Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4089, Sportsmen's Heritage Act of 2012, and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my friend, Mr. McGovern. He is absolutely right. The next vote will be a vote to double down on the Republican budget.

I appreciate the answer from my colleague from Utah (Mr. Bishop). What the next vote will allow, the vote on the rule, is for the House to proceed with the implementation of the Republican budget. Therefore, if you think that budget is the wrong direction for this country, you should vote against the rule and not give the House the authority to move forward, because that's what the next vote is all about.

Mr. Speaker, let's just remember what that budget does. I would just remind my colleagues that the issue in the debate was not whether or not we reduce the long-term deficit in this country. We've got to do that. The issue was how we do that. The Republican budget did not follow the advice of every bipartisan group that has looked at the challenge of deficit reduction, because those bipartisan groups have said that we need to take a balanced approach--meaning, we've got to make some tough cuts.

We passed some of the Budget Control Act, and we needed to do more. They also said that we needed to deal with the revenue side of the equation, but the Republican budget doesn't ask for one penny--one penny--from millionaires for the purposes of deficit reduction. It doesn't close one single tax loophole for the purposes of deficit reduction--not one. In fact, the overwhelming majority of our Republican colleagues have signed a pledge saying they won't do that, that they won't close one tax loophole for the purpose of deficit reduction. Now, the American people understand the math of the budget. If you say that we're not going to ask the wealthiest to do a little more as part of reducing the deficit, it means you've got to sock it to everybody else even harder.

Just this week, we saw this play out. Yesterday, in the Senate, they had a vote on the Buffett rule. It is a very simple proposition: let's ask millionaires to pay the same effective tax rate as their secretaries. Every Democratic Senator but one voted for it. Every Republican Senator but one voted against it.

Contrast that to what's going to happen in the House on Thursday. Here in the House on Thursday, they're going to do another tax break. Look at the Joint Tax Committee, a nonpartisan group. Where did the bulk of those funds go--to hedge funds? to Washington law firms? There was $50 billion added to the deficit in 1 year, and it would be $500 billion over 10 years. When you give tax cuts like that and if you also want to reduce the deficit, it means you cut into everything else. So what do you cut? You do cut the Medicare guarantee. You hit seniors on Medicare. I'll just show you a chart that shows exactly what they do here.

If you look at this chart, it shows the current support that seniors receive under the Medicare program. That's the blue line. This is the percentage of support they get from the Medicare program. As you can see, if you continue the Medicare program at the current levels of support, it maintains that at that level. This green line is the level of support that Members of Congress get as part of the Federal employees' health benefit plan. Members of Congress get a fixed percentage of the premium costs as part of their plan. When the costs go up, Members of Congress' support for the plan goes up accordingly, and that's why the level of support from Members of Congress--that's the green line--stays constant over time. As for the Medicare voucher plan, huh-uh. Under the Medicare voucher plan, as costs for health care rise, the amount of the vouchers seniors get will not keep pace. That's how they reduce the deficit.

In other words, it's another round of tax cuts for millionaires; but for seniors who have a median income today of under $22,000, they're going to give them a voucher that doesn't keep pace with health care costs. For Members of Congress, your plan keeps pace with rising health care costs; not so for seniors on Medicare. Why? Again, it's not a balanced approach.

What else does it do? We just had a hearing today in the Budget Committee on what it does to Medicaid. It shreds the social safety net. It cuts Medicaid by $800 billion over the next 10 years. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, by the year 2022, Medicaid will be cut by 30 percent and, by the year 2050, by 75 percent.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I would remind my colleagues that two-thirds of Medicaid funding goes to seniors in nursing homes and to care for disabled individuals, and another 20 percent goes to kids from low-income families. They would whack that in their budgets, in the Republican budget, by $800 billion. At the same time, if you'd just take the portion of the tax cut in the Republican budget that extends the Bush tax cuts for the folks at the very top, that's $961 billion, but they don't want to ask those Americans to go back to paying the same rates that they were paying during the Clinton administration--the same rates. The economy was booming and 20 million jobs were created--but no, they want to give the folks at the very high end a tax break and cut Medicaid by $810 billion.

Those are the choices that are made in the Republican budget, and that's what this vote on this rule is all about: whether we should allow this body to go forward and implement that budget. It's wrong for the country. It's displaced priorities.

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