[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5670]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1100
                              TWO AMERICAS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, that was great rhetoric but not reality. 
Thank God when the Architect built this Capitol, he put a top on it 
that attracts lightning rods; otherwise, who knows what would happen in 
front of us.
  The budget that was put up yesterday talked about defense, but it 
also had one other element in it. That was restricting the District of 
Columbia from using funds for low-income women to get family planning 
or abortions.
  If you really wanted to take care of the troops, you would fund a 
spending proposal that took care of the troops and you wouldn't add a 
rider to it that you know that no human being who cared about women's 
choice would vote for. You eliminate a great percentage of your 
possible supporters. If the troops are number one and number one only, 
you don't put something on with DC abortion rights on it because that 
eliminates part of your constituency.
  Now, one of the previous speakers talked about this too, the one that 
was back into Led Zeppelin. I haven't figured that one out yet. But it 
was something about Planned Parenthood. Why is Planned Parenthood an 
issue? Because the Republican majority made it an issue. They put in 
their budget that there will be no funding for Planned Parenthood, a 
specific organization. Not any organization that does family planning, 
not any organization that might provide abortions, but Planned 
Parenthood. And that is a sticking point in the negotiations.
  It is wrong to single out a single organization that helps women with 
their family planning and that does give low-income women opportunities 
to get tests for HIV/AIDS and for breast cancer and for all other types 
of women's health issues. The Republicans have made that an issue, and 
they made it such an issue that they wouldn't have a clean CR proposal 
yesterday.
  Mr. Hoyer offered a proposal. He said, Let's just continue the budget 
for a week at its current spending plans. No cuts, true. They could 
come later. That was resoundingly rejected because they wanted to go 
forward with their extreme social policy, and that's what matters to 
them. They can hide behind what they want.
  The fact is there are two America's today. I read about it when I was 
a young person. Michael Harrington wrote a book decades ago called 
``The Other America.'' It was about an America that didn't get the 
support that it needed--Appalachia, poor people, regular folks that 
didn't get what they needed and didn't have the opportunity that this 
country should give everybody. The two Americas are the upper 1 percent 
that aren't going to be paying more taxes and the other 99 percent that 
do.
  One gentleman said the Democrats want everybody to pay more taxes. 
No, not everybody; just the millionaires. And they wouldn't go along 
with that, because the millionaires are the party that control the 
Republicans. That's what they're about. They won't fund--put a tax 
proposal on that will tax millionaires because they want the middle 
class to pay more. Their budget blueprint that's going to come out 
lowers the overall rate to 25 percent--even more for millionaires.
  And the billionaires, they're not watching today, Mr. Speaker, 
because they've got their lobbyists working for them. They came here in 
December and they took the estate tax from a million dollar exemption 
to a $5 million exemption. And they took the rate that really mattered 
to them from 55 to 35 percent so they can pass that wealth on and 
continue the differences in America.
  Two Americas: The upper 1 percent that the majority party represents, 
and the other 99 percent that we represent.
  Mr. Speaker, let's get abortion out of the debate. Let's protect our 
troops. Let's keep this government moving.

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