Conference Report on H. Con. Res. 95, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2006
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H. CON. RES. 95, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (House of Representatives - April 28, 2005)
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Republican Budget Conference Report.
The Republican budget makes huge cuts to critical programs for the poor and the most vulnerable in our country in order to give away $106 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest in our society.
The Republican budget instructs the Energy and Commerce committee to cut $14.7 billion, of which at least $10 billion is supposed to be cut from the Medicaid program that serves nearly 50 million Americans. Medicaid provides health care not only to poor moms and kids, but also to the elderly and the disabled.
The Republicans will tell you that they have to cut Medicaid because we are in state of fiscal crisis. And it's true we are in the midst of crisis. But it is a manufactured crisis.
If you add up all the spending that Congress has approved since 2001, you will see that: 48 percent of all the spending has gone to tax cuts, 37 percent has gone to Defense and Homeland Security, and only 15% has gone to Domestic programs.
It is clear when you look at these numbers that the deficit did not balloon upward due to social programs, or even the war in Iraq. The deficit came from the Republican's irresponsible tax giveaways to help their fat cat friends get fatter and fatter and fatter.
This Republican budget asks the mothers and grandmothers in the nursing home, the disabled children, the poor, those with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, to sacrifice their health and dignity in order to finance the tax cuts of the wealthiest 1 percent in this country.
It asks those who have nothing to sacrifice everything, and those who have everything to sacrifice nothing.
This budget is about giving $106 billion away in tax cuts, cutting up to $14.7 billion from the Medicaid program.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this shortsighted, fiscally irresponsible, and immoral budget.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Republican Budget Conference Report.
One of the most egregious offenses committed in the Republican Budget is the proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.
Although a budget should have nothing to do with controversial environmental policy decisions, this budget would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge through backdoor budget chicanery. In poll after poll, the American people have expressed their disapproval of using the budget to decide such a contentious issue. The Republican Majority knows that it cannot pass this measure as standalone legislation. By shoehorning the Arctic Refuge into the budget, they are making an end-run around the legislative process, knowing that it cannot pass in the Senate any other way.
While the budget claims that oil leases from the Arctic Refuge will generate $2.4 billion in revenue, this appears to be a case of gross deception and misinformation.
When the President's Office of Management and Budget was asked why it is assuming that the oil leases in the Refuge will sell for amounts that are hundreds of times greater than the average North Slope lease over the last 15 years, OMB passed the buck--they said, ``Go ask Interior; we don't know.''
Ladies and gentleman, we deserve more than such dodges and lame excuses. This Republican budget will destroy forever the wilderness quality of one of God's most magnificent ecological systems on the basis of illusory economic projections.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this shortsighted, fiscally irresponsible, and immoral budget.
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