[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 42 (Wednesday, March 12, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H1612-H1616]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CHANGING THE DIRECTION OF THE COUNTRY'S BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to be here speaking 
on behalf of the American people and the class of 2006, the class that 
was elected to Congress to change the direction of the country, and 
that's what we've been set upon to do during these last 14 months.
  And I appreciate very much the comments of my distinguished colleague 
from Florida (Mr. Meek) and the great efforts he has made week after 
week to address the American people on the issues that are of critical 
importance to them.
  We are going to talk tonight about the budget resolution as well 
because this is, above all things, the fundamental responsibility of 
the House of Representatives, the United States Congress. This is how 
we deal with all of the tax revenue that we generate in this country 
and how we essentially steward the funds of the population that depend 
on us to make good judgements for them.
  And I'm joined tonight by my distinguished colleague from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Kagen) who has been a frequent participant in these sessions and 
someone who joins with us in our commitment to making life better for 
all Americans, making this an economy and a society that works for 
everyone and not just for the wealthiest.
  There are lots of ways to frame budget debates, and there's always a 
risk that we get much too deep in numbers and we get way too deep in 
the weeds, and we don't talk about the big picture because the big 
picture is what most Americans want to deal with. They want the small 
picture of how it affects their daily lives. But they also want to know 
what we're about here, what our goals are, what our ambitions are for 
the American people, what we are trying to do as we work through this 
$3 trillion budget that we have to do each Congress.
  And it's been interesting to sit and to stand and to listen to our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, those Members who have been 
in charge of this body and in charge of the Federal budget essentially 
for the last 6 years and even in the Congress before that for another 6 
years, and listen to them try to frame the issues in ways that 
understandably try to benefit their position.
  But it's fascinating to listen as they talk about our budget, and 
somehow, because we don't plan to keep all of the Bush tax cuts in 
effect ad infinitum, that that somehow represents a tax increase.
  And I have to remind everyone when I talk about issues that you 
remember what the Bush administration did and this Congress did when 
they enacted these tax cuts. They basically provided a sunset. They 
provided in the legislation that these tax cuts would end, and the 
reason they did that was because they wanted to be able to project 
somewhere out in the future that there would be a balanced budget in 
spite of the fact that they knew they were destined for huge deficits.
  So they put a sunset, they put an end on those dates. Just as if you 
were in a business and you say, Okay, for 2 days only we are going to 
have a sale. We are going to give you 30 percent off. And that's the 
terms of the deal. So you come in on the fourth day and you say, Wait a 
minute. I want to pay that lower price. And the store says, Wait a 
minute. No. This was two days only 30 percent off. So you didn't raise 
the prices. You can't argue that we raised the prices. This was the way 
the deal was set up.
  So now they're trying to have it both ways. They're trying to say we 
provided a tax cut, most of which went to the very wealthiest 
Americans, and now we are going to, because you are not willing to 
extend that tax cut, you are going to raise our taxes. No. We are going 
to end that two-day sale.
  But what is really more disturbing than anything else, and I listened 
earlier to one of our colleagues from Wisconsin, one of your 
colleagues, Mr. Kagen, that when he was talking about what this budget 
would mean if we did not extend the Bush tax cuts, it said the average 
American would have their taxes raised by $1,000 or $1,200 or $3,000 
when, in fact, that is kind of the magic of numbers and what you can do 
with them. Because if you take someone who is making $10 million a year 
and you raise that person's taxes by 4 percent, which would be 
essentially restoring the maximum tax rate, pre-Bush tax cut rate to 
that person, and then you average it over thousands of people, yes, you 
are going to get an average tax hike of $1,000 per person. But the 
average American, the average person who is making $30,000 a year is 
not going to see his or her taxes increased at all under this budget.
  But you put that person with the person who's making $10 million a 
year whose taxes might go up a couple hundred thousand dollars, you 
average all of that in, yeah, you can come up with an average tax 
increase on all Americans. But that's not the way it works, because the 
average American will not have his or her taxes increased under this 
budget. The average very wealthy American will have his or her taxes 
increased.
  But that's the way we play games with numbers around here, and it's 
very disturbing.
  So it's important that when we discuss these important issues, $3 
trillion worth of Federal budget, $1 trillion dollars, essentially, 
that this Congress has to deal with in discretionary funding, that we 
be honest, that we be candid, that we paint the accurate picture for 
the American people and what it means to them.

[[Page H1613]]

  And I would like now to yield to my distinguished colleague from 
Wisconsin who I know is very much focused on what this budget does and 
every budget does for the people he represents, everyday Americans in 
his district. So I'm proud to yield to my distinguished colleague from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Kagen).
  Mr. KAGEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Yarmuth from the great State of 
Kentucky. And I thought what I would do is I'd share with you some of 
my feelings about how things are going here in Washington.
  We were presented with Bush's proposal, which, medically speaking, is 
dead on arrival. It just doesn't face up to and it doesn't really 
reflect our traditional American values of putting people before 
things. People ought to come first.
  I am very much opposed to the President's budget which seeks to 
really destroy Medicare and take away Medicaid, which is the health 
care access for those of us who are in the greatest need. And so I 
think we have to take a look at the numbers. When the President 
suggested $497 billion cut from Medicare, nearly $100 billion cut from 
Medicaid, how are these people going to get the essential medical care 
that they need?
  I look at it, in the big picture, as this way: We've been elected to 
change the direction of the country and to do four essential things: 
First, defend America. We have to enact, as we did, the 9/11 
recommendations. We have to begin to move our troops away from Iraq and 
back after our real enemies, Osama bin Laden and his followers. And 
they weren't in Iraq when we went there; they were in Afghanistan. But 
we cannot remain in a hundred-year war and continue to borrow money 
from China and spend it in the sands of Iraq.
  Everywhere I go in Wisconsin, my good friend, people are telling me, 
Look, you have got our hard-earned tax dollars. Spend it here at home. 
Build our roads. Build our bridges. Rebuild America. Let's not rebuild 
another country. Let's rebuild our own lands. This budget does not 
reflect our values. It doesn't protect anyone except corporate greed 
and those at the very top of the ladder. It doesn't do what we should 
be doing: educating our children, caring for our veterans.
  The Democratic budget seeks to put in over $3 billion above what we 
did last year because we have 330,000-plus soldiers coming back from 
Iraq and Afghanistan.

                              {time}  2145

  And they need help now more than ever, not just before and during 
their service in harm's way, but when they come home with PTSD and 
other injuries that you may not see that are mental, and also those 
physical injuries. We have to have a budget that makes sense not just 
for us here, but also for people at home.
  I have here a chart that shows you the change in real median, which 
is like your average household income, by Presidential term. If you 
look over here right by the right, this is something people in 
Wisconsin understand straight away. We are not better off today than we 
were before President Bush took office. And this Republican policy of 
borrow and spend and borrow and spend has put us in the drink.
  There is a difference between Republicans and Democrats. Right now, 
the difference is about $33 trillion of debt on an accrual basis. When 
President Bush took office, we had a debt of about $20 trillion on an 
accrual basis. We are now up to $53 trillion of debt. We have 
obligations we have to meet to those people that we serve and 
represent.
  During the Clinton Presidency, there was an increase of $6,100 of 
median household income; with Bush I, a decline of $1,000. So we have 
to return and get back to the basics of balancing our budget, and most 
importantly, balancing our trade as well. We cannot continue to have a 
negative trade deficit with our partners overseas and have any kind of 
economy left at all.
  This budget does not make sense. I thought I would go through with 
you, since you are from Kentucky, some of the things that might be 
happening if we followed President Bush's and the Republicans' budget. 
Homeland security grants. In the State of Kentucky, well, you would 
lose $7 million. In Wisconsin, $9 million. Homeland security grants are 
important sources of revenue for small governments and cities and towns 
to help defend America on the local level.
  Assistance to firefighter grants, the AFG grants, puts valuable 
equipment into volunteer fire departments across the country, giving 
them communication gear so we can communicate during an emergency. 
Well, in Kentucky, oh, my poor friend, you're not even on the list. 
Let's go to Wisconsin. We're losing $13 million. And Kentucky, $12.5 
million with the President's budget.
  What about the Clean Water State Revolving Fund? This is an essential 
source of revenue for guaranteeing that we have infrastructure that 
makes sense, that functions as it should, wastewater treatment plants 
and the like. In Wisconsin, under President Bush's budget, we would 
lose $4 million. In Kentucky, you would lose almost $2 million. It goes 
on and on.
  Community Development Block Grants, Dislocated Worker programs. These 
are people-oriented programs that need to have financing to make sure 
that people have a safety net that they can count on.
  If you want it in general terms, you used the analogy about a sale, 
you know, 2 days only, or should we say, ``to the rich only.'' That 
sale, that tax break, that has to end because otherwise we're passing 
the buck. We're passing our debt on not to our generation, but to our 
children and our grandchildren because sooner or later these debts must 
be paid.
  We're seeing it now with the decline of the dollar. The decline of 
the dollar has caused what? The oil hasn't changed for 1 million years, 
but its value has gone up because our purchasing power for the dollar 
has gone down. The gold hasn't changed, but it now might take $1,000 
someday soon, real soon, to get 1 ounce of gold. So your purchasing 
power of the dollar has declined. Interest rates are going down, making 
your investments, if you saved any money at all and you're on fixed 
income, it's much harder for you now to make it through the week.
  As we look at the budgeting process here in Washington, the essential 
difference is there are debt lovers and debt haters. We want to pay our 
bills. We want to be fiscally responsible and socially progressive to 
guarantee that people are more important than things and people are 
more important than corporations.
  And I yield back.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my distinguished colleague.
  He raises an important point because there are two different types of 
expenditures that we make in this Congress and that everyone makes. You 
can spend money that basically goes down the drain and never yields any 
kind of positive return, or you can invest money that pays back in 
manifold times over the years.
  I know that I call my colleague Mr. Kagen; in fact, he is a 
physician. I should say Dr. Kagen. I raise that because one of the 
things that the President's budget did, it would do if we were to enact 
it, which of course we won't, but is to cut funding for the National 
Institutes of Health. It seems to me that we're facing, as a country, 
this enormous exposure financially over the next several generations 
because of health care costs. We can try to tax our way out of it, 
raise more money to pay for it; we can try to use cost containment 
measures, which probably are not going to be that effective because 
every time you try to cut down on what you spend for health care, you 
reduce access to it; or we can invest money now in the type of research 
that will cure the very diseases that are going to cost us the most 
down the road. So if we spent $20 billion and we're able to cure cancer 
within the next 5 years, that would save us trillions of dollars long 
term as a society. The same with diabetes, the same with almost every 
disease we can mention. Yet the President's budget reduces funding on 
an inflation basis from the last year's budget. This is the type of 
thing where we should be investing more money because down the road 
these will pay off, not necessarily for us, in fact, but for our 
children and future generations.
  It's the same way with energy and it's the same way with 
infrastructure. These are the types of investments and expenditures 
which this budget, the Democratic budget, emphasizes. This is our 
focus. And this is the type of expenditure that the President's budget

[[Page H1614]]

ignores. And that represents a very fundamental difference in our 
approaches.
  Clearly, we have one big elephant in the room. I don't say that in 
partisan terms. I will use gorilla. We have one big object in the room, 
and that is our expenditure in Iraq. If we continue to spend $150, 
$170, $200 billion a year in Iraq, that is money that doesn't represent 
an investment. It represents money being flushed down the drain. That's 
something that we have a serious policy dispute with and that's a very 
controversial subject around the country, but it's the type of 
expenditure that is keeping us from doing the type of investment that 
will yield returns down the road.
  I'm very happy that my colleague mentioned infrastructure and 
investment because that is where we're going to have to focus our 
activity, our attention. Because unless we do that, we are destined for 
the same type of borrow-and-spend society and economy as opposed to an 
invest-and-reap-the-reward society that we can have otherwise.
  We have a fundamental debate with our colleagues from across the 
aisle and with the administration in the White House and we're going to 
have to continue to fight this until we can convince the American 
people that the long-term approach, investing in people and 
infrastructure and research, are the answers to our long-range 
problems. And the Republican budget, the President's budget, is 
something that takes us in the wrong direction.
  With that, I would ask my colleague to respond to or react to those 
comments.
  Mr. KAGEN. I couldn't agree with you more, and I appreciate your 
yielding.
  Think about it. I'll ask it rhetorically: Can you name one thing that 
President Bush has done to help us become an energy independent Nation? 
Just one thing. I can't think of a thing that he has done. There is so 
much that we could be doing to become energy independent.
  But let's look at taxes just for a minute. I can lower your taxes by 
investing in people, by having healthier children who will have 
healthier lives. They will get a better education if we educate them 
and invest in education. I can lower your taxes. I can lower the taxes 
of every city, every county and every State in this country if we would 
invest in a health care system that makes sense, that's affordable, and 
guarantees access to affordable care for everyone, especially our 
children on whose future we all depend. We can lower our taxes by 
having healthy senior citizens who walk straight, who don't need canes, 
who actually have access to the essential services that they require.
  We have to invest in people, their education, their health care, and 
especially our veterans. And it's going to cost more and more and more 
the longer we remain in a religious civil war in Iraq. We're spending 
$12 billion of our tax money that we have to pay back sometime. Now 80 
cents on the dollar that we're borrowing from foreign countries, 80 
cents on the dollar we're taking from foreign countries right now. So 
who owns America? Who are we? And in which direction are we going to 
turn? We have become a debtor country.
  Let's take a look at some of the numbers that are a bit frightening. 
I'm going to scare you for a reason. This is the way it is: 2.8 million 
homes are going to go through foreclosure in a short time through the 
subprime mortgage crisis. But the number at the end of the day, when 
this recession is done in 2011 or 2012, may be 20 million homes. Now if 
you have three people per home, that's 60 million American citizens. 
Sixty million people might have to lose their home. If I came up to you 
and said, hey, you know, 20 percent of the population in Cuba is 
homeless, you would say, well, yeah, it's a Third World country. We're 
already getting there.
  Now 10 years ago, in conversations with my physician colleagues, we 
would have an agreement that we were doing fine in America so long as 
the value of the dollar was upheld and so long as Arabians took our 
dollar in payment for their oil. Well, last year, the Japanese started 
buying their oil and paying in the yen. Germany is now paying in the 
euro because they get more for their money. So our dollar has been 
devalued because of these failed and losing economic policies that 
we're now underneath because of President Bush.
  We must turn a page. We must come back to the basics of being 
fiscally responsible and paying as we go as we've done in this House in 
the 110th Congress.
  Now if we don't invest in our children's education, where are we 
going to get? We're getting nowhere. If we don't invest in our 
children's health care early on, we'll never be able to afford their 
expensive care later on. Remember the old tire commercial, ``You can 
pay me now or you can pay me later''? That's true in the health care 
field as well.
  I feel very strongly that we have to take on all of these issues. We 
have to have a fiscally responsible budget. And the very first thing we 
have to address is our skyrocketing, impossible costs for health care, 
which are a drag on every small business I get to meet with. I don't 
care if you're in farming or if you're a shoe salesman or if you're a 
small manufacturer, the number one cost you have of running your 
overhead is your health expense for your employees, if you're fortunate 
enough to have the money to pay for it.
  Today, the average cost for a family of four is $14,000 for health 
insurance, on average. If you're making $50,000 annually, how can you 
afford to give $14,000 to the insurance industry? You can't afford it. 
That's why we have 47 million United States citizens with no health 
care coverage at all. I think we have to become fiscally responsible. 
This Congress will do it.
  I yield back.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you. This is kind of a tangent, but it's important 
to mention because we hear from the other side so many times, I think 
from the Presidential candidate as well as so many Members, that the 
answer to the health care crisis is to give families a $5,000 or so tax 
credit so they can pay for their health insurance. You've framed the 
issue extremely well; how many families of moderate income can afford 
to pay? The $5,000 tax credit doesn't mean anything when their health 
insurance is costing them $14,000 a year. First of all, they don't have 
the money to spend, so they probably are not paying a lot of tax to 
begin with. A tax credit is kind of a myth. It's just something that 
maybe sounds good, but in the real world doesn't work.
  But you also mentioned a very important element to this, and that's 
the issue of education. The President and the Republicans have 
continued to underfund education in this country at almost negligent 
amounts for a number of years now.
  We just had a press conference a few weeks ago in my district because 
we were able to get enough money, a Federal grant to provide 
scholarships for 500 citizens of my district that would enable them to 
get an associate's degree. We calculated the amount of increased 
earning capacity based on that $1 million worth of scholarships and it 
ended up being $13 million worth of increased revenue earning capacity 
based on a $1 million investment. Because if you take somebody from a 
high school degree and you give him or her an associate's degree, all 
of a sudden their income potential increases by 50 to 100 percent. 
You're talking about over a lifetime of earning capacity, $250,000 to 
$300,000 just for that small investment.
  These are the types of decisions that we have to make, that we're 
called on to make in these budgeting processes. And I think that 
represents the real distinction between our party and the party that 
has controlled this House up until 2007. They want to spend money in 
very different ways. We want to invest tax dollars to improve the lives 
of those people who can really generate increased activity in the 
economy, increased earning.

                              {time}  2200

  Just on the basis of the question of stabilizing Social Security and 
Medicare, if you increase somebody's salary from $25,000 a year to 
$50,000 a year, you've doubled their contribution to Social Security. 
You've doubled their contribution to Medicare. This is the way we dig 
ourselves out of the hole that we have been in. It's to make sure that 
every American is earning a decent living and, therefore, can 
contribute to these programs. It's not to

[[Page H1615]]

sit there and say we're going to continue to give Warren Buffett and 
Bill Gates and many of the wealthiest Americans in this country tax 
breaks and hope that somehow that results in a better way of life for 
every other American.
  I think we have seen enough of trickle-down economics. They tried to 
sell us that under the Reagan revolution. They've tried to sell us that 
under two Bush administrations. I think the American people finally 
realized that that's not the answer to our economic problems and that's 
not the answer to our economic future.
  We have seen, and not just in New Orleans with Katrina, that when you 
have trickle down, unfortunately, it doesn't lift all boats. It drowns 
a lot of people. And that chart demonstrates, as vividly as it can be 
demonstrated, what has happened in this country under trickle-down 
economics. We have drowned those people who are represented in red. 
Their boats didn't float. Our position is we want to make sure that 
everybody has the right kind of boat so that when the storms come, 
they're floating with everybody else.
  And I think that is something that the American people are catching 
on to. I think that's why every survey of American attitudes, when you 
ask people, Who do you trust more to handle the economy, taxes, 
education, health care? they have said, We prefer the Democrats by 
substantial margins now.
  That doesn't mean we're off the hook. That doesn't mean just because 
people think we have the right answers that we don't have to respond 
and that we don't have to perform. But I think they have recognized 
that the other answer is empty, and they have said, we put our faith in 
your philosophy. We put our stock in you. Now perform for us. That's 
what we're trying to do with this budget. That's what we hope to do as 
we move forward into the 111th and 112th and 113th Congresses.
  I'll yield to my colleague on that.
  Mr. KAGEN. Thank you for yielding. You bring up an interesting point 
about paying taxes. Do you really believe that people who are going 
down can pay more? It doesn't make any sense at all. Let's take a look 
at some of the numbers.
  Twenty-five percent of all workers in the United States earn less 
than $8.70 per hour. One half of all women working earn less than $8.70 
an hour. That's about $18,000 in a year. One-fifth of all children in 
America are living in poverty, which is the highest among the 17 
industrialized nations, and we are the only industrialized nation that 
doesn't have guaranteed access to health care for everyone. So who is 
going to end up paying?
  Well, we had dinner tonight. Somebody has to pay the bill; right? So 
we can't just get up and turn it over to somebody else. Our kids aren't 
there. Our grandchildren aren't there. We had to come up with the money 
to pay for our bills. But if you don't have any money, and I'm not 
accusing you, but if you don't have the money, I'm going to have to 
cover you.
  Now, who has benefited from all these tax cuts? It's the people at 
the top of the income scale. It should be no surprise who is going to 
have to pay the bills when they come due. It's not going to be people 
that don't have any money. They're going to the banks now looking for 
money.
  I was in a diner in Oconto, Wisconsin, Northeast Wisconsin, having a 
bite to eat on my way to an event. And I asked the guys who were 
working there that are city workers how I could help them with an 
economic stimulus package.
  And they said, Doc, look out the window. It's right there. There's 
the price of gas. If you want to put more money in my pocket, cut the 
cost of gasoline.
  Well, we haven't done it yet because we have got an oil Vice 
President and an oil President. We can't do it while they're in office.
  The second thing he said was, look, the other thing you can do is 
knock down the cost when I go to the pharmacy to get my medication. I 
think I'm paying too much.
  And let me share with you some reality. In the State of Wisconsin, we 
have a program for senior citizens who are in need of assistance in 
paying for their prescription drugs. So if you can't afford your 
prescription drugs and you're in need and you're lower income status, 
you will qualify for senior care, and by buying into it with $30 a 
year, you get this kind of a benefit. Virginia, for her medications, 
pays over $330 per month at the pharmacy for her medications. On senior 
care it's $89. The same pharmacy, the same prescription drugs, the same 
drug makers. The only difference is the State of Wisconsin formed a 
purchasing pool.
  I will give you a second example. The Veterans Administration has 
negotiated steep discounts for a vast number of very effective and 
therapeutic prescription drugs. And, on average, if you're a veteran 
getting your prescription drugs from the VA, you're paying 46 percent 
less than a Medicare part D patient. But, my friend, the veterans who 
fought for this country, for our freedom, for the right not just for 
themselves to get a discount, they fought for everybody. Don't you 
think it's only right but that everybody be able to get those same 
medications at that same steep discount? They didn't fight a war--they 
didn't defend America--for themselves. They did it for every citizen 
across this land. If the VA can use its resources to leverage down and 
purchase prescription drugs at a steep discount, shouldn't everyone 
benefit from that steep discount?
  So we have to begin to think differently in America, about us. Not 
me, about all of us. We have to begin to return to the days when health 
insurance was sold to an entire community. You know those letters u-n-
i-t-y, unity? We have got to put ``unity'' back into ``community.'' We 
have to return to community-based ratings so we can insure everyone in 
the community without any discrimination. And when we do that, we can 
leverage down the cost of prescription drugs and insurance coverage for 
everyone. So I think this is our time when we can begin to have a 
discussion with the American people about what's important to them.

  In Wisconsin paying your bills is just the way of life. So is 
working. Two feet of snow, three feet of snow, we're still there on 
time. So from our Wisconsin point of view, and I am certain it's true 
in Kentucky as well, people want to pay their bills. But what's 
happening today in households across my district is people are running 
faster to stand still. They are working harder to make a little bit 
more. But their energy costs for their gasoline, for the diesel; for 
the farmers, for their fertilizers, their feed, for their cows, the 
energy cost is escalating. That's called inflation. And on top of that, 
they can't buy as much with their hard-earned dollar. So what good does 
it do if you're milking cows and you're getting $20 per hundred weight 
and your overhead is eating it up? The margin, your profit, is almost 
the same as when it was $12 per hundred.
  So we have to begin to change our Federal policies, and our budget 
must reflect not just our Nation's values but our true American 
traditional family values of pay-as-you-go.
  Now, when I was just 12 years old, my grandmother from Poland taught 
me, Steve, if you see something you like and you've got the money, go 
ahead and buy it. If you see something you like and you don't have the 
money, don't buy it. And that's all you need to know about money.
  We have to take that idea here in Washington as well and say, look, 
there are things we must do. We must defend our country. We must grow 
our economy, expand the middle class. At the same time, we have to 
protect our planet from global climate change and global warming. All 
of these are very complex issues, but it begins with money.
  Now, my friend, I look at money as a problem solver. If you've got 
money in your pocket, you can solve some problems. And this government 
has built up such debts that we are now getting handcuffs on us, 
monetary handcuffs. Our debt load is so heavy, we are having more and 
more restrictions on what problems we can solve. So I think we have to 
get our financial House of Representatives in order, not just our 
congressional House but our financial house.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my colleague. And as we wind down, I want to do 
two things. One is to thank him for dinner, because that was very nice 
of him to be willing to stand in for me, not that I couldn't have paid, 
but he was generous enough to treat tonight; and, secondly, to talk 
about the concept of unity and community.

[[Page H1616]]

  And on the dais to my colleague's right, there are several terms 
inscribed in that dais, but on my far left the term ``union'' is 
inscribed. And that's really what I think we have lost track of and 
lost awareness of in this country, that we are part of something that 
is very special. But it is a union. It's not 300 million individuals 
out on their own.
  And we had an interesting hearing the other day in the Committee on 
Oversight and Government Reform, and basically the subject was on the 
subprime mortgage crisis, but it was also related to CEOs' salaries. 
And I'm not sure it was quite a good idea to combine the two, although 
they do provide kind of a stark contrast in which many of these 
companies, namely, Countrywide, had lost lots of money, and yet the CEO 
had left the company and was still making millions of dollars, $37 
million he left the company with.
  But we also had the former chairman of Citigroup, the CEO of Time 
Warner, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch; so we had some of the giants 
of American industry there. And the topic of discussion kept 
alternating between the subprime mortgage crisis and also the question 
of CEOs' salaries. And it occurred to me, as we went through this 
discussion, that many of these CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a 
year in compensation, much of it related to stock options that they are 
given, so their compensation ultimately is related to their stock 
price.
  And as the conversation went on, it finally came my turn to ask 
questions. And I addressed these giants of American industry, and I 
said, I can see how in a comparative market situation that the CEO of 
Citigroup, which is a $35 billion company, may be worth $10 million a 
year in salary. I don't have any complaint about that. And even if you 
lose money in a particular year, I mean if it hadn't been for the 
talents of the CEO, you might have lost more money; so maybe that was 
justified.
  But what the American people see is CEOs making tens of millions of 
dollars, at the same time feeling, if not knowing explicitly what's on 
that chart, that their standard of living, even though they are working 
as hard as they have ever worked, is not improving. And if they are 
working for one of those companies at a relatively average position, 
while they are working hard, their standard of living is staying the 
same and the CEO's salary is increasing.
  And we all know the data about the disparity between CEOs' salaries 
and their employees' salaries. It's gone from an average of 30 times in 
the early 1970s to now 400 or 500 times. And it doesn't matter whether 
you lose money; they still make these huge salaries. And I asked them, 
When you have these meetings in your compensation committees and you're 
deciding and discussing the salaries of your CEO and your upper 
management, is there ever a conversation or have you ever heard of a 
conversation that related to how you might improve the lives of your 
employees, how you might stabilize the communities where your 
businesses are, how you might help to make this country a better place, 
or is all the conversation related to how you get the stock price up?
  And the retired chairman of Citigroup said, very candidly and 
honestly, No, we only talk about share price. I said, That's a very 
unfortunate disconnect between what I think we all think is the 
objective, the ambition of this country, this Union, which is to make 
life better for everybody, to create jobs, to have everybody realize 
the American Dream, and yet our largest corporate citizens are only 
thinking about how they raise their stock price.
  And I wonder, and I hope to be able to pursue this conversation with 
other CEOs of big corporations as I serve my terms in Congress, Do you 
ever talk about raising your standard of living of your employees? How 
do we get their wages up? How do we improve their benefits? How do we 
improve their health care situation? How do we stabilize that community 
and what can we do? And I know there are companies out there who are 
great corporate citizens. I have some in my own district who do that.

                              {time}  2215

  But if you don't have the corporate mentality that thinks about the 
same goals that the American people have, then we have a problem in 
this country. And I am not exactly sure how to go about it. But I know 
that the policies that are represented by our colleagues on the 
Republican side and by this been White House have been ones that say, 
we're going to do everything we can to facility that strategy of 
letting those companies do whatever they need to do to jack their stock 
prices up, and meanwhile we hope that it helps everybody else.
  And I think that our budget says that we are not going to rely on 
just an abstract hope. We are going to take steps to invest in the 
American people, to put money in education, to put money in health care 
and to put money in infrastructure that will allow those people to make 
sure they improve their own standard of living.
  So, we are going to have this debate for a long time. We will have it 
in this particular context in this budget debate, but as we go forward 
in this Congress, and in future Congresses. And I look forward to it 
because I think that the American people want us to do everything we 
can to help them realize their individual ambitions, and, again, to 
make ourselves a better Union.
  So with that, I would just like to ask my colleague if he has any 
closing remarks, and then we will let everyone go home.
  Mr. KAGEN. I appreciate your comments. And I have learned a great 
deal just working with you here in Congress. And I appreciate your 
sacrifice of leaving your business and your life in Kentucky to work 
here in Washington even as you live back in Kentucky, as I work here in 
Washington and live in Wisconsin.
  I will just remind you what we both agree on. We need to have not 
just a budget policy, but a tax policy that rewards work more so than 
wealth. Because what you see with this graph is that the people that 
are being rewarded are the wealthy who are not necessarily working as 
hard as people.
  Now whose side are we on? We do not sit in a boardroom. We are 
standing on the workplace floor. We understand the pain and feel the 
stress that ordinary Americans are going through and families are 
making it just a tough time every single day. The policies that we are 
putting forward have to be people first, and our budget must not only 
be balanced, but we have to balance the other deficits that we face. We 
have a budget deficit, and we have a savings deficit. We have to 
become, once again, a Nation that saves money and not just spends 
money. We have to lead the way here in Congress.
  And I look forward to working with you in the years to come and 
certainly in the next several weeks as we pass a budget here.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my colleague. And as I close, I just what to 
repeat what I have said to many people, and that is that it is such a 
great honor to be in this wonderful group of people, men and women, 
elected in 2006, because most of us came to Congress well past the age 
of 50. We came because we had done what we wanted to do in our 
professional lives or our business careers, and we said we wanted to 
make a difference.
  We weren't here because we expected to spend 25 or 30 years in 
Congress. We didn't want to be professional politicians. We came 
because we wanted to see what we could do to change the direction of 
the country. And nobody is a better example of that than my colleague 
from Wisconsin, and I thank him for joining me tonight. I look forward 
to further discussions as we move forward.

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