Concurrent Resolution On The Budget, Fiscal Year 2016 -- Conference Report -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I hope some of the comments I make in reference to this product are not taken personally.

I thank the Presiding Officer for all the work he has put into the budget and for his friendship and cooperation on so many different issues.

What is this budget all about? A budget is really like a blueprint. It really says what we want to do and spend in the next fiscal year that starts October 1. As a result of passing a budget, we send a message to the spending committees and tell them how much to spend in different areas. The budget tries to spell out not only the amounts but also the policy we are to follow when we pass these spending bills. It is really a pretty small document by Federal standards, but it really packs a lot of wallop when it comes to what we are going to be doing for the next several months.

Budgets make choices, just as our family budgets make a choice. Can we afford a new car? Is it time to move? Can we remodel the kitchen? Can we pay for the kids to go to college? These are family budget decisions that are made that really impact the lives of members of the family. Just as those decisions impact lives, so does this, in a large way, for over 300 million Americans.

Sadly, from my perspective--and I have great respect for the Senator from Wyoming, who serves as the Senate Budget Committee chairman--from my perspective, this budget has the wrong priorities. Let me tell you why.

Many times, you are going to hear speeches given on the floor of the Senate about how the government should not pick winners and losers. I have heard that so many times. It basically says: Let's leave it to the free market forces and other forces. Government shouldn't pick winners and losers.

This budget being offered to the Senate picks winners and losers, and we can almost identify those winners by name because what this budget does is it eliminates the Federal estate tax. The Federal estate tax in this circumstance--changes that are called for, reforms in it, will result in tax breaks for the wealthiest people in America. Roughly 4,000 people a year will be spared, if their estates are worth more than $10 million, from paying the estate tax. For these individuals who are that wealthy, it means a $3 million tax break. When you add it up over a 10-year period of time, 4,000 people per year, it comes out to $268 billion. So the wealthiest people in America are declared the winners in the Senate Republican budget.

Who are the losers? The losers are 16 million Americans who will find that they don't have the benefits of the EITC tax credit, as well as the child tax credit that has been proposed. For 16 million Americans, we cut back tax credits which they can use to build and sustain their families in order to give tax breaks to 4,000 people a year who have an estate worth more than $10 million.

We haven't ignored the estate tax. In fact, we substantially reformed it. We indexed it. We made a lot of changes to it. But the Republican budget said we haven't gone far enough. We still have 4,000 people who are so rich that they are going to pay the tax, and this budget says it is time for that to end. I think they are wrong.

In order to deal with reducing the budget deficit, let me tell you where this Republican budget turns. All of us are aware of the fact that student loan debt now is the largest debt in America other than mortgage debt. There is more student loan debt in America than credit card debt. Think about that for a second.

Millions of students are deep in debt and carrying that debt for year after year because higher education--colleges and universities--cost so much. Middle-income families can't afford to pay it. They haven't saved enough. So the kids and sometimes the family have to borrow the money to get it done.

What does this budget do for those student borrowers? First, it reduces the amount of money available in Pell grants. Pell grants are grants--not loans--given to low-income students at colleges and universities. That is money the students don't have to borrow because they come from low-income families. Well, in this bill, we have a 31-percent cut in Pell grant funding; it is about $90 billion over 10 years. Eight million Americans are dependent on Pell grant funding in this current school year. They will find that there is less money available in grants--even though they are from low-income families--to go to college. So what is the alternative? Don't go to college or borrow more money. So the Republican approach to the student loan debt crisis is to decrease the grants and increase the debt of future students.

That isn't all. There is a provision that says: If you borrow money to go to colleges and universities from the Federal Government, then your repayment of those government loans is going to be at least sensitive to your situation in life. In other words, you won't have to pay more than 10 percent of your income each year to pay off the student loan.

They eliminate it. That basically means these students are going to have to pay higher amounts of their earnings on their student loans. Is that a problem? It is a big problem. It is a problem for those fresh out of colleges and universities who want to start their lives. How are they going to start their lives and take the jobs they want and still pay off the student loans? Students are making decisions now about where they go to work and what they do with their lives because of the debt they carry with them out of colleges and universities. The Republican budget before us today makes it more difficult for those students by reducing the Pell grants and increasing the payback cost on student loans.

They do something else for students, too. The Affordable Care Act, which some call ObamaCare, said: If you graduate from college, you can stay on your parents' health insurance plan until age 26. Is that important? Boy, it was in our family.

I can remember when my daughter graduated from college, and I said: Jennifer, do you have health insurance?

She said: Dad, I don't need it. I feel fine.

Really?

Well, now, under the Affordable Care Act, my daughter and other kids can stay on their parents' health insurance plan. So what does the Republican budget do about that? It abolishes the Affordable Care Act. It abolishes that protection for families to keep their kids on their health insurance plans. How can that help families and kids fresh out of college? A lot of kids out of college are not finding jobs right away. They are doing internships. They are working part time. They can't afford health insurance. But they are on the family plan now because of ObamaCare--not according to the Republican budget; they want to get rid of it.

That isn't all. When you take a look at eliminating the Affordable Care Act--at this point, we have 16 million Americans who have the benefit of health insurance because of ObamaCare, and they eliminate it over a period of time. And we believe that number will grow to 27 million Americans who, because of the Republican budget, will not have the opportunity to get health insurance.

They cut back on Medicaid eligibility. Medicaid, of course, is health insurance for those in low-income situations. What will happen to those people? I wonder if the Budget Committee sat down, took a look, and said: Well, what is going to happen if people lose their health insurance, 27 million Americans? It would be naive to say that they just won't get sick. We know they will, and it will go back to the old days. In the old days, sick people who had no health insurance still showed up at the hospital. The hospital took care of them. The doctors took care of them. They were charity patients. Who paid for their care? All of us who have health insurance. I don't want to go back to the old days. I don't think America wants to. But this Republican budget does. It eliminates the Affordable Care Act.

I travel around Illinois and Chicago--I am honored to represent it--and I go to community health centers. They are popping up all over, in rural areas and cities as well, in neighborhoods. I want to say how proud I am that the Affordable Care Act created many of these centers. I have said, and I stand by it, that if I were sick or a member of my family were sick, I would be confident that if they walked into that center, that clinic, they would be treated to professional care. They are popping up all over the place. Elderly people now have someplace close to home to go to a clinic. Those who are on Medicaid--the health insurance from the government--can go in and be treated the same as anybody else.

What do we have in this bill when it comes to these health care clinics? This bill not only kicks 11 million people off Medicaid by taking away States' rights to expand health care to lower income residents, it cuts funding for community health centers by 70 percent--community health centers that are now serving 23 million Americans, which includes 7 million children and 250,000 veterans. How can we be better off by cutting back on the medical care in these health clinics? Do we think people won't get sick? Of course they will, and the cost will be shifted to others, just like the bad old days that we remember when health insurance premiums were going through the roof. But that is the proposal, and I think it is a serious mistake.

When I look at this Republican budget, I wonder if the Members who voted for it have really taken these ideas back home; if they have sat down with people and talked about what the impact will be when working families lose the tax credit of the ITC and child care. I wonder if they have considered what the impact will be by saying they want to perpetuate breaks in the Tax Code which reward companies for taking jobs overseas.

Isn't that the last thing we should be doing? Shouldn't the Tax Code be rewarding American companies that keep quality jobs in the United States, instead of shifting their mailing address to the Cayman Islands or someplace in Europe?

I think it is pretty clear: If you want to build a strong American economy, you stand by the best, most patriotic American corporations that keep people working in the United States. Yet that is not what this budget proposal does. We can do better.

I hope we defeat this budget resolution, and I hope we can then sit down and actually have a bipartisan conversation about the future of this country.

I think the future of this country includes a Tax Code that is fair to working families. I think it rewards American companies that create jobs in the United States. I don't think it gives 4,000 people a year, who happen to be the wealthiest people in America, a winning Power Ball ticket, as this budget proposal we have before us does.

I think we ought to expand the reach of health insurance, not reduce it. We want to give families a chance to be able to send their kids to college and kids not be so burdened with debt they can't chart their own futures. That is an optimistic, positive view of a growing America. This budget resolution is not.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this budget resolution and say to the Committee on the Budget that we can do better. If we are going to pick winners and losers, let's pick working families right here in America as the winners.

I yield the floor.

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