the full cost of the Iraq war and the cost of the
alternative minimum tax relief for this year are not included in this
budget. So a $407 billion deficit without even including probably the
two largest items that we are going to have to face in the next year,
we'll get to that point, but there are a lot of issues here.
When I talk to people when I go back home in the district, I hear a
lot about
[[Page H606]]
entitlement spending, and when I go home, I think I can make a pretty
good case that Medicare is important and we shouldn't be cutting
Medicare at a time when the number of people qualifying for Medicare is
rising exponentially and health care costs are going up. I can make a
pretty good case, I think, for that. But I will still hear people say,
You know what? I'm not on Medicare. That's an entitlement program. I
don't care about that. Cut it. It's a boondoggle. Just cut it. I do
hear people say that. They're wrong, but they say it. Well, there are
some things in this budget that nobody, nobody in their right mind
could justify freezes or cuts in these types of programs. And maybe our
colleagues are out there and they say, Show me. What are you talking
about? What is in the budget that we shouldn't cut?
Well, how about research, health care research through the National
Institutes of Health? I think that's something that affects everybody.
If you're not directly affected by health care research, you certainly
have somebody in your family or you have somebody, a loved one or a
friend, that is affected. And let's talk about the type of research
that we are talking about.
This budget freezes funding for lifesaving medical research at the
NIH, National Institutes of Health, regarding diseases such as
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease. At a time when our
medical technology in this country is greater than anywhere else in the
world and our research and our ability to find treatments and cures for
these diseases exceeds any time in the history of the planet, we are
going to cut funding for medical research for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,
cancer, and heart disease? I think, Mr. Murphy, that we make a pretty
good case that that's not a cut that should happen.
This budget also slashes funding, and this is inexcusable, slashes
funding by $433 million, 7 percent of the overall budget for the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, responsible for infectious
disease control, prevention programs, and health promotion. So we hear
a lot about the avian flu, the bird flu, the possibility of a pandemic
through diseases, whether it be a terroristic issue or just something
we can't control on the health side. That may be the number one public
health threat facing the country right now, the possibility of a
pandemic flu, a worldwide spread of some disease, and we're going to
take this opportunity to cut the Centers for Disease Control
specifically for infectious diseases by 7 percent? That's what we are
going to cut in this budget when we are adding $407 billion to the
national debt for 1 year? I think it's inexcusable. So I really don't
think there is anybody that I am going to run into in my district
that's going to say that's a good idea.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just want to share a story with you, if
you will yield, Mr. Altmire. I was getting on a plane this morning to
come down to Washington from my district, and an older gentleman
recognized me as I was going through the security checkpoint. And he
stopped me, and he said, I have written you a letter. I've got a real
problem with what you're doing down there. And I said, Talk to me about
it.
And he looked me in the eye and started to tear up a little bit, and
he said, My wife died of cancer last year. And he said, I can't for the
life of me understand why you guys, and he lumped us all together, and
I tried to explain the differences a little bit to him, but it was a
very emotional moment. He said, I can't understand how you guys are
cutting the funding for the programs that might save the life of the
next wife who has cancer and instead you're spending money, billions of
dollars, overseas on a war that's making us less safe. And he was
tearing up.
I mean, this is a personal and emotional issue for so many people in
this country, as it should be, because they know. They read about the
advances that are being made in science. Whether it be stem cell
research or the thousands of other lines of inquiry that are making
progress every day in this country, they know that it could be their
loved one's disease whose cure or treatment is right around the corner.
This should be a personal issue to everyone in this Chamber, and
everyone should have to answer that question that you posed as to how
on Earth we can pass a budget that freezes medical research that is
going to cure diseases and make people better just in order to balloon
a deficit, just in order to fund a war, just in order to fund massive
tax cuts for the wealthy. The priorities are just so screwed up, and
any person in this world can tell a story of a loved one who would be
hurt by those cuts.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Absolutely. And I thank the gentleman for that story.
And I've had similar circumstances in my district where people wonder
why we are cutting Alzheimer's funding, where they have a loved one who
has struggled with that disease.
I also want to talk about education and what this budget does for
education. I think just about anyone should agree that's a national
priority. Few things in the budget are more important than education.
Well, what does this budget do?
This budget freezes education funding, which results in cuts in real
terms. And instead of investing in innovation in the classroom, the
budget eliminates, eliminates, the $267 million program providing
grants to States for classroom technology. It freezes the $179 million
mathematics and science partnerships. At a time when we're struggling
to compete in the global economy with countries like China and others
that are investing heavily in science education, we are cutting it. At
least the President is proposing cutting it in his budget.
It freezes targeted improvement and achievement in math and science
programs that do that. And instead of making college more affordable,
the budget eliminates, completely eliminates, supplemental education
opportunity grants; the Perkins loan program, one of the staples of
student assistance for higher education in this country, eliminates;
and the Leveraging Education Assistance Partnership program, the LEAP
program, which many of my colleagues know is necessary to provide
financial support specifically targeted to needy students who otherwise
wouldn't have the opportunity to pursue a higher education. These are
the programs that are being eliminated under this budget. Not frozen,
not cut, but eliminated.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. At the very time, Mr. Altmire, where our
country is most in need of a skilled workforce. I mean you know it,
because you do the same tours that I do to manufacturing facilities and
worksites, that every company in our district is screaming to us, Do
something about the workforce. I can hire people if you make sure that
they are trained and educated and ready to work on day one. And so as
we're sort of seeing a massive slowdown in this economy, potentially on
the way to a recession, this is the very worst time to be cutting back
our commitment to higher education programs, to worker and job training
programs. And it runs totally counter to what we have been doing here
in this Congress.
I mean, we need to remind the President that he signed into law the
biggest expansion in college aid since the GI bill, increasing the
maximum allowable Pell grant, the direct grant to students by $500,
providing for loan forgiveness to potentially tens or hundreds of
thousands of students who go into public service professions; and, most
importantly, cutting the interest rate for student loans in half from
6.8 to 3.4 percent, which is going to save the average college student
in Connecticut about $4,000 over the lifetime of the repayment of their
loan. That's real dollars when you couple it together with the other
benefits that that package had.
And that was a bipartisan success. That was conceived by Democrats.
It took Democrats taking control of Congress to put that on the agenda.
But there were a lot of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle
that voted for it, and there was a President, maybe reluctantly,
because he changed his position over time, but there was a President
that signed that.
So we have come together as a Congress to recognize the importance of
helping kids and helping families pay for the increasing cost of higher
education, and we should especially recognize the importance of that
when our economy is having trouble getting its engine going. That's
when we should be investing in workers. That's when we should be
investing in education. And
[[Page H607]]
as you have so ably and accurately outlined, Mr. Altmire, this
President's budget does an immediate 180 degree turn on the investments
that we have been making and should continue to make in higher
education.
Mr. ALTMIRE. And the gentleman from Connecticut represents a district
in some ways that is similar to my district. We both have a
manufacturing base that has suffered in recent years as a result of the
global economy and a variety of factors. And as the gentleman said, at
the very time when we should be finding ways to help people that have
suffered as a result of these job losses and a loss of manufacturing,
find new job training sources, find educational opportunities for our
kids so they can stay in our communities instead of having to leave
town, a problem that we are struggling with, I think, probably in both
of our districts, the President uses this budget as an opportunity to
eliminate, not freeze, not cut, but eliminate vocational education.
And he slashes the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program by 45 percent;
afterschool programs by 26 percent; teacher quality State grants by
$100 million, which helps incentivize high quality people to go into
the teaching profession, people who have other options, who could
become doctors or lawyers or chemists or any other profession. We want
to incentivize the best and brightest in this country to go into
teaching to educate our kids, and everyone knows the importance of what
goes along with that. Well, the President proposes cutting the budget
by $100 million for that program.
And, similarly, the gentleman from Connecticut talked about the fact
that middle-class workers are seeing their wages stagnate and American
jobs have been lost, 17,000 lost jobs just last month. And at this time
when we should be finding ways to stimulate the economy and create
jobs, instead, the President's budget slashes $234 million for job
training programs.
{time} 2115
Again, not to repeat myself, but it is worth pointing out, in an
atmosphere of a budget that creates $407 billion in deficit spending,
out of balance, and that slashes employment services more than $500
million in cuts for Americans looking for work. These are people who
are motivated, who want to find jobs, who are looking for work, and he
eliminates grants to States to provide employment services for job
seekers and employers cutting one-stop career centers. These are all
programs that my constituents benefit from that get heavily used in
western Pennsylvania. We have had manufacturing losses, and we are
trying to find ways to retrain those workers so they can move into
other careers, educate themselves so they can stay in western
Pennsylvania, and what are we doing? The President is proposing cutting
these job training programs. It is just inexcusable.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It doesn't make sense. It wouldn't make
sense even in good economic times, Mr. Altmire, because you know even
in the so-called boom years of the 1990s and earlier in this decade,
those jobs were still leaving Pennsylvania. Those jobs were still
leaving the northwestern part of Connecticut. And you always need to
have just that safety net, just enough help for people to bounce back,
because the folks that live in our districts, as they do across the
Nation, these are proud, proud people. They want a job. They want to
work hard. They do not want to be out of work. They do not want to be
undertrained. And they are going to take the opportunities that we give
them just to be able to bounce back and reenter the economy. That is
all we are talking about with these programs. This isn't permanent job
assistance. This isn't the welfare state. This is just, listen, your
company went out of business, shipped their jobs over to China, shipped
their jobs down to Mexico. We're going to help you for a certain period
of time learn a new skill so you can get back and be a productive
member of society. That is an important project to undertake in any
economic time but most critical now when more and more people need that
help, Mr. Altmire, that is critical right now.
Mr. ALTMIRE. And the gentleman knows there is another thing that our
regions in the country share and that is that we have harsh winters. We
have been known to have harsh winters. And another thing that gets cut
in this budget inexcusably is home heating assistance. And with regard
to energy generally, we have a time where we have all time record
energy prices. Families across the country are struggling with finding
a way to pay their bills directly related to the price of oil and gas.
And at that time, you would think that the President would view that
as a priority in his budget. But instead, it severely cuts assistance
to seniors and to families with children in paying their home heating
bills through the LIHEAP program, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance
Program, very important in my area in western Pennsylvania. He cuts it
by $570 million nationwide, $19 million of which comes from the State
of Pennsylvania. And this is going to force States to reduce the number
of households getting help through the LIHEAP program nationwide by 1.2
million people. These are low-income families with children. These are
senior citizens that simply don't have the financial ability to pay
their heating costs, and we are going to knock, with this budget, 1.2
million of them off the rolls.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let's view this through a broader prism,
and I think if you do, you see that this cut, in particular, is even
crueler because we were set up for this moment. I mean, this has been 7
years of an energy policy which has been designed to do only one thing,
a cynic might say, put more money into the hands of the big
international oil companies, run by a lot of the friends of the folks
that are in this administration. We have had an energy policy which has
done nothing, has done nothing, essentially, to decrease the amount
that people are paying to gas up their car or heat their homes. We have
profits of record magnitudes coming from ExxonMobil and Chevron and BP
and all of these major multinational oil conglomerates. We have had a
Federal policy, led by this President and probably more accurately led
by this Vice President, Vice President Cheney in his secret, closed-
door meetings that have constructed most of this energy policy, that
have stolen millions of dollars from American consumers with the tax
breaks and regulatory giveaways to the oil industry that have allowed
them to continue with no abandon to rip off American consumers. The
LIHEAP program is just an added insult to an energy policy which has
been taking money out of American taxpayers' pockets and putting it
into the oil companies' treasuries.
The LIHEAP program simply says this, this has been the policy of this
administration and the Republican Congress for the last 8 years, for
the last 6 years, they have said, we're going to do nothing to help you
with prices, we're just going to continue to watch energy prices spiral
and spiral and spiral and have no short-term or long-term strategy to
do anything about it. But on the back end, we're going to help you a
little bit with some subsidy dollars for the people in your community
that are so hard up they are going to need some help to pay those bills
or else they would freeze in their houses, which is what you're talking
about. You're talking about people who would potentially freeze in
their houses if they don't get a little bit of help from their
government to pay for their heating oil bills, largely seniors on fixed
incomes in our community. And now not only do we have an administration
that is not willing to work with us on reforming our energy policy to
break our addiction to foreign-produced oil, to finally get a grip on
these spiraling oil prices because we have got an administration that
cares more about the pockets of their oil company friends than the
pockets of the regular, average, everyday consumers, now also we are
taking away that small, tiny little subsidy that prevents people from
freezing in their homes because they can't afford to heat it.
When you step back a little bit, when you are right in that budget,
everybody here should make it one of their top priorities, whether you
live in a cold weather State or a warm weather State, to put the money
back for the LIHEAP program. Put the money back for the heating
assistance for low-income people. But let's also understand that it is
even more egregious given
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the fact that we could have done something 10 years ago, 5 years ago,
to prevent ourselves from getting into a position where we are
continuing to subsidize these big energy companies and have to be
reliant on low-income heating assistance to keep people warm in the
winters.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I think this is exactly why it is important to have this
discussion, to walk through these programs in the budget and talk about
what exactly are we talking about when we talk about these draconian
cuts that we are facing? And as I said earlier, I have people in my
district that say, cut it, cut it, Federal spending, we need to cut it.
And we do have an enormous deficit. We have an all time record debt,
and we do need to find a way to reduce the Federal deficit. Nobody can
disagree with that.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Just to make one point there, the
Democratic budget that we passed last year balances the Federal budget
in 5 years. For the first time since the Clinton administration, we are
going to have a balanced Federal budget. This isn't pie-in-the-sky
rhetoric that you are putting out there, Mr. Altmire. The Democratic
budget found a way that we passed at the end of last year to invest
money in education, in environmental protection, in health care and do
it in a responsible way that provides for a balanced budget in 5 years.
There is a way to do it, and we are finding it here. We can do it
again.
Mr. ALTMIRE. That is exactly where I was going to go. I thank the
gentleman for his comments.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I'm in your head, Mr. Altmire.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate that. The fact is the Democrats in this
Congress have made the tough decisions. We submitted a budget last
year, and I am sure we will do so again this year that achieves balance
for the first time since the previous administration. Nobody can
disagree that there is room for more cuts. There is room for more
reductions. But what we want to do here tonight in this 30-Something
Special Order is to talk about the programs that shouldn't be cut, the
programs that are critically important to this country that the
President has made a decision to reduce.
We talked about Medicare. We talked about life-saving medical
research. We talked about the Centers for Disease Control, infectious
disease prevention. We talked about education. We talked about the
LIHEAP program, home heating energy assistance, and unfortunately the
list doesn't end there. It is incredible to think that at a time when
we are facing a recession in this country driven by a lot of different
factors, but nobody can dispute perhaps the number one driving factor
over the past several months and maybe the past few years has been this
subprime mortgage issue and home foreclosures and people struggling to
afford their mortgages, finding a way to make that monthly payment.
Despite the growing problems in the subprime mortgage crisis,
inexplicably this budget that we are talking about tonight cuts loan
counseling for those at risk of losing their homes. The name of the
program is the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. It cuts it by 87
percent, at a time when we are struggling as a Nation with a subprime
crisis that the world has never seen before, or at least America has
never seen before. At a time when the crisis is at its most acute
point, we are going to cut by 87 percent the program that helps those
most at risk, 2 million people in this country at risk of losing their
homes. The people most at risk of losing their homes are facing an 87
percent cut. It is ludicrous.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I know we have our freshman colleagues
coming in after us, so we are going to give them some room here.
But I want to turn for a few minutes to a subject that you alluded to
earlier, and I know you may have some more areas here in which we want
to talk about what the devastating cuts are going to do, but I want to
talk for a second before we hand it off to some of our other freshman
colleagues about what is not in the budget, and you alluded to it
before, most importantly, the cost of the war isn't truly reflected in
this budget.
In fact, some staff members on the Republican side made a comment
earlier today that they even admit that the $70 billion that is put in
this budget is essentially just a downpayment on what we are going to
need to perpetuate the costs of this war in Iraq for the rest of the
year. And it is just I think becoming impossible for our constituents
to really understand why we can't include the costs of this war,
whether you agree with it or disagree with it. We will save that for
another day. Mr. Altmire, you know where I am on this question. I
believe that we should get ourselves out of this mess sooner rather
than later in a planned-for way. But while we are there, and while we
are still spending money, let's pay for it. Let's budget for it
responsibly.
Now, I think you could probably make the argument in the first year
or 2 years of this conflict that it was emergency spending, and that
there was an argument to be made in the first few years of the war in
Iraq and the war in Afghanistan that we were going to need to borrow
some money for that. I have no problem understanding that in emergency
circumstances, we are going to have to do some deficit spending. Nobody
likes that. But with regard to the economic stimulus package that we
are passing, it makes sense in very narrow circumstances to borrow some
money in order to get some short-term gain when the spending is on an
emergency basis. But we are 5 years into this war now, both in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It is not catching us by surprise anymore. It is not an
emergency expenditure anymore. We can plan years in advance for the
money that we are spending on this war. There is no justification for
this money not being in the budget. What happens is it is just hidden.
When you get these figures about how big the deficit is going to be
when we pass the President's budget, which we obviously won't do, but
if we were to pass the President's budget, that doesn't even take into
account the real costs of this war. If I were a taxpayer out there that
was for this war, or if I were a taxpayer out there that was against
this war, I would be greatly aggrieved, and I think they are greatly
aggrieved by the fact that we are not paying for it. Well, we're going
to. We're going to. Because these bills, whether they are on the tab of
the war or whether they are on the tab of the domestic programs that
haven't been paid for for years, they are going to be paid at some
point. Those bills and those promissory notes are going to come due,
and they are going to be paid for by your children and my future
children, and your future grandchildren and my future grandchildren. We
are hamstringing generations to come to pay for the costs of this war,
and we should account for it.
The second thing that is not covered, Mr. Altmire, is this thing that
we keep on talking about down here called the alternative minimum tax.
Now, I know there are still a lot of people out there that don't
understand what the alternative minimum tax is because year after year,
Congress has done the right thing and has held in abeyance the
adjustment to the alternative minimum tax that would essentially make
it cover most middle-class taxpayers in this country. In my district in
Connecticut we have about 20,000 people that pay the alternative
minimum tax that was initially set up just to cover the richest of the
rich who weren't paying any tax through deductions or were paying very
little tax through deductions and credits.
{time} 2130
If we don't fix the Alternative Minimum Tax again this year, in my
district it is going to go from like 19,000 people paying it to like
80,000 people paying it. It is going to be a huge problem, thousands of
additional dollars in tax obligations for millions of Americans. Well,
the President doesn't say anything about that in this budget. I think
he just assumes that we are going to fix it again, but he doesn't put
the cost of doing that in the budget.
So, if you tack on the costs of the war that aren't in this budget,
if you tack on the costs of once again fixing the Alternative Minimum
Tax which we should do and put that in the budget, this deficit is
enormous, is enormous. I think we should be having a real argument over
the real cost of this budget. Through all this sort of gimmickry that
we see, all this trickery in how the numbers are accounted for, the
[[Page H609]]
war is not in there, the Alternative Minimum Tax fix isn't in there.
I know this sort of goes over the head of a lot of people out there,
because they say this is just the logistics of a budget. This is just
numbers, where you put one number, where you put another number. It
matters, because you can't hide money that we have to spend. Whether
you put it in the budget or out of the budget, if you spend the dollar,
somebody is going to have to pay for it. Maybe not now, but in 10 years
or 20 years.
Mr. Altmire, part of the reason that the 30-Something Working Group
talks so much about deficit spending is because we are going to be
around when those bills come due. We have an obligation, I think a
special obligation as some of the younger Members of this House, to cry
bloody murder when this President tries to do more deficit spending
than he is even telling us here, because it is going to be our
generation and our kids' generation that are going to have to pay for
it.
Mr. ALTMIRE. That is right. The gentleman talked about the assumption
in the budget being submitted. Because the gentleman wasn't here when I
showed this, I want to show the gentleman, as he knows, what $3.1
trillion looks like. This is what it looks like. This is what the
President dropped on your desk and mine on Monday. This is the budget
we are talking about. So for our colleagues who are joining us late,
this is the budget that we are discussing tonight.
The assumption that was made in putting this budget together by the
administration, by President Bush, was that Congress would act on the
Alternative Minimum Tax, and, of course, we will. We are not going to
allow that to lapse, which would result in an increase for 23 million
people in the country, a tax increase, 70,000 in my district, I think
the gentleman said 80,000 additional in his district. So, of course, we
are going to deal with the AMT.
It is tough. It is a difficult way to have to do policy, to do it
year-to-year. It is probably not the best way. We made a tough decision
in December, we will make another tough decision at the end of this
year, and the President knows we are going are to have to do it and we
are going to have to pay for it, because that is what we have to do. It
is not included in the cost of this $3.1 trillion budget.
I know we are running short on time, so I did want to just summarize
a few of the other programs, saving one in particular for the end that
near and dear to my heart, that are cut in this budget. Because, again,
people say what are we talking about when you talk about all these
cuts?
We talked earlier about the subprime mortgage funding and so forth.
How about highway funding? Is there anyone in the country that can
disagree that we have a national crisis with infrastructure? We had the
unfortunate situation last fall with the bridge collapse in Minnesota
which highlighted a problem that many knew but really in a very tragic
way shined the spotlight on the incredible need that exists in this
country for infrastructure improvement, for bridge repair, for highway
repair. We simply do not have anywhere near close to the amount of
money necessary to fix the roads and bridges that need fixing right
now, let alone all the new construction that needs to take place.
The district that I represent, we are talking about funding for
bridges and roads and docks and dams along the riverways. Well, with
highway funding in particular, the President's budget unbelievably
proposes to cut funding for highways by $800 million below the amount
guaranteed by the previous transportation reauthorization bill that we
did several years ago.
Every $1 billion in new infrastructure investment creates 47,500 jobs
in this country and a shortfall in highway revenue is projected in
fiscal year 2009, which is what this budget covers. So we have a
projected shortfall, yet the President still recommends a $800 million
cut. And at a time when we lost jobs in January, who knows how many
jobs we are going to lose in the months ahead as we face what may turn
out to be a recession, we are talking about a problem that can create
nearly 50,000 jobs for every $1 billion in new investment, and we are
going to cut $800 million. It makes no sense.
Homeland security, the gentleman from Connecticut talked about the
importance of homeland security, which nobody can dispute, perhaps the
number one issue facing the country today. Well, so what does the
President's budget do? The calculation of his budget excludes $2.7
billion in border emergency funding from Congress, which was approved
in fiscal year 2008. When this is taken into account, the President is
only proposing to increase less than $100 million for fiscal year 2009
for homeland security needs for the entire agency.
In addition, the budget slashes funding for State Homeland Security
Grant programs, first responders, police, firefighters, EMTs, people
right out there on the front lines in our communities, many of them
volunteers. This President's budget cuts $750 million, 79 percent below
the current year's funding level. For firefighter grants, $450 million,
60 percent below, just for firefighter grants, and 79 percent below for
all first responders.
It is incredible that this is the budget that was put before us. Who
could possibly argue that that is a good policy decision, to cut
funding for first responders by 79 percent?
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. This is all sort of hard to take in. As
you said, that massive budget document gets dropped on us, and the
parade of horrors is endless in terms of all of the commonsense
programs, whether it is homeland security, whether it is law
enforcement, whether it is health care, whether it is research
spending. It is just hard to handle. It is like it gets your brain
going in overdrive. Then you got to step back for a second. I think it
does make sense to step back and have a little bit of faith that now
cooler and calmer heads can prevail.
It used to be when that budget was dropped on Congress' desk in
January or February that it basically was the law of the land, that
with a few changes here or there, the Republican-led Congress was going
to rubber stamp that President's budget.
As much as Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan and Ms. Wasserman Schultz before we
got here would come down and try to expose all of those damaging
harmful cuts to middle-class families throughout this country, to
people trying to make their way in this world, that it didn't matter,
because so long as Republicans controlled this place, there was going
to be essentially a rubber stamp on all of those cuts and more massive
deficit spending, the most fiscally irresponsible set of Congresses in
our lifetime.
That has changed now. That is different. And, listen. We are all
fallible. We don't get every single choice right, even on our side of
the aisle, Mr. Altmire. But the good news is, is that we are going to
find a way to push back most of those cuts, if not all of them. We are
going to find a way to pass another budget which gets us a little bit
closer to a balanced budget.
Now, the way we do that is sit here and expose all of the very
harmful cuts and all the very harmful spending in this President's
budget. But the American people should have some faith that you sent a
new Democratic Congress here. You sent this new freshman class that we
are a part of to pick apart that budget for the first time, and decide
not only how to more compassionately spend American taxpayer dollars,
but to more smartly spend them so that we are not racking up those huge
deficits, so that we are starting to balance budgets again.
So this is all very damaging news, and I know we are probably going
to close on some of the worse news in the budget, but I think people
should have faith that we now have leadership in charge of this
Congress that is going to be able to pull apart that budget and start
setting us on a commonsense and compassionate course again.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman. I am going to talk about the most
egregious, in my opinion, of all these cuts. And I know it is hard to
believe having walked through them that there could be one in
particular to point to. There is one that is particular to my
constituents and to something that I support. We are going to turn it
over momentarily to our freshman colleague, Mr. Yarmuth from Kentucky,
who I am sure is going to talk more about some of these issues.
As Members of Congress, we are all given the opportunity to testify
before
[[Page H610]]
the Budget Committee and say here are our priorities. These are the one
or two or three at the most things that we care about that we really
want to see addressed in the budget.
I was asked over the break that we had in between the first session
and the second session during the holidays, somebody came up to me in a
shopping center and recognized me and said, hey, you know, how has the
first year been? What are your experiences? What are you most proud of?
Without hesitating, for me, what I am most proud of that this
Congress did last year was we had the highest funding increase for
veterans health care in the 77 year history of the VA. We had to fight
tooth and nail. We had to do it over multiple opportunities throughout
the year. But in the end, the budget that we passed exceeded even the
recommendations of the service organizations. The VFW, the American
Legion, the Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans,
those organizations every year present to Congress their recommended
funding levels for what they feel that they are going to need. For the
first time ever, this Congress exceeded that.
So I am very proud of the work that we did as a Congress on veterans.
And it was a bipartisan effort. It is something we can be proud to have
worked together on.
Well, what does this budget do for veterans, something that I have
made my number one priority in this Congress. And I think we as
Congress have a good record so far on veterans, and I want to keep that
good record going, and I want to prevent the cuts that the President's
budget talks about.
It cuts veterans health care by $20 billion over 5 years. Let me
repeat that. This budget cuts veterans health care by $20 billion over
5 years and cuts funding for constructing, renovating and
rehabilitating medical care facilities in 2009, for which this budget
is authorized.
Now, for me, that is very parochial, because I have $200 million of
VA health construction going on in Western Pennsylvania, a lot of which
is in my district. Two different projects, $200 million. So the
President is coming in here at a time when we have the opportunity in
Western Pennsylvania to be the preeminent health care system in the
entire VA, top notch facilities, he is going to cut the construction
funding, and he is going to cut funding even more egregiously for
veterans health care by $20 billion.
I am sure the gentleman can agree, there is no group that should
stand ahead of our Nation's veterans when it comes time to make funding
decisions.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It just begs the question, Mr. Altmire.
What was going through the minds of the Bush administration budget
negotiators when they were sitting at the table last year negotiating
with us as we were insisting on the biggest increase in veterans
funding in the history of the program? I mean, we pushed that and
pushed that and pushed that. You were courageous from the very first
day that you got here in making that a priority.
It is just so terrible to think that, well, the Bush administration
was sitting there finally saying yes to that enormous and important
increase in veterans funding, that all the while they were drafting
that budget. All the while as they were agreeing just 60 days ago to
the biggest increase in veterans funding since the VA program began,
they were drafting secretly a budget that was going to reverse
everything they just agreed to. That just speaks to the worst of what
happens in Washington, D.C., Mr. Altmire.
Mr. ALTMIRE. That is right. I thank the gentleman. We are going to
wrap it up as our time has expired. I would only point out on that note
that this is the sixth year in a row that this budget raises health
care costs on 1.4 million veterans, imposing $5.2 billion in increased
copayments on prescription drugs and new enrollment fees on veterans
over 10 years. I wish I had more time to talk about that.
At this time I am going to thank the Speaker for the opportunity to
address the House this evening with my colleague Mr. Murphy from
Connecticut.
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