[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 12, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2403-S2405]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BUDGET PRIORITIES
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, there is one point on which every Senator
agrees, Democrats and Republicans alike: The economic recovery is
starting to gain strength, and it is time to focus our attention on
reducing deficits and restoring fiscal discipline. The current deficits
are unsustainable and present a very real danger to our Nation's future
economic prosperity; however, there is sharp disagreement as to how
best to achieve that shared goal.
Along with other Democratic Senators, I advocate a balanced approach
that includes spending cuts and necessary revenue increases while
continuing to make crucial investments in education, infrastructure,
and research, the investments that are absolutely essential if we are
going to stay competitive in a global economy. We know this approach
can work because it is what we did under President Clinton's leadership
in the 1990s. That budget at that time created large surpluses and put
us on the track to completely eliminating the national debt within a
decade. It also created a brief era of shared prosperity with 22
million new jobs and 116 consecutive months of economic expansion.
By contrast most Republican Senators favor an approach that I
consider to be unbalanced, unfair, and highly unlikely to succeed. We
have now had nearly a week to evaluate the House Republicans' budget
proposal for 2012 and beyond--the so-called Ryan budget. Let's look at
what this truly radical budget plan would do.
It completely dismantles Medicare and Medicaid.
It concentrates two-thirds of its spending cuts on programs serving
the most disadvantaged people in our society, including seniors and
people with disabilities, even as it preserves huge subsidies for
special interests.
It exempts corporations and wealthy individuals from shared sacrifice
in order to bring deficits under control. To the contrary, this
Republican tea party plan locks in the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy--
tax cuts that were passed 10 years ago when we were looking at budget
surpluses as far as the eye could see.
Well, under our present circumstances, the wealthy don't need these
tax breaks, and we can't afford them. This budget of Mr. Ryan's and
Republicans slashes the tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. That is
the lowest level since 1931. Indeed, this so-called deficit reduction
plan includes tax cuts that would cost $2.9 trillion over the next 10
years compared to the CBO baseline, and that is according to the
nonpartisan Tax Policy Institute.
This tea party budget plan repeals the new health reform law,
stripping 34 million nonelderly Americans of health coverage and
eliminating all the consumer protections in the law, including the ban
on discrimination based on preexisting conditions.
This budget of the Republicans repeals the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
reform law, allowing financial manipulators to return to the same
reckless practices that led to the financial collapse, to the great
recession, and to much of our current huge budget deficits.
This budget cuts the maximum Pell grant award even as more students
are enrolling in higher education to give themselves the skills they
need for the modern economy.
How bizarre that several pundits have called this Republican tea
party budget plan ``courageous.'' There is nothing courageous about
targeting the most vulnerable people in our society for the
overwhelming share of cuts. There is nothing courageous about giving
another huge tax cut bonanza to those who have seen their incomes
skyrocket in recent years. There is nothing courageous about destroying
the retirement security of tens of millions of American seniors,
including dismantling Medicare and hacking away at Social Security.
There is nothing courageous about gutting Medicaid, the program that
millions of seniors and people with disabilities depend on to pay for
care such as nursing home care or home health aids.
Let's be clear. There is nothing courageous in this Republican tea
party budget. To the contrary, I suggest it is a cowardly budget. It is
a bully's budget. In this budget the powerful and the privilege attack
the weak and the vulnerable.
We all understand what is going on. Republicans are seizing on the
budget crisis as a pretext for ramming through a longstanding
ideological wish list. At the State level--in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio,
and elsewhere--Republicans are using the budget crisis as a pretext for
an assault on public workers, including teachers and firefighters and
others. On Capitol Hill they are using it to try
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to, as I said, defund health care reform, to destroy Medicare and
Medicaid, Social Security, and, yes, to cut tax rates even more deeply
for corporations and the wealthiest in our society.
This tea party budget is an unprecedented assault on middle-class and
working Americans. It would drive down Americans' standard of living,
shred the economic safety net, reduce access to health care and higher
education, and do grave damage to our public schools and their ability
to prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future.
Make no mistake. It is not about reducing budget deficits. Republican
Governors and Republicans in Congress are demanding budget cuts to
programs on which the middle class rely at the same time they continue
to push for tax cuts for large corporations and the wealthy.
Call this what it is: Republicans have openly declared class warfare.
Republican Governors have the gall to attack teachers, firefighters,
police officers, and other public employees as--in the words of Indiana
Gov. Mitch Daniels--``the privileged elite''--the privileged elite.
Our police, our firefighters, our public employees are the privileged
elite? Why? Well, I suppose because they actually have pensions. They
have decent jobs, decent wages, access to health care. For heaven's
sake, we shouldn't be dragging people down because they have a middle-
class life. We should be working day and night to give every American a
decent standard of living, to shore up the middle class rather than
tearing it down.
I suppose, to Governor Daniels and others, if the middle class are
the privileged elite, then I guess the middle class today are those who
are making minimum wage, working at dead-end jobs. Is that the new
middle class?
Meanwhile, as Republicans at the State and national level go after
the health care and retirement security of middle-class Americans--
again, they are going all out to pass new tax breaks for those who have
already been showered with tremendous breaks in the past. The tax cuts
the congressional Republicans secured in December--that is what was
passed in December--will add a whopping $354 billion to the deficit
this year and even more next year. The Congressional Budget Office
estimates that the tax cuts in the new House budget would cost the
Treasury $2.9 trillion over 10 years. Yet now these very same
Republicans claim they are worried about the deficit.
Well, they are not fooling anyone. This is not about deficit
reduction, it is about ideology. Republicans are taking a meat ax to
programs for the middle class--everything from cancer research to
education to transportation to health care--and they are gutting the
safety net for the elderly, the poor, and people with disabilities.
It is the same old GOP game plan: Give huge, unaffordable tax cuts to
corporations and the wealthy while enacting budget cuts that assist the
middle class and the most vulnerable.
This new tea party Republican budget gives new meaning to the word
``extreme.'' Let's look at what they have proposed. This budget
dismantles Medicare, creating a new private voucher program so future
seniors would have to pay out of pocket for many lifesaving health care
costs. It does nothing to control health care costs. It simply shifts
the costs to the elderly individuals.
Get this: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2030,
under the Republican budget plan, seniors would have to pay two-thirds
of the cost of their health coverage.
Future seniors would see their out-of-pocket costs more than double
to $12,500 a year. At the same time, the benefits would be cut in
half--in just 20 years. Think about that. People who are now in their
forties, looking to when they get on Medicare, will have their benefits
cut in half, but they will pay twice as much for it under the voucher
system.
This tea party Republican budget reopens the prescription drug
doughnut hole which we have set in motion to close under the affordable
care act. That would require seniors to pay $3,600 a year more for
prescription drugs.
The Republican tea party block grants Medicaid and cuts $1 trillion
in health care services, which would end vital services disabled
Americans depend on, such as coverage for home health aides, assistance
services so they can get a job, or going to a nursing home if that is
the only option. By shifting costs to the States, this would worsen our
State budget deficits.
The Republican budget proposal doesn't stop at dismantling the safety
net and programs seniors rely on for a secure retirement. This budget
plan makes profound and destructive cuts to the entire range of
programs that underpin the American middle-class standard of living,
everything from education, student grants and loans, law enforcement,
clean air and clean water, food safety, biomedical research, highways,
bridges, and infrastructure--in short, all of the programs and services
middle-class Americans rely on for a decent way of life and the promise
that enhances the ability of the private sector to grow and provide
more jobs.
The Republican assault on the middle class is breathtaking both in
scope and depth. It could not come at a worse time for working
Americans, who are already under enormous strain. It is no secret that
people are working harder and longer than ever before, but they still
can't seem to meet the cost of basic, everyday needs such as education,
transportation, and housing, let alone save enough to support
themselves in their old age. Even before the great recession, working
people weren't sharing in our Nation's prosperity.
The shared prosperity of the years after World War II created an
expanding middle class, a soaring standard of living. But these wages--
real wages--peaked in the 1970s, and they have been stagnant ever
since. Think about that. They peaked in about 1979. Since 1979, real
wages have not gone up. You wonder why middle-class Americans are so
upset about what is going on. They realize this. They may not be able
to put it in exact language, but I can tell you that middle-class
families know what has happened to them. They know they have lost their
earning power.
Middle-class jobs are also being shipped overseas--a trend actually
encouraged by our Tax Code. Income inequality in America is reaching
Third-World levels. Job security, savings, and pensions are
disappearing, along with the American dream.
Now, with working Americans barely making ends meet, just barely
holding on to a decent way of life, the Republicans have proposed a
budget--make no mistake--that will destroy what is left of the middle
class in this country. I could not disagree more strenuously with this
approach. The future of our Nation depends on our ability to ensure
that everybody benefits from economic growth. It means putting policies
into place that build a strong and vibrant middle class with good jobs,
fair wages, and good benefits. That is the America I want to see--one
where people who work hard and play by the rules can live a decent
life. Tragically, the tea party budget plan would take us in exactly
the opposite direction. It would gut the whole range of programs that
support the middle class in this country. It would dismantle the safety
net for those with disabilities and for the poor--a safety net that has
been painstakingly created over the last 80 years.
This Republican budget plan not only turns the clock back to before
the Great Society programs of Pell grants, housing, and support for
people in the middle class, it would turn it back to even before the
New Deal. It would gut all Federal support that is basic for education.
It would all but eliminate Federal support for infrastructure, which
means we will fall even further behind China and the European Union,
which are investing massively in everything from ultramodern ports, to
high-speed rail, to state-of-the-art roads and bridges. Right now,
China is investing between 8 and 10 percent of its GDP in
infrastructure. We are at 2 percent and going down.
Indeed, this tea party budget aims to dismantle the Federal
Government as we know it. It proposes to shrink discretionary
spending--including defense--and other minor mandatory program spending
from 12 percent of GDP last year to 6 percent of GDP in 2022 and to
just 3.5 percent of GDP per year in the long run. Think about that. It
would shrink discretionary spending and other mandatory spending from
12 percent of the budget last year to about 3.5 percent of the budget
over the
[[Page S2405]]
long run. Well, that is about the same level of Federal spending during
the Presidency of Calvin Coolidge, nearly a century ago, when defense
spending was very small and there was very little, if any, support for
education and the infrastructure of our country. We don't live in the
era of Calvin Coolidge any longer, but this budget would take us back
to that time.
Adding insult to injury, this budget plan makes a mockery of the
concept of shared sacrifice to reduce deficits. Apparently, it wasn't
enough to bail out the Wall Street bankers whose reckless gambling and
risk-taking created the great recession; now we are being asked to cut
programs for working Americans so that Wall Street can get another
giant tax cut.
This Republican tea party budget is built on bad priorities, bad
policy, and just plain bad values. As columnist E.J. Dionne points out,
Americans can see ``how radical the new conservatives in Washington
are, and the extent to which some politicians would transfer even more
resources from the have-nots and the have-a-littles to the have-a-
lots.''
Going back to the 1930s, the American people have supported and
strengthened an unwritten social contract. That social contract says
that we will prepare our young, care for our elderly, and build a
safety net for those who fall, who become disabled or sick. That
unwritten social contract says that if you work hard and play by the
rules, you will be able to rise to the middle class or even beyond.
That social contract says that if you start at the bottom, you will
have a ladder of opportunity to the middle class. It says that a
cardinal rule of government is to provide a ladder of opportunity so
that every American can realistically aspire to the American dream.
But in one fell swoop, this Republican budget rips up that social
contract. It replaces it with a winner-takes-all philosophy that tells
struggling, aspiring people and communities across America: You are on
your own.
If you are a low-income high school student who can only afford
college with the help of a generous Pell grant, this budget says: Tough
luck. You are on your own.
If you are a working couple with two kids who can't scrape together
enough money to purchase decent health insurance, this budget says:
Tough luck. You are on your own.
If you are a poor rural community that needs assistance to pay for a
new sewer system or a flood control project, this budget says: Tough
luck. You are on your own.
If you are a poor, urban community struggling to find funding to
create high-quality K-12 public schools for your children, this budget
says: Tough luck. You are on your own.
If you are a retiree with serious health problems and can't afford
the big out-of-pocket costs in this Republican plan to do away with
Medicare or if your health insurance company abruptly cancels your
policy, this budget says: Tough luck. You are on your own.
If you are a low-income family who counts on Federal nutrition
assistance and you are trying to decide whether to spend scarce dollars
on food or medicine, this budget says: Tough luck. You are on your own.
Mr. President, this would not be the America we have come to know and
love. It is not the kind of America my grandparents and your
grandparents or our fathers and mothers built for us and for future
generations. It is not the America that built the best middle class
history has ever seen. This budget is not the kind of America my
friends and neighbors in Iowa would find acceptable.
So, mark my words, this budget is not a courageous budget. As I said,
it is a cowardly budget, a bully budget. And the American people will
not stand for this unwise, unbalanced, unfair assault on their economic
security, their way of life, and the America our grandparents and our
parents built for us and for future generations.
Mr. President, I will oppose with every fiber of my being these
grossly, misguided proposals in every way I can. And I can assure you,
Mr. President, the American people will not stand for this tea party
Republican budget either.
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