[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5785-5792]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FISCAL CHOICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor to be here on the floor 
of the House of Representatives talking to the American people about 
one of the most critical things that this body does, and that is to 
decide how much money we ask our citizens to contribute to the 
government and how that money is going to be spent.
  I didn't come here intending to respond to the gentleman who spoke 
before me, but he cast in one respect the whole debate over our budget 
very well when we had Mr. Broun's four-way test. The first thing that 
Mr. Broun

[[Page 5786]]

listed was: Is it right/moral? And I agree with him because when we 
debate the budget of the United States, when we debate how we are going 
to spend the taxpayers' money, the first question we should ask is: Is 
it right, and is it moral? The converse is if we don't spend something, 
is it wrong and is it immoral.
  Today, I had the great honor of visiting Walter Reed Hospital. I got 
to speak with several of our extremely brave, courageous soldiers who 
have been injured in battle. And one young man who lost both legs, one 
just above the knee and one all of the way to his pelvis, and lost a 
little bit of finger on one hand was on what can only be described as 
bionic legs which he said are extremely good, the technology is 
extremely advanced; but they still don't help him walk. He talked to us 
for a long time about what he had been through, the progress he had 
made, and what he hoped to achieve with technology.

                              {time}  2010

  His parting comment to us was that this is the result of the Federal 
Government spending money on medical research. This is helping people 
not just in the military, not just in the Armed Forces, but also in the 
private arena as well.
  So I look at what the Republican budget has done, which we will 
consider later in the week; and it slashes money for medical research. 
I say let's apply Mr. Broun's four-way test: Is it right? Is it moral? 
Also, does it make any sense to cut medical research when we have brave 
men and women who after making incredible sacrifices are reacquiring 
some of their lives because of the taxpayer money we have spent in 
funding critical research? It would be immoral--Don was his name--to 
deny Don his request that we continue to fund medical research that is 
going to help him regain his capabilities, his physical function, as 
well as to continue to fund the medical research that will help the 
thousands of young men and women who have sacrificed so much for us.
  So as we enter this debate this week on the Republican budget 
proposal/the Democratic alternative budget proposal, we have choices to 
make. That's always what government is about. It's about choosing: How 
do we spend the taxpayer money that we ask our taxpayers to contribute 
to the general welfare of this country?
  Last week, we sat in the Budget Committee and considered the 
Republican budget. I'm sure that my characterization of the Republican 
budget will be different than the Republicans' characterization of 
their budget. Yet I will say one thing, that we all agree that we have 
a fiscal challenge in front of us. We have enormous deficits. We can 
argue about how we got here, but I'm not going to spend time debating 
that tonight. We clearly have a challenge, and the future is even more 
challenging. So the question is:
  As we approach this budget deficit, this future of deficits, a very, 
very large national debt, what is the best way to approach it?
  Now, the Republican answer is that there is only one side of the 
ledger. Most homes, most businesses have two sides of the ledger. They 
have an income side, and they have an expenditure side. As far as the 
Republicans on the Budget Committee are concerned, we only have an 
expenditure side. You've heard the Speaker of the House say we only 
have a spending problem; we don't have a revenue problem. You've heard 
my senior Senator from Kentucky, the minority leader of the Senate, say 
we don't have a taxing problem, a revenue problem; we have a spending 
problem.
  In fact, if you look at our situation right now, we're no different, 
in a lot of respects, from the average household or the average 
business. If we have a financial challenge, we do a couple of things. 
We ask, Okay, where can we cut costs? Then we ask, How can we generate 
more revenue? Those are the two options. As far as the Republicans are 
concerned, there is only one option. It is to cut expenditures. 
Unfortunately, my characterization is that they cut the programs which 
help the most vulnerable people in our country.
  On the other hand, what do they do on the revenue side? They say, 
Well, let's see. Millionaires and billionaires haven't done quite well 
enough over the last decade or so. Twenty years ago, they only earned 9 
percent of all income in the country. Now they earn 35 percent of all 
income in the country. That's not quite good enough. Let's give them 
another tax break. The Bush tax cuts were okay, but they weren't quite 
large enough. So instead of cutting their rate from 39.6 to 35 percent, 
let's cut their maximum rate to 25 percent, and let's see what that 
does for the economy.
  I think most of my Democratic colleagues would agree that, if we're 
going to approach this deficit and the national debt in a responsible 
way, we'll look at both sides of the ledger. We will ask people who 
have done extremely well and who have the capacity to give more to pay 
a little more, and we will make responsible cuts that are balanced 
across the sector.
  There are so many ramifications to this debate, and we're going to be 
debating it all week, so I am proud to have with me today some members 
of the Budget Committee from the Democratic side to help me discuss 
this.
  It is my great honor now to yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Tonko).
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Yarmuth, and thank you for 
leading us in this discussion.
  It is rather interesting to hear you, with your introductory 
comments, speak of the approach to one side of the ledger. What has 
been advertised out there, what has been messaged, is that what we have 
are these cuts that translate into savings: we're going to save at the 
expense of the middle class. We're going to cut programs for seniors, 
for veterans, for children, for working families, for small businesses. 
That will produce savings--this propensity for tens of billions of 
dollars' worth of cuts, for $100 billion worth of cuts, and an 
insatiable thirst for cutting domestic programs that really provide the 
dignity factor for many families as well as provide for job creation 
and retention.
  We saw what happened when we invested in job creation, which was to 
gain over 2 million private sector jobs in just over the last year. So 
we know that those investments oftentimes will lead to lucrative 
dividends. They will relate to programs that are required for our 
working families, for our middle class Americans across this great 
country. Also, they provide for an opportunity for job creation, which 
produces the sort of mix--that down payment, the priming of the pump, 
if you will--that makes it all happen.
  So, Representative Yarmuth, you are correct in talking about this as 
a one-sided approach. Yet what troubles me is that there is this 
messaging effort under way that would try and convince the American 
public that it's producing savings. But where do those savings go? 
There are trillions of dollars of cuts to the middle class in this 
Republican plan. Those trillions of dollars of cuts that they deem as 
savings are then that fuel that provides the resources to cut the 
trillions of dollars' worth of millionaire/billionaire tax cuts to 
provide for the continuation of services that contractors will provide, 
which have been deemed wasteful or at times fraudulent, with the 
Pentagon. They will continue to protect those investments. They will 
allow for additional relief for corporations.
  So it's sliding dollars out of the pockets of the middle class and 
investing them, the spending that they do, as they accrue those 
savings. The new spending that they do is tax cut delivery for those in 
the upper echelon. To me, it sounds very much like the pre-recession 
situation under the Bush administration which led us to this deep and 
very painful and long-term recession. Their plan has been dubbed by 
themselves, by their own Members, as the Path to Prosperity. I would 
suggest that it's a road to ruin for the middle class and that it's a 
road to riches that paves the streets with golden opportunities for 
those who are the most comfortable in society, for those deemed on top 
of the perch.
  This is a very interesting scenario that is being placed before this 
body,

[[Page 5787]]

before all of Congress for that matter. We need to put it under the 
microscope, and we need to message to America what is happening. You 
take from the poor and the middle class. You slide it over to the most 
comfortable--to corporations and millionaires, billionaires, oil 
company handouts, mindless handouts. That's how they pay for those, by 
sliding that cash down that slippery slope and investing it in tax 
cuts, spending it on tax cuts for those, as you indicated, who just 
didn't get quite enough under the Bush tax cuts.
  In a while, too, I want to go toward the Medicare situation. They 
want to end Medicare with this budget. I want to talk about that after 
we hear from some of our other colleagues.
  This is an interesting scenario--a road to ruin, a road to riches. 
It's a complete separation, a dichotomy, of special needs out there, 
coming at the expense of middle class America. It's a raid on our 
middle class. It's paving the road to riches for the very fortunate, 
and it's creating the road to ruin for America's middle class.

                              {time}  2020

  Without a strong middle class, without enhancing the purchasing power 
of our middle class, we have a weakened America. That is easy enough to 
prove through history.
  So thank you again, Representative Yarmuth, for bringing us together 
on a very important discussion here in the House of Representatives as 
we continue to fight for the middle class that has been impacted 
severely and would take even more hits if this budget were allowed to 
pass through.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman. He mentioned the ``road to 
ruin.'' It's also a road we've been down before.
  Mr. TONKO. Absolutely.
  Mr. YARMUTH. It is a road we've been down before.
  Back under the Reagan administration, this whole magical economic 
theory of trickle-down economics was developed. And the idea was, you 
let people at the top make as much as they possibly can, do as well as 
they possibly can, and that will trickle down and help everybody else. 
The man who was largely responsible for that policy under the Reagan 
administration, David Stockman, who was his budget director, he said 
just last year, ``I find it unconscionable that the Republican 
leadership, faced with a $1.5 trillion deficit, could possibly believe 
that good public policy is to maintain tax cuts for the top 2 
percent.'' That was last year when we were actually debating whether to 
return to the Clinton-era tax rates--the Clinton era, by the way, which 
resulted in one of the most impressive decades of job growth in this 
country.
  Now they even want to double down on that. They not only don't want 
to go back to the Clinton era tax cuts; they want to cut it even 
further. And their theory is that by cutting the tax rate by 10 percent 
more on the wealthiest people in this country, that they will create 
more jobs. Where do they get this stuff? Well, the only source they 
have for that theory is the Heritage Foundation. Now the Heritage 
Foundation was also the group that said that if we cut taxes under the 
Bush administration, that we're going to have this enormous job growth 
and this enormous surplus. It didn't quite work out so well. But 
they're saying now--this is what I call the ``Harry Potter budget.'' 
You wave your magic wand and you make anything sound like it's true--
cut taxes further on the rich, slash spending to help the low- and 
moderate-income people in this country, and the economy will bloom. 
Well, I'm not buying it. I don't think most Americans will buy it. But 
again, it's a road we've been down before, so we have some evidence.
  At this point, I'd like to introduce and yield time to a great new 
Member of Congress and also the Budget Committee, the gentlelady from 
California (Ms. Bass).
  Ms. BASS of California. Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth, for your 
leadership in this effort.
  You know, as a new member on the Budget Committee, we had an 
interesting week last week. We really just completed a week where we 
saw the far right of the Republican Party take their party off the 
ledge and way out of the mainstream. They've declared war on seniors, 
on the disabled, on the sick, on children, and on the underserved by 
proposing to end Medicare and Medicaid as we know it. They've 
championed the budget, entitled the Path to Prosperity.
  This is a plan that simultaneously ends Medicare while giving 
billions in tax breaks to Big Oil and the wealthiest Americans. Mr. 
Tonko called it the ``path to ruin''; I thought about the ``Ryan-to-
ruin'' plan.
  It generously gives senior citizens a gift, and that gift is a 
voucher to purchase health care. The senior citizen then has to 
identify an insurance carrier that will take the voucher; and if the 
person is lucky, the voucher will cover all the cost. I do think that 
this would be rare. And I don't know what happens in this plan if after 
a couple of years or a couple of illnesses the insurance company 
decides to drop the person or raise the rates. You know, under the 
Affordable Care Act, of course, they couldn't do that, but if the Ryan 
plan does what he wants, he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so 
all of that would come back into play. The person would have to pick up 
the rest of the cost under the Ryan plan.
  Now, I believe that we are simply foolish and we are fooling 
ourselves if we think all seniors will be able to just write a check 
and pay the difference. That's what is said, they will just pay the 
difference, they will just have to absorb more cost. A more likely 
scenario is that seniors will simply not have medical coverage, and we 
will be sent back in time to when seniors did not have coverage because 
insurance companies didn't want to cover them. I often say to people 
that you can judge a society by how it treats its elderly and its 
children. The ``path-to-ruin'' plan hurts both populations.
  What I wanted to do today was to share a story, but just talk for a 
moment a little bit about the Ryan plan. When it takes effect in 2022--
that's only 11 years from now--the average senior would receive an 
$8,000 voucher to buy insurance. What I wanted to share with you was 
the years that I spent working in the emergency room. I worked in Los 
Angeles County, USC--one of the largest emergency rooms in the United 
States. And the emergency room is so large, it is divided into 
different sections. One section that I spent a couple of years working 
in is called ambulatory care, but we used to call it the ``walking 
wounded'' because, frankly, the people that came to that section of the 
emergency room shouldn't have even been in an emergency room, but the 
reason why they were there was because they didn't have health 
insurance, they didn't have access to care. And what typically happens 
is that if you don't have access to care, by the time you eventually 
see someone, you are much sicker than you would have been.
  So I remember a case where a diabetic patient, who was not 65 and, 
therefore, he couldn't access Medicare, he came into the walking 
wounded area or the ambulatory care area with a sore on the heel of his 
foot. He told me in the history that he was a diabetic. But he had 
tried a series of home remedies and he finally came to the ER when his 
heel started turning purple. Well, as I interviewed the patient and I 
asked about his medical history, he told me that he had been diagnosed 
with diabetes years ago, but he couldn't afford his medication. So he 
was trying to watch his diet and do the best he could. Well, for those 
of you who don't know, a patient with a history of poorly controlled 
diabetes who presents to an emergency room is likely to have a series 
of complications. Well, this man ended up as an amputee because the 
sore on his heel--that he didn't realize--had developed into gangrene, 
and that's why his foot was turning colors.
  So just thinking about the cost of this, the total cost of this visit 
was $12,000 and his leg. That bill included a $2,000 charge for his 
emergency room visit and lab tests, a $6,000 charge for an amputation, 
and a daily charge of $1,400 for aftercare. If this patient had had 
access to routine preventive care,

[[Page 5788]]

he would still have his leg, and $12,000 would be saved.
  So why do I share this story with you? Well, we're fooling ourselves 
if we don't understand that turning Medicare into a voucher and leaving 
seniors to fend for themselves is simply denying adequate health care 
that in the end will cost us so much more in suffering and in hospital 
costs that will ultimately be borne by taxpayers.
  Today in my office I met with representatives from several hospitals 
who were describing the challenges that they face now. So there is an 
area of Los Angeles County where 600,000 people live--and the last time 
I checked that was around the entire population of the State of 
Vermont, 600,000 people--where there is not one trauma center, there is 
not one emergency room because all of the four hospitals in that area 
have closed. Now that's today.
  Under the Ryan plan, vouchers for seniors and vouchers for States--
because that's the bottom line as to what a block grant is, it's a 
voucher; instead of a voucher for an individual, it's a voucher for a 
State. The hospitals they represent that all border this area--that has 
no trauma center in it and has no emergency room and has no hospital 
because they're all closed up--they would essentially have to absorb--
and they have been absorbing--the population, these 600,000 people. So 
they were concerned, and they came into my office today concerned that 
they could potentially face closure now, given the situation.
  If we were to adopt the Ryan plan--the ``pathway to ruin,'' however 
you want to describe it--I think we would be setting the stage for 
hospital closures to continue, for more patients to come into the 
walking wounded area of emergency rooms, for there to be more 
amputations, for people to be sicker and eventually come to the 
emergency room--which is so incredibly short-sighted because in the end 
it winds up costing taxpayers so much more money because these people 
are going to be cared for. So we are fooling ourselves if we think that 
seniors are just going to be able to meet what the voucher doesn't 
cover.
  Thank you very much for your leadership in this.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentlelady for her contribution and for her 
work on the Budget Committee.
  I know somewhere toward the end there the gentlelady mentioned jobs, 
and this is something that is kind of at the core of what we're trying 
to work toward.

                              {time}  2030

  We're trying to find a budget, develop a budget that will stimulate 
the economy, that will create jobs. And we know that under the Ryan 
budget, again, according to the Heritage Foundation, the way they get 
to some kind of fiscal sanity is they project that unemployment in the 
country will be reduced to 2.8 percent by 2016.
  Now, I don't know any reputable economist in the country that thinks 
that's feasible, particularly when you're slashing a lot of government 
spending that does create jobs, particularly in the health care arena; 
but no one has been more vocal and more knowledgeable and more 
articulate about what it takes in this country to create jobs than Mr. 
Garamendi from California.
  I welcome him to the discussion and yield to him now.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth.
  For the members of the Budget Committee, you've had a steep and 
difficult job as the Republicans have attempted simply to ram down the 
throats of this Congress a really unacceptable budget, one that does 
destroy opportunities.
  I would love to talk about Make It in America, and I will in a 
moment, but I was just listening to my colleague from California, and 
she raised the issue of the medical care here in the United States.
  It was 1964 that the United States set out on a very, very important 
mission, and that was to provide health care to seniors. Prior to that 
time, and I know from my own county where I grew up in Calaveras 
County, if you became a senior, you were destined for a very, very 
rough road. There was literally no insurance available for you, and 
there was no opportunity for you to get yourself out of poverty unless 
you happened to be among the wealthy. It was a terrible situation.
  So during the Lyndon Johnson period in 1964, they created a program 
called Medicare so that when you became 65, you had an opportunity to 
get a solid health care program available to you--a doctor program, a 
hospital program. You had to pay a little bit for the hospital program, 
but it was guaranteed available to you. And every American 65 and over 
had that policy.
  Here we are, 40-some years later, and what's taking place? Our 
Republican colleagues are determined to terminate, kill, stop, 
eliminate Medicare. They do it in a subtle way.
  But I want everyone to know that this year if the Republican budget 
goes forward, this will be the tombstone for Medicare: ``Medicare: 
1965-2011. Created by Lyndon Baines Johnson, LBJ. Destroyed by the 
GOP.''
  How do they do it? They do it by saying everyone that is 55 years old 
today will never get Medicare. It's over. And for those that are on 
Medicare, their lives will move on and eventually they'll be gone also. 
And Medicare dies with this budget. This is a central part of the 
American promise to every senior, and the Republicans are determined to 
terminate Medicare and put a tombstone dated this year, 2011.
  You'll get a voucher; but as my colleague from Los Angeles so 
eloquently said, that voucher will be worth very little when the time 
comes. And you'll be thrown to the insurance sharks.
  I understand insurance. I was the insurance commissioner in 
California for 8 years, and I know what the health insurance companies 
want to do. They want to make sure that they insure somebody who will 
never get sick. Preexisting conditions, raise the rates, change the 
benefits, increase the co-pays, end the deductibles, all of that. So 
the future population of seniors in just 10 years will be thrown to the 
wolves, and they'll be at the mercy of the health insurance companies.
  We cannot let that happen. This is a fight for the very nature of 
America. This is a fight not only to protect seniors but to protect 
those who want to become seniors. I want to know what American out 
there today does not want to live long enough to get to Medicare.
  They know that today because of the Democratic Congress they have an 
opportunity to get insurance with the Health Care Reform Act, but they 
know that the Republicans want to take that away, too. The very first 
piece of legislation that the new Republican Congress passed was the 
repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act. This is step two, to 
dismantle.
  Now, I'm going to take another 30 seconds and then turn it back to my 
colleagues on the budget side.
  But here's what we must do. We must get to the root cause of the 
underlying inflation in health care.
  Terminating Medicare does not stop health care inflation. What could 
stop it are the kinds of reports and the kinds of suggestions that I 
made 5 years ago when I wrote this document called ``Priced Out.'' 
Forty-three separate things that we can do--specifically for 
California, but it's applicable for America--43 separate things that we 
can do to bring down the costs of medical care.
  It turns out that about a dozen of those were in the Affordable 
Health Care Act, very specific things to rein in the cost of medical 
care.
  Two examples. One: hospital infections. Not only deadly, but costly. 
Now every hospital in the United States is forced by the Affordable 
Health Care Act to pay attention to hospital infections. It's probable 
that one of our colleagues who was with us here in this House last year 
died as a result of a hospital infection just last week. This is 
serious stuff. It's in the Affordable Health Care Act. Hospitals would 
be penalized.
  Secondly, electronic medical records so that the mistakes are 
eliminated.
  Let me turn this back to you, Mr. Yarmuth and Mr. Tonko. You on the 
Budget Committee have served so well, so hard, fighting the initial 
battle to

[[Page 5789]]

protect America's seniors and to protect this Nation's future. Thank 
you for the opportunity to join you.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman for his contribution and also want 
to segue from what he said because he talked about Medicare and the 
ability to save money in Medicare. One of the ironic things about this 
debate has been that last year when we were passing the Affordable Care 
Act and found $550 billion over 10 years that we could save in Medicare 
and reinvest in new benefits, during the campaign that year, we were 
chastised for slashing Medicare. Yet those same Republicans, in 
developing their budget and saying how great they are at cost-cutting, 
are using the same savings that we found, the same savings of $550 
billion, that they ran millions and millions of dollars against 
Democratic candidates last year. And they're taking credit for that in 
their budget, which is interesting.
  I know Mr. Tonko is chomping at the bit to talk about Medicare some 
more, so I'll yield to him at this point.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Yarmuth and Representative 
Garamendi. Thank you both for your input.
  Now, Representative Bass of California talked about the Medicare 
transformation that would really hurt people across this great country, 
and it seems as though you would expect everyone that serves here to be 
an avid fan of history, that we would want to be taught by the history 
that has built this great Nation.
  We heard earlier from Representative Yarmuth about the repeats of the 
tax cuts that were recent history. We saw it during the second Bush 
Presidency. We saw it during the Reagan era where we did this trickle-
down theory: if we reduce the burden at the top, it will trickle down 
and everyone will have jobs galore.
  Well, you look at the history, and those two scenarios just did not 
work. They did not work. And as students of history, all of us as 
Representatives, we should absorb that lesson, and we should know that 
a repeat of that kind is only going to wreak damage on the American 
economy and, more importantly, on the American families, the middle 
class.
  What did work, what lesson in history stands very strong and tall is 
that during the FDR Presidency when this country was hurting from one 
of the worst economic struggles it had to face, they came up with a 
program that invested in job creation, invested in the American worker, 
invested in American families.
  We created infrastructure; we built across America the needs of this 
great Nation. And today, some of those institutional efforts are still 
serving our needs. They stand as a monument of government responding in 
a way that embraced compassion, that came forward with an intelligence 
that enabled us to grow out of those economically difficult times. And 
we were benefited by that sort of leadership.

                              {time}  2040

  What we need today is an investment in job creation. Think of it. As 
we enter into a global race on clean energy and innovation, other 
nations are bulking up and we are defunding with this budget. We are 
defunding R&D, research and development for science and tech jobs. How 
can we expect to win a race, a global race, when we're tying our hands 
behind our backs and are not allowing us to go forward?
  But to Medicare, the history learned there, and Representative 
Garamendi pointed it out, pre-1965 people were being cherry-picked, 
they were being led along without appropriate health care coverage, 
without insurance because they were perhaps dealing with a preexisting 
condition, they were a complex case, they were ignored, they were 
totally just abandoned by an insurance opportunity. Because of that, 
our Nation, with compassion again, the history it wrote through those 
LBJ years was to establish a Medicare program.
  Look what happens. This chart will tell us when we get rid of 
Medicare, when this Republican plan, if it had its way, ends Medicare, 
we are going to see this very impact coming upon our seniors. We will 
go back to the pre-1965 years. Look at this. This is the current 
Medicare program, where benefits for our seniors enable them to avoid 
oftentimes the out-of-pocket expenses.
  It is forecasted by independent groups out there, not by partisan 
thinking here in the House, but independent bodies are suggesting that 
it will double in the early years in terms of what is expected of our 
seniors digging deeper into their pockets. And by the year 2030, it's 
forecasted triple what they are paying today. This is another way to 
provide savings for the sole purpose of investing those savings in 
millionaire, billionaire tax cuts, in oil company handouts, in 
corporation relief. This is the effort here. It is a reverse Robin 
Hood. It is going after the middle class, which is the strength of 
America.
  Give that middle class its purchasing power. Give our middle class 
seniors their Medicare program. Let them have dignity. Let there be a 
quality of life. Let there be the opportunity for work, for employment, 
and let the masses enjoy the benefits of those sorts of programs. 
That's what we're talking about here. History repeated. Bad history 
repeated. Good history ignored. And our seniors will suffer from this 
Medicare program. This end to the Medicare program will bring about 
suffering for them because of greed and because of the road to ruin 
that has been established by this so-called path to prosperity.
  Representative Yarmuth, I believe that we need to do better than 
this. We should not fail our seniors, our disabled, and as 
Representative Garamendi said, future generations of seniors, an 
onslaught of baby boomers that will be impacted by all of this 
activity.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko. There are so many 
aspects of this that deserve to be discussed. One of the things that's 
kind of sad is that the Republicans, in talking about their plan to 
privatize Medicare, say, oh, this is just like the plan that Members of 
Congress have. Well, first of all, Members of Congress have the same 
plan as every other Federal employee, so it's not necessarily anything 
special that we have.
  But the only thing that is somewhat similar about this is that you 
have some options in the private sector. We buy insurance from private 
vendors, and we have a certain allowance. And under the Ryan plan, the 
Republican budget, seniors, all those under 55 now, when they become 
seniors they would have a certain amount that they could spend--not 
just could spend, had to spend in the private sector because they won't 
be allowed to buy into any Medicare program or a public option. The 
difference is, as you pointed out in your graphic there, that Members 
of Congress and Federal employees pay about 28 percent of the premium. 
Under the Republican budget, seniors are going to pay 68 percent of 
their premium.
  This is shifting the burden, the cost, and putting it on seniors who 
are on fixed incomes, who don't have the ability to pay. And what's 
going to happen to them? This is so unlike the Federal insurance 
program. It's frightening in its dishonesty.
  But I want to talk about one thing quickly and then yield to Mr. 
Garamendi again, because we talked about taxes and tax rates. In the 
Budget Committee last week I offered an amendment to the Ryan budget 
that would have restored the Clinton era tax cut, highest tax rate of 
39.6 percent on Americans making $1 million a year or more. Now, that 
is a very small percentage of Americans. Very small percentage. Less 
than 1 percent of the Americans make over a million dollars a year.
  I said let's just have them pay what they paid under the Clinton era. 
Not one Republican voted for that. And their argument was, and I know 
they believe this because they keep saying it and have always said it, 
that if you raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans that 
they're going to lose incentive, that they're not going to work as 
hard, that they're not going to make investments because you are 
eliminating their incentive.
  Well, for those with a long memory, the highest marginal tax rate in 
this

[[Page 5790]]

country's history back in the sixties was 91 percent--I am sorry, under 
the Eisenhower administration--was 91 percent. When my father built his 
company in the sixties and seventies, the highest marginal tax rate was 
70 percent. When Ronald Reagan took office it was 50 percent. Now it's 
down to 35 percent, and they want to cut it even further.
  Now, they had this belief, again, that if you raise rates you're 
going to destroy incentives. I built a company, both my brothers have 
built very successful companies, my father built a very successful 
company. Not one of us has ever said, oh, my gosh, because I can only 
keep 60 cents of that next dollar I make rather than 64 cents or 65 
cents, I am just not going to make that dollar. Just doesn't make any 
sense for me to work harder. Business people don't think that way. That 
is not human nature.
  I have one brother who is very successful. He is in the barbecue 
restaurant business. You have all heard me tell this story a hundred 
times. I am going to tell it again. I asked him, ``What about this 
marginal tax rate thing?'' And he said, ``You know, if people can't 
afford barbecue it doesn't matter what my tax rate is.'' And that's 
really where we are as a country. That's where we've come as a country. 
Because we have let the middle class decline, because their buying 
power has declined not just in relative terms, in absolute terms over 
the last decade, while the wealthiest Americans, these people making $1 
million, $1 billion and more have done extremely well.
  Right now 1 percent of the American people make as much as the bottom 
90 percent combined. We have the greatest disparity in income and 
wealth in this country that we have had in almost 100 years. Yet ask 
millionaires and billionaires to pay a little bit more--not a lot more. 
We are not saying go to 70 percent. We are saying go to 39 percent from 
35 percent. Not one Republican vote.
  We've seen in the past what's happened with tax rates. We have been 
talking a lot about history tonight. Under the Clinton administration, 
during the Clinton years, top tax rate of 39.6 percent, 20.8 million 
jobs created. After the Bush tax cuts, reducing that top rate to 35 
percent, 653,000 jobs lost. That is not evidence for cutting the 
marginal tax rate on the highest-income Americans even further.
  We have seen again right now the Bush tax cuts--this is the job loss 
thing--the economy floundered after the Bush tax cuts went into effect. 
So again, all we're saying is if we're going to ask people to sacrifice 
as we try to get our fiscal house in order, we need to ask everybody. 
In particular, we need to ask the people who have done the best and who 
have earned the most and who have the most wealth.
  Again, the person who has talked more about what it takes to create 
jobs in this economy is my colleague from California. I yield to him 
again.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth. This is what you 
were talking about here, a different way of saying the same thing that 
you discussed. This is over the period of time from 1979 to 2005. This 
is the income growth by each 20 percent of the population. So those 
people at the very bottom saw almost no income growth at all, 200 
bucks. And as you go to the next 20 percent and the next 20 percent, 
you get up to the last 90 percent, they did okay. They made about 
$745,000.

                              {time}  2050

  So that's the 90 to 99 percent of the population. Those are very, 
very wealthy people. They did okay.
  But you go to the top 1 percent, the top 1 percent--excuse me, I am 
wrong. That's the top one-tenth of 1 percent, not even 1 percent. One-
tenth of 1 percent. That population saw their wealth increase by nearly 
$6 million each, and that's what you were talking about, a different 
way of displaying it.
  What's happening in the United States is this enormous shift of 
wealth to the super wealthy, and our Republican colleagues want to 
reward them for their good success by reducing their tax rate. So much 
for shared sacrifice.
  And as Mr. Tonko pointed out, the sacrifice is really the middle 
class, because the benefits that the middle class had, the future 
opportunity for Medicare, they are going to wind up paying more, 
getting less, as the Republicans terminate Medicare as we know it 
today.
  The other part on taxes, and then I want to turn to one of my 
favorite subjects, and that is how did we get to this deficit, 
Republicans want to continue giving $12 billion to $15 billion of our 
tax money, this is money that you, I, the stenographer there, the 
people that work here, the men and women across America that are 
working, $10 billion to $12 billion of their tax money, and they want 
to hand it over to the oil companies.
  Now, what in the world did the oil companies need a tax break for? 
They need a subsidy like, well, like they don't need it. Why? Because 
in the last decade, the oil companies, the big oil companies in the 
United States, have earned $947 billion dollars in profits. That's just 
shy of $1 trillion dollars in profits. And yet our Republicans demand 
that we give them another $12 billion to $15 billion a year.
  Now, that's bad enough. But I just came across this fact. ExxonMobil 
was the most profitable company in the world in 2008. In 2009, 
ExxonMobil made $19 billion of profit. Well, good for them. And I am 
sure they paid their fair share of taxes, right? Wrong.
  Their effective tax rate was zero. So since they didn't pay any 
taxes, we ought to give them another $12 billion, to the oil industry. 
This is just plain wrong. This is not good economic policy.
  One thing, and then I know you want me to talk about Make It in 
America, and I will in a few moments, but I get so concerned when 
people talk about the Democratic deficit. Hello? Not so, not a 
Democratic deficit; really, a Republican deficit.
  That fellow over there, that's Ronald Reagan. President Ronald Reagan 
left at the end of his 8 years with a projected $1.4 trillion deficit, 
followed by George H.W. Bush. At the end of the George H.W. Bush period 
the projected deficit going forward would be $3.3 trillion. Thank you, 
George H.W. Bush. Between the two of you, you really ran up the 
deficit.
  Then along came this fellow Democrat, Bill Clinton, put in policies 
voted by Republicans and Democrats, raised the tax rate to what you 
said, 39 percent for the super wealthy, and put in place PAYGO. That 
PAYGO required that any new spending had to be paid for with cuts or 
new taxes.
  The result? Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a projected $5.6 
trillion surplus.
  Then along came George W. Bush, Jr. What did he do? First year in 
office, a tax cut. You were here weren't you, Mr. Yarmuth?
  Mr. YARMUTH. I am sorry, no, I wasn't here. I didn't have the honor 
of voting against those.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Okay, so you weren't here. A tax cut year one, a tax 
cut year two, a war, two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq followed by a 
Medicare drug program that wasn't paid for and the deregulation of Wall 
Street. The result: He left office with an $11.5 trillion projected 
deficit going forward. This is where we are.
  The day Obama came into office, President Obama came into office with 
a $1.3 trillion deficit the day he took office, and we worked ourselves 
out of it. Thank goodness the two of you were here to vote for those 
pieces of legislation. We are working ourselves out of it. That chart 
that you showed a moment ago shows the growth of the economy.
  We need to understand that we are not going to get out of this 
deficit with the kinds of cuts that are being discussed by our 
Republicans. It's going to take a balanced approach.
  President Obama has set out a balanced approach. He said no growth, 
no growth in the discretionary Federal budget. He will probably, 
tomorrow, talk about how to hold down medical costs, and I gave you 
some examples a moment ago. Those are the big drivers, and the 
military.
  You want to deal with this deficit? End the war in Afghanistan and 
bring home $120 billion a year. We can do this. Tax policy? Let's let 
the wealthy

[[Page 5791]]

pay their share, let the oil companies pay their share.
  Hold the expenditures steady and reduce it, as has been proposed, and 
do it in a way that creates economic growth. We can do this. I know you 
gentlemen on the Budget Committee fought hard for that kind of policy. 
The Republicans refuse.
  In fact, their proposal, it's 30 years before you eliminate the 
deficit. We can't have that.
  I will talk about Make It in America before we are finished here, but 
I am going to turn it back to you Mr. Yarmuth. But I think it's really 
important for the American public to understand where the deficit came 
from and how it can be solved over the long run without harming 
seniors, without taking away Medicare and by making the critical 
investments that you have talked about, Mr. Tonko, education, research, 
Make It in America, those kinds of things.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman. Just to elaborate a little bit on 
the issue of what creates jobs and what kills jobs, under H.R. 1, which 
was the Republican continuing resolution that was passed earlier this 
year--we are still fighting that battle, and we will be fighting it 
this week--but these are the principles that were reflected in here 
that are now are reflected in the Ryan budget.
  And this is what various economists said would happen if H.R. 1 would 
go into effect, and this was just for 6 months of the year. Call it 
``Slash-onomics.'' Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke--again this is 
6 months, 200,000 jobs lost; Mark Zandi, who was John McCain's economic 
adviser during his Presidential campaign, 700,000 jobs lost; the 
Economic Policy Institute, 800,000 jobs lost; and the Center for 
American Progress, just shy of a million jobs lost. That's over 6 
months.
  Now as we saw on the chart before, contrast that with what's happened 
just under the Obama administration and the policies that we adopted 
when we were in the majority. Job growth now, over 200,000 private 
sector jobs last month created. We are on the right track.
  And to slash spending the way that the Republicans have proposed, 
without an accompanying increase in revenue, is going to do further 
damage to what is now a solid recovery that's under way.
  I just have to laugh a little bit again about the projections of the 
Ryan Republican budget, because they have made a big deal out of saying 
this is $6 trillion better than the Obama budget over the next 10 
years.
  Well, the way they get to that, once again we said it earlier, is to 
project that unemployment will come down to 2.8 percent in 5 years, 
which no economist says it would be. But more importantly, they say, 
that we will increase revenues by almost double from $2.2 trillion 
dollars last year to $4.3 trillion 10 years from now.
  Now, to put that into perspective, the 10 years before that we went 
from $1.9 trillion in revenue to $2.2 trillion in revenue. Now, we have 
been up higher, we have been up around $2.5 trillion. That's the 
highest we have been.

                              {time}  2100

  Now they're saying we're going to cut taxes on corporations from 35 
to 25 percent, we're going to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans 
from 35 to 25 percent, and yet we're going to experience unprecedented 
growth in revenue even though we are cutting taxes. Again they can't 
get anybody to verify this except the Heritage Foundation, which has 
not been particularly accurate in the past. This is the Harry Potter 
budget. This is their theology: Cut taxes, the economy explodes.
  We've been down that road before, Mr. Tonko. I would like to yield to 
you to talk about the Road to Ruin that we are about to be asked to 
drive.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Yarmuth. I believe we don't have 
much time left in this hour of discussion. But let me just indicate 
that this entire House experienced an election last November. Everyone 
was up for election. And I would dare say in talking to many, many 
colleagues about the message that resonated back at home it was about 
jobs, jobs, jobs. It was about the economy. That was the driving 
dynamic I believe at the voting booth.
  And look at our track record here for the first 3\1/2\ months for the 
112th session of Congress. Not one bit of legislation that would 
produce jobs was brought to the floor. However, that budget, as you 
just pointed out in your Slash-onomics bar graph, might take as many as 
975,000 jobs off the picture for American workers, after we've spent 
just over a year creating over 2 million private sector jobs. Now 
that's in contrast with 8.2 million lost under the Bush recession. So 
we've got a long way to go.
  But why would you reverse progress with a budget that, with Slash-
onomics, reduces nearly--well, we'll even take some of the lower 
estimates of 400,000; why would you want to do that at a time when we 
are recovering from that very difficult economic time?
  I think it's so important for us to inform the constituents out there 
and tell middle class America this is a tipping point in our history. 
This is whether we fix an economy, create a situation where we come 
forth and produce products not yet on the commercial scene. A leading 
nation can do that when it embraces its intellectual capacity. You 
build products not yet discovered and engineered. That is making it in 
America. That's what we can do if we invest in our workforce and invest 
in our education. But we're denying all those investments with this 
budget, just like this Medicare chart which, as you indicate, will have 
seniors receiving 32 cents on every health care dollar they require, 
and they're going to have to fend for the rest.
  So we're asking middle class America to pay more, everything but 32 
cents on the dollar for their health care as seniors qualifying for 
Medicare, and then we're going to take and destroy this economy and 
snuff out the dreams and the opportunities for America's middle class. 
We were told in November, America start growing the economy, stop 
draining and reducing the middle class. You are reducing, you're 
snuffing out that middle class. And that was the message.
  And also on taxes I believe America is waking up to what has happened 
here with some of these scenarios. They understand it is not about 
who's cutting taxes but whose taxes are you cutting? Whose taxes will 
you cut? There's a big difference. And when you do this mindless 
handout to profit-rich oil companies, historically profit rich, sitting 
on about a trillion dollars worth of profit, and mindlessly for nearly 
a century we have handed out these benefits to oil companies. It's 
wrong. We can do better. This plan is the Road to Ruin.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman. We have a couple minutes left. I 
would just like to yield to my friend, Mr. Garamendi, for some closing 
comments about making it in America.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If America is going to make it, we have to make it in 
America. Once again, manufacturing matters. The problem with the 
Republican budget is it hollows out, continues the hollowing out of 
American industry by denying the research, reducing research and 
reducing job training and continuing the kind of tax policies that 
actually give corporations tax breaks when they send jobs offshore. We 
want to reverse that. We're putting together the Make it in America 
agenda, a real jobs agenda for the middle class.
  Mr. Yarmuth, thank you so very, very much for bringing this to our 
attention and carrying this discussion tonight.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank the gentleman and thanks for his participation. 
I just want to say in closing that budget battles are more about 
dollars, and I think all of us on both sides of the aisle believe that 
and live by that, or want to live by that. Budgets are about values. 
Budgets are about what we care for in America. And one of the things 
that I think we have always stood for in America is the idea that 
anyone has the opportunity to reach his or her full potential, and to 
be wealthy, but certainly to be happy and to be healthy.

[[Page 5792]]

  What the Republican budget does is destroy much of that hope, destroy 
much of that dream, slashing education, slashing research and 
development, and slashing investment in infrastructure while at the 
same time giving more and more tax breaks to wealthy individuals, 
millionaires, billionaires, oil companies, Wall Street hedge fund 
managers, and the people who have already had more than their share of 
the American blessing.
  So as we proceed in this debate this week on the budget and 
throughout these next few months in the Congress, I want to make it 
very clear that our values are at stake, not just our dollars, but our 
values, and whether you call it the Road to Ruin, or as I look to call 
it, the Pay Back for the Prosperous, the Republican budget does not 
reflect our values. It does not lead to a brighter future for the vast 
majority of Americans, and it should be rejected. We should move 
forward with a budget that invests in our dearest, dearest asset, and 
that is the American people.

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