[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 25651]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    THE RIGHT PRIORITIES FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Mr. Speaker, after claiming that they believe in 
fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, the Republicans in their 
years of control in Washington have created the deepest budget deficits 
in American history and spiraling national debt.
  Now, after abandoning fiscal responsibility and borrowing to pay for 
tax cuts and to reconstruct Baghdad, Republicans say they must cut 
programs that primarily serve disadvantaged Americans in order to pay 
for reconstructing the Katrina-leveled gulf region. No other emergency 
funding required offsets.
  They claim that they are going to get tough on Federal spending 
through the budget reconciliation process where they propose a cut over 
$50 billion. They are getting tough all right, tough on the weak and 
needy, because this is where the cutting will be done: $10 billion in 
Medicaid cuts to health services for poor children and long-term care 
patients, and increasing the costs of prescription drugs for those 
beneficiaries; $844 million in food stamp cuts, eliminating nutrition 
and school lunch and breakfast benefits for hundreds of thousands of 
families and children; $14 billion in cuts to student aid programs, 
raising the costs of college for students and their families through 
the increased interest rates and loan fees. And it cuts all 
discretionary spending programs, such as veterans' health care, by a 2 
percent across-the-board cut.
  I listened to some of my Republican friends yesterday who likened the 
increased spending to increasing a child's allowance, but the analogy 
does not work. These cuts are not the same as taking away an allowance 
which a parent gives a child for candy, ice cream, movies, books and 
incidentals. It is more like taking away the child's meals, not taking 
them to the doctor, denying them college tuition, and then the parents 
borrowing for a vacation and having the child have to pay for it out of 
their allowance.
  Many reports and the Washington Post even in an editorial last month 
pointed out that the Republican post-Katrina budget plan would add to 
the deficit, not reduce it, because the required spending cuts do not 
come close to paying for the at least $70 billion in new tax cuts 
provided for in the budget, cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest 
Americans and that apparently remain sacrosanct no matter what other 
expenses pile up.
  I think the American public needs to know what the Congressional 
Budget Office said about some of those cuts. That office said last 
Thursday that the House Medicaid cuts would save more than $30 billion 
over 10 years. However, that office, the Congressional Budget Office, 
also pointed out that these savings will not come from the premiums and 
copays the Republicans say will create the savings, but they will come 
because those cuts would keep our must vulnerable communities and 
residents out of the health care system.
  Many of those people dropped would be the hard-working poor. The 
majority of those dropped, like those in Tennessee like I visited with 
last week, would be African American and other minorities. But there 
will be large numbers of people with disabilities, children, people 
living in our rural areas and the poor of every race, ethnicity and 
nationality.
  So instead of closing the health care disparity gap, which causes 
close to 100,000 premature, preventable deaths in this country every 
year, this body, should it pass the Republican budget package, would by 
that act be increasing those deaths and continuing the health care 
inequality which the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called the 
most shocking and inhumane of all.
  The poor folks, the folks in our rural areas, people with 
disabilities, seniors, people of color, immigrants, and our children 
should not be made to carry the burden of the war and pay for the 
luxuries of the rich. At the same time the Republicans are proposing 
such spending cuts, they are preparing to move forward with $106 
billion in additional tax cuts this year that will largely benefit the 
wealthy.
  Will it save money? No. The net result of the GOP budget plan is $100 
billion of debt over the next 5 years.
  As I said to my American Legion this past weekend, America is being 
transformed by the actions of this administration and this Congress 
into a country I do not recognize, one that has gone far astray from 
the values and principles on which it was founded and on which this 
United States became the leader of the free world. What this budget 
reconciliation will do and what it says about this country is not what 
they fought for and laid their lives on the line for. It dishonors 
their service and that of the men and women who are fighting for this 
Nation even today.
  So it is my hope and prayer that my friends on the other side of the 
aisle will abandon the irresponsible and heartless budget plan. Now is 
not the time to cut programs that are vital to the victims of 
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and to our most vulnerable citizens who, 
like those victims, also face smaller but just as devastating 
socioeconomic hurricanes every day, while they have cut taxes for the 
most fortunate and add to the deficit.
  These are not the actions of a people who value life as Americans do. 
These are not the right priorities for our country.

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