[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 27283]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 27283]]

            A 1-PERCENT CUT IN THE BUDGET DOES NOT CUT WASTE

  (Mr. GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the Social Security program is one 
of our most successful domestic programs ever created. It guarantees 
retirement security benefits for millions of Americans, and yet what
we are seeing now today as the Republican majority's budget process
uses 17 billion in Social Security Trust Fund, this budget process
did nothing for Social Security, did nothing for Medicare and hurts
every family. The bill does not extend Social Security 1 day, 1 day,
and it provides not one penny for a prescription benefit for Medicare
recipients. The only thing it does do is it hurts every American 
family, but they did want to provide an irresponsible tax cut that 
somehow they forgot about the last few days.
  A 1-percent cut in the budget does not cut waste. Ninety-nine percent 
spending for a carrier that the Navy does not want and does not need is 
still 99 percent waste. What they are doing though is saying: well, we 
are not going to cut our pork; we are going to cut everybody. But let 
me tell my colleagues that carrier is still going to be built, and it 
is still going to be waste.
  The budget gimmick of putting off the research for medical with the 
NIH is atrocious. What they are doing is playing with people's lives 
that have cancer and diabetes, just to name a few.

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