[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8515-8517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, there has been a rare outburst of 
bipartisanship in the Senate this week. It is somewhat amazing, and I 
think it should be celebrated because Democrats and Republicans agree 
that the administration's new budget is a complete disaster. It has 
fallen with a bipartisan thud here in our Chamber.
  I think there is a reason for that. Throughout the campaign and now 
as President, President Trump has made a lot of promises. He has 
promised a balanced budget. He has promised no cuts to Social Security, 
Medicare, or Medicaid. He has promised the best healthcare for everyone 
at the lowest cost. He has promised massive new tax cuts. He has 
promised a great wall paid for by Mexico.
  Skeptics, including myself, have awaited this budget to see the hard 
choices, the details, and the math that could make sense of those 
promises. After all of those words--and there were a lot of them--and 
all of those promises, we now have a budget, and it makes no sense.
  Let's walk through a few of the numbers. Every year, our country 
collects on average about 18 percent of our gross domestic product in 
taxes--the equivalent of about 18 percent of our gross domestic product 
in taxes, and every year we spend just over 21 percent of the GDP. That 
gap is why our national debt continues to grow. Instead of closing the 
gap, where you have spending here and revenue here--instead of closing 
that gap, the President's budget proposes further tax cuts, bringing 
down the share of the GDP we are collecting and increasing defense 
spending while promising to balance the budget.
  Just this morning, President Trump sent his Secretary of the Treasury 
to Congress to explain how all this adds up. He couldn't do it. He 
couldn't do it. The only way the math in this budget works, the only 
way that the gap closes, is by assuming that magically

[[Page 8516]]

our economy will grow faster than any serious economist in the country 
predicts and that, as a result of that outside growth, the government 
would take in an extra $2 trillion in taxes. That is the plan. That is 
the $2 trillion assumption about the finances of our country and the 
potential burden of the next generation of Americans, some of whom are 
sitting here with us today.
  Even if you accept that math--which I don't--but even if you accept 
that math, we have another problem. The administration's budget also 
proposes massive tax cuts that it claims will not add to our debt 
because of the same $2 trillion in new tax revenues. As has been 
pointed out, that is double-counting, plain and simple, the kind that 
would cause any college freshman in America to fail his or her 
accounting exam. This would be like depositing the same paycheck at two 
different banks and claiming that your salary had doubled, then 
increasing your spending on groceries, travel, housing, and everything 
else as if it were actually true that your income would be double. You 
would go broke, and that is what is going to happen here.
  It is no wonder that a Republican Congressman said that this budget 
was like building a house on what he called ``a sandy foundation.'' The 
administration's only hope of getting this through is if Americans, 
including some of the President's strongest supporters, ignore the math 
and ignore the fact that his proposal actually grows our national debt, 
cuts Social Security, cuts Medicaid, and savages countless programs 
that protect vulnerable Americans and invest in our future.
  On Medicaid in particular, a lot of us are scratching our heads at 
the math, let alone the real world pain that would result, should this 
proposal become law.
  The healthcare bill, which passed on the floor of the House--and I 
said about that bill that even if I think about the townhall meetings I 
have had in Colorado, where people object most strenuously and most 
strongly to what is called ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act, if you 
set out to design a bill less responsive to the people in my townhall 
who opposed ObamaCare--if you set out to draft a bill less responsive, 
you couldn't do a better job than they did in the House of 
Representatives.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for his work on healthcare because I 
can actually recognize the concerns of my constituents in his fine work 
as opposed to what we have seen in the House.
  One of the things that are so disturbing about that bill is that they 
are slashing Medicaid by around $830 billion. That is 20 percent of the 
Medicaid Program that has been cut in that House budget. This new 
budget would gut the program by another $600 billion. Combined, that 
would cut Medicaid nearly in half by 2026--in half. That means millions 
more Americans. This is why the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--
told us that 23 million Americans would lose their health insurance as 
a result of the bill--because it would mean that the minute all of this 
happened, people would struggle to get quality healthcare services.
  In addition to the 23 million who are going to lose it because of the 
plan the Republican majority passed in the House, in my home State of 
Colorado--and I do not think it is very different from a lot of places 
in this regard--half of the people who are on Medicaid are kids. Are 
they supposed to go to work, or do we want them in school and having 
the benefit of a healthcare program?
  Do we expect seniors in long-term care to go back to work? There are 
millions of Americans who are living in nursing homes, having spent 
their entire life savings for the privilege of being in long-term care 
or in nursing homes that are paid for by Medicaid. What are they 
supposed to do? Are we going to empty out the nursing homes in the 
United States?
  I think, to some extent or another--I always get into trouble with my 
staff every time I say this, but I am going to say this again here--
every one of us in this Senate is a conservative if ``conservative'' 
means to protect the institutions of our government and to think 
carefully before we leap. There is nothing conservative about this 
proposal on Medicaid. It is a radical proposal--a 20-percent Medicaid 
cut. We have not seen anything like that in our history.
  What is amazing about this budget is not just that the math does not 
add up but that its targets are shockingly clear: rural communities, 
vulnerable Americans, vital investments in our future. This budget 
slams communities that are already hurting in our economy. Farmers 
would face a 21-percent cut to the Department of Agriculture, meaning 
less help to fight erosion, protect water quality, and improve 
irrigation. The budget eliminates the TIGER Grant Program entirely, 
which builds roads, bridges, and train stations all across the country. 
It cuts the maintenance budget for the U.S. Forest Service by over 70 
percent, making it harder to maintain the trails and facilities that 
support rural outdoor economies.
  I invite anybody here and I would welcome anybody to come visit 
Colorado. That is not a hardship; it is a beautiful place. See the 
condition that our national forests are in and the work that needs to 
be done and the conditions under which employees of the Forest Service 
are being asked to do their jobs. It is not right. It is not fair.
  This budget eliminates essential air service which helps connect our 
most remote areas. Besides water, it is probably the most important 
lifeblood of our rural communities. It cuts assistance to State and 
volunteer fire departments, exposing our mountain towns to even greater 
risk. This is a horrible budget for rural America--horrible.
  This budget also turns its back on families who are struggling the 
most. It eliminates support to heat low-income homes through the 
winter. That is the reason Democrats and Republicans do not support 
this budget. It cuts safety inspections for coal miners, while 
devastating support to fight pollution and clean up toxic sites that 
disproportionately harm poor communities. It cuts assistance to the 
homeless and community development block grants--ends it--which promote 
affordable housing and economic development in low-income areas. It 
slashes food stamps by 25 percent. It is like the Grinch himself wrote 
this budget. Nearly half of those who benefit from that program are 
children--poor children.
  This budget not only ignores our duty to ensure that kids in poverty 
do not go hungry, it also fails to invest in their future. This budget 
cuts education funding by $9 billion. It slashes afterschool and summer 
programs for low-income children. It cuts funds to help teachers become 
better teachers. It cuts programs to help students work their way 
through college.
  There is not anybody in America who thinks it is right that we are 
bankrupting families and students because of the high cost of college, 
which is something that their parents and grandparents did not have to 
endure because of choices we made then that we are not making today.
  Who in his right mind thinks an answer to that is to cut work-study 
programs? Yet that is in the budget. It takes aim at our next 
generation. The budget targets next-generation research and technology 
that we need in order to compete in the 21st century. It slashes funds 
to the National Science Foundation.
  Do you want a reason as to why Republicans and Democrats do not 
support this budget--why we have bipartisan opposition for it? It is 
that it cuts the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, by $8 billion 
even though its research supported over 330,000 jobs and $60 billion in 
economic activity just last year. It cuts research for low-cost, clean 
energy even though experts predict nearly $8 trillion of global 
investment in renewable energy over the next 25 years. It devastates 
the Department of Energy's loan program that spurs private investment 
and pays for itself.
  Believe me, I have worked in every level of government. I have been 
in the private sector, too, and I know there is waste in every level of 
government.

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There is waste in the Federal Government. There are programs that make 
no sense, and there are decisions we make that make no sense. We need 
to strive every day to become better stewards of taxpayer dollars. I do 
not think we do a good enough job in this place of oversight, of how 
taxpayer dollars are being used. Yet this budget does not target waste, 
and this budget does not target fraud and abuse; it targets who we are 
as a nation and what we hope for, for the next generation.
  In these times, the American dream is not something we can take for 
granted. It is the product of choices our forbearers have made and 
choices we have made--choices to invest in the future, to look out for 
one another and ensure that all Americans have opportunities to make 
the most of their God-given potential.
  Budgets are more than just dollars and cents; they answer important 
questions about our vision for the future and our values as Americans. 
In that sense, it is worth considering how this budget would affect the 
everyday lives of Americans--of the people who come to our townhalls or 
the people who are too busy working, trying to provide for their 
families, to be able to go to our townhalls.
  If this budget were to pass, a working mom might lose healthcare for 
herself and have to worry that her aging mother might not be far 
behind. She might have to cut back hours at work to pick up her kid 
whose afterschool program was just canceled. Driving home, she will 
wonder whether her child's weeklong cough has anything to do with the 
air he is breathing or the water he is drinking or whether that dinner 
was the last of the groceries for the month even though it is only the 
25th.
  These are the choices our constituents are going to face, and that is 
not the future we want. It is not an America we would choose for our 
kids.
  (Mr. BLUNT assumed the Chair.)
  I am wrapping up here. I know my colleague from Louisiana is here.
  The most expensive thing for us to do is to give up on working 
people, our kids, and on urban and rural communities that are too often 
forgotten by people in Washington. That, I am afraid, is what this 
budget does--it gives up. In a sober analysis on real solutions to our 
problems and our basic commitment to each other, we are as fellow 
citizens bound by a common destiny, but this does not meet the test.
  I look forward to working with Republicans and Democrats, together, 
to write a budget that actually reflects the will of the American 
people. I look forward to working with the Presiding Officer and my 
colleague from Louisiana, who is doing such good work on healthcare.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

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