[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 89 (Tuesday, May 23, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3077-S3078]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         The President's Budget

  Mr. President, now, on the budget, today, the President will release 
his full budget for fiscal year 2018. From all indications, the Trump 
budget will seek deep cuts to programs that help the middle class and 
working America while providing more handouts to the rich. It will cut 
to the bone programs that help the elderly, the poor, while adding 
money for an unnecessary, ineffective border wall that continues to 
have bipartisan opposition.
  To make all the math work, the Trump budget makes entirely unfounded 
assumptions about economic growth. In short, the Trump budget takes a 
sledgehammer to the middle class and the working poor, lavishes tax 
breaks on the wealthy, and imagines all of the deficit problems away 
with fantasy math. The Trump budget exists somewhere over the rainbow, 
where the dreams of Nick Mulvaney, Paul Ryan, and the Koch brothers 
really do come true.
  Of course, these dreams are a nightmare for the average working 
American. We expect the Trump budget will make deep cuts to the 
National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control. Let me 
ask, How many people in America want to cut cancer research when it has 
done such good? Well, President Trump evidently does. It is his budget.
  They kneecap research that develops new cures, damaging our ability 
to contain or prevent the outbreak of disease. We are all living longer 
and healthier, in part because of this research. We want to stop it, 
cut it back, so we can give tax breaks to wealthy people who, God bless 
them, are doing great already?
  We expect the Trump budget will gash programs like Meals on Wheels. I 
even read in the paper this morning that the head of the Freedom Caucus 
said that even for him some of these cuts were too great. The SNAP 
benefits, making sure no kid goes to bed hungry in America--this is 
America. We have always done this. The Children's Health Insurance 
Program, cruelly ripping away the lifelines from Americans who need it 
the most, the children, the working poor, the elderly.
  We expect the Trump budget will cut transportation funding, education 
funding, and programs that help students repay their student loan debt. 
One of the great problems in America, the debt on the backs--the burden 
on average kids getting out of college, middle-class kids, we are going 
to make it harder? What is going on here? What is going on in the White 
House with this kind of budget?
  Our college kids, when they get out, they need to be able to live 
real good lives and not have this burden of debt on their shoulders 
which they are struggling under now. We are going to make it worse. We 
also--it is amazing but true. The Trump budget will break President 
Trump's promise to protect Social Security and Medicaid from cuts, both 
of these. He promised over and over again he would not cut Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
  Medicare was not cut here, but Medicaid is and Social Security is. On 
Social Security, the budget will cut Social Security disability 
benefits to many Americans who have earned them and paid for those 
benefits. You can say: Well, it doesn't cut old-age benefits for the 
elderly. Wait. If they get away with this, the elderly will be next on 
the chopping block because the goal, it seems, of this budget is to cut 
everything you can so you can give even more tax breaks to the 
wealthiest people--the Koch brothers type of thinking.
  It will also seek hundreds of billions of dollars--additional cuts--
in Medicaid. The budget cuts Medicaid on top of the cuts that were made 
in the House bill for TrumpCare. What will that do? Medicaid has become 
a middle-class program. For sixty percent of the people in nursing 
homes, Medicaid funds it.
  What are we going to tell a couple with three kids? Say, they are 40 
or 45. They have three kids. They are saving for college, they are 
struggling, but at least they know that mom or dad, who needs help, is 
in a nursing home. If this budget passes, that family is going to have 
a terrible choice: Take hundreds of dollars a month out of their own 
budget and give it to pay for the nursing home or find a place for mom 
and dad to live, maybe at home. Maybe there is no room in the house. It 
is awful. That is what they are doing.
  What else will it hurt? Opioid addiction. Much of the progress we are 
trying to make on opioid addiction comes through Medicaid because they 
give treatment. We need law enforcement--I am a tough law enforcement 
guy; you know that--but we also need treatment. I have had fathers cry 
in my arms because their sons--in this case, it was both sons--were 
waiting online for treatment and died of an overdose. What a burden a 
parent has to live with. We should cut that and cut it to give more tax 
breaks to the rich? It is an America turned upside down--this budget.
  How about rural areas? I represent New York State. It is known for 
its big city, New York City. We have other great cities upstate, but we 
also have the third largest rural population in America. So I am very 
familiar with rural America. In many of my counties in upstate New 
York--and this is true in rural counties throughout America--the 
largest employer is the rural hospital. That hospital is the only 
hospital around for miles and miles and miles if, God forbid, you have 
a stroke and you have to be rushed there to get better.
  Well, go talk to our rural hospitals. These rural hospitals are the 
beating heart of our local economy, employing hundreds, sometimes even 
thousands, of people. Well, nearly one in three rural hospitals today 
is at risk of closure. It is more expensive to run a rural hospital. 
People in rural areas are entitled to the same healthcare, so that 
means buying all these fancy machines. In an urban area, those machines 
can run 24/7 and get the reimbursement back, but in a rural area they 
can't. There are not that many people, but they get some help.
  The Trump cuts to Medicaid would cause a whole bunch of these rural 
hospitals to close and many more to lay off employees, hurting 
healthcare in rural America, and hurting jobs in rural America--places 
that need help.
  The Trump budget on top of TrumpCare, which seeks more than $800 
billion in cuts to Medicaid, would decimate healthcare options for 
rural Americans and pull the plug on many of these rural hospitals. 
Some of my colleagues will be talking more about that this morning.
  When you add all of it up, the Trump budget is comic-book-villain 
bad. Just like comic books, it relies on a fantasy to make all the 
numbers work. It is the kind of budget you might expect from someone 
who is openly rooting for a government shutdown. Haven't we heard the 
President say that? It is the latest example of the President breaking 
his promises to working Americans. This budget breaks promise after 
promise after promise that the President made to what he called the 
forgotten America, the working men and women of America. He said that 
he would help them, and this budget goes directly against them.
  In his speech to Congress, for instance, earlier this year the 
President

[[Page S3078]]

called education ``the civil rights issue of our time,'' but his budget 
guts vital school programs, our future, our kids. He said: ``Cures to 
illnesses that have always plagued us are not too much to hope,'' but 
his budget slashes funding at the NIH and CDC where they do this 
research. And he said: ``Save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security 
without cuts. Have to do it,'' but his budget cuts Social Security 
disability insurance and ends Medicaid as we know it.
  The Trump budget is one giant, brazen, broken promise to the working 
men and women of America. It completely abandons them. Fundamentally, 
this is a deeply unserious proposal that should roundly be rejected by 
both parties here in Congress. I am optimistic that is what will 
happen.
  We should follow the same blueprint we did in the 2017 budget: Both 
Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate, in a bipartisan way, 
everyone compromised. We should get together, negotiate a serious 
proposal that maintains our commitments to the middle class and 
actually sets up our economy to grow.
  We cannot let the President turn America inside out with his budget. 
We have to stand together, Democrats and Republicans, and reject it for 
the sake of middle-class and working Americans. The Trump budget 
hopefully will not see the light of day.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it was quite edifying to be sitting here 
listening to the Democratic leader speak this morning during the 
morning remarks, expressing his concern for healthcare, rural 
hospitals, and talking about his concerns about delivering healthcare 
to the poor. It is indeed ironic because at a time when ObamaCare, the 
Affordable Care Act, is literally in meltdown with unaffordable 
premiums and deductibles, we are not seeing any help whatsoever from 
our Democratic colleagues. I would suggest, rather than rail against 
the President's budget, they ought to be engaged in a more constructive 
process of working with us to make sure we can deliver on the promise 
of affordable healthcare to all Americans.
  Of course, there is the matter of the President's budget itself. I 
remember that President Obama's last budget got voted on here in the 
U.S. Senate. It got one vote--one vote. A President's budget is not 
binding on the Congress. The Congress passes a budget resolution, both 
houses, and we anticipate doing that again.
  The President's budget is really a statement of the President's 
priorities. Frankly, there are some things in the President's proposed 
budget that I think are worthwhile--things like securing our border. At 
the end of the day, it is the job of Congress, though, to pass a budget 
that reflects the priorities of our country.
  I think it is worth pointing out that several aspects of the 
President's budget are encouraging and a welcome change from the 
previous administration. For one, it balances in 10 years. I would love 
to have our Democratic colleagues express some concern for the fact 
that we continue to spend money we don't have and impose the burden of 
repaying that money someday on future generations. To me, that is one 
of the most immoral things we do in this country; we spend the money 
today, and we leave the debt to our children and grandchildren to pay 
that back, which they must at some point. So when the President 
proposes a budget that actually balances in 10 years, I think that is a 
good thing. What a welcome relief from a White House budget anchored 
around overspending and growing the size of government, which we have 
seen for the last 8 years.
  The other thing the President's budget does is reverse the defense 
sequester. This is the artificial cap we put on defense spending.
  Of all the things the Federal Government does, national security is 
the No. 1 job. You can't outsource that to anyone. It is our No. 1 
responsibility to keep the country safe and to keep America strong. 
Under the Obama administration, there was a cap put in place that 
prevented increased military spending, and indeed we saw cuts to the 
military of about 20 percent during the Obama years.
  One thing that President Trump has done, which I find a welcome sign, 
is to properly resource our military so we can better defend against 
increasing threats around the world. It is simply irresponsible for us 
to allow our men and women in the military to operate on slashed 
budgets and outdated equipment. They can't even train and be ready for 
the next fight. The best deterrent to war and the best assurance of 
peace is a strong America. The President's budget reflects a better 
understanding of the threat environment ahead, and for that I am 
grateful.
  So rather than railing against the President's budget, which he knows 
will not be passed into law--because no President's budget ever becomes 
law; it is a proposal of the President's priorities. As I said, there 
is much to like among the President's priorities--balancing the budget, 
emphasizing national security spending, and the like. Ultimately, we 
will have to come up with a budget ourselves. So I find the Democratic 
leader's railing against the President's budget, which he knows will 
not become law as written, somewhat ironic.