[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 120 (Tuesday, August 2, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1492-E1493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BUDGET CONTROL ACT OF 2011

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, August 1, 2011

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to the debt ceiling and deficit 
reduction legislation and will vote against the bill.
  Raising the debt ceiling should be a legislative act that allows us 
to meet the obligations our country has already incurred. But this 
legal formality has been taken hostage by the Republican Party and tied 
to dangerous and extraordinary demands regarding spending and taxes 
that affect everyone in our country.
  As a result, we have a crisis that has been wholly manufactured. Our 
national debate has been paralyzed. Millions of Americans have been 
frightened about whether Social Security checks and salaries for our 
armed forces will be paid, financial markets have been rattled, and 
America's fiscal responsibility has been tarnished in the eyes of the 
world.
  As a matter of economic policy, the spending cuts in this legislation 
will do harm to the economy and will curb our ability to stimulate job 
growth. Our economy is weak. The recovery is stalled. Our workers and 
households need action from Congress that helps promote growth and 
investment. With unemployment over 9 percent and growth at barely 1 
percent, the last thing we need is for Washington to take the wind out 
of the sails of future growth. Cutting spending by over $2 trillion 
hurts the economy's ability to move forward.
  As a matter of equity, this package is not balanced. It is all 
spending cuts, cuts that are deeper because we are blocked by the 
Republicans' refusal to consider revenues to be gained from asking the 
wealthy and fortunate to play their fair share. There is nothing to end 
egregious tax expenditures benefiting corporations or to ask our most 
profitable companies today, such as the oil industry to pay a little 
more; or to have the burden of deficit reduction shared, even a little 
bit, by the wealthiest among us. This is not fair. It is willfully one-
sided. And given the magnitude of the task before us to deal 
responsibly with our long term debt, it is not right.
  As a matter of protecting and strengthening Medicare, Medicaid and 
Social Security, this legislation is also gravely deficient. There may 
be buffers for these programs in the sequester, but the pressure to cut 
these programs as a part of the new joint congressional committee that 
is established to secure an additional $1.5 trillion in spending cuts 
will be extreme. There will be tremendous pressure to restructure these 
programs in order to forestall additional defense cuts and additional 
cuts to discretionary spending. Such changes will undermine our 
country's promise to the elderly,

[[Page E1493]]

the poor, the vulnerable. Raising the eligibility age for Medicare or 
Social Security, or cutting benefit levels, will be subject to an up-
or-down vote by this new joint committee. No amendments can be offered 
or voted on. This process weakens Congress as an institution, and it is 
a dangerous abdication of our responsibility for these bedrock 
programs.
  We have worked over the years to make careful changes to Medicare 
when necessary to restore its solvency. In the Affordable Care Act, we 
enacted careful reforms that will improve the efficiency and soundness 
of Medicare. Arbitrary cuts to the program through sequestration, or 
rushed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, are no way to 
guarantee the future of those vital programs. We run the risk of 
substantial changes that will drive providers out of the system, 
leaving patients without access to doctors or to nursing homes and long 
term care services.
  This legislation does not represent the values to which I have been 
committed since first being elected to Washington.
  That is why I have concluded that this package does not deserve my 
support today.

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