[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 160 (Thursday, October 5, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H7873-H7882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2018
The Committee resumed its sitting.
[[Page H7874]]
Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Francis Rooney).
Mr. FRANCIS ROONEY of Florida. Mr. Chair, with all respect, the cruel
and unusual punishment is the Democratic-proposed substitute amendment.
The raw deal is the Democratic-proposed substitute amendment that
increases spending $6.2 trillion over our budget.
This thing raises taxes--$2.7 trillion, the largest tax increase in
American history, at a time when we are drowning in debt and stagnant
wage growth.
It requires a one-to-one match of defense and nondefense
discretionary spending at a time when we can't keep our F-18s flying
and we have airplanes crashing around the country for lack of
maintenance.
This is unconscionable. This budget never balances. It will leave us
with an $852 billion deficit by fiscal year 2027. It expands ObamaCare,
the most disastrous and heinous trick played on the American people
that I can remember. It prioritizes amnesty over security.
We are never going to get our country straight and preserve our
sovereignty if we don't protect our security. On the other hand, we
have got the Republican budget that offers to do a lot of things. One
thing it offers to do is put a work requirement for able-bodied adults
with no dependent children into welfare.
Mr. Chair, I include in the Record an article by Nicholas Eberstadt
of AEI talking about the horrible condition of our labor force now and
how drastically important this is and how much it will improve the
opportunities for people to rise out of poverty. We have got three 25-
to 54-year-old males sitting out of the labor force collecting benefits
for every one that is unemployed. The unemployed rate is 4.7 percent.
That makes the total 20 percent. It is almost over 5 million people
that we owe them a moral obligation to offer them an opportunity to
rise out of poverty through work, and that is what the Republican
budget does.
[Commentary, Feb. 15, 2017]
Economy: Our Miserable 21st Century
(By Nicholas N. Eberstadt)
On the morning of November 9, 2016, American's elite--its
talking and deciding classes--woke up to a country they did
not know. To most privileged and well-educated Americans,
especially those living in its bicoastal bastions, the
election of Donald Trump had been a thing almost impossible
even to imagine. What sort of country would go and elect
someone like Trump as president? Certainly not one they were
familiar with, or understood anything about.
Whatever else it may or may not have accomplished, the 2016
election was a sort of shock therapy for Americans living
within what Charles Murray famously termed ``the bubble''
(the protective barrier of prosperity and self-selected
associations that increasingly shield our best and brightest
from contact with the rest of their society). The very fact
of Trump's election served as a truth broadcast about a
reality that could no longer be denied: Things out there in
America are a whole lot different from what you thought.
Yes, things are very different indeed these days in the
``real America'' outside the bubble. In fact, things have
been going badly wrong in America since the beginning of the
21st century.
It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical
milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the
Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive
generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living
and levels of social well-being, broke down around then--and
broke down very badly.
The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons
sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits
and prognosticators and professors and policymakers,
ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were
for the most part too distant from the distress of the
general population to see or hear it. (So much for the
vaunted ``information era'' and ``big-data revolution.'') Now
that those signals are no longer possible to ignore, it is
high time for experts and intellectuals to reacquaint
themselves with the country in which they live and to begin
the task of describing what has befallen the country in which
we have lived since the dawn of the new century.
Consider the condition of the American economy. In some
circles people still widely believe, as one recent New York
Times business-section article cluelessly insisted before the
inauguration, that ``Mr. Trump will inherit an economy that
is fundamentally solid.'' But this is patent nonsense. By now
it should be painfully obvious that the U.S. economy has been
in the grip of deep dysfunction since the dawn of the new
century. And in retrospect, it should also be apparent that
America's strange new economic maladies were almost perfectly
designed to set the stage for a populist storm.
Ever since 2000, basic indicators have offered oddly
inconsistent readings on America's economic performance and
prospects. It is curious and highly uncharacteristic to find
such measures so very far out of alignment with one another.
We are witnessing an ominous and growing divergence between
three trends that should ordinarily move in tandem: wealth,
output, and employment.
Depending upon which of these three indicators you choose,
America looks to be heading up, down, or more or less
nowhere. From the standpoint of wealth creation, the 21st
century is off to a roaring start. By this yardstick, it
looks as if Americans have never had it so good and as if the
future is full of promise. Between early 2000 and late 2016,
the estimated net worth of American households and nonprofit
institutions more than doubled, from $44 trillion to $90
trillion.
Although that wealth is not evenly distributed, it is still
a fantastic sum of money--an average of over a million
dollars for every notional family of four. This upsurge of
wealth took place despite the crash of 2008--indeed, private
wealth holdings are over $20 trillion higher now than they
were at their pre-crash apogee. The value of American real-
estate assets is near or at all-time highs, and America's
businesses appear to be thriving. Even before the ``Trump
rally'' of late 2016 and early 2017, U.S. equities markets
were hitting new highs--and since stock prices are strongly
shaped by expectations of future profits, investors evidently
are counting on the continuation of the current happy days
for U.S. asset holders for some time to come.
A rather less cheering picture, though, emerges if we look
instead at real trends for the macro-economy. Here,
performance since the start of the century might charitably
be described as mediocre, and prospects today are no better
than guarded. The recovery from the crash of 2008--which
unleashed the worst recession since the Great Depression--has
been singularly slow and weak. According to the Bureau of
Economic Analysis (BEA), it took nearly four years for
America's gross domestic product (GDP) to re-attain its late
2007 level. As of late 2016, total value added to the U.S.
economy was just 12 percent higher than in 2007. The
situation is even more sobering if we consider per capita
growth. It took America six and a half years--until mid-
2014--to get back to its late 2007 per capita production
levels. And in late 2016, per capita output was just 4
percent higher than in late 2007--nine years earlier. By this
reckoning, the American economy looks to have suffered
something close to a lost decade.
But there was clearly trouble brewing in America's macro-
economy well before the 2008 crash, too. Between late 2000
and late 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged less than 1.5
percent per annum. That compares with the nation's long-term
postwar 1948-2000 per capita growth rate of almost 2.3
percent, which in turn can be compared to the ``snap back''
tempo of 1.1 percent per annum since per capita GDP bottomed
out in 2009. Between 2000 and 2016, per capita growth in
America has averaged less than 1 percent a year. To state it
plainly: With postwar, pre-21st-century rates for the years
2000-2016, per capita GDP in America would be more than 20
percent higher than it is today.
The reasons for America's newly fitful and halting
macroeconomic performance are still a puzzlement to
economists and a subject of considerable contention and
debate. Economists are generally in consensus, however, in
one area: They have begun redefining the growth potential of
the U.S. economy downwards. The U.S. Congressional Budget
Office (CBO), for example, suggests that the ``potential
growth'' rate for the U.S. economy at full employment of
factors of production has now dropped below 1.7 percent a
year, implying a sustainable long-term annual per capita
economic growth rate for America today of well under 1
percent.
Then there is the employment situation. If 21st-century
America's GDP trends have been disappointing, labor-force
trends have been utterly dismal. Work rates have fallen off a
cliff since the year 2000 and are at their lowest levels in
decades. We can see this by looking at the estimates by the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the civilian employment
rate, the jobs-to-population ratio for adult civilian men and
women. Between early 2000 and late 2016, America's overall
work rate for Americans age 20 and older underwent a drastic
decline. It plunged by almost 5 percentage points (from 64.6
to 59.7). Unless you are a labor economist, you may not
appreciate just how severe a falloff in employment such
numbers attest to. Postwar America never experienced anything
comparable.
From peak to trough, the collapse in work rates for U.S.
adults between 2008 and 2010 was roughly twice the amplitude
of what had previously been the country's worst postwar
recession, back in the early 1980s. In that previous steep
recession, it took America five years to re-attain the adult
work rates recorded at the start of 1980. This time, the U.S.
job market has as yet, in early 2017, scarcely begun to claw
its way back up to the work rates of 2007--much less back to
the work rates from early 2000. U.S. adult work rates never
recovered entirely from the recession of 2001--much less the
crash of '08.
And the work rates being measured here include people who
are engaged in any paid employment--any job, at any wage, for
any number of hours of work at all.
On Wall Street and in some parts of Washington these days,
one hears that America
[[Page H7875]]
has gotten back to ``near full employment.'' For Americans
outside the bubble, such talk must seem nonsensical. It is
true that the oft-cited ``civilian unemployment rate'' looked
pretty good by the end of the Obama era--in December 2016, it
was down to 4.7 percent, about the same as it had been back
in 1965, at a time of genuine full employment. The problem
here is that the unemployment rate only tracks joblessness
for those still in the labor force; it takes no account of
workforce dropouts. Alas, the exodus out of the workforce has
been the big labor-market story for America's new century.
(At this writing, for every unemployed American man between
25 and 55 years of age, there are another three who are
neither working nor looking for work.) Thus the
``unemployment rate'' increasingly looks like an antique
index devised for some earlier and increasingly distant war:
the economic equivalent of a musket inventory or a cavalry
count.
By the criterion of adult work rates, by contrast,
employment conditions in America remain remarkably bleak.
From late 2009 through early 2014, the country's work rates
more or less flatlined. So far as can be told, this is the
only ``recovery'' in U.S. economic history in which that
basic labor-market indicator almost completely failed to
respond.
Since 2014, there has finally been a measure of improvement
in the work rate--but it would be unwise to exaggerate the
dimensions of that turnaround. As of late 2016, the adult
work rate in America was still at its lowest level in more
than 30 years. To put things another way: If our nation's
work rate today were back up to its start-of-the-century
highs, well over 10 million more Americans would currently
have paying jobs.
There is no way to sugarcoat these awful numbers. They are
not a statistical artifact that can be explained away by
population aging, or by increased educational enrollment for
adult students, or by any other genuine change in
contemporary American society. The plain fact is that 21st-
century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work.
For an apples-to-apples look at America's 21st-century jobs
problem, we can focus on the 25-54 population--known to labor
economists for self-evident reasons as the ``prime working
age'' group. For this key labor-force cohort, work rates in
late 2016 were down almost 4 percentage points from their
year-2000 highs. That is a jobs gap approaching 5 million for
this group alone.
It is not only that work rates for prime-age males have
fallen since the year 2000--they have, but the collapse of
work for American men is a tale that goes back at least half
a century. (I wrote a short book last year about this sad
saga.) What is perhaps more startling is the unexpected and
largely unnoticed fall-off in work rates for prime-age women.
In the U.S. and all other Western societies, postwar labor
markets underwent an epochal transformation. After World War
II, work rates for prime women surged, and continued to
rise--until the year 2000. Since then, they too have
declined. Current work rates for prime-age women are back to
where they were a generation ago, in the late 1980s. The
21st-century U.S. economy has been brutal for male and female
laborers alike--and the wreckage in the labor market has been
sufficiently powerful to cancel, and even reverse, one of our
society's most distinctive postwar trends: the rise of paid
work for women outside the household.
In our era of no more than indifferent economic growth,
21st-century America has somehow managed to produce markedly
more wealth for its wealthholders even as it provided
markedly less work for its workers. And trends for paid hours
of work look even worse than the work rates themselves.
Between 2000 and 2015, according to the BEA, total paid hours
of work in America increased by just 4 percent (as against a
35 percent increase for 1985-2000, the 15-year period
immediately preceding this one).
Over the 2000-2015 period, however, the adult civilian
population rose by almost 18 percent--meaning that paid hours
of work per adult civilian have plummeted by a shocking 12
percent thus far in our new American century.
This is the terrible contradiction of economic life in what
we might call America's Second Gilded Age (2000--). It is a
paradox that may help us understand a number of overarching
features of our new century. These include the consistent
findings that public trust in almost all U.S. institutions
has sharply declined since 2000, even as growing majorities
hold that America is ``heading in the wrong direction.'' It
provides an immediate answer to why overwhelming majorities
of respondents in public-opinion surveys continue to tell
pollsters, year after year, that our ever-richer America is
still stuck in the middle of a recession. The mounting
economic woes of the ``little people'' may not have been
generally recognized by those inside the bubble, or even by
many bubble inhabitants who claimed to be economic
specialists--but they proved to be potent fuel for the
populist fire that raged through American politics in 2016.
So general economic conditions for many ordinary
Americans--not least of these, Americans who did not fit
within the academy's designated victim classes--have been
rather more insecure than those within the comfort of the
bubble understood. But the anxiety, dissatisfaction, anger,
and despair that range within our borders today are not
wholly a reaction to the way our economy is misfiring. On the
nonmaterial front, it is likewise clear that many things in
our society are going wrong and yet seem beyond our powers to
correct.
Some of these gnawing problems are by no means new: A
number of them (such as family breakdown) can be traced back
at least to the 1960s, while others are arguably as old as
modernity itself (anomie and isolation in big anonymous
communities, secularization and the decline of faith). But a
number have roared down upon us by surprise since the turn of
the century--and others have redoubled with fearsome new
intensity since roughly the year 2000.
American health conditions seem to have taken a seriously
wrong turn in the new century. It is not just that overall
health progress has been shockingly slow, despite the
trillions we devote to medical services each year. (Which
``Cold War babies'' among us would have predicted we'd live
to see the day when life expectancy in East Germany was
higher than in the United States, as is the case today?)
Alas, the problem is not just slowdowns in health
progress--there also appears to have been positive
retrogression for broad and heretofore seemingly untroubled
segments of the national population. A short but electrifying
2015 paper by Anne Case and Nobel Economics Laureate Angus
Deaton talked about a mortality trend that had gone almost
unnoticed until then: rising death rates for middle-aged U.S.
whites. By Case and Deaton's reckoning, death rates rose
somewhat slightly over the 1999-2013 period for all non-
Hispanic white men and women 45-54 years of age--but they
rose sharply for those with high-school degrees or less, and
for this less-educated grouping most of the rise in death
rates was accounted for by suicides, chronic liver cirrhosis,
and poisonings (including drug overdoses).
Though some researchers, for highly technical reasons,
suggested that the mortality spike might not have been quite
as sharp as Case and Deaton reckoned, there is little doubt
that the spike itself has taken place. Health has been
deteriorating for a significant swath of white America in our
new century, thanks in large part to drug and alcohol abuse.
All this sounds a little too close for comfort to the story
of modern Russia, with its devastating vodka- and drug-
binging health setbacks. Yes: It can happen here, and it has.
Welcome to our new America.
In December 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) reported that for the first time in decades,
life expectancy at birth in the United States had dropped
very slightly (to 78.8 years in 2015, from 78.9 years in
2014). Though the decline was small, it was statistically
meaningful--rising death rates were characteristic of males
and females alike; of blacks and whites and Latinos together.
(Only black women avoided mortality increases--their death
levels were stagnant.) A jump in ``unintentional injuries''
accounted for much of the overall uptick.
It would be unwarranted to place too much portent in a
single year's mortality changes; slight annual drops in U.S.
life expectancy have occasionally been registered in the
past, too, followed by continued improvements. But given
other developments we are witnessing in our new America, we
must wonder whether the 2015 decline in life expectancy is
just a blip, or the start of a new trend. We will find out
soon enough. It cannot be encouraging, though, that the Human
Mortality Database, an international consortium of
demographers who vet national data to improve comparability
between countries, has suggested that health progress in
America essentially ceased in 2012--that the U.S. gained on
average only about a single day of life expectancy at birth
between 2012 and 2014, before the 2015 turndown.
The opioid epidemic of pain pills and heroin that has been
ravaging and shortening lives from coast to coast is a new
plague for our new century. The terrifying novelty of this
particular drug epidemic, of course, is that it has gone (so
to speak) ``mainstream'' this time, effecting breakout from
disadvantaged minority communities to Main Street White
America. By 2013, according to a 2015 report by the Drug
Enforcement Administration, more Americans died from drug
overdoses (largely but not wholly opioid abuse) than from
either traffic fatalities or guns. The dimensions of the
opioid epidemic in the real America are still not fully
appreciated within the bubble, where drug use tends to be
more carefully limited and recreational. In Dreamland, his
harrowing and magisterial account of modern America's opioid
explosion, the journalist Sam Quinones notes in passing that
``in one three-month period'' just a few years ago, according
to the Ohio Department of Health, ``fully 11 percent of all
Ohioans were prescribed opiates.'' And of course many
Americans self-medicate with licit or illicit painkillers
without doctors' orders.
In the fall of 2016, Alan Krueger, former chairman of the
President's Council of Economic Advisers, released a study
that further refined the picture of the real existing opioid
epidemic in America: According to his work, nearly half of
all prime working-age male labor-force dropouts--an army now
totaling roughly 7 million men--currently take pain
medication on a daily basis.
We already knew from other sources (such as BLS ``time
use'' surveys) that the overwhelming majority of the prime-
age men in this un-working army generally don't ``do civil
society'' (charitable work, religious activities,
volunteering), or for that matter much in the way of child
care or help for others in the home either, despite the
abundance of time on their hands. Their routine,
[[Page H7876]]
instead, typically centers on watching--watching TV, DVDs,
Internet, hand-held devices, etc.--and indeed watching for an
average of 2,000 hours a year, as if it were a full-time job.
But Krueger's study adds a poignant and immensely sad detail
to this portrait of daily life in 21st-century America: In
our mind's eye we can now picture many millions of un-working
men in the prime of life, out of work and not looking for
jobs, sitting in front of screens--stoned.
But how did so many millions of un-working men, whose
incomes are limited, manage en masse to afford a constant
supply of pain medication? Oxycontin is not cheap. As
Dreamland carefully explains, one main mechanism today has
been the welfare state: more specifically, Medicaid, Uncle
Sam's means-tested health-benefits program. Here is how it
works (we are with Quinones in Portsmouth, Ohio):
[The Medicaid card] pays for medicine--whatever pills a
doctor deems that the insured patient needs. Among those who
receive Medicaid cards are people on state welfare or on a
federal disability program known as SSI. . . . If you could
get a prescription from a willing doctor--and Portsmouth had
plenty of them--Medicaid health-insurance cards paid for that
prescription every month. For a three-dollar Medicaid co-pay,
therefore, addicts got pills priced at thousands of dollars,
with the difference paid for by U.S. and state taxpayers. A
user could turn around and sell those pills, obtained for
that three-dollar co-pay, for as much as ten thousand dollars
on the street.
In 21st-century America, ``dependence on government'' has
thus come to take on an entirely new meaning.
You may now wish to ask: What share of prime-working-age
men these days are enrolled in Medicaid? According to the
Census Bureau's SIPP survey (Survey of Income and Program
Participation), as of 2013, over one-fifth (21 percent) of
all civilian men between 25 and 55 years of age were Medicaid
beneficiaries. For prime-age people not in the labor force,
the share was over half (53 percent). And for un-working
Anglos (non-Hispanic white men not in the labor force) of
prime working age, the share enrolled in Medicaid was 48
percent.
By the way: Of the entire un-working prime-age male Anglo
population in 2013, nearly three-fifths (57 percent) were
reportedly collecting disability benefits from one or more
government disability program in 2013. Disability checks and
means-tested benefits cannot support a lavish lifestyle. But
they can offer a permanent alternative to paid employment,
and for growing numbers of American men, they do. The rise of
these programs has coincided with the death of work for
larger and larger numbers of American men not yet of
retirement age. We cannot say that these programs caused the
death of work for millions upon millions of younger men: What
is incontrovertible, however, is that they have financed it--
just as Medicaid inadvertently helped finance America's
immense and increasing appetite for opioids in our new
century.
It is intriguing to note that America's nationwide opioid
epidemic has not been accompanied by a nationwide crime wave
(excepting of course the apparent explosion of illicit heroin
use). Just the opposite: As best can be told, national
victimization rates for violent crimes and property crimes
have both reportedly dropped by about two-thirds over the
past two decades. The drop in crime over the past generation
has done great things for the general quality of life in much
of America. There is one complication from this drama,
however, that inhabitants of the bubble may not be aware of,
even though it is all too well known to a great many
residents of the real America. This is the extraordinary
expansion of what some have termed America's ``criminal
class''--the population sentenced to prison or convicted of
felony offenses--in recent decades. This trend did not begin
in our century, but it has taken on breathtaking enormity
since the year 2000.
Most well-informed readers know that the U.S. currently has
a higher share of its populace in jail or prison than almost
any other country on earth, that Barack Obama and others talk
of our criminal-justice process as ``mass incarceration,''
and know that well over 2 million men were in prison or jail
in recent years. But only a tiny fraction of all living
Americans ever convicted of a felony is actually incarcerated
at this very moment. Quite the contrary: Maybe 90 percent of
all sentenced felons today are out of confinement and living
more or less among us. The reason: the basic arithmetic of
sentencing and incarceration in America today.
Correctional release and sentenced community supervision
(probation and parole) guarantee a steady annual ``flow'' of
convicted felons back into society to augment the very
considerable ``stock'' of felons and ex-felons already there.
And this ``stock'' is by now truly enormous.
One forthcoming demographic study by Sarah Shannon and five
other researchers estimates that the cohort of current and
former felons in America very nearly reached 20 million by
the year 2010. If its estimates are roughly accurate, and if
America's felon population has continued to grow at more or
less the same tempotraced out for the years leading up to
2010, we would expect it to surpass 23 million persons by the
end of 2016 at the latest. Very rough calculations might
therefore suggest that at this writing, America's population
of non-institutionalized adults with a felony conviction
somewhere in their past has almost certainly broken the 20
million mark by the end of 2016. A little more rough
arithmetic suggests that about 17 million men in our general
population have a felony conviction somewhere in their CV.
That works out to one of every eight adult males in America
today.
We have to use rough estimates here, rather than precise
official numbers, because the government does not collect any
data at all on the size or socioeconomic circumstances of
this population of 20 million, and never has. Amazing as this
may sound and scandalous though it may be, America has, at
least to date, effectively banished this huge group--a group
roughly twice the total size of our illegal-immigrant
population and an adult population larger than that in any
state but California--to a near-total and seemingly unending
statistical invisibility. Our ex-cons are, so to speak,
statistical outcasts who live in a darkness our polity does
not care enough to illuminate--beyond the scope or interest
of public policy, unless and until they next run afoul of the
law.
Thus we cannot describe with any precision or certainty
what has become of those who make up our ``criminal class''
after their (latest) sentencing or release. In the most
stylized terms, however, we might guess that their odds in
the real America are not all that favorable. And when we
consider some of the other trends we have already mentioned--
employment, health, addiction, welfare dependence--we can see
the emergence of a malign new nationwide undertow, pulling
downward against social mobility.
Social mobility has always been the jewel in the crown of
the American mythosand ethos. The idea (not without a measure
of truth to back it up) was that people in America are free
to achieve according to their merit and their grit--unlike in
other places, where they are trapped by barriers of class or
the misfortune of misrule. Nearly two decades into our new
century, there are unmistakable signs that America's fabled
social mobility is in trouble--perhaps even in serious
trouble.
Consider the following facts. First, according to the
Census Bureau, geographical mobility in America has been on
the decline for three decades, and in 2016 the annual
movement of households from one location to the next was
reportedly at an all-time (postwar) low. Second, as a study
by three Federal Reserve economists and a Notre Dame
colleague demonstrated last year, ``labor market fluidity''--
the churning between jobs that among other things allows
people to get ahead--has been on the decline in the American
labor market for decades, with no sign as yet of a
turnaround. Finally, and not least important, a December 2016
report by the ``Equal Opportunity Project,'' a team led by
the formidable Stanford economist Raj Chetty, calculated that
the odds of a 30-year-old's earning more than his parents at
the same age was now just 51 percent: down from 86 percent 40
years ago. Other researchers who have examined the same data
argue that the odds may not be quite as low as the Chetty
team concludes, but agree that the chances of surpassing
one's parents' real income have been on the downswing and are
probably lower now than ever before in postwar America.
Thus the bittersweet reality of life for real Americans in
the early 21st century: Even though the American economy
still remains the world's unrivaled engine of wealth
generation, those outside the bubble may have less of a shot
at the American Dream than has been the case for decades,
maybe generations--possibly even since the Great Depression.
The funny thing is, people inside the bubble are forever
talking about ``economic inequality,'' that wonderful seminar
construct, and forever virtue-signaling about how personally
opposed they are to it. By contrast, ``economic insecurity''
is akin to a phrase from an unknown language. But if we were
somehow to find a ``Google Translate'' function for
communicating from real America into the bubble, an important
message might be conveyed:
The abstraction of ``inequality'' doesn't matter a lot to
ordinary Americans. The reality of economic insecurity does.
The Great American Escalator is broken--and it badly needs to
be fixed.
With the election of 2016, Americans within the bubble
finally learned that the 21st century has gotten off to a
very bad start in America. Welcome to the reality. We have a
lot of work to do together to turn this around.
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Tennessee (Mr. Cohen), a distinguished member of the Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee.
Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chair, the other day, a young man who lives in my
neighborhood came over, and he asked me to try to teach him how to
drive a car. And I told him: Son, it is real easy to drive a car. It is
just kind of like these budget proposals you will see in Congress. If
you want to go forward and do things down the road, you put the car in
D, like Democrat, for drive, and your car will go forward. But if you
want to go backwards and reverse back to the 1950s, you put it in R,
like a Republican.
He learned quick, and that is what these budgets are about. If you
want to
[[Page H7877]]
go forward, you go with the Democratic budget--forward on building
highways, school construction, broadband expansion; research, research
on the deadly diseases that are killing each and every one of us and
our children in time to come, and research by the National Institutes
of Health that are cut by the budget. There is nothing more important
that can be in the budget than moneys for the National Institutes of
Health, yet they are being cut. Cancer, Alzheimer's, AIDS, stroke,
diabetes, all are going to come at us and our relatives.
Some will say, and I said this one time before, and Mr. Kingston on
the other side said: Well, our children and our grandchildren will have
to pay for it. Who do you think is going to get the cures and the
treatments? Our children and our grandchildren and generations to come.
And they cut research. They cut opportunities for America. You talk
about taxes and the debt, the Republican plan gives billionaires the
biggest cuts in history, over $50 billion with estate tax elimination
for people like the Koch brothers and the Waltons and all those folks,
and that money will never come back.
The alternative minimum tax is eliminated. That is the only thing
that made clear that President Trump paid any taxes in the only tax
return we know about. If it weren't for that, he wouldn't have paid
anything. We are talking multimillion- and billion-dollar tax cuts for
the richest that create deficits in the future, but that is okay when
it is giving money to those who already have it.
Franklin Roosevelt was right. You judge a society not by what it does
for those who have an abundance, but you judge it by what it does for
those who have the least.
Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I do want to say to my good friend and
colleague from Tennessee that I think the D stands for debt for
Democrats, and I think the R stands for Republicans and recovery.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr.
Womack), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee and the
Appropriations Committee.
Mr. WOMACK. Mr. Chair, I thank the distinguished chairwoman of the
Budget Committee for her outstanding work.
My friend from Tennessee talks about driving forward. I think we need
to pump the brakes. You are driving right off a cliff with this budget.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition. It is my strong belief that our
Nation has a debt crisis on its hand, and I am astonished by how many
people on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Chairman, just refuse to
acknowledge the problem. It is as if the problem doesn't exist.
Under their plan, taxes are going to be raised nearly $3 trillion. We
are going to continue to raise spending to the tune of over $6
trillion. We will have a meager $2.6 billion in deficit reduction, by
the way, compared to our budget that does well over $6 trillion in
deficit reduction.
Our Nation is $20 trillion in debt, and it is a complete absurdity to
think that we could begin to relinquish this process if we enacted such
a burdensome budgetary proposal that is being offered by our friends on
the other side of the aisle.
This budget would also diminish our national security apparatus. It
would end the global war on terrorism fund by 2019. Let's go ahead and
telegraph that we are going to end the global war on terrorism fund by
2019. The only people who I know who would support that would be our
adversaries.
It seeks to promote the collapsing Affordable Care Act by keeping
those burdensome mandates in place. This resolution before us right now
refuses to do anything about the runaway entitlement programs that are
the primary drivers of the deficit and debt in the country.
Mr. Chairman, their budget just will never balance. Never.
The Acting CHAIR (Mr. Simpson). The time of the gentleman has
expired.
{time} 1030
Mrs. BLACK. I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from
Arkansas.
Mr. WOMACK. It will give no reconciliation instruction so that we can
finally get control and protect for long-term sustainability the social
safety net program that many depend on.
The bottom line is, you either acknowledge we have a deficit and a
debt crisis, or you do not. And if you believe as I do, you will refuse
this budget, and you will support ours.
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Minnesota (Mr. Nolan), a distinguished member of the Agriculture
Committee.
Mr. NOLAN. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I rise in support
of the Democratic budget alternative and in opposition to the
Republican budget that has been proposed.
It has been often said that gracious living and good politics is all
about gratitude. Paying something forward is how you show your
gratitude.
Quite frankly, the simple truth about this Republican budget is that
it rolls back a century of progress. It sets the stage for the
dismantling of Social Security, which lifted more people out of poverty
than anything, and for Speaker Ryan's plan to turn it over to Wall
Street.
It sets the stage for turning Medicare over to the insurance
industry--Medicare that provided our elderly with insurance and life
opportunities that heretofore had not existed.
This century of progress that this budget rolls back includes clean
air and water. It includes healthy, safe working places and conditions.
It includes an opportunity society that invests in our people.
And guess what? In a little over a century, we doubled life
expectancies. Wow, what a marvelous accomplishment.
We created the best and biggest middle class in the history of the
world. We became a model for the world; jobs with living wages and
healthcare benefits and pension benefits.
This Republican budget proposes to roll back that entire century of
progress. It is nothing about paying it forward. It is nothing about
paying things back. It is about rolling back a century of progress, and
we can not let that happen.
That is what the Democratic budget is really all about, investing in
people, investing in infrastructure, investing in America, and
investing in people's jobs and living wages, and in their benefits.
That is how you show your gratitude, and we have got a lot to be
grateful for.
Let's vote and enact this Democratic budget proposal which invests in
America, which invests in people, which invests in opportunities. That
is what this debate is really all about.
Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Johnson), who is a member of the Budget Committee.
Mr. JOHNSON of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I saw recently, and I remember
Ronald Reagan said something when he finally got his tax reform package
done back in 1986--why it took so long and why it was so difficult. And
at the end the day, he said: You know, the lawmakers and the
policymakers forgot one important factor in their calculations that
brought us to this point; they forgot to include what the American
people have to say about this.
That is what is happening here today, Mr. Chairman. The American
people have told us they want economic growth. They want opportunities
for their kids and their families, a better quality of life. They want
Washington to live within its means and stop taking more and more and
more from them out of their paychecks.
So let's do a little bit of comparison. Let's look at, my colleagues,
the Democrat budget. It raises taxes by $2.7 trillion, compared to the
CBO January baseline. That is almost $3.8 trillion more than revenue
levels in our House Republican budget. It increases spending by $6.2
trillion, compared to the Republican budget over that 10-year period.
It increases the debt held by the public by $3.9 trillion, almost $4
trillion relative to the House Republican budget.
And what is important, Mr. Chair, it never balances. There is not
even an attempt to balance; not to mention that there are no
reconciliation instructions that would give us an opportunity to deal
with healthcare and other economic growth reforms.
Mr. Chairman, this is not a responsible budget that is being offered
by
[[Page H7878]]
our colleagues on the other side. I urge my colleagues to oppose it and
to support the House Republican budget later today.
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a distinguished member of the Budget
Committee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from
Kentucky for his astute analysis on what the American people really
want. I thank the manager, the chairwoman of this bill, and I
acknowledge the position that they take.
But what America really wants is for Washington, for America, for the
government, to stand by them in their time of need.
I am very grateful to be part of a party that is not about politics
but is about values. We are the better choice party. We offer a better
deal on this project that we have worked so hard on called the American
budget.
The American budget, in contrast to our friends on the other side of
the aisle, recognizes, as I visited the National Institutes for Health,
that 80 percent of their budget that we are going to lose goes for
research and researchers--looking those researchers in the eyes when
they explain the research in medical science to help save lives, and to
know that the Republican budget cuts the NIH, the Centers for Disease
Control, and takes up the TrumpCare that cuts trillions in Medicaid and
$500 billion in Medicare. That is the story of this bill.
Then, as my good friend from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) indicated, we
invest in infrastructure, and we help this young man, not only with his
healthcare but with education. Do we realize how many jobs go unable to
find individuals in this country? Hundreds of thousands because of the
lack of training.
So if my friends want growth, you know how you get growth? You invest
in the American people. Or you tell the American people when tragedies
strike, whether it is the Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico, or Florida,
or Texas, or tragically, in Nevada, that you will stand by them. You
provide them with the infrastructure to be able to overcome.
Not the Republican budget, because the Republican budget is giving
trillions in tax cuts, and the distribution of those moneys will not
see the front door of low-income, moderate-income, middle class working
Americans.
That is the distinction between the Democratic budget. It increases
opportunity through a higher minimum wage. It believes in equal pay for
equal work. It knows that immigration reform will bring in billions of
dollars. It will create opportunities for work.
Then, of course, we know that the Democratic budget strengthens our
healthcare, and it provides that her Social Security, her Medicare,
will not be in jeopardy. The Medicare trust fund will not lose with a
Republican budget and the trillions of dollars of tax cuts, her life,
as she continues to seek some balance of good life will be lost.
We are the right direction. We are for the American people. We are
standing by the American people with the Democratic budget. I ask my
colleagues to vote for the Democratic alternative.
Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), the chairman of the
Education and the Workforce Committee.
Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my colleague from Tennessee,
the chair of the Budget Committee, for the wonderful work she has done
on bringing us to this position.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this substitute amendment.
As chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee, my priority
this Congress is to ensure that our policies promote a climate of job
creation through economic growth, a sound fiscal policy, and a global
economic competitiveness.
Our budget helps achieve all of these priorities by laying the
foundation for a robust and comprehensive simplification of our
burdensome Tax Code. The Democrat substitute not only fails to do so
but would decimate America's workforce.
Our budget reforms our broken Tax Code so that it works for every
American at every income level, regardless of where they live or how
much money they earn.
The top U.S. tax rate for individuals has been as high as 90 percent
and as low as 28 percent. At the same time, income tax revenue has
remained fairly steady, despite these sharp rate swings. It turns out
that the biggest driver of Federal revenue is not higher tax rates but
economic growth.
In fact, a sizeable majority of economists point out that a broad
base and low rates are key in a tax system that fosters economic growth
and competitiveness. Legislators on both sides of the aisle agree on
this basic principle, and history has shown it to be true.
Instead of raising taxes, we should, instead, embrace the policies
contained in this budget resolution that encourages economic growth,
like reducing regulatory burdens, welfare reform, and comprehensive tax
reform for all individuals, not just a select few.
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), a member of our Budget Committee.
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I rise, as well, in opposition to the
substitute amendment, and I do so because I am struck by the ways in
which you can, at times, agree on the diagnosis but disagree on the
cure.
I think we would all agree, Republicans and Democrats alike, that we
have a real problem in the way that wages have indeed stagnated over
the last 30 years. A lot of my Democratic colleagues are nailing it in
terms of that diagnosis.
The question though, is the cure. And the question there is: Can we
fix that problem by raising taxes by $2.7 trillion? Can we fix that
problem by increasing spending by $6.2 trillion? Can we fix that
problem by increasing the debt by $3.9 trillion and, in essence, having
a budget that never balances?
I would argue, no, and I would say, instead, what we have to look at
is the basics, which we have been dancing around, which is the
mathematic formula that says: Savings drives investment, which drives
productivity gain which, ultimately, impacts standard of living or
wages. And what we don't focus on enough is this notion of the
investment part of investment; if you want to increase productivity,
you have got to increase investment.
In fairness to my Democratic colleagues, part of that is public
investment, but another part is private.
What my colleague from Virginia was just getting at a moment ago was,
for 50 years, regardless of tax rate, 90 or 28 percent, the take to
government has been about 18 percent of GDP very consistently.
So what I would argue is we, indeed, need more public investment, but
we also need private investment to go with it. And if we don't watch
out, what is being contemplated with this Democratic substitute is a
process that will ultimately crowd out that much more in the way of
private investment so key to increasing productivity.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Kentucky has 3\1/2\ minutes
remaining. The gentlewoman from Tennessee has 1\1/4\ minutes remaining.
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, it is clear that we have a very different
budget and a very different understanding of the challenges facing our
country. We see that so many Americans are working harder and longer
and can't remember the last time they got a raise.
We know families are worried about how to pay for college, or if
their parents' retirement is secure, or if they will ever be able to
afford to stop working. And we know that trillions of dollars in tax
cuts for millionaires and large corporations will turn these fears of
hardworking Americans families into reality.
{time} 1045
Just a few minutes ago, my Republican colleague from Ohio talked
about what the American people want. On many of those things, we agree.
But I know one thing the American people don't want. They don't want
massive tax cuts for the top 1 percent of Americans.
The Democratic budget rejects tax cuts for the wealthy. We invest in
programs that will grow our economy, create good-paying jobs, provide
real support for working families and real security in retirement. We
make education
[[Page H7879]]
and childcare more affordable, and we support policies to help every
American get the healthcare that they need.
Those are the priorities of our budget, and they are the priorities
of the American people.
I, therefore, urge my colleagues to support the Democratic
alternative, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I look into my children's and grandchildren's eyes, and I
say: I want you to know that right now you owe $63,000 for your part of
the debt of this country.
What we are doing in Congress right now, if we were to vote on and
accept this amendment, we would be increasing that burden on our
children and grandchildren.
I, for one, cannot do that, and I think that we have got to be
responsible. We have got to look at how we in this country can get back
to the place, as has already been said, that we ask families and
businesses to do, and that is to live within their means.
Mr. Chair, I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment, and I yield back
the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment in the nature of a
substitute offered by the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth).
The question was taken; and the Acting Chair announced that the noes
appeared to have it.
Recorded Vote
Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 156,
noes 268, not voting 9, as follows:
[Roll No. 556]
AYES--156
Adams
Aguilar
Barragan
Bass
Beatty
Beyer
Bishop (GA)
Blumenauer
Blunt Rochester
Bonamici
Boyle, Brendan F.
Brady (PA)
Brown (MD)
Butterfield
Capuano
Carbajal
Cardenas
Carson (IN)
Cartwright
Castor (FL)
Castro (TX)
Chu, Judy
Cicilline
Clark (MA)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Connolly
Conyers
Correa
Courtney
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis, Danny
DeFazio
DeGette
DeLauro
DelBene
Demings
DeSaulnier
Deutch
Dingell
Doggett
Ellison
Engel
Eshoo
Espaillat
Esty (CT)
Evans
Frankel (FL)
Gabbard
Gallego
Garamendi
Gomez
Gonzalez (TX)
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hanabusa
Hastings
Heck
Higgins (NY)
Hoyer
Huffman
Jackson Lee
Jayapal
Jeffries
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Kaptur
Keating
Kelly (IL)
Kennedy
Khanna
Kildee
Kilmer
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lawrence
Lawson (FL)
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lieu, Ted
Lofgren
Lowenthal
Lowey
Lujan Grisham, M.
Lujan, Ben Ray
Lynch
Maloney, Carolyn B.
Matsui
McCollum
McEachin
McGovern
McNerney
Meeks
Meng
Moore
Moulton
Nadler
Neal
Nolan
Norcross
O'Rourke
Pallone
Panetta
Pascrell
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Pingree
Pocan
Polis
Price (NC)
Quigley
Raskin
Roybal-Allard
Ruppersberger
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sanchez
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schiff
Scott (VA)
Scott, David
Serrano
Sewell (AL)
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Soto
Speier
Swalwell (CA)
Takano
Thompson (CA)
Tonko
Torres
Tsongas
Vargas
Veasey
Vela
Velazquez
Wasserman Schultz
Waters, Maxine
Watson Coleman
Welch
Wilson (FL)
Yarmuth
NOES--268
Abraham
Aderholt
Allen
Amash
Amodei
Arrington
Babin
Bacon
Banks (IN)
Barletta
Barr
Barton
Bera
Bergman
Biggs
Bilirakis
Bishop (MI)
Bishop (UT)
Black
Blackburn
Blum
Bost
Brady (TX)
Brat
Brooks (AL)
Brooks (IN)
Brownley (CA)
Buchanan
Buck
Bucshon
Budd
Burgess
Bustos
Byrne
Calvert
Carter (GA)
Carter (TX)
Chabot
Cheney
Coffman
Cole
Collins (GA)
Collins (NY)
Comer
Comstock
Conaway
Cook
Cooper
Costa
Costello (PA)
Cramer
Crawford
Crist
Cuellar
Culberson
Curbelo (FL)
Davidson
Davis, Rodney
Delaney
Denham
Dent
DesJarlais
Diaz-Balart
Donovan
Duffy
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Dunn
Emmer
Estes (KS)
Farenthold
Faso
Ferguson
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Flores
Fortenberry
Foster
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Fudge
Gaetz
Gallagher
Garrett
Gianforte
Gibbs
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Gosar
Gottheimer
Gowdy
Granger
Graves (GA)
Graves (LA)
Graves (MO)
Griffith
Grothman
Guthrie
Handel
Harper
Harris
Hartzler
Hensarling
Herrera Beutler
Hice, Jody B.
Higgins (LA)
Hill
Himes
Holding
Hollingsworth
Hudson
Huizenga
Hultgren
Hunter
Hurd
Issa
Jenkins (KS)
Jenkins (WV)
Johnson (LA)
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Jordan
Joyce (OH)
Katko
Kelly (MS)
Kelly (PA)
Kind
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kinzinger
Knight
Krishnamoorthi
Kuster (NH)
Kustoff (TN)
Labrador
LaHood
LaMalfa
Lamborn
Lance
Latta
Lewis (MN)
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Loebsack
Long
Loudermilk
Love
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
MacArthur
Maloney, Sean
Marchant
Marino
Marshall
Massie
Mast
McCarthy
McCaul
McClintock
McHenry
McKinley
McMorris Rodgers
McSally
Meadows
Meehan
Messer
Mitchell
Moolenaar
Mooney (WV)
Mullin
Murphy (FL)
Newhouse
Noem
Norman
Nunes
O'Halleran
Olson
Palazzo
Palmer
Paulsen
Payne
Pearce
Perry
Peters
Peterson
Pittenger
Poe (TX)
Poliquin
Posey
Ratcliffe
Reed
Reichert
Renacci
Rice (NY)
Rice (SC)
Richmond
Roby
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Rooney, Francis
Rooney, Thomas J.
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross
Rothfus
Rouzer
Royce (CA)
Ruiz
Russell
Rutherford
Sanford
Scalise
Schneider
Schrader
Schweikert
Scott, Austin
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shimkus
Shuster
Simpson
Sinema
Smith (MO)
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smucker
Stefanik
Stewart
Stivers
Suozzi
Taylor
Tenney
Thompson (MS)
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tipton
Trott
Turner
Upton
Valadao
Visclosky
Wagner
Walberg
Walden
Walker
Walorski
Walters, Mimi
Weber (TX)
Webster (FL)
Wenstrup
Westerman
Williams
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Womack
Woodall
Yoder
Yoho
Young (AK)
Young (IA)
Zeldin
NOT VOTING--9
Bridenstine
DeSantis
Doyle, Michael F.
Kihuen
Murphy (PA)
Napolitano
Rosen
Titus
Walz
{time} 1111
Ms. SINEMA, Messrs. GAETZ, MARSHALL, MAST, BANKS of Indiana, and
FRANKS of Arizona changed their vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
Mses. VELAZQUEZ, WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Messrs. KEATING, and CARSON of
Indiana changed their vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment in the nature of a substitute was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The Acting CHAIR (Mrs. Walorski). Pursuant to the rule, it is now in
order to consider a final period of general debate, which shall not
exceed 10 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and
ranking minority member of the Committee on the Budget.
The gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Black) and the gentleman from
Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) each will control 5 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACK. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Alabama (Mr. Palmer), who is a member of the Budget Committee.
Mr. PALMER. Madam Chairman, I appreciate the hard work the Budget
Committee has put forth to produce a budget that prioritizes our
national defense and sets forth bold policy reforms that will get this
country back on track to fiscal responsibility.
Specifically, I am pleased to see that this budget commits to
reducing the substantial amount of improper payments throughout the
Federal Government. The Government Accountability Office estimates that
there were $144 billion--I want to emphasize $144 billion--in improper
payments in 2016 alone, and that is not even a complete estimate. In
fact, 18 Federal programs did not report their improper payments, so
the total is undoubtedly higher.
To make matters worse, since 2013, the amount we have been
incorrectly sending out has been trending upwards. Instead of reducing
our fraudulent payments, the rate at which we pay them out has been
increasing. Since 2003, there has been a total of $1.2 trillion in
improper payments. Let me repeat, that is $1.2 trillion plus interest.
{time} 1115
Because we have been running deficits over that timeframe, we have
literally had to borrow that money to send it to fraudsters and others
who
[[Page H7880]]
would not have received it. This is unacceptable.
As you can see from this chart, this represents improper payments for
2016 alone. It is money borrowed that we pay interest on to send to
people who are not supposed to get it. We are borrowing money and
adding to our debt through improper payments.
This budget, for the first time, sets forth a bold strategy for
cutting these payments in half over the budget window, saving us $700
billion over our 10-year window.
While I hope, in the near future, we can zero these payments out, I
am thrilled to see that we are beginning to tackle a problem that is
putting an additional strain on this country's fiscal problems.
Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this budget.
Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Chairwoman, I yield myself 4 minutes.
Madam Chairwoman, I suppose I should be saying thank you. I will get
a huge tax cut under the Republican tax cut plan, as well the majority
of those people sitting here--the majority of our colleagues in
Congress--who are, like me, fortunate enough to be millionaires
already.
Forgive me if I am in no mood to say thank you, because I was elected
not just to represent millionaires, but to represent aspiring
millionaires, working families, seniors, and veterans. For all of them,
for anyone who isn't already a millionaire, this budget is a slap in
the face.
With all of the problems facing our country right now, all the people
struggling to get ahead, it is unfathomable to me that this Congress
could look at people like me and say: Hey, that guy, let's give him
more money. In fact, let's give all millionaires hundreds of thousands
of dollars in tax cuts.
Really, I am small potatoes. President Trump, according to his
financial disclosure, will get hundreds of millions of dollars in tax
cuts.
Where is all that money coming from? If you are listening to this and
you are not a millionaire, probably from you.
To pay for our own tax cuts and the tax cuts for wealthy donors,
Republicans are going to increase taxes on 45 percent of American
families with children. That is just the start. Seniors, people with
disabilities, and low-income families will see their healthcare cut.
Poor seniors will lose benefits that help them keep food on the table
and their homes heated in the winter. Veteran benefits, meals for
hungry schoolchildren, programs that make education affordable and job
training available, investments that generate economic growth and
create good-paying jobs are all at risk in this budget.
They are also cutting corporate tax rates, which we will be paying
for by plunging our Nation into deeper and deeper debt, giving
multinational giants another advantage over small- and mid-size
businesses in the name of perpetuating the myth of supply-side
economics.
Supply-side failed. They renamed it trickle-down, but nothing
trickled down. Now it is job creators. When that fails, maybe they will
call it ``I get mine now; you get yours later--maybe.'' But whatever
they name it, it is a sham. This plan is a hoax on the American people,
and it will make most people's lives more difficult.
So forgive me if I am in no mood to say thank you for the extra money
in my pocket. With millions of Americans struggling and scraping to get
ahead, and with my tax cut increasing their challenges, I cannot begin
to justify my extra money, and, quite frankly, I cannot fathom how my
Republican colleagues are able to justify theirs.
With this budget, Republicans aren't just passing the buck, they are
pocketing it. Madam Chair, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no''
on the Republican budget.
Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms.
Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.
Ms. PELOSI. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank
him for his great leadership as the ranking member on the Budget
Committee in the House, and I thank all of the members of the Budget
Committee for their great work to make the budget that was proposed
earlier, the Yarmuth budget, a statement of our values. That is exactly
what a budget should be.
A Federal budget should be a statement of our national values, and
what is important to us as a country should be reflected in the
priorities that we place into that budget. The budget before us,
proposed by the Republicans, is just the opposite of that. It is
accompanied by a tax proposal that they put in, one of the biggest
transfers of wealth to the wealthiest people in our country in our
country's history. Every time they do it, they make it worse.
I let you be the judge: Is a statement of our national values to cut
a trillion dollars from Medicaid, cap and take Medicaid down a bad
path, in order to give tax cuts to the richest people in our country?
Is it a statement of our values to take a half trillion dollars out
of Medicare to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in our country?
Our distinguished ranking member has listed some of the things that
would be cut if we went down this unfortunate path posed by our
colleagues on the other side.
This is a budget that steals from the middle class. It steals
hundreds of billions of dollars from critical job-creating, wage-
increasing investments, infrastructure, job training, and clean energy.
It harms veterans, it cuts education, it abandons rural America, and it
guts education.
This is really a mystery to me. When you cut education, with the
stiff competition we have, this is one of the worst budget decisions
that you have made. Nothing brings more money to the Treasury than
investing in education: early childhood, K-12, higher education,
postgraduate, and lifetime learning for our workers.
That is how you grow the economy. That is how you bring money to the
Treasury, and not by cutting it in order to give tax cuts to the
wealthiest people in our country.
Is it a statement of values to cut education so that you have a tax
cut that benefits 80 percent?
I know you don't want the public to hear this, and I can understand
why. How could it be a statement of the values of the American people
to cut the education of our children in order to have a tax cut where
80 percent of it benefits the top 1 percent of people in our country?
It is just not right.
As they do that, the deficit hawks, who seem to be an endangered
species on the Republican side of the aisle these days, are adding
close to $2.4 trillion to the deficit, not counting debt service or
interest on that national debt. Then they say: Oh, that is okay; we
need to increase the national debt by trillions of dollars so that we
can give tax cuts.
Where do the tax cuts go? $2.6 trillion goes to corporate America.
Guess what happens to the middle class. There are $470 billion in tax
increases to the middle class, about a half trillion dollars in
increases to the middle class, $2.5 trillion in tax cuts for corporate
America. Again, it is adding so much to the deficit.
Now they say: Oh, trickle-down economics is going to pay its own way.
We will get that money back.
Not so. It never happens. Nonsense. But don't take it from me. No
less a figure than Bruce Bartlett, who worked for Congressman Jack
Kemp, a real supporter of supply-side economics--and, as was said,
supply-side turn into trickle-down, et cetera. As a proponent of
supply-side economics, he said: We never said it would pay for itself.
We just advocate it as an economic approach.
But anyone who says, and this is from him, that the whole supply-side
dynamic scoring pays for itself--part of this argument--is all
nonsense. It is not true. He went on to say that it was bull--you
finish the sentence.
So, here we are at a place where we can increase the deficit,
decrease job creation, hurt the middle class, benefit the top 1
percent, and add to the national debt in historic proportions that will
be very hard to collect from deficit hawks--if any of you exist over
there.
Instead, we have an opportunity today for a better deal for the
American people--better jobs, better pay, better wages, and a better
future--where we lower costs for America's working families and middle
class families, and where we prepare them with the tools for the
economy of the 21st century.
[[Page H7881]]
I thank the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky, the chair of the
Bourbon Caucus, for his great leadership in bringing a better budget
that is a statement of our national values, that supports American
workers with responsible tax reform, calls for parity between defense
and nondefense, and strengthens the ACA and protects Medicare.
Every time the Republicans come to the floor and try to stack the
deck even further for their wealthy friends, we have to have this
conversation. Democrats will fight these tax cuts and this unfortunate,
deceptive budget that they have on the floor. I urge my colleagues to
start by voting ``no'' today and to continue the conversation with the
American people to fight this unfortunate path they want to take us
down: the road to ruin.
I urge a ``no'' vote.
Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mrs. BLACK. Madam Chairman, I am going to be brief in my closing
comments.
I do want to ask my colleague to consider this: Are we proud of a
country where we are leaving our children and grandchildren in further
and further debt?
During our discussion in this Chamber, we have shared our ideas for
building a better America, an America that we would be proud to entrust
to future generations. While it requires confronting real challenges
along the road ahead, it is, undoubtedly, worth the journey.
First, our budget forces the Federal Government to live within its
means, just like hardworking Americans and small businesses do on a
daily basis.
Second, our budget identifies wasteful spending and finds much-needed
savings and reforms for unsustainable mandatory spending. In fact, our
committee has put forward the largest reform package for mandatory
programs that has been seen in 20 years.
Third, it calls for a robust funding of our military, ensuring the
resources that will allow us to be ready and protect our mainland. It
also starts the process of restoring our military readiness, which
suffered dramatically during the Obama administration.
Finally, our budget is the golden key that unlocks progrowth tax
reform and takes us one step further to the great ideas unveiled in the
framework last week.
Without question, our budget plan reflects American values and shared
priorities. I urge my colleagues to join me in their support for a win
for all Americans, because doing so will begin to ensure a brighter and
better future for generations to come, and I urge a ``yes'' vote.
Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. All time for general debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 553, the Committee rises.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr.
Newhouse) having assumed the chair, Mrs. Walorski, Acting Chair of the
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that
that Committee, having had under consideration the concurrent
resolution (H. Con. Res. 71) establishing the congressional budget for
the United States Government for fiscal year 2018 and setting forth the
appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2019 through 2027, and,
pursuant to House Resolution 553, she reported the concurrent
resolution back to the House.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the rule, the previous question is
ordered.
The question is adoption of the concurrent resolution.
Under clause 10 of rule XX, the yeas and nays are ordered.
Members will record their votes by electronic device.
Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, this 15-minute vote on adoption of
the concurrent resolution will be followed by a 5-minute vote on
agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal, if ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 219,
nays 206, not voting 9, as follows:
[Roll No. 557]
YEAS--219
Abraham
Aderholt
Allen
Amodei
Arrington
Babin
Bacon
Banks (IN)
Barletta
Barr
Barton
Bergman
Biggs
Bilirakis
Bishop (MI)
Bishop (UT)
Black
Blackburn
Bost
Brady (TX)
Brat
Brooks (AL)
Brooks (IN)
Buchanan
Bucshon
Budd
Burgess
Byrne
Calvert
Carter (GA)
Carter (TX)
Chabot
Cheney
Coffman
Cole
Collins (GA)
Collins (NY)
Comer
Conaway
Cook
Cramer
Crawford
Culberson
Curbelo (FL)
Davidson
Davis, Rodney
Denham
DesJarlais
Diaz-Balart
Donovan
Duffy
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Dunn
Emmer
Estes (KS)
Farenthold
Faso
Ferguson
Fleischmann
Flores
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gaetz
Gallagher
Garrett
Gianforte
Gibbs
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Gosar
Gowdy
Granger
Graves (GA)
Graves (LA)
Graves (MO)
Griffith
Grothman
Guthrie
Handel
Harper
Harris
Hartzler
Hensarling
Herrera Beutler
Hice, Jody B.
Higgins (LA)
Hill
Holding
Hollingsworth
Hudson
Huizenga
Hultgren
Hunter
Hurd
Issa
Jenkins (KS)
Jenkins (WV)
Johnson (LA)
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jordan
Joyce (OH)
Kelly (MS)
Kelly (PA)
King (IA)
Kinzinger
Knight
Kustoff (TN)
Labrador
LaHood
LaMalfa
Lamborn
Latta
Lewis (MN)
Long
Loudermilk
Love
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
MacArthur
Marchant
Marino
Marshall
McCarthy
McCaul
McClintock
McHenry
McMorris Rodgers
McSally
Meadows
Messer
Mitchell
Moolenaar
Mooney (WV)
Mullin
Newhouse
Noem
Norman
Nunes
Olson
Palazzo
Palmer
Paulsen
Pearce
Perry
Pittenger
Poe (TX)
Poliquin
Posey
Ratcliffe
Reed
Reichert
Renacci
Rice (SC)
Roby
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Rooney, Francis
Rooney, Thomas J.
Roskam
Ross
Rothfus
Rouzer
Royce (CA)
Russell
Rutherford
Ryan (WI)
Sanford
Scalise
Schweikert
Scott, Austin
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shimkus
Shuster
Simpson
Smith (MO)
Smith (NE)
Smith (TX)
Smucker
Stefanik
Stewart
Stivers
Taylor
Tenney
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tipton
Trott
Turner
Upton
Valadao
Wagner
Walberg
Walden
Walker
Walorski
Walters, Mimi
Weber (TX)
Webster (FL)
Wenstrup
Westerman
Williams
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Womack
Woodall
Yoder
Yoho
Young (AK)
Young (IA)
Zeldin
NAYS--206
Adams
Aguilar
Amash
Barragan
Bass
Beatty
Bera
Beyer
Bishop (GA)
Blum
Blumenauer
Blunt Rochester
Bonamici
Boyle, Brendan F.
Brady (PA)
Brown (MD)
Brownley (CA)
Buck
Bustos
Butterfield
Capuano
Carbajal
Cardenas
Carson (IN)
Cartwright
Castor (FL)
Castro (TX)
Chu, Judy
Cicilline
Clark (MA)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Comstock
Connolly
Conyers
Cooper
Correa
Costa
Costello (PA)
Courtney
Crist
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis, Danny
DeFazio
DeGette
Delaney
DeLauro
DelBene
Demings
Dent
DeSaulnier
Deutch
Dingell
Doggett
Ellison
Engel
Eshoo
Espaillat
Esty (CT)
Evans
Fitzpatrick
Foster
Frankel (FL)
Fudge
Gabbard
Gallego
Garamendi
Gomez
Gonzalez (TX)
Gottheimer
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hanabusa
Hastings
Heck
Higgins (NY)
Himes
Hoyer
Huffman
Jackson Lee
Jayapal
Jeffries
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones
Kaptur
Katko
Keating
Kelly (IL)
Kennedy
Khanna
Kildee
Kilmer
Kind
King (NY)
Krishnamoorthi
Kuster (NH)
Lance
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lawrence
Lawson (FL)
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lieu, Ted
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Loebsack
Lofgren
Lowenthal
Lowey
Lujan Grisham, M.
Lujan, Ben Ray
Lynch
Maloney, Carolyn B.
Maloney, Sean
Massie
Mast
Matsui
McCollum
McEachin
McGovern
McKinley
McNerney
Meehan
Meeks
Meng
Moore
Moulton
Murphy (FL)
Nadler
Neal
Nolan
Norcross
O'Halleran
O'Rourke
Pallone
Panetta
Pascrell
Payne
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Peters
Peterson
Pingree
Pocan
Polis
Price (NC)
Quigley
Raskin
Rice (NY)
Richmond
Ros-Lehtinen
Roybal-Allard
Ruiz
Ruppersberger
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sanchez
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schiff
Schneider
Schrader
Scott (VA)
Scott, David
Serrano
Sewell (AL)
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Sinema
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (NJ)
Smith (WA)
Soto
Speier
Suozzi
Swalwell (CA)
Takano
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tonko
Torres
Tsongas
Vargas
Veasey
Vela
Velazquez
Visclosky
Wasserman Schultz
Waters, Maxine
Watson Coleman
Welch
Wilson (FL)
Yarmuth
[[Page H7882]]
NOT VOTING--9
Bridenstine
DeSantis
Doyle, Michael F.
Kihuen
Murphy (PA)
Napolitano
Rosen
Titus
Walz
{time} 1148
Mr. HOYER changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
So the concurrent resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
PERSONAL EXPLANATION
Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Speaker, I was absent during roll call votes No.
556 through 557 due to my spouse's health situation in California. Had
I been present, I would have voted aye on the Yarmuth of Kentucky
Substitute Amendment No. 4, and no on final passage of the Budget
Resolution.
____________________