[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 90 (Wednesday, May 24, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3106-S3108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         The President's Budget

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, yesterday, we received President Trump's 
first budget submission. He calls it ``A New Foundation for American 
Greatness.'' Well, that might get an award for fiction, but it couldn't 
be further from the truth.
  Instead of building a foundation for the American people, it pulls 
the rug out from under them. This budget has to be understood as 
something more than just a photo op with a slogan.
  The President's budget displays a fundamental lack of understanding 
of the role of government of, by, and for the people in supporting the 
middle class, lifting up the most vulnerable among us and serving our 
values and interests as a Nation. It proposes to cut nondefense 
discretionary spending by over $1.5 trillion; that is, $1,500,000,000 
over 10 years, including a $54 billion cut in fiscal year 2018 and a 
$260 billion cut by 2027. This would be a 40-percent cut to nondefense 
programs in 10 years.
  This is not only shortsighted, it is irresponsible and unrealistic. 
We should be supporting opportunity, and we should be creating jobs, 
not eliminating them. What this country needs is jobs. We should be 
caring for our veterans. We should promote our health and the 
environment. These are important to all people. It doesn't make any 
difference what political party you belong to. We shouldn't be 
recklessly slashing vital lifelines to the American people.
  Sequestration has had devastating consequences for both defense and 
nondefense programs. These consequences are going to last a generation. 
The Trump budget would only extend and deepen those problems.
  We are nearing the Memorial Day break, and I ask Members of both 
sides of the aisle: Let's sit down, and let's have Republicans and 
Democrats work together, as the Senate is supposed to, and negotiate a 
budget deal based on parity. We did this in 2013; we did it in 2015. It 
worked well. Such a deal would allow the Senate to provide 
appropriations bills that reflect our true, enduring values as a 
nation.
  The Trump budget proposes over $1.7 trillion in cruel and 
unsustainable cuts to important mandatory programs that provide a 
safety net of health and nutrition programs to those who are struggling 
most in our communities. Can you imagine, in the wealthiest, most 
powerful Nation on Earth, we are going to cut out programs to help the 
people most in need?
  Many of the cuts in the Trump budget come from the Medicaid Program, 
where the President doubles down on the dangerous programmatic changes 
and cuts included in the TrumpCare bill. Not only would enacting this 
budget make it harder for low-income families to receive health 
coverage through Medicaid, but the proposal also cuts nearly $6 billion 
from the Children's Health Insurance Program, which would force near-
poverty children off health insurance.
  I know in my own State of Vermont--it is not a wealthy State; it is a 
small State. But when we started a program to make sure children had 
healthcare, it was costly at first. In the long run, it saved us all a 
great deal of money. We were rated every year as the first or second 
healthiest State in the Nation. You have to have people healthy from 
the time they are children. You cannot suddenly say: Oh, we are going 
to spend a fortune when you are adults on illnesses that could have 
been taken care of when you were children.
  The President's budget proposes significant cuts to the Supplemental 
Nutrition Assistance Program, which supports food assistance for 
individuals and families in need. How does the President expect to make 
America great again if there are hungry children in our schools? Every 
parent knows a hungry child cannot learn. How can we be the greatest 
country in the world if we do not offer a helping hand to the most 
vulnerable among us?

  It has been and continues to be my goal that we complete the 
appropriations process in the Senate the way it is supposed to be done. 
Each of the 12 appropriations bills deserves debate and an up-or-down 
vote on the Senate floor. All Republicans and Democrats vote for the 
things they support and vote against the things they oppose. That is in 
the best interest of this country, and I know Chairman Cochran shares 
this goal. As vice chairman, I will work with him to do this.
  This budget is an obstacle and not a pathway to this goal. The 
President's budget proposal is not bipartisan. In fact, I am willing to 
bet that, if you put the President's budget on the floor today and 
asked for a vote up or down, even though the Republicans are in the 
majority in the Senate, it would not pass because it does not make a 
hint of a gesture toward true bipartisanship. The appropriations 
process works best when you have bipartisan cooperation. This budget is 
not in the best interest of the country or of the real priorities of 
the American people. That is why it would not get even enough 
Republican votes to pass. It is unbalanced, needlessly provocative, and 
appallingly shortsighted.
  Rural America, including rural States like Vermont, is missing in 
action in the President's budget. His

[[Page S3107]]

budget eliminates key investments in rural communities and leaves them 
without Federal partnership support for everything from infrastructure 
development and affordable housing to programs that preserve the 
environment and provide food for the elderly.
  It is a compilation of broken promises to working men and women and 
struggling families, and it frays the lifelines that help vulnerable 
families lift themselves into the middle class. This Vermonter does not 
find that acceptable, and I doubt others do.
  Eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which we 
call LIHEAP, would leave thousands of Vermonters and thousands 
throughout this country out in the cold. The government should not be 
in the business of saying to families: OK, you have a choice. It is 10 
degrees outside. You can either have heat, or you can eat. You can 
either have enough warmth so that you do not freeze to death, or you 
can have food so that you do not starve to death, but you cannot have 
both.
  We are the most powerful, wealthy Nation on Earth. What a choice to 
force on people.
  From LIHEAP, in my own State, Vermont received nearly $19 million to 
help more than 21,000 households in all 14 counties last year. This is 
a vital lifeline, and it is especially important in rural communities. 
We cannot slash investments in our rural communities.
  We cannot abandon Federal support for cleaning up Lake Champlain. 
Eliminating the Sea Grant and Geographic programs would be foolish, as 
it would waste the investments we have already made. It would mean that 
the money we have put in to clean our lake would end up being lost, and 
we would have to start all over again.
  The large and dynamic ecosystem in Lake Champlain is the largest body 
of freshwater in the United States outside of the Great Lakes. It 
borders Vermont, New York, and Canada and is a treasure, but we cannot 
stand still. We do not want it to become polluted like other bodies of 
water throughout our country. You either advance or you slip behind, 
and once you start slipping behind, it becomes an escalating matter.
  The budget is full of cuts that advance the administration's 
antiscience, know-nothing-ism agenda. It eliminates thousands of 
scientists and shuts off funding for research into cures for everything 
from Alzheimer's to cancer. You cannot say to people who are trying to 
find a cure for cancer and so many other diseases: Oh, we are going to 
cut your money for a few years, turn everything off, send the 
scientists home, and maybe in a few years we might give you money 
again.
  You cannot do that with medical research. The University of Vermont 
would lose millions of dollars for valuable research--research that you 
cannot pause and hope to resume. We are so close to finding a cure for 
most kinds of cancer, just as we did years ago with polio. Are we going 
to turn that off? Are we going to say to the American people: We want 
to have a sloganeering budget. Sorry. When your grandchildren come 
along, maybe someday, somebody will restore this science and will find 
a cure for cancer.
  This budget not only denies the reality of climate change, but it 
eliminates all of the Environmental Protection Agency's climate 
programs, from voluntary incentives to programs that seek to prevent 
further damage to public health and environmental quality. Climate 
change is very real, and we are at a critical moment. Now is not the 
time to turn back the progress we have been making.
  The President has promised jobs, jobs, jobs. I would love to see 
jobs, jobs, jobs in this country, but under his budget, an estimated 4 
million people, including veterans, would lose access to employment and 
training services next year. Four million Americans would lose that 
promise of a job. He would eliminate almost $4 billion from Pell 
grants. You do not create jobs by denying young people access to 
affordable higher education or by slashing job training.
  Cutting the State Department's budget by more than 30 percent shows a 
clear lack of understanding of the vital role of soft power in our 
national security. The Secretary of Defense said: If you are going to 
cut the State Department's budget this way, you had better give me 
money to buy more bullets, because I am going to need them.
  The budget would eliminate lifesaving nutrition programs. It would 
impede our ability to promote stability in increasingly volatile 
regions of the world. America is not made safer by failing to feed the 
hungry.
  As Defense Secretary Mattis has said, soft power is fundamental to 
our national security, which has been said by Secretaries of Defense 
and military leaders in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
  The Trump budget would have serious and harmful consequences for our 
economy, for working families, for those who are struggling, for our 
environment, for health, for the seed corn of cutting-edge scientific 
and technological research, and for our national security. This is 
foolish, and it is not acceptable. You do not turn these things on and 
off to make a sound bite. Sound bites do not make America strong, and 
sound bites do not continue the greatness of America. Tough choices 
keep America great and help the American people.
  I would remind the White House that the power of the purse rests with 
Congress. As vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I 
intend to exercise that power, and I will work with Chairman Cochran in 
laying out a bipartisan path forward.
  Mr. President, there are far too many illogical, arbitrary, and 
harmful cuts in spending and wholly unbalanced priorities in the 
President's proposed fiscal year 2018 budget to list at one time. I 
will have plenty more to say about that in the weeks and months ahead, 
but I do want to take a moment to highlight one, as it illustrates the 
foolhardy way this Administration has sought to appease right-wing 
ideologues rather than do what is truly in the national interest.
  For fiscal year 2017, the Congress--Republicans and Democrats--agreed 
to appropriate $607.5 million for international family planning 
programs. Under our law, none of those funds can be used for abortion. 
They are for contraceptives and services like education and counseling 
to promote voluntary family planning in the world's poorest countries 
and, by doing so, to reduce reliance on abortion, reduce child 
mortality, improve maternal and child health, and increase 
opportunities for women and girls.
  These programs have a long track record. There is abundant, 
indisputable data to show they are effective and they save lives, and 
they illustrate that, while we may have fundamental differences about 
whether women should have the right to abortion, there is broad 
agreement about the importance of family planning.
  For fiscal year 2018, the Trump Administration proposes to eliminate 
funding for international family planning as a way to ``protect life.'' 
That may be an appealing sound bite, but that's all it is. For every 
$10 million reduction in funding for family planning and reproductive 
health programs, the data shows that approximately 440,000 fewer women 
and couples receive contraceptive services and supplies, resulting in 
95,000 additional unintended pregnancies, including 44,000 more 
unplanned births, 38,000 more abortions, and 200 more pregnancy-related 
deaths.
  How does that protect life? The evidence is overwhelming that the 
absence of family planning not only means more unsafe abortions but 
higher birth rates, 95 percent of which occur in the poorest countries 
that cannot feed or provide jobs for their people today.
  I would say to the ideologues in the White House who think that the 
way to protect life is to cut off funding for family planning: They 
don't know what they are talking about. These are the same people who 
support vastly expanding the Mexico City Policy beyond President Ronald 
Reagan and both President George H.W. Bush and President George W. 
Bush, to all global health funding. In fact, they will be responsible 
for more abortions, higher rates of child mortality, higher rates of 
maternal death, and greater suffering.
  This is a shocking proposal. They either don't realize how much harm 
and suffering it would cause, or they don't care. Can you imagine if 
our government, in addition to trying to outlaw abortion, tried to take 
away the contraceptives Americans rely on to prevent unwanted 
pregnancies? Tens of millions of Americans depend on access

[[Page S3108]]

to modern family planning services every day. The outcry would be 
immediate, and it would be deafening.
  I am confident that the Congress will reject this unwise and cruel 
proposal. It would be unconstitutional in this country, and it should 
not be imposed on millions of impoverished people in the developing 
countries who depend on our assistance.
  I would note the importance of it. We had a man whom I admired 
greatly in this body, a Republican chairman of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee, Mark Hatfield. He was strongly anti-abortion 
but was an honest and good man who said that we had to have these 
family planning programs because without them, the number of abortions 
would skyrocket, that the number of deaths at birth would skyrocket, 
and that we would have higher birth rates, 95 percent of which would 
occur in the poorest countries that could not feed or provide jobs for 
their people.
  Let's not do that again. Let's not make policy by sound bite. Let's 
make policy as to what is best for our country and that best respects 
the values of America--values that we have tried to demonstrate 
throughout the world. We also try to demonstrate that to our own 
country no matter where you are, whether you are Republican or Democrat 
or Independent, whether you are poor or rich, rural or urban. Let's 
work on what is the best for America, not on a budget that tries to 
polarize America and pits one group against another.
  Mr. President, on this table I have on the floor, I note that it 
shows how we, at the Pentagon, have money to put into a border wall at 
the cost of the Department of Agriculture, clean energy, climate 
change, the environment, education, foreign aid, infrastructure, 
healthcare, the middle class, civil rights, labor unions, nutrition 
programs, child nutrition, and community investments. If we want to 
spend $40 billion on a wall that will make no sense and have the 
taxpayers pay for it--easy--let's vote it up or down. I do not think 
the American people want it. They would rather see that money be spent 
on programs that educate people, that create jobs, that improve science 
and find cures for cancer and others, not for a wall that we will pay 
for and that nobody else will pay for.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all 
postcloture time on the Sullivan nomination expire at 3 p.m. today and 
that, if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and 
laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the 
Senate's action.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.