[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5557-5560]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1720
                             FISCAL CHOICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ross of Florida). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Yarmuth) is recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor for me to come to the 
floor of the House of Representatives this afternoon to join some of my 
colleagues on the Democratic side of the Budget Committee to talk about 
choices. You know, government is all about choosing. It is setting 
priorities, and it is choosing what we are going to spend the people's 
money for, how much we are going to ask the people to pay to the 
government, and how we are going to spend those dollars. It is all 
about choosing.
  It is also about values. This week, this issue of choices is playing 
itself out in two arenas in government, one in the continuing 
resolution battle that took place on this floor this afternoon, the 
idea that we have to figure out how to fund the government for the rest 
of this fiscal year ending September 30, and whether or not we are 
willing to let the government shut down tomorrow night because of the 
choices that we either make or refuse to make. And it is also playing 
itself out now in the development of the budget for the following 
fiscal year, 2012.
  Yesterday in the Budget Committee, we considered the budget proposal 
offered by Chairman Ryan and the Republicans that offered some very 
stark choices for the American people. They are similar to the choices 
that we have been debating week after week after week for the last 
couple of months about how we are going to fund the government for the 
rest of the year.
  From the Democratic perspective, at least I know from my perspective, 
the reason I have not been willing to support the Republican versions 
of the continuing resolutions that have come to this floor is that they 
make choices which don't seem very fair to me. They don't seem to 
represent the values that this country has always embraced, the values 
of fairness and justice and the idea that we are all in this great 
journey together and that we are trying to create a country that works 
for everybody and not just for a very few.
  Today, the Republicans brought to the floor a continuing resolution 
to fund the government for one more week. These are the choices they 
made as to what we should cut in order to avoid shutting the government 
down: they wanted to eliminate $143 million for school lunch assistance 
programs; $187 million for education for the disadvantaged programs, 
school improvement funds, education innovative improvement programs, 
and adult education. It cuts the WIC program, nutrition for low-income 
families, women and their children; the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy. They want to cut $495 million from FEMA's first responder 
program.
  All these things they wanted to cut; and yet when you ask them 
whether they want to have other people, the wealthiest people, the big 
corporations, the people who have done very well in this country over 
the last couple of decades, if you ask them, why don't we make them 
share some of the burden of balancing this budget, they say: Oh, no, we 
can't do that. We can't do that.
  Let me just illustrate with this chart one of the choices that they 
made in the 2012 budget proposal. They chose to include, refused to 
eliminate, $800 billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of 
Americans, and instead cut $771 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 
years. This was a choice.
  Do we want to make sure that our senior citizens have access to 
nursing homes, that our disabled population has access to assisted 
living facilities and home care? Our young, low-income, poor families, 
do we want to make sure that they have health care? Or do we want to 
make sure that the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans continue to have 
their cake and eat it, too? Their choice in the budget and in the 
continuing resolution is to let those wealthiest Americans have their 
cake and eat it, too, and let the most vulnerable segments of society 
pay the price of helping to balance the budget.
  I am a big fan of political cartoons, and today's cartoon in The 
Washington Post I think said it all, because one of

[[Page 5558]]

the other proposals that the Republicans made in their 2012 budget 
proposal was not just to maintain the tax breaks for the wealthiest 
Americans, but to increase them. They want to cut the maximum tax rate 
from 35 percent, which was the rate that it was cut to by the Bush 
administration, they wanted to cut it even further to 25 percent. In 
other words, a 10 percent additional tax cut for the wealthiest 
Americans.
  As a matter of fact, I offered an amendment in the hearing to rescind 
the Bush tax cut for only those people making over $1 million a year, 
only those people making over $1 million a year. They voted it down 
unanimously.
  But here is the cartoon by Tom Toles in The Washington Post. It has, 
and I won't name him, but a Republican member of the Budget Committee, 
offering a platter that says ``More Tax Cuts for Wealthy.'' And the 
``Truly Rich Guy'' says: ``Stop!! I can't eat another bite!'' And the 
Republican says: ``Sorry, everybody has to share the pain.''
  This is one of the choices we have. It is stark: again, tax cuts for 
the wealthiest Americans, or health care, education, nutrition for the 
other 90 percent of the American people who have not done so well.
  So as we move through this process of choosing both how we are going 
to fund the government until September 30 and how we're going to fund 
it into the future, the American people need to know whose side the 
Republican majority is on and whose side the Democrats are on.
  With that, I yield to my colleague, a member of the Budget Committee 
from New York (Mr. Tonko).
  Mr. TONKO. I thank you, Representative Yarmuth, and thank you for 
leading the next 30 minutes of discussion here which I think are very 
critical to the lives of Americans, the American public and American 
working families across our Nation.
  It is an honor to serve with you on our Budget Committee as we spent 
countless hours yesterday dealing with a saga of a budget for 2012. 
Just as we're trying to avoid a shutdown of America's government this 
very hour, they are also pushing through in a rather rushed format a 
2012 fiscal plan that takes the pain and suffering of the 2011 plan and 
expands it exponentially. They grow it drastically, the pain for 2012.
  As you indicated, these are choices that we have before us. I believe 
firmly that our budgets, whatever level--Federal, State, local--are a 
reflection of our values, our principles, our priorities. That's where 
we are now, whether we are trying to avoid a shutdown for the 2011 
fiscal year which is looming over us, or whether we are putting 
together the 2012 fiscal plan. It is about priorities and values and 
principles that we hold near and dear. It is also a statement on an 
economic agenda.
  I have before me here this chart that speaks about the 1.8 million 
jobs that have been added since last year, since 2010; 1.8 million 
private sector jobs. You can see the precipitous drop that came with 
the red ink of the close of the Bush recession. And then early in 2009, 
we began to recover. We stopped the bleeding of the recession, and it 
has been a slow but steady and upward and forward climb as we have 
introduced new jobs into the private sector arena that allows us to now 
work away at those 8.2 million jobs that were lost during the Bush 
recession.
  Why we would want to stop that progress is beyond me; but those are 
the cuts that will be made here in the 2011 scenario, by which we are 
attempting to avoid a shutdown, and the 2012 budget where there are 
cuts to R&D and to science and technology.
  I served as president and CEO of NYSERDA, the New York State Energy 
Research and Development Authority, prior to coming here a couple of 
years ago. I saw firsthand what science and tech means in terms of job 
growth and expanding the opportunities.

                              {time}  1730

  And so these cuts that are part of the 2011 plan and the 2012 budget 
that we're dealing with in double-dose fashion will mean tremendous 
pain for our middle class families.
  We need to commit to a jobs agenda. The people told Democrats and 
Republicans alike in campaign season it's about jobs, jobs, jobs, and 
the economy. It's not about growing another pricetag, draining our 
economy with the cost of a shutdown. We need to avoid that shutdown.
  One of the concerns yesterday when we were meeting on the 2012 budget 
format was--my concern, your concern, our concern as Democrats on that 
Budget Committee--to avoid the end of Medicare. This plan, introduced 
by our Republicans on the Budget Committee, is called the ``roadmap.'' 
And I said it's a road to ruin for our middle class, for our working 
families. They want to end Medicare, a system that has worked for over 
40 years for 46 million Americans. And what does it do? It shifts risk 
from government over to the senior citizen. It asks the senior citizen 
to dig deep into the pocket, and then every year dig deeper.
  They are already suggesting that the beneficiaries' costs will more 
than double by the year 2022 and then more than triple by the year 
2030. Is this what we're about? Are these our values? Are these our 
principles? Are these our priorities? I would say boldly, no, they are 
not. They are not. And senior citizens are already getting wind of this 
idea, and they are supporting our efforts to stop the end to Medicare, 
which is part of the format that they have introduced, part of the 
legislation they have introduced for their budget for 2012.
  We failed in that attempt. You and I supported it--Gwen Moore has 
joined us I see. We all supported that push to end their desire to end 
Medicare. We failed with it, and that will be coming to a vote before 
the full House I think next week.
  So these are the things that people need to be alerted to. These are 
the issues that are going to be tough for middle class America to 
assume for the poor, the working poor, for the masses out there. And 
when we see the concentration of wealth and all the benefits and all 
the focus being in just the upper echelon, we understand what their 
choices are. Their choices are different than ours--they're with Big 
Oil, they're with big banks, they're with special interests, they're 
with millionaires, billionaires. They're with handouts to the oil 
companies that are sitting on record profits of over $1 trillion. We're 
there with the middle class families, the working families, making 
certain that we create jobs, retain jobs, and keep this pattern of 
activity going.
  Thank you, Representative Yarmuth, for bringing us together for what 
I think is an urgent, urgent dialogue that needs to reach every 
household in America.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from New 
York and thank him for his work on the Budget Committee as well, and 
standing up for all Americans as we try to recover from the greatest 
economic crisis we've had since the Great Depression 80 years ago.
  I forgot to mention one thing earlier when I was talking about the 
proposal to raise the taxes of people making over $1 million a year 
back to the Clinton-era tax levels. And what's interesting about those 
Clinton-era tax levels, when the highest rate was 39.6 percent, during 
that time, 20.8 million jobs were created in the United States in the 
private sector. Then came the Bush tax cuts and took the maximum level 
tax to 35 percent; 653,000 jobs lost in the private sector.
  I know it seems counterintuitive because the mythology has grown out 
there that when you lower taxes, it stimulates economic activity. The 
reality is quite different: 39.6 rate, 20.8 million jobs created; cut 
it to 35 percent, 653,000 jobs lost.
  What about annual growth rates? Again, during the Clinton years when 
the high rate was 39.6, 3.9 percent real GPD growth over that period. 
When 35 percent, 2.1 percent real GPD growth. So the reality is that 
lower tax rates do not necessarily equate with better growth or more 
jobs. What they do equate with is a continuing separation of the very 
wealthiest Americans from everybody else.
  Over the last 30 years, the percentage of all the income earned in 
the country

[[Page 5559]]

by the top 1 percent has gone from 9 percent to 33 percent; 33 percent 
of all the income earned in this country goes to the top 1 percent. 
They make more and they own more than the bottom 90 percent of the 
people in this country.
  So all we're saying is, we know that everybody is going to have to 
share in this sacrifice to try and get our fiscal house in order, but 
we're only asking the most vulnerable people to share. The people who 
have been doing the best in this country, we're not asking them to even 
have a little bit of an inconvenience.
  And someone who can speak so articulately and passionately about the 
wrong choice that the Republicans are making is someone who has come 
from that world, who lives with that world every day, who represents 
the great city of Milwaukee, our colleague, Gwen Moore.
  I would like to yield to her now.
  Ms. MOORE. Thank you for yielding, gentleman, and thank you for 
putting together this Special Order.
  I can tell you that it has been very distressing to watch the 
progress of this budget being put together for the American people. And 
part of the distress I think is because of the sort of psychological 
warfare that is being committed here. I think that the Orwellian way 
that the budget is being presented--it's being presented as we have got 
to make draconian cuts in the budget in order to heal our fledgling 
economy, and especially, we have to so-called ``reform'' our 
entitlements programs in order to maintain them for the future.
  There has been a call for an adult conversation about this, a call 
for the facts and for the truth, and no accounting gimmicks and no 
gimmickry in this discussion of reforming entitlement programs. 
Democrats are admonished not to scare seniors with entitlement reform 
and to demagogue the issue, and yet what we have seen from the 
Republicans are these fire engine red colorful charts warning us of the 
burden that the aging baby boomers will impose upon the hapless 
taxpayer unless we adopt the so-called austere ``path to prosperity,'' 
which ends the entitlement to Medicaid, caps those benefits, which 
turns Medicare into a voucher--so-called ``premium supports''--and 
which gives instruction to the Ways and Means Committee to privatize or 
to fix Social Security.
  Now experts have told us, even though the Republican Budget Committee 
has told us that Medicare and Medicaid are driving the budget deficits 
and that they are the cause of this huge, tremendous debt, experts 
across the spectrum have told us that the real problem with health care 
costs is the growth of health care in the private market. We have seen 
health care costs double, in double digits, increase by double digits 
every single year. We have seen private health insurance premiums 
increase, double within the last 20 years. And so it doesn't matter 
whether you're a Medicaid recipient, whether you are a double 
recipient--a Medicare recipient who is also using Medicaid because 
you're in a nursing home. It doesn't matter if you're a large 
corporation, Harley Davidson or Xerox Corporation. It doesn't matter if 
you're a small business operator. It doesn't matter if you're someone 
who is on the individual market looking for insurance. Nobody can 
afford to fuel these profits for pharmaceutical companies, $20 million 
annual salaries for insurance executives, and all of the other 
giveaways to wealthy insurance companies.
  Medicare was overpaying insurance companies by 14 percent until we 
enacted the Affordable Care Act. We cannot afford, in Medicare part D, 
the prescription drug program, we simply cannot afford to have a 
program where Medicare pays pharmaceutical companies for a large 
group--like Medicare recipients--and then not negotiate the drug prices 
as they would with any group. I mean, there are companies, large 
corporations with a much smaller pool of employees that benefit from 
negotiating for the group, and the law that the Republicans passed, the 
Medicare part D, doesn't allow those negotiations. These are easy 
fixes. These are easy fixes that could reap us billions of dollars in 
savings.
  Social Security. Social Security. There is some very low-hanging 
fruit if people would want to come to the table and negotiate in good 
faith to create a solvent situation for Social Security well beyond the 
baby boomer years. We could raise payroll taxes beyond the $106,800 cap 
that is now in place.

                              {time}  1740

  But, of course, our Republican colleagues have an aversion, as the 
gentleman has pointed out, of shared sacrifice. No one who earns money 
and who has reaped the benefits of this great American economy should 
be asked to pay taxes. Who should be made to pay taxes? Those suffering 
working class, middle class folks.
  The gentleman has shared with us earlier in his chart where they're 
proposing to lower the top tax rate by 10 points, down from 35 percent 
to 25 percent. Yet they claim that this is a budget-neutral act.
  Well, come on now. You know, I don't have a degree from the Wharton 
School of Economics, but I can tell you that if it's budget neutral and 
we're still going to receive those revenues, then that must mean that 
somebody else is going to pay the taxes. Am I wrong about that?
  I would like to ask the gentleman.
  Mr. YARMUTH. You're absolutely right. If we're going to be revenue 
neutral and we're going to cut the taxes of some people, then other 
people are going to have to pay more. And, unfortunately, in this 
particular proposal, it's going to be the people who can afford it the 
least.
  I thank the gentlelady for her contributions.
  I want to welcome another colleague from the Budget Committee, 
Allyson Schwartz from Pennsylvania, who has been instrumental in 
developing the Affordable Care Act as a member of the Ways and Means 
Committee in the last Congress and the Budget Committee and who now 
serves as a very prominent member of the Budget Committee.
  I yield to the gentlewoman.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ. Thank you very much. I'm pleased to participate in 
their conversation, and I just want to make a few comments, and then 
maybe we can talk further about really what the Republicans proposed in 
their budget.
  We sit on the Budget Committee. We went through 12 hours in what we 
call here in Congress a markup, but really it was a debate and a real 
reflection on the contrast between what the Republicans are offering to 
the American people and the way to tackle what are very, very serious 
financial problems for the country. I think we all agree that they're 
serious, that we have to make sure that we take seriously the deficit 
and bring down the deficit over time and be able to get to a balanced 
budget at some point and begin to pay down the national debt. We all 
agree on that.
  The real issue here is how do we do it? What are the choices we are 
making? What's on the table for discussion? And we offered up a number 
of suggestions and ways that we might take some of the money--you've 
talked about this already before I got here, about the tax breaks for 
the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, the tax subsidies for the five 
largest oil and gas companies. We're talking about literally hundreds 
of billions of dollars here, that instead they have chosen to protect 
those subsidies and those tax breaks and instead to make real cuts in 
what we believe are some real priorities for us. So budgets are all 
about choices and priorities.
  I want to particularly talk about not just the spending cuts and 
where else we might be able to take spending cuts. We're interested in 
everything being on the table and looking at the Department of Defense, 
for example, which some Republicans agreed with us on.
  But one of the changes that they are making--and many of us refer to 
this as the Ryan budget, but right now it is actually the Republican 
budget. This is no longer your colleague from Wisconsin's ideas, but it 
is really the Republican budget that was passed. It was announced by 
the Republicans last

[[Page 5560]]

night and will be on the floor potentially next week. And there are 
dramatic changes for our seniors in this country. Dramatic changes.
  We have said to our seniors and our future seniors that when you get 
to be 65, there's going to be security for you in terms of payment for 
your health care. They have changed that for future seniors. There will 
no longer be guaranteed benefits for future seniors. They will instead 
be offered a voucher. It will not be the whole cost of buying private 
insurance. They have said that. It will be support for the premium, not 
the whole thing. And then seniors will have to go--and I think Paul 
Ryan mentioned this yesterday--shopping in the insurance marketplace 
for the best insurance they can get.
  When I think about that, maybe that sounds okay. You know, you go 
shopping. You've got a voucher in your pocket. It sounds like a coupon. 
You can go to the store, and you're going to be able to get 80 percent 
of costs paid.
  However, this is health insurance, and what we already know is that 
the insurance industry was not inclined, before the Affordable Care 
Act, to cover insurance for sick people. They didn't want to cover sick 
kids. We had to pass a law that said you can't discriminate against 
children. You have to let them buy health insurance and cover that 
illness. And they certainly don't want to cover sick adults.
  Well, when I go talk to a group of seniors, and I can be at a senior 
center or any number of places we've all visited as Members of 
Congress, and we'll have a group of 50, 100 people, and I ask, Do any 
of you take any medications?
  And they all laugh: Of course, I take medication.
  Do any of you take two prescription medications?
  Of course.
  Do any of you take three or four?
  These are a healthy group of seniors. They look healthy to me. You 
know, they're out and about and they're listening to a Member of 
Congress. And I ask, Well, how are you going to go out and buy 
insurance that's going to be affordable for you?
  What we know and what seniors tell us is that they know that if they 
go to a voucher program and they're no longer guaranteed, they will no 
longer have guaranteed benefits, that their voucher will become less 
helpful over time as expenses go up, that there will be no controls on 
how their taxpayer dollars will be used.
  So let me just close, if I may, by saying that seniors know that 
privatizing Medicare--and that's what this is, it's privatizing 
Medicare--will limit their benefits, will be obstacles to care and on 
certain reimbursements, that copayments for primary care or copayments 
for specialty care could be quite significant, that there could be 
exclusions for certain services that they need, that there could be 
discrimination based on income and age and illness, and there's more 
uncertainty if they face a serious illness going forward.
  So I just wanted to show two charts that maybe we will want to talk 
about as we go forward. One of them is, to just follow up on what I 
said about choices, here we are faced with a choice that the 
Republicans have made, which is to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 
Americans. It's going to cost about $800 billion, and instead they are 
going to dismantle--this is the case of Medicaid, which is really about 
seniors in nursing homes, frail elderly in nursing homes, costing about 
$771 billion. That's a decision they've made.
  We can talk more about how we've bent the cost curve, if we can use 
that language, on Medicare. We have already taken some serious action.
  I'm happy to have further conversation with my colleagues about what 
this Republican budget means to seniors across this country.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you.
  I would like to yield again to Mr. Tonko, who has another 
illustration he wants to give us.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Yarmuth.
  I will do this quickly because I know time is ticking away.
  We all mentioned the concern about Medicare and how they're going to 
privatize it. Well, here it is, the end to Medicare. This is the buyer 
beware chart. This shows the Republican proposal in 2022 dollars and 
the Medicare model in 2022 dollars. And the voucher simply isn't going 
to cover much. They're suggesting 32 percent. So that leaves a $12,500 
price tag to be assumed by--you guessed it--the senior. Dig into your 
pocket. Under the current Medicare model, it leaves you with a $6,150 
price tag.

                              {time}  1750

  So it's going to more than double the commitment from the senior 
citizen. This is the ``buyer beware'' chart. The happy shopping spree 
isn't so happy. Representative Yarmuth, I just wanted to point that 
out. The bar graph shows it plain and simple: buyer beware.
  This is an attack on middle class America. It's an attack on the 
system that has worked well for so many decades, and certainly it is a 
priority that is not ours. It is theirs. We are for the working 
families of this country, and we will continue to fight that fight.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Again, a perfect illustration of the choices that we 
face as a country as we move forward over the next decades.
  We know we have fiscal problems. We know we have very difficult 
choices. The Republicans have chosen to put the cost of balancing the 
budget on seniors, on low-income families, on working families, and to 
completely spare oil companies, millionaires and billionaires, hedge 
fund managers, and anyone else who has made the most of America, who 
has done the best, and who needs the least help. The Republicans leave 
them without any role to play.
  Just in the few seconds remaining, I would like to ask Representative 
Moore if she has any closing comments.
  Ms. MOORE. I think that budgeting is not just about numbers and 
figures; it's about values.
  I think that the Republicans have made it very, very clear that they 
want limited government. They particularly don't want government 
enriching the lives of individuals. You would think that they would 
want to protect some things that are not individual things, like clean 
air, clean water, food safety protection, but they are eviscerating all 
of these programs as well: research for cancer, the creation of green 
energy jobs, the Community Development Block Grant programs.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I want to thank my colleagues from the Budget Committee 
for joining me, and thanks to the American people for paying attention 
to this very important process we are in now.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________