[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 30 (Monday, March 4, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H819-H820]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     DOING OUR BUSINESS DIFFERENTLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. What's so maddening about the sequester drama, just 
like the earlier fiscal cliff drama and the looming government shutdown 
drama, is that it is hopelessly beside the point.
  The path to fiscal sustainability is not merely cutting budgets, 
raising tax rates, or closing a few loopholes. It is about 
fundamentally doing business differently.
  Health care costs demand that we accelerate health care reform, which 
we're already working on in Oregon and in a number of other communities 
and health care systems across the country. These reforms, if put into 
effect nationally, would save more in health care costs over the next 
10 years than the entire $1.2 trillion sequester.
  Everybody is getting excited about across-the-board cuts in the 
Department of Defense, but no one is talking about how we fundamentally 
change

[[Page H820]]

our philosophy of military compensation, benefits, and the size of the 
force to come to grips with the cost of an all-volunteer Army.
  Of course, at a minimum, we should also dramatically reduce and shift 
resources away from the vast nuclear weapons stockpile and the three 
redundant delivery systems which we haven't used in 68 years and 
probably never will. We have 10 times more nuclear firepower than we 
need for deterrence. It is past time to scale down that archaic symbol 
of the Cold War and save hundreds of billions of dollars at no risk to 
American security.
  It is time for Congress and the administration to work meaningfully 
for agriculture reform to give more support for America's farmers and 
ranchers at a fraction of the cost. We should reform the outrageous, 
inefficient, and unproductive crop insurance program. We should restore 
investments in nutrition, conservation, research, and marketing that 
will make a difference for most farmers and ranchers, improve long-term 
productivity, and support value-added agriculture. This saves money in 
the long run and doesn't distort our trade position or make Americans 
unhealthy.
  By all means, we must reform our Tax Code, but reform is not likely 
to raise anything near what a growing and aging America is going to 
need.
  Yes, close more of the egregious loopholes, but we need another 
broad-based source of revenue. A carbon tax would fit the bill, help 
reduce the deficit, and help us protect the planet from increasingly 
catastrophic weather events and the budget-busting disaster relief that 
inevitably follows.
  We should, for the first time in 20 years, increase the gas tax, as 
recommended by the Simpson-Bowles report, a user fee that will help 
enable us to provide more support for transportation, put more people 
to work rebuilding and renewing America.
  We might take a lesson from the history and our failed 14-year effort 
to prohibit alcohol, where the government spent a fortune in a 
fruitless effort to enforce prohibition, lost a fortune in revenue, and 
made a fortune for the Mafia, the underworld cartels of the 1920s, that 
haunts us to this day.

                              {time}  1210

  We ought to treat marijuana like we treat alcohol: the Federal 
Government regulates and taxes while the States decide what they want 
to do to legalize for medical or recreational use. Given what's already 
happened in 23 States and the District of Columbia, let's save money on 
enforcement, raise revenue from taxation, and invest in drug treatment 
and efforts to keep drugs out of the hands of children.
  Let's take a break from the endless debates that are basically beside 
the point. Let's commit to doing business differently with health care, 
the military, enact broad-based taxes to both raise money and fix a 
broken Tax Code, stop cheating the majority of farmers and ranchers and 
the environment.
  This is not rocket science. We could start now if people address the 
big issues in a thoughtful way. Even when some of the measures may be 
controversial or hard, it's a whole lot better than doing stupid things 
that alienate everybody.

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