[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3805]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GOP BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this week, we begin the Republican 
charade of pretending to balance the budget in 10 years, without a hint 
of how it really is possible. They intend to repeal ObamaCare, which 
was the central issue in the last campaign, where you will remember 
President Obama was reelected, the Senate went even more Democratic, 
and House Democrats gained seats and won over 1 million more votes than 
the Republicans.
  Normal people would think that the ObamaCare issue might be settled. 
Does anybody realistically think it's going away anytime soon?
  The Republican fantasy budget reduces taxes dramatically without a 
hint of how it would be possible, without exploding the deficit or 
dramatically raising taxes on the middle class.
  This is consistent with what the Romney-Ryan ticket said on the 
campaign trail last fall. The same issue where they dodged, dissembled, 
or ignored the perfectly reasonable question: How is it possible? Six 
months later, it's back in the budget, but there still is no answer.
  During the last 40 years, there have been only four budgets without 
deficits: the last three Clinton budgets and the one that George Bush 
inherited from Bill Clinton. In each case, taxes as a percentage of the 
total economy were over 20 percent. In this Republican fantasyland, 
budgets are balanced with revenues at 19 percent of the economy, yet 
meeting the needs of 78 million more seniors and an infrastructure 
deficit that is growing as America is falling apart.
  Clearly, this is not remotely possible if we're going to enjoy 
anything like our current quality of life. There is a real-world 
intersection of budget-saving opportunities with potential areas of 
agreement. Health care reform is one, but not just by shifting the 
burden to seniors and the disabled, as the Republicans propose in their 
fantasy budget.
  My home State of Oregon is in the middle of an exciting demonstration 
of how to squeeze out the waste we all know is there and realign 
incentives. Instead of the empty ritual of pretending to repeal 
ObamaCare, let's work together to accelerate reform for all Americans.
  If the Oregon experiment works--and frankly, many of these 
efficiencies, by the way, are already achieved in other parts of the 
country and with some private health systems--we could save more than 
$1.2 trillion that the flawed sequester is supposed to achieve in the 
next 10 years.
  Another area of irresponsibility in the Republican budget is defense. 
Instead of increasing Pentagon spending, we should reform it. The most 
obvious target is the nuclear arsenal larger than anything we need for 
nuclear deterrence. Ten percent of our nuclear weapons would decimate 
Russia. A handful of missiles would wipe North Korea off the map, yet 
they propose to spend over two-thirds of $1 trillion over the next 10 
years on this bloated arsenal.
  Before we increase the Pentagon budget, maybe we should figure out 
why the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is now 7 years behind schedule, 70 
percent over budget, and the Pentagon still doesn't know how it's going 
to meet the more than $1 trillion in operating and maintenance costs.
  Amazingly, the Republicans want to increase spending for the 
Pentagon, the only major budget so flawed it can't even be audited. 
There are bipartisan opportunities to reduce and reform the military, 
but you're not hearing about it in the Republican budget this week.
  Instead of a Republican rerun of a bad reality TV show, let's 
consider working together on areas to change how the government does 
business and give more value to the taxpayer while we get spending 
under control.

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