Impact of the President's Budget on America

IMPACT OF THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET ON AMERICA

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much to my good friend from Ohio. What is more baffling is that it is bad enough that the President is, in this proposed budget, asking for more tax cuts for the wealthiest few, but what is more disheartening, deflating, insulting is that he is doing it on the backs of Medicaid recipients and Medicare beneficiaries.

There is a $252 billion Medicare cut, a net $28 billion Medicaid cut in this budget. Yet still there are billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. I mean, how do you stand behind a podium at a press conference, how do you hold up this big, thick, hulking document and say that this is a representation of your values, of our country's values?

Tax cuts for the wealthy and slashing health care for those who need it most and who can least afford it. I just honestly wonder every single day who raised these people. What were they talking about around their dinner table? It was obviously a different conversation than what was discussed around my dinner table.

I come from not a poor background, not a wealthy background, but you know, I ate every night, we woke up and ate breakfast every day. Because I was comfortable in that regard and because my family was able to provide for us, we were taught around that dinner table that you took care of and gave back. In the Jewish religion, it is called Tikkun Olam. You give back to the community and help people who can least afford it, and this budget is the antithesis of that. This is give to the people who can best afford it and do it and take from the people who can afford it the least.

I guess that is another example of why Democrats were successful across this country. Why both of my colleagues were successful in defeating Republican incumbents because the message was clear and they wanted a new direction.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Speaking of S-CHIP, the children's health insurance program, there is actually a proposal in this budget document that narrows who would be eligible for the children's health insurance program.

Right now, I think the eligibility is twice that of the poverty level, and Secretary Leavitt just signed off on a formula that would narrow those children who could potentially be eligible for children's health insurance, I mean, at a time in our country when people are struggling to afford health care, when we have more and more people, especially children join the ranks of the uninsured, which means when you are sick, they cannot afford to go to the doctor and they use our emergency rooms as primary health care. Like I said, where are their values coming from?

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Just actually if you are momentarily at a loss, I have the privilege of sitting on the House Appropriations Committee, as does Mr. Ryan, and we will have a chance to take this document apart pretty carefully, one of the things that I was reviewing as we received this today was just the continuous example that this administration provides in representing a policy in one way and doing something completely different.

I mean, we have to be careful about the words we choose when we are on the House floor referring to the President, but I will point you to the section of the proposed budget that talks about how we finally are including at least some portion of the war budget inside the budget, instead of doing it all as emergency supplemental funding. So we have to give the President credit for at least including a portion of that in the budget.

However, he actually does not have any funding for the war, assumes no funding for the war past the end of 2008. There is no funding in his proposed budget for 2009. I think probably everyone in this country would like nothing more than for us to be completely finished in this war in Iraq by that point, but that is not the track that we are on and it is not the track that the President has suggested that we are going to be on.

So, there is a certain lack of clarity in terms of the distinction between what his budget represents and his rhetoric. They are not matching each other, and I think people see through that. We are fortunately now running this institution. So, through our accountability process, we can show the disparity between what the budget represents and what the actual policy implementation is.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That brings me back to my, you know, sort of private thoughts, when reviewing the budget proposal, and the changes in the SCHIP program formula, where are their values, where are their priorities? If you lay out the choices they had, they choose covering the formula and covering fewer kids.

Perhaps it is that President Bush's daughters are grown now, or that they have always had health care coverage or that he grew up in a family that maybe didn't understand need. But there is something desperately wrong with the priorities and the values of this administration in terms of the direction they are moving in this country.

That is why, at least fortunately now, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Altmire, Mr. Murphy, we have some balance. We have the ability to exert Congress' role as a check and balance. We have the 30-something Working Group that can come to the floor each night and talk about those issues, talk about what is important to the American people, and the way we want to continue to move this country in the new direction that our constituents have asked for.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I find this an appropriate time, as we are wrapping up, I think, we only have a couple of minutes left, to remember what happened here in the first 100 hours that is in contrast to that document there. Of all the things we talked about in the last 55 minutes or so, 45 minutes, we should make note of that in the first 100 hours the Democratic Congress raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. We cut student loan interest rates in half that will save the average family $4,400, so you get a pay raise. If you have a kid in school that is taking out loans, we will save you $4,400.

We allowed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices so our seniors will have less cost to bear for their drug prices, and then we repealed the corporate welfare and invested that money in alternative energy and passed a stem cell research bill to open up two new sectors of the economy for job growth. Compare the first 100 hours and who we helped, and you take that document there that cuts health care for poor kids. That is the difference between what the American people did in the last election, and what we had to deal with within the last, between 6 and 14 years, depending on how you are counting.

Now I get to do this again, show you guys how to do this. If you want to e-mail us, any of the Members, 30SomethingDems@mail.house.gov or you can get on the Web site at www.speaker.gov/30Something and send us your comments. All of these charts that we have here are available on the Web site for other members.

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