President's Budget Hurts People

PRESIDENT'S BUDGET HURTS PEOPLE -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2006)

02/08/06

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this administration will go down as the most antilife in modern history. The President's budget is a moral document. It should promote life. Yet the President's new budget released Monday makes the wrong choices. It irresponsibly hurts future generations and saddles them with gigantic debt. It hurts them, it hurts people. It is irresponsible.

Let us start with health care. The President's budget will hurt people. It is a health care budget that is antilife. The Bush budget carves out over $36 billion through 2011 from Medicare. Despite the fact that people cannot afford prescription drugs and costs are exploding, why is he forcing across-the-board cuts to future Medicare payments?

The chaos surrounding the new prescription drug benefit has already caused undue anxiety and lack of medication to thousands of our citizens too sick and too ill to fight back in lines at drugstores around our country. Seniors 80 years old with Parkinson's disease are being forced to go into drugstores confused without the help that they need. The President's budget is antilife.

At the same time, the President's new budget slashes our lead agencies to fight disease. They shortchange veterans' health care. Apparently, the Bush administration's idea of honoring service to our country is to make millions of veterans pay huge increases for health care costs that they have earned.

The President's budget proposal includes legislation that would raise veterans' premiums to over 100 percent on prescription drugs. Additionally, the Bush administration has shortchanged the Department of Veterans Affairs, leaving it short of needed funds to take care of the expected influx of tens of thousands of injured and disabled veterans returning from Afghanistan and the Iraq war. His veterans budget is anti-life.

The Bush budget offers words only and no substance to thrust our Nation into a new era of energy independence. For hard-hit consumers, he has offered nothing. His policies, however, allow the huge oil giants to rack up even more profits. Take ExxonMobil that just racked up the largest profit of any corporation in U.S. history, $36 billion in profits in just 1 year. Their profits in 1 year were larger than the entire budget of the U.S. Department of Energy. It is interesting to note that Exxon's windfall lifted the combined profits of the 2005 oil giants to $63 billion, three times the size of the entire Department of Energy. His energy budget is anti-life.

There are people freezing and getting flu around this country because they have to set their thermostats down. His budget is anti-life. He refuses to see those people.

If the President was serious about helping people, he would be committed to making our Nation energy independent. He would have made new fuels a centerpiece of his State of the Union address. Instead, his budget eliminates all funding for new fuels to help expand the production of ethanol and biodiesel. His budget cuts renewable energy loans, bioenergy support value-added to help small companies get a start up. By almost $100 million he shortchanges them.

And yet if we look at oil company profits, they have allowed CEOs in those firms to double their salaries and drive up their political contributions by a staggering $450 million in the past 6 years. They know how to cash in. But what a great injustice to the vast majority of people. Their heating bills are going up. They are paying for gasoline. They do not have any sweetheart deals in this town to cut their taxes.

If you look at the weatherization program, the President is reducing funds there. If you look at the winter heating assistance program, the people applying have reached a 12-year high, but his budget is over $2 billion short, $2 billion short of what is needed just to take care of the people that we needed to take care of last year. But the oil companies have a $63 billion profit, just the top three companies. What is wrong with this picture?

He has cut first responders. We know he has not gotten help to people affected by Katrina and Rita in the gulf.

And this says nothing about how his budget is anti-life against the youth of our country and children by causing tuition to go up at all of our schools. The Bush budget fails the moral test. It fails the ill. It fails our youth. It fails the future. It is the most anti-life budget in American history.

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