[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 12, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H2578-H2579]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE REPUBLICAN BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, Congress this week will focus on the 
Ryan Republican budget, probably the most profoundly negative and 
cynical plan ever advanced by a major party in the House of 
Representatives.
  There are lots of individual analyses that are available to 
Americans, not from spin masters, but from serious journalists and 
analysts. I strongly

[[Page H2579]]

hope that people will take the time to look at it. They will find in 
the course of their research that there are a number of very 
fundamental flaws.
  First and foremost, there is no fundamental reform of our defense 
spending, something that is driving the deficit dramatically. We 
sidestep opportunities to reform agricultural programs. It actually 
takes us backwards on health care. And there are $4 trillion of program 
cuts over the next 10 years, falling primarily on low- and moderate-
income Americans. It is a hypocritical approach.
  Last year, Americans were given television ads from Republican 
candidates accusing Democrats of slashing Medicare for senior citizens. 
Now we see that the Republicans are taking all of those proposed 
slashes in spending and using it to finance their program to reduce 
taxes for those who need it the least.
  In addition, people will be able to verify that senior citizens, 
starting in 2020, will be bearing a far greater burden for paying for 
their own Medicare than ever in the Affordable Care Act in any of the 
reforms. It replaces a steep curve of increased Medicare spending, no 
doubt about it. That's why in the Affordable Care Act we embedded 
reform proposals to bend that cost curve. It's replaced without 
proposals to reduce Medicare spending. It just simply slashes the 
support that seniors can get. It's replaced with the much greater cost 
curve increase for private insurance. Their approach is to give a 
voucher to insurance companies to provide insurance for senior citizens 
for health care.
  Bear in mind, the reason we got Medicare in the first place is 
because senior citizens' insurance policies were not profitable. They 
couldn't buy comprehensive health insurance in an affordable fashion 
before Medicare. What leads anybody to believe that somehow aging 
Americans are going to be more attractive to the health insurance 
industry in the future? And by replacing Medicare, which actually has 
reduced cost increases below what it cost in the private health 
insurance company, you are actually going to increase overall health 
care costs.
  But nowhere is that cynicism more evident than in a bill that is 
coming to the floor, I think tomorrow, the legislation to end the 
Prevention and Public Health Fund under the Affordable Care Act. 
Already in States like mine we've received millions of dollars for 
prevention activities and for wellness clinics to help people stop 
smoking and to improve the training of health professionals. These are 
investments to help make Americans healthier in the first place and 
reduce the demand for health care costs.
  There was a time, Mr. Speaker, when prevention was a bipartisan 
issue. In fact, in our deliberations in the Ways and Means Committee in 
last Congress, people on both sides of the aisle were talking about the 
need to help deal with prevention programs to keep people healthy in 
the first place. What a sad state when one of the first actions of this 
Congress is to repeal this bipartisan concept of a prevention and 
public health fund.

                          ____________________