Social Security Disability Insurance and Unemployment Benefits Double Dip Elimination Act

Madam Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

Madam Chairman, what we have got here with this particular amendment is more than a doubling down on what was already a bad idea.

We heard, actually, from Mr. Rogers, who is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and a Republican Member of Congress, that the Republican version of the budget offered by Mr. Ryan was ``draconian''--draconian because of the impact it has on important investments that have historically helped make our economy grow, make us a world leader, make sure that we can keep our competitive edge in a global economy. The Republican budget coming out of the Budget Committee devastated those important investments.

Of course, they didn't close one single special interest tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit, but they decided to cut deeply into investments in our kids' education, everything from early education, to K-12, to college ed. They make no secret about it.

They want to charge college students higher interest rates and, at the same time, protect special interest tax breaks. What we have here in the Republican Study Committee's amendment is simply a doubling down on what the chairman of the Republican Appropriations Committee already called draconian.

The interesting thing to me, Madam Chairman, is that I would have thought that the Republican Study Committee would have taken a different approach. I would have thought they would have taken an approach that didn't require, as part of their budget, the revenues from the Affordable Care Act, but if you look at their revenue line, it is identical to the revenue line in the House Republican budget, which is identical to the Congressional Budget Office's revenue line, which The Heritage Foundation--no left-leaning group--has said means that these budgets incorporate the tax revenues from the Affordable Care Act.

Again, here is what The Heritage Foundation said:

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of this budget is that it

keeps the tax increases associated with ObamaCare.

It is what they have said about the House Republican budget's revenue line. This one has the same thing.

If they are going to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as they say they will, that revenue line should go down; yet no matter how you cut it, Madam Chairman, the choices remain choices that we do not believe reflect the values and priorities of this country,

which are of protecting those special interest tax breaks for very powerful interests while gutting important investments in our future, investments that have been proven historically to make the United States the leading economic power in the world.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentleman speaks about the importance of fiscal discipline and fiscal responsibility, and we agree.

The question we have is: Why do they exempt from the whole practice of fiscal discipline all of these what are called tax expenditures and tax preferences that have been put into the Tax Code many times by very powerful special interests?

What does a tax preference mean? It means in many cases that, because somebody has well-heeled lobbyists, he is able to escape having to pay taxes on something that everybody else has to pay for.

What our Republican colleagues are saying is they don't want to take away any of those special interest preferences for the purpose of reducing the deficit. They would rather cut deeply into our kids' education. They would rather charge college students more interest on their loans. They would rather increase class sizes in K-12, which is what happens when you cut Title I and special education.

They talk about opportunity, but the opportunities that they are protecting are those for the special interests who had their lobbyists do very well for them in Washington. Hey, hands off all of that. We don't want to touch that. But we are coming after everybody else, including, by the way, seniors on Medicare who will immediately see the reopening of the doughnut hole.

So if you are a senior with high prescription drug costs, that is going to cost you $1,200 more per year, on average, immediately. And then they begin to phase in in their budget their Medicare voucher program, which will end the Medicare guarantee.

This is all about priorities. The interesting thing here is that, despite all the talk about fiscal discipline from our Republican colleagues, it is hands off imposing any fiscal discipline on powerful special interests who have succeeded in getting themselves special deals in the Tax Code.

I am very pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra), chairman of the Democratic Caucus and a member of the Ways and Means Committee, who has spent a lot of time focusing on these issues.

Mr. Chairman, it is now my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Florida (Ms. Brown), a distinguished member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and someone who is focused on investing in America.

I yield the gentlelady an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I want to thank my colleague from Georgia for yielding and for his leadership in bringing forth this budget. As the chairman of the Republican Study Committee's Budget and Spending Task Force, Mr. Woodall has brought this budget called Back to Basics, and that is really what we are here to talk about right now.

Madam Chair, what are those basics we should get back to?

I think they are the basic fundamentals that our Founding Fathers laid out when they created this great Nation. It is still the greatest nation in the history of the world, but it is a nation with serious challenges.

If you look at our economy, our economy is struggling in many ways because of policies coming out of Washington, because of Washington's failure to confront those challenges.

People across this country are ready to confront those challenges. They are looking to us to finally start laying out a vision that says we are going to start living within our means, that we are going to do the things that families across this Nation do every single year, and that is finally getting back to fiscal discipline.

When my friend on the other side--I guess the person who is tasked with coming and opposing budgets that balance--uses terms like ``draconian''--Madam Chair, I will tell you what is draconian. What is draconian is to deny the opportunity to our children and grandchildren that we enjoy today, something that every single generation in the history of our country has.

One of the pure definitions of the American Dream is that every generation in our Nation's history, since George Washington led us through that Revolution, has had better opportunities than those that we enjoy today; yet most people in this country recognize, if we don't get our fiscal house in order, our children--my 7- and 4-year-olds, whom my wife drove to school this morning--won't have those same opportunities, and they all deserve the opportunities that we enjoy.

So how do we do it? How do we get back to basics?

We do it by having really good, strong, bold policy--bold policy that says we ought to live within our means.

Our budget balances by year 4. In 2018, we have a balanced Federal budget. If you compare that with President Obama's budget, he has got a budget that has over $1 trillion in new taxes.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: oh, you need to stick more taxes on all of these businesses.

If anybody is making a profit in America, it seems like they want to put a bull's-eye on him. If one happens to be successful and make a profit and create jobs in this country, that is somehow a bad thing.

If you take their approach in their budgets--in all of their budgets--they have over $1 trillion in new taxes. President Obama has nearly $2 trillion in new taxes, so you would think: okay, all of those new taxes must be what get you to balance.

In fact, Madam Chair, all of those new taxes just get you more despair. This President's budget never, ever gets to balance, but he has all of those tax increases that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about.

In our budget, we don't have any new tax increases. What we have is good, smart fiscal discipline policy that says let's get our economy moving again and let's believe in the American people.

By not raising taxes and by getting our economy moving, you actually get to balance in 4 short years and start creating surpluses, so we can pay back that debt, as my friend from Georgia talked about, so that we don't have to send all of those interest payments to other countries and to other priorities. Let's set those priorities in America.

How do we do this? How do we actually get back to balance in such a short period of time?

Number one, we save Medicare from bankruptcy, just as Paul Ryan does in the House Republican budget that came out of the Budget Committee. We share many of those same principles that get us to fiscal responsibility by saving Medicare, by not letting it go bankrupt, as our colleagues on the other side do and as the President's own budget does.

The President's own budget allows Medicare to go bankrupt. We don't think that is responsible, so we take care of those who paid into a system over their lifetimes.

We also invoke smart policy. If you start with health care, in our bill, we actually repeal the President's health care law and replace it with the American Health Care Reform Act, a bill that actually puts patients back in charge of their health care and that allows us to, again, have families be in charge of those decisions and to lower costs.

It is good, smart policy. We will talk more about it, but this is the right path to getting our economy back on track.

I thank the ranking member on the Budget Committee for, first, all the work he has done over the years in trying to get America back on track when it comes to what it should do with its budgets.

Budgets are a testament to our values and our priorities, and I believe Mr. Van Hollen has made it very clear what the values and priorities of Members of this side of the aisle are. It is

about making sure that we invest the taxpayer dollars to help our economy grow, help grow jobs, and help our kids grow up and get to college.

But let me remind everyone here of something. Remember those brainless, autopilot sequester cuts which had been scheduled for last year that led to the Republican shutdown of our government? Well, the Republican budget of 2015 is sequester on steroids.

Remember last year's autopilot sequester cuts that would have kicked over 50,000 children out of Head Start classes? Well, the 2015 Republican budget kicks 170,000 kids out of Head Start classes.

This Republican budget would kill jobs, with 1.1 million Americans likely to lose their job as a result of this budget and probably 3 million more the following year are the estimates.

This budget would cut seniors' Social Security benefits by changing the way we calculate their cost-of-living increases so that they would get less each year, even though we know the cost of living for seniors keeps going up.

They would continue to reduce our investments in very important projects that include Medicare, because this Republican budget would voucherize Medicare. It would turn it into a privatized version of what we have now, without the guarantees, so that seniors will be paying more for their prescription drugs.

This Republican budget would close not one single wasteful corporate tax loophole and, instead, it actually offers billionaires a $200,000 tax cut at the same time that it is increasing taxes for the middle class by about $2,000.

It should surprise no one that, while we are not closing any tax loopholes in the Republican budget and while we are increasing the taxes for middle class Americans, this Republican budget excludes things that we should do.

Through this budget we could, right now, move to increase the economy's capacity, increase the number of jobs, and decrease our deficits by finally fixing our broken immigration system.

Our Democratic budget does that; the Republican budget doesn't. And as a result, we give up, through the Republican budget, an opportunity to reduce our deficits by close to a trillion dollars over the next couple of decades. We give up the opportunity to create close to 3.5 million jobs over the next 10 to 20 years by doing immigration reform, and we give up the chance to strengthen Social Security by doing immigration reform. The Democratic budget makes those investments.

The Democratic budget actually invests in early childhood education. The Democratic budget makes it possible for more middle class families to afford to send their kids to college.

The Democratic budget makes those investments because we do close corporate tax loopholes. We do go after those who are evading paying their fair share of taxes. And we can make those investments in early childhood education, in fixing our broken immigration system, in investing in our roads and bridges because we go after those who are evading paying their taxes. We could do that.

But, again, I remind you, this is a budget being presented on this floor from our colleagues on the other side that actually put the brainless cuts under the sequester on autopilot. And we need to defeat that.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to add extraneous material into the Record on H. Con. Res. 96.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes.

I rise today on behalf of the Republican Study Committee. As so many Members of this Chamber know, the Republican Study Committee is made up of those most conservative Republicans here in the House; and while I serve on the Budget Committee, I have great respect for our Budget chairman, Paul Ryan, and I have a great belief in the budget that came out of that Budget Committee.

The Republican Study Committee's role is to try to do even better; and, Madam Chair, we have brought just such a budget today. We call it the Back to Basics Budget, and it is the budget that balances the fastest of any budget that we are going to be debating here on the House floor.

In just 4 years, it will bring us to balance, but I am not here about the numbers. I am here about why the numbers matter because, for every year that we are not in balance, we are not just borrowing that money from our children, we are paying interest on that money that could have gone to other priorities.

You will hear in this debate today about priorities that my friends on the other side of the aisle wish we would invest more money in that they don't believe our budget invests enough in.

That may be true, yet what our budget does do is begin to pay back the debt in ways that we can take all of that money that we are dedicating to interest today and dedicate it to American families tomorrow.

Of all of the things we disagree on in this Chamber, I think we can agree that the best use of our dollars is not in their going to pay creditors, but in their going to serve constituents, and that is what the Back to Basics Budget will do for us today.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to thank my friend for his fealty for The Heritage Foundation. I share that and would remind him that the Heritage action is key voting a ``yes'' vote on the budget before us today.

If he would like to be in line with Heritage, he can vote ``yes'' with me today. I would welcome that support.

With that, Madam Chairman, I would like to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana, Chairman Scalise, who is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee and a gentleman who has provided huge leadership for us in this Conference.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to just say: Nonsense. Nonsense. This is the only budget that is being presented that includes the Tax Code Termination Act that terminates every single special interest loophole in the entire Tax Code. Both gentlemen know that. Every single special interest exemption, exception in the Tax Code is gone under this budget.

Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp), a fantastic member of the Republican Study Committee and a member of my class of 2010.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Messer), my good friend.

The documents that we are debating today are more than just the Republican budget. It is who they are.

They constantly quote scripture, yet the Bible says the poor will always be with us. Our job is to help raise the standard.

They remind me of ``The Wizard of Oz.'' The Republicans have no heart.

This is another example of reverse Robin Hood--robbing from the working people and the middle class to give huge tax cuts to the rich.

The latest House Republican goals are to dismantle Medicare by ending the guarantee and replacing it with a voucher program and block grant and cut Medicaid by $732 billion.

I was so upset last year when the SNAP program--programs like Meals on Wheels and assistance to children--was cut by $40 billion. Now they cut it by $125 billion.

They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But let me just mention that everybody that talks about repealing it has health care. Every single one of them have health care.

They reject the President's proposal for veterans and Job Corps while aiming to reduce the high unemployment rate among veterans. A cut of 24 percent to nondefense appropriations would mean $146 billion cut from veterans' health care.

They cut transportation and infrastructure projects by $173 billion, phasing out the Essential Air Service programs to 160 small communities.

It eliminates Amtrak operational funds, resulting in 36 States and more than 20 million people losing Amtrak service. The transportation budget assumes no highway or transit investment in 2015.

And while everyone knows that education is critical, they cut billions from programs like Head Start.

To whom God has given much, much is expected. I certainly think more is expected from the Republican leadership in this House.

As I said from the beginning, they remind me of ``The Wizard of Oz.'' This Republican House has no heart.