[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

[[Page S2404]]

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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