Two Americas

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) for 5 minutes.

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, that was great rhetoric but not reality. Thank God when the Architect built this Capitol, he put a top on it that attracts lightning rods; otherwise, who knows what would happen in front of us.

The budget that was put up yesterday talked about defense, but it also had one other element in it. That was restricting the District of Columbia from using funds for low-income women to get family planning or abortions.

If you really wanted to take care of the troops, you would fund a spending proposal that took care of the troops and you wouldn't add a rider to it that you know that no human being who cared about women's choice would vote for. You eliminate a great percentage of your possible supporters. If the troops are number one and number one only, you don't put something on with DC abortion rights on it because that eliminates part of your constituency.

Now, one of the previous speakers talked about this too, the one that was back into Led Zeppelin. I haven't figured that one out yet. But it was something about Planned Parenthood. Why is Planned Parenthood an issue? Because the Republican majority made it an issue. They put in their budget that there will be no funding for Planned Parenthood, a specific organization. Not any organization that does family planning, not any organization that might provide abortions, but Planned Parenthood. And that is a sticking point in the negotiations.

It is wrong to single out a single organization that helps women with their family planning and that does give low-income women opportunities to get tests for HIV/AIDS and for breast cancer and for all other types of women's health issues. The Republicans have made that an issue, and they made it such an issue that they wouldn't have a clean CR proposal yesterday.

Mr. Hoyer offered a proposal. He said, Let's just continue the budget for a week at its current spending plans. No cuts, true. They could come later. That was resoundingly rejected because they wanted to go forward with their extreme social policy, and that's what matters to them. They can hide behind what they want.

The fact is there are two America's today. I read about it when I was a young person. Michael Harrington wrote a book decades ago called ``The Other America.'' It was about an America that didn't get the support that it needed--Appalachia, poor people, regular folks that didn't get what they needed and didn't have the opportunity that this country should give everybody. The two Americas are the upper 1 percent that aren't going to be paying more taxes and the other 99 percent that do.

One gentleman said the Democrats want everybody to pay more taxes. No, not everybody; just the millionaires. And they wouldn't go along with that, because the millionaires are the party that control the Republicans. That's what they're about. They won't fund--put a tax proposal on that will tax millionaires because they want the middle class to pay more. Their budget blueprint that's going to come out lowers the overall rate to 25 percent--even more for millionaires.

And the billionaires, they're not watching today, Mr. Speaker, because they've got their lobbyists working for them. They came here in December and they took the estate tax from a million dollar exemption to a $5 million exemption. And they took the rate that really mattered to them from 55 to 35 percent so they can pass that wealth on and continue the differences in America.

Two Americas: The upper 1 percent that the majority party represents, and the other 99 percent that we represent.

Mr. Speaker, let's get abortion out of the debate. Let's protect our troops. Let's keep this government moving.

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