The Budget

THE BUDGET -- (House of Representatives - October 19, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, Catholics have a sacrament, the sacrament of penance, which they call reconciliation. It is a time when you revisit your own life to take a close look at how your daily actions square with what you believe. As a Catholic, looking at this budget, I cannot square the moral values of our country, opportunity, equality and justice, with the practical impact that this budget proposal will have on the lives of working American families.

This year, thanks to President Bush's tax-cutting program, the U.S. Government will deliver up to $106 billion to the multiple bank accounts of some of the wealthiest Americans. This government program to help wealthy Americans spend more money now forces a false crunch on our resources, a $50 billion cut that Republicans believe should come from Medicaid, food stamps, and student loans. Who will feel the impact of these cuts? Well, almost 60 percent of all people in nursing homes who are on Medicaid, and one-third of all babies who are born on Medicaid, and 8 million Americans with disabilities who depend on Medicaid, and 36 million Americans who have to worry about going hungry.

How do we, as a Congress, reconcile the fact that these cuts will disproportionately affect low-income Americans, the elderly, and the poor? The answer is we should not reconcile ourselves to such an action, not for 1 minute, not for a nanosecond. If we are going to dramatically change for the worse the lives of millions of children and families and senior citizens across the country, it had better be because we had to, not because we chose to. And there is no doubt that Republicans have now chosen to rob the poor to maintain and create new tax breaks for the rich.

We are not simply robbing the poor of resources. The proposed cuts are robbing the poor of opportunity. The reconciliation budget targets programs that work to bridge the gap between rich and poor, Medicaid, food stamps, and student loans, that strive to even the playing field for all American families.

Eight weeks ago, across the United States, Americans saw the faces of other Americans staring up at them from television screens scratching out desperate signs on rooftops. Help us, the signs said. Grandmothers, brothers, nieces, nephews, newborns, the faces of families who could be our families, neighbors who could be our neighbors, but desperate, alone, and calling out to the world to see. Across the country, Americans answered with one voice: we are better than this. This is wrong. This is immoral. This must not be allowed to continue. We must take care of our own. It is our responsibility. It is our duty. It is who we are as a people.

As a country, we saw that 100,000 people were trapped in New Orleans because they did not have automobiles to escape the flood waters. We found that 50 percent of all children in Louisiana live in poverty. In response to this national revelation, Republicans have revisited our national budget and made a decision to cut programs from the poorest of the poor while protecting a new tax cut giveaway to the richest of the rich. Instead of limiting these tax cuts to millionaires, the Republicans have decided to rebuild New Orleans on the backs of the poorest people from the rest of the country.

This is a moral question, not a budget matter. The Republicans are building the high levees around their threatened tax cuts, while letting the flood swamp the programs that matter for the rest of Americans. This is what the debate is really all about. It is about our values as a Nation and how they are reflected in how we govern, how America should treat its neighbors, our fellow Americans, who by an accident of birth came into this world unable to see or who were born into a family without the means to put food on the table, or who had the misfortune to develop Alzheimer's. Should we let them starve? Should we tell their children they will never go to college because their parents cannot pay the tuition? Shall we turn them away from the hospitals because they cannot afford the care and do not have the insurance? Or should we as a country decide that in this land of plenty no one should go without basic human dignity?

As a Catholic, I was brought up to believe that character is judged by how we treat the least amongst us. This budget does not pass that test, and my hope is that tomorrow we as a Congress will rise up to defeat it.

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Poverty is on the rise in our country, 37 million Americans are now in poverty.

A family of two in poverty--a single mother with her child--is living on $1,069 a month.

About 14 million Americans are living on half of poverty. A single mother with her child living at half of poverty is trying to survive on $535 a month.

That is two people living on $123.37 a week.

And each day in America 2,385 more babies are born into poverty.

The Republicans will say that society has little obligation to help the poor because they fail to take personal responsibility for their lives.

The United States has highest GDP in the world. We are first in military technology; first in military exports; first in Gross Domestic Product; first in the number of millionaires and billionaires; and first in health technology. But we rank 12th in living standards among our poorest one-fifth; 13th in the gap between rich and poor; 14th in efforts to lift children out of poverty; 18th in the percent of children in poverty; and 37th in the health status of our citizens.

We should be working to close these gaps and ensure that all Americans have a fair chance at life and are treated with basic human dignity.

Instead, this reconciliation plan will take away food, health care, education and the ability to live in dignity in old age from people who have no other options. This budget will proliferate existing inequalities.

I simply cannot reconcile this budget with my values because this budget does not reflect who we are as a nation and what we believe our responsibility is to other Americans.

We will be judged by how we take care of the least of our people.

We will be judged by our decision to turn our backs on those Americans who were driven to cry out HELP--We are your neighbors, your grandmothers, your children.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this shortsighted, fiscally. irresponsible and immoral budget.

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