[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 4, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H2964-H2970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE MAJORITY MAKERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Speaker, it's a great honor for me to be here 
tonight to join with many of my colleagues from The Majority Makers, 
the Class of 2006, which brought change to the Congress, and now hopes 
to join with President Obama to bring change to the country. We're here 
tonight to talk about the challenges facing this country that are 
manifold, the incredible, unprecedented nature of our situation, the 
opportunities that we face, because every challenge comes with 
opportunities, and also to talk about the budget that President Obama 
has proposed to this Congress, because it is a budget that takes us in 
a very different direction in this country, echoing and reinforcing his 
theme of his campaign, which was to bring change to the country. And 
it's also the motivation for all of us who came to Congress in the 
Class of 2006.

                              {time}  1730

  You know, I have the great privilege of serving on the Ways and Means 
Committee and also on the Budget Committee. Over the last 2 days, we've 
heard Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and OMB Director Peter 
Orszag talking about what the situation is in the country--the economic 
challenges we in the world face--and also what the Obama administration 
plans to do about them in asking for our assistance. Two things have 
been very clear in listening to both of these two gentlemen, who are 
new to their jobs, in listening to the new administration and also in 
listening to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle as they're 
responding to the initiatives of the administration.
  The two things are: One, that they like to take potshots at the 
budget, which is fair game, because this is, after all, sometimes a 
partisan exercise. Also, the ideas that they bring to the debate are 
really no new ideas at all. As a matter of fact, listening to 
Republicans talk about the economic situation and their suggestions for 
how we move forward is kind of like listening to the coach of the 
Detroit Lions saying, ``hey, use my playbook,'' after they just went 0 
and 16. I don't want to pick on the Detroit Lions, but that's really 
what it sounds like because they bring no new ideas to the table.
  That's what is so impressive about this team that President Obama has 
assembled and about the budget that he has brought to the Congress and 
to the American people. It is a budget that is full of new ideas and of 
new approaches to very old and very difficult problems.
  So, as we're here tonight to talk about where we've been and where 
we're going and where we need to go in this country, I just want to 
mention the fact that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was here today. The 
theme of his address to the joint session of Congress was--and he has 
mentioned the expression many times--``faith in the future.'' That's 
really what we're trying to bring to this country, faith in the future, 
because that faith has been destroyed over the last decade in the 
United States, and that's what we are so committed to doing, and I 
think that's what the Obama administration is committed to doing as 
well, to restoring faith in the future, because that is also what has 
driven our country, our people, our businesses, and our institutions, 
which is that we believe there is a better time facing us, a better 
time ahead, and we have taken those steps. We have worked as hard as we 
can and have used our ingenuity to realize the future that we all 
aspire to. So I look forward to the discussion tonight as it's always a 
pleasure to be with my colleagues.
  I would like to yield, first of all, to someone who has been a 
consistent participant in these discussions we've had, the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Klein).
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman from Kentucky. Thanks for 
your leadership on the issues, as we know, we have been really faced 
with as we move into this next congressional session.
  It was interesting. A week ago, most of us were at home, speaking to 
people in small businesses, speaking to homeowners. Many of us do 
Congress on Your Corner, which is an idea where we just meet at the 
local supermarket or local drug store or local 5 and 10 and just have a 
chance to talk to people about what they're really thinking about right 
now and how we can solve these problems that our country is looking at. 
You know, it breaks down into three things:
  One is: What can we do to stimulate the economy? What can we do to 
generate consumer interest and business interest? Because, if we 
produce more, people will buy more and demand will go up, all those 
kinds of things. What do we do about the mortgage crisis? It's not just 
the people who are sort of in foreclosure. There's a very large number 
of people who are at jobs where maybe they're earning $50,000.
  I was just at a car dealer's the other day, and they were telling me 
that the owner of the company came to the 140 employees and asked them 
to vote on whether they wanted to reduce their salaries. He, himself, 
the owner, had taken no salary in the last year, but he literally asked 
them if they'd be willing to take less compensation in order to avoid 
people being laid off. They took a vote and they did it. The reality is 
someone who's earning $50,000 may be earning $40,000 or $35,000, and 
someone who is willing or is able to pay $750 for a mortgage maybe now 
can afford $600.
  Well, there are simple solutions to that, and I'm very gratified that 
Congress is moving forward. The Obama administration has put out a 
number of proposals which, I think, need quick movement because they're 
just commonsense, and they make sense.
  Everyone understands it's not in the best interest of a street for a 
home to be foreclosed on on that street. The better way to deal with 
that is to keep that person in the home. If the person is earning a 
little less than he was earning before, or that $50,000 to $35,000, and 
he can afford $600 versus $750, well, it's simple enough. Take the 
difference and defer it to the end of the mortgage or amortize the 
mortgage 40 years instead of 30 years. Get the payments to where the 
person can still afford to stay in the home and can take care of that 
home and can have a roof over his head. Add value to the community 
versus having that home boarded up and having it depress every other 
property on the street.
  That's the kind of work that we need to encourage the banks to work 
on with our local community folks, with our homeowners, and those are 
some of the proposals that are out on the table today. I think those 
are the kinds of things that I've been hearing from our communities. We 
need to know that the government is working on encouraging banks and on 
finding incentives to get the banks to work with us.
  Of course, other than the stimulus, which is already in place--and 
it's going to begin to filter into the communities over the next number 
of weeks--the last thing, of course, is fixing the banks in a way that 
they will lend to small businesses. I know we're going to talk about 
that tonight because we're a country of small businesses. We understand 
that's the lifeblood of our communities--to create jobs, to create 
wealth and to support local communities. I know that there are a number 
of ideas we're going to discuss which will help get those small 
businesses back on track because we know that we need to get the banks 
to help out with that.
  So, with that, I'll turn it back to the gentleman. I'm looking 
forward to this good discussion on how we're going to move forward over 
the next number of days.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman from Florida.
  One of the great things about having these discussions is we get 
perspectives from all over the country, not just from different, more 
conservative, more aggressive districts but, rather, geographically and 
demographically. There are a lot of important perspectives that help 
shape the context of this discussion.
  I would now like to yield to my colleague, the distinguished 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire).
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman, and I thank my colleagues for

[[Page H2965]]

joining us tonight in this important discussion.
  I want to focus on the President's budget and, in particular, on what 
is different about this budget in that the President has looked in a 
comprehensive way at our economy, not just at the crisis that we find 
ourselves in today, at this moment in time, but also at how to get 
ourselves out and where we want to be a year from now, 5 years from 
now, 10 years from now. We all understand that.
  What the President has done with his budget is include within it 
segments of our economy that have been ignored in budgets over time--
things like health care, like energy and like education--because what 
we understand in this Congress is we cannot move forward as a nation; 
we can't solve our economic problems, and we can't move this country 
forward and continue as the preeminent Nation on the planet in this 
global economy unless we reform our health care system, unless we find 
a way to get ourselves off of our addiction to foreign oil and unless 
we continue to improve the quality of the education available to all 
students in this country and make education more accessible so we can 
continue to be competitive in the global economy.
  What we have set before us is the realization that every family, 
every business and every individual in this country is impacted by the 
cost of education, by the cost of energy and by the cost of health 
care, and we are going to talk about those issues tonight and certainly 
going forward.
  I want to focus specifically on health care. The President has laid 
out an ambitious agenda, and he has done something that is unique. He 
has allowed Congress to have a say in it in a way that has not been the 
case in previous health care discussions. The President has said, 
``These are my priorities, and while I'm willing to work with the 435 
Members of the House and with the 100 in the other body, let's work 
with the American people,'' because, in heart, that's what we are. We 
are Representatives. Let's put together a plan that can solve this 
crisis that we face, not just with our economy but in the health care 
system.
  So what are some of the things that we hear when we go back and we 
have Congress on Your Corner?
  Well, when we talk about the cost of health care, I often hear people 
say, ``Well, why are you taking my money? I'm happy with my insurance. 
I'm covered. I have a job. I'm fine.'' Somebody will say, ``Why are you 
taking my money and giving it to somebody else who doesn't have health 
care? I understand that that's a problem and that that's unfortunate, 
but why are you spending my money on them?''
  What I try to explain to people is they're already paying for the 
costs of that person's health care. The most obvious example that 
you've heard many times is, when that person needs health care, he goes 
to the emergency room, which is the least effective, the most costly 
and the most inefficient setting that you can possibly get for primary 
health care. So we're forcing them into that setting to begin with, and 
they get covered, and they get reimbursed, if you're the hospital, 
because that's our money. If you go to the hospital, the reason an 
aspirin costs $10 is because of the cost shift that takes place. When 
you have someone show up who doesn't have insurance, the hospital or 
provider will shift that cost to somebody else. That's an obvious way.
  What people don't think about is that your State taxes are higher 
because of exploding Medicaid costs all around the country. States are 
forced to pay for the Medicaid program. They shift that to the costs of 
the State taxpayers. Think of the delivery chain, the supply chain. At 
every level, health care costs impact the cost of the consumer. You've 
heard many times with regard to the auto industry, which is certainly 
struggling right now, that $1,500 from the price of every car made in 
this country is due to the health care costs of the automaker.
  Think about that. For every good and service that the American people 
buy on a daily basis, there is the cost to manufacture it, the cost to 
ship it, the cost to store it, and the cost to sell it. In every 
segment of that supply chain, there is a component that adds a premium 
for the cost of health care for the employers and for the employees who 
are involved in that little piece of the supply chain.
  The salary and wages of the American people are lower because of the 
health care costs of the employer's, because they're offering health 
care to their employees. Therefore, the salaries are lower. We as an 
American people are already paying in a variety of ways for the people 
who don't have health insurance. We hear about the 47 million Americans 
who lack health insurance. We also need to remember the tens of 
millions more who live in fear every day of losing their coverage. They 
are one accident or illness away from losing everything. Less than half 
of small businesses in this country are able to afford to offer health 
care to their employees, less than half, because of the double digit 
increases that we've seen year after year after year.
  This is simply an unsustainable course that we're on, but rather than 
looking at this in isolation as one problem that's separate from the 
economic situation that we face, the President and this Congress are 
going to work together and are going to look at those items together, 
along with energy independence and along with education, in a way that 
we haven't done before in taking a comprehensive look at it. These are 
the things that we're going to be talking about moving forward, and 
these are the things that this group is going to continue to discuss in 
these forums.
  So I thank the gentleman from Kentucky, and I look forward to 
continuing the debate.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman.
  I just have to add one thing because I think what he has done has 
brilliantly answered one of the charges that's always leveled about 
government action and its involvement in health care, which is, ``Oh, 
we don't want socialized medicine.''
  What Mr. Altmire has so intelligently recognized is that, whether 
it's in an organized way or in a disorganized way, we do socialize the 
cost of medicine across society. Right now, we do it in a very 
disorganized way, which, unfortunately, leads to both the 
inefficiencies, the added expense and the fact that many people fall 
through the cracks and are not covered. So I thank him for his 
comments.
  Now I would like to yield time to my good friend from Colorado (Mr. 
Perlmutter).
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth. It's a pleasure to be here 
with all of you tonight to talk about what's going on in Congress and 
about a change that's coming in this country--a needed change, a change 
from the direction that was taken in the prior 8 years.
  I don't have to tell anybody in this room or anywhere else across the 
country that somebody drove the car into the ditch, and we've got to 
get that car out of the ditch in terms of the economy--in terms of the 
financial and housing systems across this country. We are grappling 
with an economy that's struggling at best and with a deficit that we've 
inherited from the Bush administration of well over $1 trillion. What 
are we going to do about it?
  The first thing you have got to do is stabilize the financial and 
housing markets. Those two things are being done through recapitalizing 
the banks and by giving them the ability to stay on their feet. The 
housing market we need to stabilize, and the administration has a 
complete program as to how to do that:
  One in terms of interest rates that good and creditworthy borrowers 
can take advantage of like they haven't been able to take advantage of 
in years and years and years. I mean solid loans that aren't fly-by-
night, phony baloney types of loans but 5 percent interest rates 
available to good and creditworthy customers.
  Second, for people who find themselves in markets that are difficult, 
where the prices of the houses have dropped but they're paying their 
way and they're struggling, there is an ability for them under the 
administration's proposal to refinance so that they, too, can take 
advantage of low mortgage rates that are available today. For those who 
have been laid off or who are otherwise having trouble with their homes 
and their mortgages, there are other avenues available to them.
  So, first, we have got to stabilize the marketplace. That's 
happening. Second

[[Page H2966]]

and more important is rejuvenating and invigorating the economy. We did 
that 2 weeks ago with the President's major recovery act.

                              {time}  1745

  There are components in that of investing in America like we've never 
done before or we haven't done for years and years and years.
  And that investment costs money. There is no question about it. 
Whether you're a family or a business or a country, there are times you 
have to invest. And we have invested, and those returns we're going to 
see in a new energy economy, in a change in how we deal with our health 
care system and rebuilding our infrastructure. Those returns are going 
to be long term, but they are jobs today. Jobs in America today. Jobs 
that we need desperately from coast to coast.
  The third piece in getting this country back on track and changing 
its direction, and getting that car out of the ditch is to restore 
confidence in both the economy and the financial systems. And we are 
working to see which regulations, which laws that were eliminated that 
should be reinstated, and which laws or regulations have compounded the 
problem and should be eliminated so that we can restore confidence, 
reinvigorate the economy and stabilize the markets.
  All of this is going to be done starting with a tremendous deficit in 
this country but reducing it by half over the next 4 years in a 
fiscally responsible fashion.
  There is a lot of hard work for us here in Congress, but even more 
hard work for people all across this country. But this country is 
capable of doing it, has done it time and time and time again, and we 
will get the car out of the ditch. We've got an administration and a 
Congress that is dedicated to doing that. And so we will change the 
direction of this Nation and get it back on track.
  With that, to my friend from Kentucky, I yield back.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my friend, and I'd like to ask a question of the 
gentleman from Colorado who has done such incredibly important work on 
the Financial Services Committee and on these issues of which he spoke.
  One of the things that we face, I know in terms of the housing 
situation, is that we have a very different situation from place to 
place in the country. We know certain areas of California and Nevada 
and Michigan have suffered to a far greater extent than many other 
areas. And in some of these areas, where housing values have not 
declined as much, and some other ones, I know some of the citizens 
wonder, ``Why should I worry about helping the people in California or 
Nevada? What's in it for me?''
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. YARMUTH. I'm asking the gentleman a question.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. That's a great question because, in Colorado, we sort 
of went into the downturn of the economy before the rest of the 
country, and we've been climbing out. We had a much smaller drop in 
property values, our employment rate has been higher, but if the job 
layoffs were to continue, we would be falling into the same ditch as 
the rest of the country.
  So for somebody from Colorado, the ability to maintain and build 
jobs--good energy jobs, health care jobs, jobs in rebuilding our 
highways, our transit, our electric grid--that will keep my State from 
driving into the ditch. So we're focused more on the jobs piece, but 
obviously having a strong and healthy financial system, as well as a 
housing market, is key as well. So this affects all of us, and we've 
seen it kind of roll across the country.
  So even if in Colorado we have it better off today, we want to keep 
it that way. We don't want it to fall farther behind. So all of us are 
in this together.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman.
  It now gives me great pleasure to introduce my colleague from the 
great State of Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).
  Mr. COHEN. I appreciate the opportunity to join with my colleagues 
and the Majority Makers Caucus on this March 4, 2009. It's been 76 
years since Franklin D. Roosevelt took his first oath of office. March 
4--which was then in past history when the President took office--March 
4, 1933, and he said, ``The only thing the American people have to fear 
is fear itself.''
  President Roosevelt took office after President Hoover, and Mr. 
Yarmuth discussed some things that were about the Detroit Lions, and 
you don't have to go back as far as the Detroit Lions. You can look to 
what the Republicans said about Mr. Roosevelt's attempts to bring us 
out of the Depression. And they caused the Depression, President Hoover 
and Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau of that Congress. And 
President Roosevelt brought us out of the Depression. He created work 
programs that put money in the economy and put people to work. And he 
made a major difference. He transformed this American economy.
  Once again, the Republican responses are similar to what we saw pre-
1933. They're similar to what we heard in 1993 when President Clinton 
was looking at bringing about a balanced budget and the Republicans 
said that wouldn't work. And the Republicans have said many of the same 
things about this proposal depending entirely on tax cuts and entirely 
on the same type of issues and policies that have gotten us into the 
ditch that we're in now.
  The fact is we need to move forward and the leader of the Republican 
Party's philosophy is none other than Rush Limbaugh. And Rush Limbaugh 
has said he wants this American President to fail.
  Now, I can understand people wanting to have power for their party, 
but when you want a newly elected President of the United States--with 
a tremendous majority vote and majority support in this country--to 
fail, you are basically suggesting that the United States of America 
should fail. Because if President Obama fails in this most unusual 
time, when economic crisis has gripped this country--we're in a 
recession that is, in fact, probably is a depression, but we've kept 
the linguistics of a recession--you're suggesting that the American 
economy and the American Government should fail.
  With the Republicans up here talking constantly against what 
President Obama has done and voting against it lockstep in the Recovery 
and Reinvestment Act, we saw a party that's not only being negative but 
is being, in my opinion, un-American. They've offered not new ideas but 
negative thoughts to question anything that's being done. They offer 
only the old and failed tax cuts.
  We had the privilege today to listen to the Prime Minister of Great 
Britain, and he said, and I may quote: But sometimes the reality is 
that defining moments of history come suddenly and without warning, and 
the task of leadership then is to define them, shape them, and move 
forward to the new world they demand. An economic hurricane has swept 
the world creating a crisis of credit and of confidence. Credit and 
confidence. History has brought us now to a point where change is 
essential. We are someone not just to manage our times but to transform 
them. Our task is to rebuild prosperity and security in a wholly 
different economic world where competition is no longer local but 
global, and banks are no longer national but international.
  What Prime Minister Brown said, and said so well, is besides the fact 
that we have to restore confidence--and that's what I hear from every 
economist that I talk to is that's one of the problems right now is the 
American public needs to have confidence.
  We came out of the Great Depression. We've come out of smaller 
depressions, recessions, and we'll come out of this one. But we won't 
do it with naysayers saying that it won't happen and this plan will 
fail and not offering an alternative.

  And it's a worldwide problem. And what Prime Minister Brown said to 
us is basically his government and the governments of the world are 
doing the same thing that our government is doing and doing it together 
in a united front: stimulus packages, reforming banks and making sure 
that we can go into a new economy and create jobs.
  The President's plans create new jobs by going into broadband and 
extending broadband into rural areas and inner cities to create jobs 
and give people access to the Internet; seeing that health care costs 
are controlled, which is taking a larger and larger percentage of

[[Page H2967]]

our budget and threatens American industry that has to bear those 
costs, while, in most other countries where they have national health 
care, the government bears it and not the industry. And we're competing 
against foreign producers who don't have that as part of their costs, 
so it's a disadvantage that we have. And General Motors and Ford and 
Chrysler have that disadvantage.
  But we're trying to control health care costs, and we're trying to 
invest in education. We're putting more money into Pell Grants and 
giving people an opportunity to get better jobs to compete on the world 
scale where it is global and not local for competition for jobs. 
Investing more and more in science.
  And in the previous discussion to this hour, we heard people on the 
Republican side talk about science. They talked about stem cells. We 
put over $10 billion into the National Institutes of Health. I was 
really pleased that happened. I'd offered an amendment to do something 
similar, and it was passed by Senator Harkin on the Senate side.
  That's going to be putting scientists to work finding cures for the 
illnesses that they were talking about but refused to fund: heart 
disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, AIDS, diabetes, Parkinson's. Those 
illness can be cured or treatments can be found if we give enough 
opportunity for scientists to do their studies, and the National 
Institutes of Health is the organization from which those funds come.
  There have been so many falsehoods put out about this bill, and I 
would like to share a few with the American public here. One is--and I 
found this most interesting. The Republicans have claimed that under 
this bill--and many people have probably heard this--that each job will 
cost $275,000 per job. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist 
called that a ``bogus charge.'' He said, ``Why is it bogus? Because it 
involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years 
creating millions of jobs each year and dividing it by the jobs created 
in just one of those years. It is as if an opponent of the school lunch 
program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the 
next 5 years and divide it by the number of lunches provided in just 
one of those years and asserts that the program was hugely wasteful 
because it cost $13 per lunch while the actual cost of lunch was 
$2.57.''
  There have been so many false figures put out and accusations 
concerning different programs in the bill and the different economic 
plans that have been put forth by the Obama administration.
  We know from Larry Summers and others that stimulus moneys need to be 
timely, targeted, and temporary. And they voted against giving the 
people who are on the front lines, the Purple Hearts of this recession, 
more extended unemployment compensation. They voted against giving 
States moneys for Medicaid when we know we're going to have more and 
more need for Medicaid because more people fall in that category and 
can't afford their health care. And they voted against extending people 
food stamps, and those moneys, particularly food stamps and 
unemployment, are the most timely.
  Those people are in desperate need, targeted to those who will spend 
it immediately because they don't have resources otherwise, and 
temporary because it's a short-term amount of money that's expended. 
And those people spend it immediately. They won't spent it on their 
condos and vacation vistas that they might go to someplace else, but 
they will spend it in their neighborhoods and their communities. And 
they'll be taxed, sales taxed immediately and put money into State and 
local governments who need that money to provide law enforcement and 
other services.
  So, Mr. Yarmuth, my friend from Kentucky, and the other sophomore 
Majority Makers I have joined here, I think we need to think about 
Franklin Roosevelt and the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 
That was kind of what President Obama talked to us about in his State 
of the Union and addressed us about when he was sworn in. A confidence 
that this country is a great country and this government will overcome 
the obstacles that we face, though they be great, and we will be the 
greatest country on the face of the Earth in the 21st century as we've 
been in the past.
  But we need to think in new ways. We need to invest in new sectors to 
provide new jobs and to give our people the resources and tools they 
need because we're a greet people. And I think you can usually see 
history repeating itself. You see it being repeated here with Franklin 
Roosevelt, that Congress; President Obama and this Congress.
  Thank you, sir.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my friend.
  I want to tag along a little bit about the tax discussion because, 
it's interesting, there's an old saying that when all you have is a 
hammer, everything looks like a nail. And what we've seen out of our 
colleagues on the other side is the only policy that they even think 
about when it comes to the economy is tax policy and the need to cut 
taxes.
  The Republican-run Congress, controlled Congress, in 2001 and then 
2003 cut taxes. Most of that tax cut went to the very wealthiest people 
in the country. That tax cut was scheduled to expire in 2011. And now 
that the President's budget would allow those tax cuts to expire for 
the very wealthiest Americans, those making over $250,000 a year, our 
colleagues on the other side want to say we're raising taxes, which is 
not true at all.

                              {time}  1800

  In fact, the way I look at it is, if you go to a store, and the store 
says we've got 40 percent off today and you happen to miss that sale 
and you go back the next day and it's back to regular price, you can't 
say the store raised prices, you just missed the opportunity. Well, in 
this situation, the wealthiest Americans did not miss the opportunity, 
they took full benefit of those tax cuts for the last few years. 
Meanwhile, the great disparity between the wealthiest Americans and 
everyone else continued to grow to unprecedented levels. And now that 
this President--and I assume this Congress--will say, let's restore 
some more fairness to the tax code, let's let those tax cuts expire, 
the rich can pay marginally more than they have been since the Bush 
administration cut taxes, and now they're complaining that that's a tax 
hike, which is frivolous.
  Mr. COHEN. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. YARMUTH. I would yield to my friend.
  Mr. COHEN. Is it accurate to say that 95 percent of the Americans--
and nobody with an income of a quarter of a million dollars a year or 
less--would see a tax increase and, in fact, would get a tax cut under 
this plan?
  Mr. YARMUTH. That is clearly the effect of the President's budget, 
and it was clearly the effect of the recovery plan that we passed 
recently. And I think it was well justified. And I think the American 
people appreciate it and understand that--they know a tax cut when they 
see it and they know a tax hike when they see it. And 95 percent of the 
people in this country will see their paychecks increase, and they know 
that that's not a tax increase. So I thank the gentleman.
  Now it gives me great pleasure, we've been around the country from 
Florida to Colorado to Tennessee and Kentucky and Pennsylvania, now it 
gives me great pleasure to introduce my colleague from Connecticut (Mr. 
Courtney).
  Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you for organizing this colloquy.
  As Congressman Cohen said today, this Chamber earlier today was a 
place of a historic event where the Prime Minister of England, Gordon 
Brown, addressed the people of our country as well as both Chambers. 
And he, I think, did a magnificent job about, number one, talking about 
the economic crisis that we're in in global terms, the numbers in terms 
of lost jobs--lost wealth that has taken place over the last 6 months 
is historic and staggering--but reminded us that the focus has always 
got to be on the impact, person by person, in terms of jobs that are 
lost.
  In this country, where we have lost, as of the end of January, 3.6 
million jobs, because of our health care system being tied to 
employment there is an added blow that families suffer when there is a 
layoff, which is that people are confronted with the almost impossible 
choice of maintaining their health insurance by paying for COBRA 
premiums--which in a State like Connecticut, for an individual that is

[[Page H2968]]

about $6,000 or $7,000 a year, $12,000 for a family--or letting their 
health insurance just lapse.
  One of the things that was included in the Recovery Act--and it has 
now been 2 weeks since the President signed that measure in Denver, 
Colorado--is that we have seen, I think, Member offices, have a chance 
to sort of see our constituents vote with their feet in terms of the 
interests that they've expressed about different components. And in my 
office, certainly, the COBRA subsidy, which was a measure that was 
included in the Recovery Act--again, a historic effort by the 
government to step in and provide families with 65 percent of the 
premium costs if they are laid off--again, something that has never 
happened in any prior recession or economic downturn--is the piece of 
the Recovery Act that's gotten the most traffic in terms of phone calls 
and inquiries into my office.
  I'd like to, again, as Prime Minister Brown indicated, share a story 
in my district of a guy, Tim Jensen, he's a reporter for a small weekly 
newspaper, got laid off last September. He's one of these guys that 
would show up with a camera and a pad and pen at any event, supported 
every parade, community event, veteran ceremony. And unfortunately--as 
we know, the newspaper business has suffered along with many, many 
other industries in our country--he lost his job in September. To 
compound that, as I indicated, he had to foot the bill for COBRA 
extension, and to compound that even further, he was diagnosed with 
cancer later this fall. So now he's in a desperate Hobson's impossible 
choice of whether to maintain his health insurance, depriving his 
family of literally food on the table, or give up his health insurance 
at a time when he literally has a life or death need for medical 
treatments. The Obama plan, which is to provide a 65 percent subsidy 
for people like Tim Jensen, is literally a life safer. It is going to 
provide him and his family with the means to maintain that health 
insurance coverage and avoid, again, just a total catastrophe for him 
and his family.
  And it does tie in to the issue which I know we've been talking about 
here today, which is the impact on the public finances of this country. 
The fact of the matter is that people who do lose their health 
insurance end up being a public cost later down the food chain of our 
health care financing system, either in the form of uncompensated care 
in the emergency room if there is a health care crisis, or they lapse 
and end up in a publicly financed program like Medicaid or some form of 
public assistance program for single adults, which many States operate. 
It is far more cost effective and rational to provide those individuals 
with a subsidy to maintain their existing health benefits while 
hopefully they will transition back into the workforce rather than to 
just completely abandon them, which unfortunately was the system prior 
to passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
  So, again, a measure which will provide the individual, which Prime 
Minister Brown talked about, which always should be our focus, will 
benefit not just that individual and their family, but also our overall 
system of public finances and health care coverage; again, hopefully 
just an appetizer in terms of the main course of health care reform, 
which this administration is, again, beginning to unfold with the 
release of its 2010 budget, and a Congress that is ready to roll up its 
sleeves and go to work in terms of all the key committees.
  So this stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 
has many, many components to it, which we've talked about over the last 
few weeks or so and will continue to do so. But clearly, the COBRA 
subsidy, a new, unprecedented effort by the government to step in and 
help unemployed workers--which are, sadly, going to increase at least 
in the short term--
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. COURTNEY. Sure, I would be happy to.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Well, Mr. Courtney, one of the things that you've 
made the point so well, and Mr. Dreier, when he and I were arguing 
about the stimulus bill 2 weeks ago, is the immediacy of this, the 
urgency of this. The time to act is now, not 10 weeks from now, not 20 
weeks from now. I mean, your friend's life was on the line. Mr. 
Dreier's friend, it was a tragedy because of job layoffs and a number 
of other things. So Mr. Dreier, explaining it as somebody on the other 
side of the aisle, but still wanted to vote no.

  And what I've seen--and not to really pick on the other side because 
it's time for us to move forward in a positive way--their position is, 
just say no, we like the status quo. This country can't afford the 
status quo any longer. We need to move quickly, we need to move with 
purpose, and we need to move now. Because whether it's to maintain or 
create new jobs, provide COBRA where jobs have been lost, maintain 
State government--backfilling them so we keep the teachers and the 
firefighters and the policemen and the maintenance workers employed in 
this difficult time--or to assist people who have suffered, we've got 
to move now. And this Congress and this President are moving now.
  Now, my friends on the other side don't like it, but their old ways--
and I'm pointing to the record deterioration of the budget--have just 
driven us right into the ditch. I said that before. We have to turn 
this around. And so we will, under the President's approach and the 
congressional approach, reduce what was a record deficit that we've 
inherited by almost half or more, doing so in a way that creates new 
jobs, creates a new energy economy, creates a health care system that 
works, and at the same time assisting people who have fallen on hard 
times. So I just appreciate working with all of you to get going on 
these problems and to turn this around.
  I will now yield back to my friend from Kentucky, or to my friend 
from Connecticut.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Just to sort of close the note there, which is that, as 
difficult and challenging as the time we're living in for individuals 
like my friend I just described, or the macro picture, the fact of the 
matter is we can do this. As the Prime Minister said, we have to 
maintain our optimism, and we will, because that's the nature of our 
country. And we're going to get through this and fix this problem. And 
thank God we've got a President who's ready to work with this Congress 
and get this country turned around and moving in the right direction.
  With that, I yield back to Mr. Yarmuth.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my friends. And I think one of the things that 
is so impressive about this budget that we have had submitted to us is 
it is unique in so many ways and it is trend setting in so many ways.
  I would like to yield once again to my friend from Florida (Mr. 
Klein) to talk about how this budget may differ from budgets we have 
seen.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Well, I thank the gentleman for the discussion 
today. Because I think if we think about how we plan our family 
budgets, whether it's sending your kids to college, whether it's 
planning for retirement, if you're in retirement, making sure that the 
investments you have, even in difficult times like this, will pay for 
the expenses that you have, these are all things, it's all about 
certainty, and it is about trying to know where you will be and plan 
for the future. I know a lot of small businesses I talk to, they want 
to know for sure about how they will be in a position to plan their 
capital budget, cover the expansion, make the investments in their 
equipment and things like that.
  So one of the things we've been working on is this budget. And the 
budget of course is the plan for this next year's fiscal spending of 
our government. And of course there are a lot of fixed expenses, there 
are things like, everything from prisons to roads to our military and 
defense and veterans, which are so important to us, particularly at a 
time when we are fighting two wars and we are creating a new generation 
of veterans. So as they come home, as this Congress has demonstrated, 
we will make sure that anyone who wears the uniform gets the benefit of 
making sure that this country stands behind them and their families for 
all the necessary care that they need in the future, as well as jobs.
  But for the rest of the country, this really is a question of times 
when we do plan the necessary future vision. And I think what President 
Obama has

[[Page H2969]]

offered to many of us that I think is really visionary and exciting--
and we're seeing this in the blueprint or what we call our budget--it's 
a focus on education, it's a focus on health care, it's a focus on 
energy. Each one of these is a crucial component of moving our economy 
forward.
  Education by far--and I've believed this for a long, long time; my 
mom is a teacher, she is a public school teacher, she has taught second 
grade. She absolutely instilled in me the notion of how important 
education is. And as one of the first people to go to college in our 
family, it really has given me the opportunity to do things that have 
allowed me to serve in Congress. But more importantly, education is the 
best investment as a country that we can make. And between the stimulus 
plan and the budget, there is investment in college education. In 
President Obama's speech last week he talked about having every person 
who wants to be able to get a college education get one.
  We see our competition around the world, whether it's Singapore or 
China, other places, the engineering degrees and other degrees that are 
coming forward; that's an investment in their future. Well, we have a 
great education system and a great university system, and community 
colleges and apprenticeship programs and vocational programs, all of 
these need to be nurtured and supported. And every student who wants to 
go to school--and every adult who wants to go back to school, 
particularly in a time like this--needs to have that support because 
that will turn into a very high productive economy.
  Health care. We know health care is just the Pacman eating up the 
costs in our economy, not just for government, not just for Medicare 
and Medicaid, but for private businesses. I know that when I was in a 
business, we had about 75 employees. Every year--and I know many of the 
people who are on the floor here understand this from their businesses 
or people at home understand this--every year you go back and have that 
conversation of what it's going to cost to renew your health insurance; 
double-digit increases every single year--whether there has been an 
experience of sickness or anything in the business, that's exactly what 
happens, double-digit increases. So you have to make decisions; do you 
cut back? Do you pass off more of the costs to your employees? And at 
some point in time businesses say I can't afford it. And we want to 
give them the opportunity to provide that type of health insurance 
because it keeps their employees healthy. We don't want people showing 
up at the emergency room.
  So this budget has an investment of changing our health care system 
to make it more efficient, better quality of medicine. And one of the 
ways they do this is bringing our health system into the 21st century 
with health technology. And this is something really simple. Think of 
when you go to your doctor's office, and your doctor, and all his good 
medicine and good advice he's given you, he writes down the information 
about his observations and your evaluation on a chart in pen, in many 
cases--not all, but many of them still do--and that's because their 
systems have just not kept up with. It's not a fault of the doctors, 
it's just that the systems have really not kept up in this business. 
Now, every other business in the United States, we pretty much are on 
computers. Well, you still see large racks of files in a doctor's 
office. So, God forbid if something happened, let's say I'm at home and 
I have my personal doctor, and that doctor has my little chart. And he 
takes some tests, my heart and all the cholesterol and all the normal 
things, and I get sick as I'm traveling--let's say I'm up here in 
Washington, D.C. Well, I may go to a doctor up here, and guess what 
that doctor starts with? Zero. Nothing. No file, no nothing. And if he 
wants to get information, he has to call and maybe have somebody 
Federal Express or some type of courier of the record up to Washington 
and maybe has to take tests all over again. It just adds tremendous 
cost into the system instead of having a very simple--with privacy, of 
course, secure--but a simple system to have all of the technology of 
health care. Plus, certainly the quality of medicine can be improved on 
as well; I know many of my doctor friends tell me that all the time.

                              {time}  1815

  There is an investment, an incentive for doctors and providers, 
hospitals and others. This is just common sense. Again, if we can save 
money it can result in better quality of medicine.
  Lastly, of course, is energy, and I know many of us in this Chamber, 
Democrats and Republicans, most Americans, understand that we have got 
to get a grip on our energy policy and stop sending billions and 
billions of dollars to countries that are not our friends but, in many 
cases, our enemies. We complain about Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, 
rightfully so, he is very anti-American, and he is a threat. And what 
do we do? We send millions and millions and millions of dollars daily 
over to Venezuela and buy their oil.
  Well, that makes absolutely no sense to me and, I think, to most 
Americans. Well, it's not just Venezuela, it's all the Middle Eastern 
countries and plenty of other places. The sooner we can get into a mode 
where we can develop alternative energy, and whether it's wind or wave 
or solar or any combination of electric powers out there, and obviously 
there is coal and nuclear--and there are probably some answers as we 
focus our technology on some of those things as well to figure out the 
solutions to those problems--any number of ways that we need to make 
this country energy independent.
  What President Obama does, and I certainly support, and I know most 
Americans do, is to really get our attention focused and make the kinds 
of investments necessary to get us into alternative energy. For energy 
conservation, electric grid, make sure that you are home, for example, 
with a new technology.
  I had a small businessman in my area that came to me and said he has 
created a device which can now purchase and store electricity at the 
least expensive hours of the day. We know that at nighttime there is a 
low demand for power and you could, if they start pricing it that way, 
you could buy it less expensively. Boy, that makes a lot of sense, and 
then you can actually get more capacity out of our existing electric 
power plants, common sense. And these are the kinds of things that 
President Obama and many of us as Americans understand are the kinds of 
things that we need to do.
  So the gentleman from Kentucky, I am actually very excited about the 
kinds of things that are in this budget. Well, sure, we are going to 
work on some and make them a little better. Maybe some won't work out, 
but I think there is a blueprint here for the future, it's a blueprint 
that will get our budget back in line, put people back to work, make 
the quality of our education, the quality of our health care, and 
certainly an energy policy that will put us into the future. This is 
the kind of leadership that I am really excited about.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my colleague, and I think that is truly one of 
the special things about this budget, is that it is forward-looking, it 
is visionary, and it doesn't rely on the tired actions of the past.
  And, furthermore, it's such an honest budget. For the first time it 
is totally comprehensive, so that we don't keep things off the books 
like we have kept the expenditures for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan 
over the last 8 years. It puts expenses for those activities in the 
budget, projects them. It also includes items for anticipating 
disasters like Katrina or other natural disasters we know are going to 
occur but we never put those expenses in the budget.
  So this is fully transparent, it is comprehensive, it is honest and, 
again, it is forward-looking, and that certainly is something that I 
think the American people, as time goes on and we discuss this budget, 
will appreciate that it is large. There is no question about it. We are 
spending unprecedented amounts of money and we, unfortunately, are 
facing some pretty substantial deficits.
  But if we stick to this test, the odds of our not just recovering 
from our current situation, but from setting the foundation for an 
incredible era of growth and progress in this country, are greatly 
improved because of this new agenda advanced by the Obama 
administration.
  So, as we get toward the end of our hour, I would like to recognize 
my friend from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) who

[[Page H2970]]

has also played an important role in one aspect of meeting the 
challenge of this current situation, and that is an element of the 
housing problem that he has been particularly instrumental in dealing 
with.
  Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth.
  Tomorrow we will have a vote in this House on a housing bill, and 
many have said that not only do we have to have confidence in our 
economy to have it come back, but we have to cure the housing problem 
first, which has been one of the main problems in causing us to go into 
this economic recession and the malaise that some say the economy is in 
and, indeed, it is.
  One of the things we are doing tomorrow with the bill is to 
permanently make FDIC insurance for banks and credit unions $250,000. 
That was something that we proposed in the first TARP and we were able 
to get that passed temporarily.
  That permanent amount of money will secure American investors' 
deposits in banks and assure people they have confidence which they 
need to have and will have in the banks to know that their money is 
safe. That's important for our banking system to make it solid and for 
our constituents' deposits to make them secure.
  The bill will also change and allow, for the first time, something 
that has been long in coming, the opportunity for people who might have 
to file chapter 13, bankruptcy, not a pleasant subject, not an easy 
subject, not an easy process but an ordeal where one has to go and show 
to the bankruptcy judge their need for help, all of their assets, their 
expenses, and be put on a plan for approximately 5 years on how they 
would have to spend their monies. And they have to have approval from 
the court over their finances.
  In that process one can have the loans that they have made on a 
second home, on a farm, on a family farm, on an airplane, on a yacht, 
just about every type of property, modified by a bankruptcy judge to 
make it affordable to the person going into chapter 13 bankruptcy. The 
judge can reduce the principal down to the secured amount, can extend 
the terms, can lower the interest rate, but the judge has not been 
allowed, since 1978, because of an act of Congress, to modify a 
person's principal residence, which is their most valuable possession--
maybe not in a monetary fashion but generally it is, at least in a 
spiritual way.
  And in this particular crisis, to allow people to modify their 
mortgages on their personal residences, is similar to what people can 
do with secondary homes, vacation homes, yachts, airports, family 
farms, et cetera. We allow people to stay in their homes to solidify 
their neighborhoods, to keep houses on the tax rolls, to keep 
neighborhoods solid where if your neighborhoods aren't solid, you have 
increased crime, increased vermin, increased problems, and maintain 
hope for people in their neighborhoods and in their homes.
  This will be a first-time activity. We have worked with all elements 
in this Congress to come about with amendments, there will be a 
manager's amendment tomorrow, to make it to where it is a last resort, 
to guarantee that the monies, the people won't be allowed to enter into 
the bankruptcy or have their mortgages changed unless they meet very 
strict criteria and provide that relief that we need to help this 
housing market succeed.

  So we help the banks tomorrow and our financial security, really not 
the banks but the individual depositors with the $250,000 FDIC 
insurance, and we help individuals in their homes with the opportunity 
to stay there and help neighborhoods.
  I think this is landmark legislation, and I know that it's been 
extended to Vermont and Kentucky as well. I thank the anchor of our 
hour and the former president of this class, the distinguished and 
honorable gentleman from the former Conference U.S.A. city, Louisville, 
Mr. Yarmuth.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my colleague and thank him for his work on this 
very important piece of legislation that we will be dealing with 
tomorrow, which will be another important component to get the ship of 
state back on course and to get our economy moving again.
  It gives me great pleasure to welcome and recognize our distinguished 
colleague from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
  Mr. WELCH. Thank you. I have been listening to some of your comments, 
and I just want to make a few remarks about the budget. We all know 
that we have an economy that's facing the biggest challenge since the 
Great Depression, and what this budget is attempting to do, and a lot 
of work getting from where we are to where we need to be, is, I think, 
very simple. It's about trying to revive the middle class.
  You know, when you think about the recent history of America in the 
1960s, when LBJ took on the challenge of trying to eliminate poverty 
and was successful in reducing it substantially, it was the right goal. 
The middle class paid.
  And in the past 10 years, and even more, the policy has been, 
essentially, to lower taxes for very high-income folks, also provide 
deregulation for corporations, and it has resulted in a significant 
transfer of wealth. The top 1 percent of our country has enjoyed the 
greatest explosion of wealth since the 1920s, and, in fact, who paid 
for that? It was the middle class.
  So the middle class paid for the programs that are essential, and I 
support it, that benefit the poor. The middle classes paid for the 
programs that were very, very generous to the quite wealthy, and it's 
the middle class who, in the end, is getting squeezed. This country has 
always done its best when it has had economic and political policies 
that have given an opportunity for people who are poor to move their 
way up into the middle class and for the middle class to sustain itself 
and to grow and prosper.
  And what the Obama budget attempts to do is redirect our energies and 
our policies towards rewarding work and rewarding and enhancing the 
middle class.
  Now, if we are going to be successful, we actually do have to pay 
attention to deficits, and it's a contradiction, so it seems, that on 
the one hand because of our fiscal situation we have to invest. We also 
have to commit ourselves to a health care policy that's going to make 
health care affordable, and to an energy policy that embraces the 
challenges of a new energy economy as something that can create jobs 
much. And we, as Democrats, who are supporting a middle class budget 
also have to embrace the absolute commitment to root out any waste and 
any excessive spending.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my colleague for his contribution.
  I would like to conclude this hour of discussion from the Majority 
Makers, the class of 2006, that as this Congress proceeds and as we 
work with the Obama administration to set a new course for the country, 
to lay a foundation for growth and prosperity, a return to prosperity 
in this country, we look forward to further discussions.
  And I think the most important thing we can say in closing is that to 
repeat the words of Prime Minister Brown this morning, who said, who 
kept mentioning, ``faith in the future.'' That's what we are about, 
restoring faith in the future for the American people, and this will be 
our main mission over the next 2 years as we proceed to help every 
American realize his or her ambition for a better life.

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