[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

[[Page H608]]

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.

                          ____________________