[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 55 (Friday, April 4, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2951-H2952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE RYAN BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. 
Nolan) for the remainder of the hour.
  Mr. NOLAN. Thank you, Mr. Levin, for this Special Order and for 
bringing to the attention of our colleagues and the country the 
importance of providing unemployment insurance for the millions of 
people who are struggling and who are in danger of losing their homes 
and the ability to feed their families.
  As a businessman over the last 32 years, I would like to point out to 
these people who somehow like to characterize these people as scofflaws 
who don't want to work and remind them that you don't qualify for 
unemployment insurance unless you are a worker and have found yourself 
unemployed by virtue of circumstances you had no control over.
  You are so right that this is the right thing to do. It is 
bipartisan, and there is a pay-for here. We should have the good 
judgment and the decency to extend the unemployment insurance for these 
people. So I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to address another issue, and it is the 
fact that most of us here in the Congress grew up at a time when our 
leaders weren't afraid to invest in our country, to invest in human 
development, and because of them, education was affordable. Guess what? 
That is no longer true.
  Now we are faced with a Ryan budget that cuts Pell grants for poor 
and needy kids who would like to get a postgraduate education.
  Medicare. Nothing has ever done more to extend the lives of more 
people than Medicare. In a little over a generation, we went from a 
nation with a life expectancy of about 47 to over 77. What does the 
Ryan budget do with

[[Page H2952]]

Medicare? It eliminates it as we know it. It turns the elderly back 
over to the insurance industry.
  Our leaders in the past invested in transportation, in health, in 
education. They created the strongest economy and the strongest and 
largest middle class in the history of the world, and now our bridges 
are falling down. What does the Ryan budget do? It cuts funding for 
transportation.
  Mr. Speaker, let's be honest. The simple truth is that the Ryan 
budget guts funding for all of the investments that created and were 
responsible for the incredible national and individual success that our 
generation has enjoyed. It cuts everything from Head Start to health to 
essential air service, funding for basic research for health and 
technology--so many of the things that made us a great Nation. Now, 
after being the beneficiaries of what our generation before us did, we 
don't want to invest in the future of our children and their children.
  It is time for a budget that acknowledges the real foundations of our 
prosperity, of our opportunities, and of our freedom here in this 
country. Let's put forth a budget that shows our gratitude for the next 
generation. Let's pay it forward. Let's be mindful of how many 
important things that leaders in the past did for us in laying this 
foundation. Where I come from there is a wonderful, old Biblical saying 
that says, ``For those to whom much is given, much is expected''--not 
less but more. Let's do for the next generation what the past 
generation did for us.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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