Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

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

I rise today to offer an amendment to the National Landscape Conservation System Act. Created in 2000, this act provides protective and restorative services to nearly 27 million acres of public lands, including a number of our Nation's most spectacular wilderness and scenic rivers.

The legislation before us today would codify this existing land preservation system, thus ensuring its existence for generations to come. However, as written, this bill does not protect the rights of our Nation's sportsmen, specifically, their continued right to hunt and fish on these lands.

Because I strongly support this right and want to make it absolutely clear that it is never infringed upon, my amendments states that enactment of this legislation will not, in any way, limit access for hunting, fishing, trapping or recreational shooting on the National Landscape Conservation System.

Furthermore, my amendment confirms that the right to manage, control and regulate hunting, fishing and trapping on these lands rests with the States, not with the Federal Government.

My amendment has garnered the enthusiastic support of a number of sportsmen's groups, including the National Rifle Association and Trout Unlimited. It is critically important that we ensure hunting and fishing activities remain a part of our Nation's heritage, so I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for his comments and welcome his support.

I do have a few other speakers who wish to weigh in. I would like to now recognize my good friend and colleague from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Mr. Carney) for 2 minutes.

I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, the coauthor of this important amendment. And at this time I would recognize another freshman colleague from the great State of Ohio, my good friend, Mr. Space, for 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor President R. Thomas Williamson of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. Westminster College was established on January 21, 1852. As one of the earliest co-educational colleges in the Nation, Westminster was founded to promote Christian values while focusing on individual development.

In June of 2008, Westminster College President R. Thomas Williamson will retire after 11 years of service. President Williamson's tenure has provided over a decade of exemplary leadership and vision for Westminster College.

During his time at Westminster College, President Williamson oversaw the completion of 10 major building projects, grew the college's endowment to over $100 million, and helped the college become the 15th best liberal arts college in the country, according to Washington Monthly. President Williamson's mantra of ``get better, not bigger'' has allowed students to receive the continued personal attention they deserve. Westminster College maintains a 12:1 student to faculty ratio and a 98 percent placement rate for its graduates.

President Williamson is a former U.S. Navy officer and holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore. He and his wife, Jean Simmonds Williamson, have four children and three grandchildren.

I want to commend President Williamson for his dedication to the students of Westminster College and the community of New Wilmington. I congratulate him on his career and wish him all the best in his retirement.

I thank the gentleman from Florida, and I look forward to continuing the discussion tonight on all these issues the gentleman has brought up.

The gentleman closed with Iraq. We are going to have General Petraeus and we are going to have Ambassador Crocker come before Congress again next week and give their status report on what they see on the ground in Iraq. As the gentleman from Florida knows, he and I traveled to Iraq together last year. One of the things that you would see over there is that the military situation, without question, our brave men and women are doing incredible work

over there. It's amazing to see firsthand the men and women in action and seeing the great things that they have been able to do with the situation that they have been presented with in Iraq.

But I cannot say the same thing about the politicians in Baghdad, the Iraqi politicians. We have had for several months now, if not more than a year, a situation in Baghdad where the politicians have just refused to step up and make the necessary political accommodations to administer their own government and run their own affairs. This situation in Iraq can only be resolved by the Iraqis themselves. It is their country. Our brave men and women in the military have provided a bubble of security around Baghdad to give the decisionmakers, the Iraqis in Baghdad the opportunity to make the tough political accommodations that are necessary, and they have refused to do it.

What we have seen in recent weeks, unfortunately, is the situation in Iraq regress. We will hold judgment on that until I hear from General Petraeus next week and Ambassador Crocker and hear what they have to say. But it does not appear that the situation in Iraq over the past several weeks has gotten any more stable. I hope that General Petraeus has good news.

But nobody can argue that our brave men and women in the military, the best and brightest this country has to offer, have done everything they can possibly do to give the Iraqis the opportunity to take the reins of power and control their own affairs and manage their own destiny. Unfortunately, it appears that they have refused to do so, the politicians in Baghdad. So we will certainly talk more about that.

I also wanted to touch on the economic downturn that we are in. There's a lot of debate on what you call it; is it a recession, are we in a recession, or are we not. I really don't care what we call it, what I know about is when I go back to my district in western Pennsylvania and I talk with people who are struggling in this economy, I can see firsthand what has happened and what the impact of this economic downturn has had on my constituents in southwestern Pennsylvania. We hear stories from all around the country of families going through the same trouble and turmoil as my constituents are in western Pennsylvania.

One of the things I hear over and over again is, well, these are just people who bought too much house. They got in over their heads and they bought more house than they can afford. You know what, they are getting what is coming to them.

That is not what happened. What we have had is people all across this country that have a mortgage, but they also have health care costs.

They have kids in school, where they are paying college tuition that is going up three and four and five times the rate of inflation. They have perhaps businesses to run. They have costs with fuel and gas prices and everything that that affects, with food prices going up.

Perhaps they took out a second mortgage, and maybe then they got overextended because they couldn't afford their daily household expenses because of everything else happening in the economy. This wave came on, and we had over 1 million foreclosures last year. We are on schedule this year to perhaps double that in 2008.

And I don't think anyone can argue that the economy is certainly in trouble right now. It is in a downward spiral, and we are hoping to prevent a recession, if we are not in one already. But I think to have an argument, as we have had on this floor many times with people on the other side who want to deny that this is a recession or not, that is missing the boat. I don't care what you call it. What I want to do is get out there and make a difference for the American people in a way that is going to make their life better and help them pay their daily household expenses and avoid bankruptcy and avoid defaulting on their mortgage. And that helps everybody.

Perhaps you do say, well, these are people who bought too much house and they got what they deserve. Even that is not the case. If those people live in your neighborhood and they default on their mortgage and their house is foreclosed, guess what? That is going to hurt your property values. That is going to have a direct impact on you, and maybe at that point you might take a second look at it. I don't want it to get to that point. I want to take proactive action.

The President this week, when he talked about what his economic plan was he was moving forward, it sounded a lot like Herbert Hoover and what his plan was in the 1930s. And if you sit on your hands and you do nothing, I can promise you, this is not going to correct itself. This problem is going to continue to get worse.

So I am grateful that we have come here tonight to talk about these important issues and to take action on these issues as a Congress, because working together we can take a giant step in solving these problems for the American people, hopefully avoiding a recession, if we are not in one, but in the long term making policy decisions that are going to directly improve the lives of our constituents all across the country.

With that, I would now yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke).

I thank the gentleman from Ohio. I wanted to think

about this in the terms of what this Congress has done to resolve some of the issues that we are talking about right now for our brave service men and women and their families. Because anyone listening to this debate would say, well, that is great that you are talking about what the problems are; but what have you done to solve the problems? And I want to tell anyone who is willing to listen that we have a tremendous record of accomplishment in supporting our troops. Not just saying the words, but supporting the troops with our actions, not just our words. And we are in the sixth year of the war in Iraq right now, and here are some things that this new Congress has done, bills that have been signed into law to address the issues that we are talking about.

The gentleman from Ohio talks about traumatic brain injury and the incredible impact that has had. TBI is the signature injury of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because people who would have been killed in previous wars, thanks to better medical technology and better armor and equipment, thankfully they survive; but, unfortunately, in many cases they are horrifically injured, the type of injuries the gentleman witnessed at Walter Reed. I took a trip to Walter Reed, myself, and I saw the same types of injuries, the lost limbs, the spinal cord injuries and the traumatic brain injuries.

But what happens is, when these men and women come back and they are still in the Defense health care system, they are treated for the apparent physical injuries that you can see in front of you. And because they are moving so quickly, they don't think to screen them for TBI if it is not a severe case of TBI. They move them over to the VA. The VA has no record of them having had a head injury, so it doesn't become part of their medical record and we have symptoms that go undiagnosed the rest of the time they are in the VA health care facility.

So what this Congress did is said that every VA facility in this country has to have somebody on staff who is equipped and trained to treat traumatic brain injury, and we created a national data base for all of those cases where we establish treatment protocols to make sure that those brave men and women who suffered from TBI get the highest quality care anywhere in the country. That is something that is going to directly impact people's lives.

Because of that law that we passed in this House and that has been signed into law, every veteran who enters a VA health care facility is going to be screened for traumatic brain injury, so never again will it go undiagnosed.

I thank the gentleman for that clarification, because that is instructive when we do hear from the other side, the unproductivity alleged of this Congress.

How about this. The gentleman from Florida talked about the tremendous strain, as did the gentlewoman from New York, the tremendous strain our families of our men and women who are in the Guard and Reserve that are being deployed not once, not twice, but multiple redeployments, four, even five times now as we head into the sixth year of the war in Iraq, and we have been in Afghanistan since before that. So these families are left behind, and they have to struggle just to make ends meet.

What has this Congress done about it? We are being told on the other side we haven't done anything, we don't have any record. Well, let me tell you what this Congress has done about it. This has been signed into law.

We expanded the Family and Medical Leave Act for the first time to cover the families of our military Guard and Reserve, people who are putting their lives on the line for us with multiple redeployment overseas. And now, because of the action in this Congress, you can use Family and Medical Leave Act time to care for a wounded service man or woman when they come back, to use time to reassimilate as a family, to get to know your kids again and get to know your spouse again after being away for 15 months. And while they are gone, the spouse can use that time to attend these deployment briefings that happen often during the workday and they can't get time off of work, they can use it for child care, they can use it to get their economic house in order and deal with the household finances, things that weren't covered before.

That is a law that is going to directly impact people's lives. It is going to make it a little bit easier for the families of our military Guard and Reserve, and that is something that we did in this Congress after the previous Congresses had done nothing to address the issue.

So, I do take offense to the comment that the gentleman from Ohio relayed that had been made about how we had done nothing.

Madam Speaker, last month the Bush administration approved the Federal bailout of an investment giant, Bear Stearns. You would have thought that the crisis on Wall Street would have opened the administration's eyes as to what is happening on Main Street. Reminiscent of Herbert Hoover, President Bush continues to oppose any efforts by this Congress to address the extreme hardships of Americans struggling in today's economy. House Democrats have crafted a foreclosure prevention package that would help stabilize the housing market, and Senate Democrats have similarly been working on legislation to help struggling families keep their homes. But rather than support such efforts, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, and Senate Republicans voted to block it from even coming to the floor for a vote.

Madam Speaker, it's time President Bush and Republicans recognize that the crisis affects Main Street as well as Wall Street, and they should join us in our efforts to help families hard hit by this economy.

Madam Chairman, I'm proud of this budget because it continues on the great work that we did last year after years and years of chronic underfunding of the veterans health care system. We added $13 billion in funding for the VA, which is the largest increase in the 77-year history of the VA, and that was great work. And we are following that up this year by adding $4.9 billion in increased funding and including steady increases over each of the next 5 years.

This budget is true to our American veterans.

In contrast, the President's budget, which does include a modest $1.7 billion increase this year, it decreases funding in real dollars over the next 4 years, and over the 5-year period, contains a cut in veterans health care spending. And there are 120,000 new veterans entering the system this year. Is there anyone in this body that thinks that health care costs aren't going to go up, that the number of veterans isn't going to go up, people entering the VA health care system? And instead of following the President's lead and cutting veterans health care spending, we're increasing spending to the largest levels in history.

It's endorsed by the VFW, the American Legion, the Vietnam Veterans of America, just to name a few. And this funding means that we're going to clear up the 500,000 case backlog that currently exists in the VA due to that chronic underfunding that took place over the past several years before we increased funding last year. It's going to make improvements at VA clinics, help keep up with growing populations of veterans, including in my home district a $180 million expansion of the VA health care facility.

It's going to increase research on traumatic brain injury and prosthetics to help our wounded warriors and our wounded veterans. It's going to help us recruit and retain the highest quality health care professionals to ensure that our veterans get nothing less than the highest quality health care available anywhere in the country right at our VA centers.

So, lastly I would say to the gentleman, we have stepped up to the plate. We are going to support our veterans not just with our words, but with our actions. We're going to continue the great work we did last year with a $4.9 billion increase this year.

I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, last March Congressman Kennedy came to western Pennsylvania to hold a hearing with me and Congressman Tim Murphy about the critical need for mental health parity legislation. Now, almost exactly 1 year later, I am proud to rise in support of the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act. This much-needed legislation will eliminate the discrepancies between health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses by ensuring that patients seeking mental health services are no longer penalized with higher copayments and coverage restrictions.

Passage of this bill is a key step towards ending the stigma surrounding mental illness. Of the 44 million Americans living with mental illness, two-thirds did not receive the treatment they need. Treating mental illness is not only critical to mental health, but also prevents physical ailments that arise when mental health conditions go untreated.

So, Mr. Speaker, this bill will help improve the mental and physical well-being of millions of Americans, and I ask my colleagues to support this bill.

And I want to commend Dr. Kagen for his leadership on this issue. As all of our colleagues know, Dr. Kagen, right from the very start, has made health care his priority here in Congress using his expertise.

I have a health care background as well, health care policy is my professional background, and the gentleman and I have spoken numerous times about the importance of health care. And I wanted to come down today to talk about the need for health care reform as we are currently discussing, but also just to commend the gentleman for his continued leadership on this at a time when clearly the political system is in unchartered waters, with a Presidential election that is going on around us, divided governments, we have a Congress with the House and the Senate that are having issues with other things going on.

But we continue to see the health care system get worse and worse. And I think the gentleman and I agree on many things, but most importantly on the need to do something about the health care issue right now. It would be very easy to say let's kick the can down the road another year. We'll come back here in March of 2009 and everything will be different and we'll take up health care then. That's great. You know what? When next year comes along, we are going to take up health care. And there is a variety of differences of opinion on what the approach should be for health care reform, how expansive do you want it to be.

But there are things that we can do now, this year, in this political environment, that are realistic. And that's what the gentleman and I have been discussing. We want to do things this year that would be considered, if not low-hanging fruit, at least issues that we can all agree on or most can agree on that we can pass and set the table for a further discussion next year on health care reform.

We have a country where there is over $2 trillion that gets spent every single year; 17 percent of our GDP goes to health care. And I don't think in my district there's an issue that I hear about more often than health care reform when I go around and visit my constituents, and the reason is this is an issue that affects everybody. It's not just your wallet. Obviously, a $5,000 premium, as Dr. Kagen was describing, something that we can all relate to, the exponential increases in health care costs. Small businesses every day in this country by the thousands have to make decisions on what to do about their health care costs for their employees. Do they shift the cost to an unmanageable level? Do they stop offering health care? But they know they can't afford it and it affects everything that we do.

$1,500 of the price of your car, if you buy an American-made car, is due to the health insurance costs of the automaker. Your State taxes are higher because of exploding Medicaid costs. Health care is the last remaining item on the table in every labor dispute in the country. That's why those issues come up. And we have a system that in many ways is better than any other system in the world. It's why people from all over the world come here for their transplants and for their high-end, high-tech care. We have medical innovation and technology advances that far surpass anything happening anywhere in the world. That's if you can get in, if you can afford our system.

The problem is when we are compared to other countries as a nation in life expectancy and infant mortality, we're not just in the middle of the pack; we're at the bottom of the pack when compared to other nations. We have tremendous issues. We're talking about 47 to 50 million Americans that lack access to health care. They don't have insurance. There are tens of millions more that live in fear of losing their coverage. They are one accident or illness away from losing everything. So we have major issues to discuss.

Most important, and I know the gentleman is going to deal with this issue at some length tonight, is the fact that if you're an individual or you're a small business owner and one of your employees gets sick or injured, you get a call from the insurance company, and they say guess what, we have to drop you because you've had this incident. And I think everyone can agree that your individual health status shouldn't be a factor in your health insurance rates.

And something that the gentleman has taken a leadership role on, which I'm going to leave him with because I'm on a limited schedule myself, and I appreciate his giving me the time, is talking about ways that we can incentivize the 47 million Americans and others who have insurance to join large risk pools, community-rated risk pools, whether it be the 180 million people in the country that are privately insured, that would be everybody, or metropolitan statistical areas, regional groups, whatever we can agree on. And I realize that there are differences of opinion on how big the group should be. But we can all agree that your individual health status should not be a factor in setting your individual health rates. It should be a larger pool's health status, which would lower the costs for almost everybody.

So at this point I am going to thank the gentleman for allowing me to say a few words and commend Dr. Kagen for his work.

Madam Speaker, I would like to wish the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Organization of Chinese-Americans a happy and healthy New Year for the year 4706, the year of the rat.

I hope this New Year brings the Chinese-American community of Pittsburgh much joy and thanksgiving. I am thankful for the positive impact this organization has had on the lives of Chinese-Americans and Pittsburgh as a whole. Chinese-Americans have greatly contributed to the progress of Pittsburgh as well as the entire nation. I am very honored for this opportunity to wish them a very happy 4706.

I ask my colleagues in the United States House of Representatives to join me in wishing the members of the Organization of Chinese-Americans a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take a moment to highlight a few aspects of this bill that I worked to include. During committee consideration of the bill, I offered and passed an amendment to encourage colleges and employers to form partnerships that identify high-demand occupations and create educational pathways for students to pursue them.

These partnerships will help students succeed in the job market and provide local businesses with the skilled workers they need to grow. This bill also includes my legislation that requires the Department of Education to forgive the student loans of veterans who are determined to be totally and permanently disabled by the VA.

This will end the duplicative and burdensome process that disabled veterans currently must endure. It also includes my legislation to provide grants for teacher preparation courses at minority-serving institutions to help them recruit and prepare the teachers of tomorrow.

This legislation will expand our teaching pipeline and improve the diversity of our Nation's teachers and teaching force. The College Opportunity and Affordability Act significantly improves our higher education system, and I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Chairman, over the past 20 years, the average price of textbooks has nearly tripled. College students now spend $1,000 a year on textbooks, and for some majors it can be up to $2,000. This dramatic rise in textbook prices is a significant contributor to the increase in overall cost of college education. To remedy this, I'm offering this amendment today with Congressman Ryan. Our amendment creates a pilot program to award 10 competitive grants to establish rental textbook programs.

Rental programs could reduce textbook expenses by up to 75 percent. A recent report by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance highlighted textbook rental programs as a way to significantly reduce textbook expenses. The same report noted that the primary obstacle to these programs is the start-up costs associated with implementing them.

The Ryan-Altmire amendment will enable institutions to create textbook rental programs and, as a result, save students money. I encourage all of my colleagues to support it. And I thank the gentleman from Niles, Ohio, for allowing me to attach my name to his amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida, and I'm glad the chart is up today and our colleagues are able to look at that.

Those are the six items that we identified as our top six legislative priorities for the 110th session of Congress and starting with the very first day, January 4, 2007. So, going back more than a year, we began work on these projects. And as the gentlewoman pointed out, four of the six have become law. They've been signed into law by President Bush. All four of them passed with strong bipartisan support. The other two that did not become law, both passed the House. In the case of stem cell research, it passed the House twice and it passed the Senate twice and was vetoed by the President twice. Unfortunately, we were unable to override the veto. The Medicare prescription drugs, that failed in the Senate. But all six of these passed the House with strong bipartisan support. Four of them have been enacted into law.

I'm glad to hear about the stimulus package, too. That was the vote that we cast today. And I'm very excited with the quick response that this House and the Senate gave to the American people. We worked together in a bipartisan way to address the problems with the economy. Just about any economist that you talk to, bipartisan, across the spectrum, will say that we are in great danger of slipping into a recession if we are not already in a recession.

So coming back at the very beginning of the year, working together, the first week back, we put together the stimulus package. We passed it out of the House. We sent it to the Senate. They took a little bit longer, but they got their work done, and I congratulate them for that. They passed it today, sent it over to us. We immediately passed it out of the House, and now we are going to send it on to the President.

And this is a stimulus package that is directly going to impact people's lives. This is a tax rebate that is going to put money in the hands of consumers who are going to spend it. And I know we are going to talk in some more detail about that. I will leave that discussion for after Mr. Murphy speaks.

But I did want to point out the issue that we are talking about is bipartisanship. We came back from the holidays, saw the need, heard from the economists, and immediately sprung into action, put together a package in a bipartisan way. Got it done. Both sides of this Capitol. Now we are sending it to the President.

The reason this is so important is because of some of the issues that Ms. Wasserman Schultz was talking about. The subprime mortgage issue that we all have heard so much about. One of the issues that people need to think about among our colleagues is that when you think about mortgages that are unable to be paid and foreclosures taking place with the subprime mortgages, in many cases this is not a case of somebody buying too much house, buying a house they can't afford, being unable to pay their mortgage. Certainly that does happen.

The bulk of these mortgages that go bad in the foreclosures that take place are second mortgages. There are people who are unable to pay their bills because of rising gas prices, because of rising health care prices, because of higher education costs. They're simply unable to make ends meet. They take out a second mortgage to pay their daily expenses and unfortunately get in over their heads and lose their homes as a result.

So this stimulus package, by putting money into the hands of people who are going to be able to use it to pay bills and stimulate the economy and buy merchandise and hopefully get the economy kick-started again and prevent a recession, or at least lessen the impact of a recession if we are already in one, this is a very important piece of legislation that both the House and the Senate passed today.

I would say, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, not to interrupt, but the President did tell us last year that he was going to reduce the deficit, and I see here that last year we had a $410 billion deficit. And he did, in fact, reduce it. Let's give credit where credit is due. The deficit this year is only going to be $407 billion.

I certainly will.

I'm being facetious, obviously. A $407 billion deficit for 1 year is a very significant deficit, third highest ever submitted behind only the budget he submitted last year and the budget from 2004.

But I really appreciate the gentlewoman giving us a little walk down memory lane because we're in a Presidential election year this year, so people are thinking about Presidential politics. And I like to remind my colleagues to think back to the 2000 Presidential election, and let's remember what the discussion was at that time. The Clinton administration was wrapping up. We're in our fourth consecutive year of budget surplus at that time. And as the gentlewoman pointed out with the previous chart, those surpluses were forecast as far as the eye could see, $5.6 trillion forecasted deficit over 10 years. So the discussion during the Presidential election in the year 2000 between Vice President Gore and then-Governor Bush was, what are we going to do with all this money? This is an incredible surplus. We're awash in money. Are we going to shore up the Social Security trust fund? Are we going to pay down the debt? What are we going to do with this money?

Well, now it's 8 years later, and unfortunately we are not having that discussion anymore, because instead of having had a $5.6 trillion surplus, as the gentlewoman pointed out, we have had a $3.5 trillion deficit over just the past 7 years. So that $5.5 trillion surplus was a 10-year projection, $3.5 trillion over 7 years. And as the gentlewoman points out, that's almost a $9 trillion swing.

And I often ask, when we discuss the budget, if you had said to an economist or any group of economists after the new administration took over and they were facing this $5.5 trillion surplus, if you had said, well, what would it take to have a $9 trillion swing to the negative in the surplus to a deficit, just about any economist you talk to would have said, well, that's impossible. You can't possibly mismanage the economy to such an extent that you would have a $9 trillion swing over just 7 years. Well, unfortunately, this current administration has done the impossible; they have added $3.5 trillion to the national debt, which now stands at $9.2 trillion.

Mr. Murphy, I would like to direct a question to our colleague from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz). She has been here for two terms now, we've been here for one, so I'm going to ask her a question. Maybe she can enlighten us and anyone else that may be listening.

What are the nations that we're talking about here when we're talking about foreign-held debt? What are some of the countries that we are lending this money to?

And I know that the gentlewoman is going to talk about this next issue, and Mr. Murphy and I talked last night at great length about the fact that the second largest line item on the budget that the President submitted to us on Monday, the second largest line item in a $3.1 trillion budget that is literally a foot thick page by page is interest on the national debt. The Pentagon budget is first, and interest on the debt is second. I believe the gentlewoman has a chart showing it's approximately $240 billion, just interest, on the national debt.

So when you think about that $407 billion deficit for 1 year that the President submitted to us, more than half of that is due solely to interest on the debt that he has accumulated over the last 7 years.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk a little bit about the chart that Ms. Wasserman Schultz was referencing and still has up. It shows the interest on the national debt and how that account dwarfs spending on education, veterans, and homeland security. But the truly sad part of that chart is that the red bar that shows net interest on the national debt is growing exponentially while the President, in the budget he submitted to us, slashes funding for education, for veterans, and for homeland security. And Mr. Murphy and I went over this a little bit last night in our talk on that 30-Something Group. But I just wanted to talk about those three accounts, education, veterans, and homeland security, and talk about what the President has decided to do.

Instead of investing in innovation in the classroom, his budget eliminates the $260 million program providing grants to States for classroom technology and freezes the $179 million mathematics and science partnerships. Now, that's a program that's targeted at improving achievement in math and science. And instead of making college more affordable, something that this House took a giant step towards doing just today, the President's budget inexplicably eliminates supplemental education opportunity grants. And the Perkins loan program, one of the staples of higher education assistance in this country, the President eliminates it in his budget. He also eliminates the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program, the LEAP program that we know about. And they all provide necessary funding for needy students. His budget also eliminates funding for vocational education. This is completely unjustified.

We talked about homeland security, something that's very important to every Member of this House. Well, the President's budget slashes funding for State Homeland Security Grant Programs. And I would repeat that. I'm speaking correctly. It slashes funding for State Homeland Security Grant Programs at a time when we're at war.

And, Mr. Murphy, you're leaving out one of the key facts, that they live in a world where you can charge everything to the national credit card. Everything that you do, every expense of the Federal Government, just charge it to the credit card, and that bill is never going to come due.

Well, guess what? That bill has come due. And the reason we're facing a recession right now is because we have been living through that fiscally irresponsible time.

The gentlewoman may have a different chart than I have.

And it's particularly frustrating to Mr. Murphy and I, who are in our first term and we had our second State of the Union address just last week, a week ago, and the President of the United States stood right behind where I am standing right now and said to the Congress you need to be more fiscally responsible. And he lectured us on how he perceived this Congress to have been fiscally irresponsible. And literally a week later, 1 week later to the day, he drops on all of our desks a budget that is out of balance by $407 billion. So when you talk about living in a world where you can say one thing and do another, I would suggest you look no further than that budget that was submitted to us.

And the gentlewoman asked about the COPS program, and I appreciate her bringing that to our attention. I had in front of me funding for something that's near and dear to my heart, and that's for veterans, which was the third category on the chart that she showed several minutes ago when we talked about education funding and other accounts that pale in comparison to interest on the national debt. I just wanted to talk about what the President's budget does for veterans. It cuts health care for veterans by $20 billion over 5 years and cuts funds for constructing, renovating, and rehabilitating medical care facilities in the year 2009.

And I would remind everybody what happened at Walter Reed, which is a defense health care facility, last year, at about this time last year, when we heard reports of substandard living conditions and paint peeling and rodents. And we are then going to look at the VA, according to the President's budget, and actually cut funds for constructing, renovating, and rehabilitating medical care facilities at a time when we've had a national scandal at one of those facilities? I think that's disgraceful.

And for the 6th year in a row, the President's budget raises health care costs on 1\1/2\ million veterans by imposing $5.2 billion in increased co-payments on prescription drugs and new enrollment fees for veterans.

I can't think of a group that we should be helping more than our Nation's veterans. And to have a budget submitted to us at a time when all of us can agree that there is nothing more important than taking care of the people who are putting their lives on the line for us, wearing the uniform of the United States every single day, making every possible sacrifice, and to have a budget submitted to us that slashes funding for veterans programs is an offense. It literally is an offense.

I want to talk about a few things that the President is leaving behind as he leaves office going into next year, and we look forward to working with him certainly throughout this year, $400 billion in annual deficits, deficits as far as the eye can see, as Mr. Murphy talked about, an exploding debt burden, a slowing economy; and this is something that I think really needs to be talked about because we had in January a net loss of 17,000 lost jobs. And there was a lot of talk in the administration about how, well, this was the first loss in 4 years in job growth in a month, which is true.

Now, any economist will tell you, anyone who studies these issues will tell you that because of the population growth in the country that works, we are experiencing in any given month, it takes between 100 and 150,000 new jobs being created just to keep pace with the increase in population growth in the country. So just to maintain, you have to have at minimum 100,000 new jobs. Well, many of the months that we are talking about going back 4 years, we have had much fewer jobs created per month than 100,000. And in fact, this administration, if you look at the job growth that has taken place over the 7-plus years of this administration and pro rate it, this is the weakest record of job growth in any administration since the Hoover administration.

Right. And Mr. Murphy held up his chart with all the Presidents on it and talked about big spenders and fiscally irresponsible people, and I think Mr. Hoover may not be remembered in those categories, but he is certainly not going to be remembered as a job creator, let's put it that way. So for this administration to have the worst record of job creation since the Hoover administration, I think really spells out the failure of these economic policies.

Madam Speaker, we're here this evening as part of the Speaker's 30-Something Working Group, and I'm going to be joined by some other members of that group who will be familiar faces to our colleagues who have participated in these Special Orders presentations.

We're going to talk specifically tonight about the budget that the President dropped on our doorstep on Monday. Now, this was an exciting series of days for the American people. We, of course, had Super Bowl Sunday, one of the most exciting Super Bowls we've ever seen. We had Super Tuesday last night, very exciting for all the American people to watch the unfolding for the Presidential election for this year. And in the middle of that, we had Monday.

And what happened on Monday? Most Americans say, well, not a whole lot happened, but in Congress a lot happened because the President put before us a $3.1-trillion budget. Now, the American people may say, well, that sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money. But what does it look like? What does $3.1 trillion look like? Our colleagues may be interested to see that. This, Madam Speaker, is what $3.1 trillion looks like. This is what the President sent us, both electronically and in paper format. This is a very big document, the entire Federal budget as proposed by the administration for the coming fiscal year 2009.

I'm going to talk a little bit about what's in this budget, but before I did that I wanted to take a little walk down memory lane for our colleagues. And many don't need to be reminded of this fact, but in the last 4 years of the previous administration we had four consecutive budget surpluses. And those surpluses, at the end of that administration and the beginning of the current administration, budget surpluses were forecast as far as the eye can see. And there was every reason to expect that the budget was going to be balanced throughout the next administration. The projection over 10 years by the Congressional Budget Office was $5.5 trillion of budget surplus over 10 years. That was the projection.

Well, now we're 7 years, going on 8 years, into this new administration. This is the eighth and final budget that President Bush is going to send to this Congress. And what has been the outcome of this $5.5 trillion surplus? And we talked about the Presidential election, Madam Speaker, and I would remind my colleagues about the debate of the 2000 election. The number one issue that was discussed in that election was, what are we going to do with this surplus? We have an enormous budget surplus, $5.5 trillion, and all the ways that that money could be used. Are we going to pay down the debt? Are we going to shore up Social Security, put that money into the trust fund? How are we going to use this enormous surplus that's facing us over the next 10 years? That was the debate in the year 2000.

Well, in this Presidential election year we're not having that debate anymore because, you see, Madam Speaker, that surplus is gone. That surplus was gone in the first year of this administration. Instead of $5.5 trillion of budget surplus over a 10-year period, we've had $3.5 trillion of deficit spending over the first 7 years of this administration. And I'm going to talk in some detail about what this fiscal year 2009 budget says, and it includes an enormous amount of deficit spending.

What we have before us is a budget that for the eighth time in 8 years continues enormous deficit spending. But we can't lose sight of the fact that when this administration first came into office, that wasn't the projection. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be and that wasn't the way it had to be. But, unfortunately, decisions were made in a fiscally irresponsible manner, and now before us is a budget that is $407 billion over budget. We have a $407 billion deficit for one year, fiscal year 2009, the third highest single year budget deficit ever submitted to the Congress behind only the budget that was sent to us last year by this President, which was $410 billion, and the 2004 budget also submitted to this Congress by the President.

So we have a record here of destroying projected surpluses and creating record deficits. $9.2 trillion of debt, Madam Speaker, faces this country before this $400 plus billion deficit that's been submitted to us.

We can't continue to charge things to the credit card. The way the previous administration turned the all-time record deficits of the 1980s into all-time record surpluses in the 1990s was through pay-as- you-go budget scoring. And that's very simple: It's what we all do in our own home checkbooks. It's what every business in America is forced to do. You have to have money on one side of the ledger to spend it on the other. And if you want to increase spending or if you see a decrease in your revenue, you have to have an offset on the other side to balance it out. Well, those are the rules that this Congress operated under from 1991 through 2001.

Unfortunately, this administration did away, and the Congress, in conjunction at that time in 2001 going into 2002, did away with pay-as- you-go budget scoring. And since that time, before this current session of Congress, every penny that was spent through the Federal Government was charged to the national credit card. We're going to let somebody else worry about it. We're going to transfer this funding to our children, our grandchildren, and our grandchildren's grandchildren. Well, unfortunately, the problem with using credit cards that way is the bill comes due, and the bill has come due, Madam Speaker.

We're going to talk about the coming economic crisis that this country faces, the possibility, if not the certainty, of a recession, and the economic stimulus package that this Congress came together in a bipartisan way to put forward to help resolve that issue. We're going to save that discussion for a little bit later.

But in the discussion over the budget, it can't be lost that in presenting a $407 billion deficit budget before this Congress, that this President has made incredibly deep cuts in some very important programs that mean a lot to a lot of people in this country. Veterans programs, veterans health care, slashed. Medicare cut by $556 billion over 10 years, a cut in Medicare at a time when you're exploding the deficit by $407 billion. And we're going to talk specifically about the misplaced priorities included in this budget.

Before we go line by line and get into that level of detail, Madam Speaker, I do want to turn it over at this point to my 30-Something colleague, Mr. Murphy from Connecticut, who has joined us and is going to give us some detail on what he views this budget to be.

I'm sure the gentleman from Connecticut would agree that it's ironic, given the fact that it was a week ago that we sat here together in this Chamber and listened to the President's State of the Union Address. And I liked some of what the President had to say on fiscal responsibility, challenging the Congress, challenging his administration to take the budget and make tough decisions and be fiscally responsible.

Well, and again, the things that were said as far as fiscal responsibility made some sense, and I was happy to hear them. And you're right, we had not heard them over the past 7 years, and that led to the deficits that the gentleman and I have both talked about.

Now, we sat here and we heard that. And I thought that hopefully that would translate to the President submitting a budget where the actions actually matched the words that we had heard a week ago. Unfortunately, it didn't. The President, a week later, submits to Congress a budget that's $407 billion out of balance. And we're living in a time when the second largest line item in the Federal budget that is before us is the interest on the national debt, which is $9.2 trillion. The second largest line item in this budget is interest on the national debt. Now, that alarms me, Mr. Murphy, and I'm sure it alarms you. And I would want to do something about that if I was submitting a budget before Congress. And I would want to show, having just talked about fiscal responsibility, that I was committed to fiscal responsibility. But, unfortunately, we have a budget that makes all the wrong decisions because it is fiscally irresponsible, it does have misplaced priorities, it does move in the wrong direction as far as increasing the deficit at a time when we already have a record debt, but it cuts programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

This is at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to afford health care, especially senior citizens. And to propose a budget that cuts Medicare by $556 billion over a 10-year period, at the same time freezing payments to hospitals, to nursing homes, to hospices, to home health agencies, it just doesn't make any sense because health care costs aren't going to stop. Health care costs have been going up above the rate of inflation every year for as far as anyone can remember.

The technology that's used for health care, the increase in the amount of baby boomers that are qualifying for the Medicare program for the first time this year, in 2008. The costs of Medicare are exploding. So to just say we are going to cut Medicare over the next 10 years by $556 billion doesn't mean health care is going to be less expensive, fewer people are going to qualify for Medicare, and fewer people are going to use the program. And certainly it doesn't mean that home health agencies, hospices, and hospitals are going to have fewer expenses just because we are going to be reimbursing them.

I would.

And the gentleman knows that there are three legs to this stool that we are talking about. One is the increase in spending leading to the deficit. One is the misplaced priorities of the cuts to programs that are critically important. The third is what's left out of this budget that we all know we have to deal with, and I'm going to save that discussion for a little bit later as we walk through some of these programs. But the full cost of the Iraq war and the cost of the alternative minimum tax relief for this year are not included in this budget. So a $407 billion deficit without even including probably the two largest items that we are going to have to face in the next year, we'll get to that point, but there are a lot of issues here.

When I talk to people when I go back home in the district, I hear a lot about

entitlement spending, and when I go home, I think I can make a pretty good case that Medicare is important and we shouldn't be cutting Medicare at a time when the number of people qualifying for Medicare is rising exponentially and health care costs are going up. I can make a pretty good case, I think, for that. But I will still hear people say, You know what? I'm not on Medicare. That's an entitlement program. I don't care about that. Cut it. It's a boondoggle. Just cut it. I do hear people say that. They're wrong, but they say it. Well, there are some things in this budget that nobody, nobody in their right mind could justify freezes or cuts in these types of programs. And maybe our colleagues are out there and they say, Show me. What are you talking about? What is in the budget that we shouldn't cut?

Well, how about research, health care research through the National Institutes of Health? I think that's something that affects everybody. If you're not directly affected by health care research, you certainly have somebody in your family or you have somebody, a loved one or a friend, that is affected. And let's talk about the type of research that we are talking about.

This budget freezes funding for lifesaving medical research at the NIH, National Institutes of Health, regarding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease. At a time when our medical technology in this country is greater than anywhere else in the world and our research and our ability to find treatments and cures for these diseases exceeds any time in the history of the planet, we are going to cut funding for medical research for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease? I think, Mr. Murphy, that we make a pretty good case that that's not a cut that should happen.

This budget also slashes funding, and this is inexcusable, slashes funding by $433 million, 7 percent of the overall budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, responsible for infectious disease control, prevention programs, and health promotion. So we hear a lot about the avian flu, the bird flu, the possibility of a pandemic through diseases, whether it be a terroristic issue or just something we can't control on the health side. That may be the number one public health threat facing the country right now, the possibility of a pandemic flu, a worldwide spread of some disease, and we're going to take this opportunity to cut the Centers for Disease Control specifically for infectious diseases by 7 percent? That's what we are going to cut in this budget when we are adding $407 billion to the national debt for 1 year? I think it's inexcusable. So I really don't think there is anybody that I am going to run into in my district that's going to say that's a good idea.

Absolutely. And I thank the gentleman for that story. And I've had similar circumstances in my district where people wonder why we are cutting Alzheimer's funding, where they have a loved one who has struggled with that disease.

I also want to talk about education and what this budget does for education. I think just about anyone should agree that's a national priority. Few things in the budget are more important than education. Well, what does this budget do?

This budget freezes education funding, which results in cuts in real terms. And instead of investing in innovation in the classroom, the budget eliminates, eliminates, the $267 million program providing grants to States for classroom technology. It freezes the $179 million mathematics and science partnerships. At a time when we're struggling to compete in the global economy with countries like China and others that are investing heavily in science education, we are cutting it. At least the President is proposing cutting it in his budget.

It freezes targeted improvement and achievement in math and science programs that do that. And instead of making college more affordable, the budget eliminates, completely eliminates, supplemental education opportunity grants; the Perkins loan program, one of the staples of student assistance for higher education in this country, eliminates; and the Leveraging Education Assistance Partnership program, the LEAP program, which many of my colleagues know is necessary to provide financial support specifically targeted to needy students who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to pursue a higher education. These are the programs that are being eliminated under this budget. Not frozen, not cut, but eliminated.

And the gentleman from Connecticut represents a district in some ways that is similar to my district. We both have a manufacturing base that has suffered in recent years as a result of the global economy and a variety of factors. And as the gentleman said, at the very time when we should be finding ways to help people that have suffered as a result of these job losses and a loss of manufacturing, find new job training sources, find educational opportunities for our kids so they can stay in our communities instead of having to leave town, a problem that we are struggling with, I think, probably in both of our districts, the President uses this budget as an opportunity to eliminate, not freeze, not cut, but eliminate vocational education.

And he slashes the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program by 45 percent; afterschool programs by 26 percent; teacher quality State grants by $100 million, which helps incentivize high quality people to go into the teaching profession, people who have other options, who could become doctors or lawyers or chemists or any other profession. We want to incentivize the best and brightest in this country to go into teaching to educate our kids, and everyone knows the importance of what goes along with that. Well, the President proposes cutting the budget by $100 million for that program.

And, similarly, the gentleman from Connecticut talked about the fact that middle-class workers are seeing their wages stagnate and American jobs have been lost, 17,000 lost jobs just last month. And at this time when we should be finding ways to stimulate the economy and create jobs, instead, the President's budget slashes $234 million for job training programs.

Again, not to repeat myself, but it is worth pointing out, in an atmosphere of a budget that creates $407 billion in deficit spending, out of balance, and that slashes employment services more than $500 million in cuts for Americans looking for work. These are people who are motivated, who want to find jobs, who are looking for work, and he eliminates grants to States to provide employment services for job seekers and employers cutting one-stop career centers. These are all programs that my constituents benefit from that get heavily used in western Pennsylvania. We have had manufacturing losses, and we are trying to find ways to retrain those workers so they can move into other careers, educate themselves so they can stay in western Pennsylvania, and what are we doing? The President is proposing cutting these job training programs. It is just inexcusable.

And the gentleman knows there is another thing that our regions in the country share and that is that we have harsh winters. We have been known to have harsh winters. And another thing that gets cut in this budget inexcusably is home heating assistance. And with regard to energy generally, we have a time where we have all time record energy prices. Families across the country are struggling with finding a way to pay their bills directly related to the price of oil and gas.

And at that time, you would think that the President would view that as a priority in his budget. But instead, it severely cuts assistance to seniors and to families with children in paying their home heating bills through the LIHEAP program, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, very important in my area in western Pennsylvania. He cuts it by $570 million nationwide, $19 million of which comes from the State of Pennsylvania. And this is going to force States to reduce the number of households getting help through the LIHEAP program nationwide by 1.2 million people. These are low-income families with children. These are senior citizens that simply don't have the financial ability to pay their heating costs, and we are going to knock, with this budget, 1.2 million of them off the rolls.

I think this is exactly why it is important to have this discussion, to walk through these programs in the budget and talk about what exactly are we talking about when we talk about these draconian cuts that we are facing? And as I said earlier, I have people in my district that say, cut it, cut it, Federal spending, we need to cut it. And we do have an enormous deficit. We have an all time record debt, and we do need to find a way to reduce the Federal deficit. Nobody can disagree with that.

That is exactly where I was going to go. I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I appreciate that. The fact is the Democrats in this Congress have made the tough decisions. We submitted a budget last year, and I am sure we will do so again this year that achieves balance for the first time since the previous administration. Nobody can disagree that there is room for more cuts. There is room for more reductions. But what we want to do here tonight in this 30-Something Special Order is to talk about the programs that shouldn't be cut, the programs that are critically important to this country that the President has made a decision to reduce.

We talked about Medicare. We talked about life-saving medical research. We talked about the Centers for Disease Control, infectious disease prevention. We talked about education. We talked about the LIHEAP program, home heating energy assistance, and unfortunately the list doesn't end there. It is incredible to think that at a time when we are facing a recession in this country driven by a lot of different factors, but nobody can dispute perhaps the number one driving factor over the past several months and maybe the past few years has been this subprime mortgage issue and home foreclosures and people struggling to afford their mortgages, finding a way to make that monthly payment. Despite the growing problems in the subprime mortgage crisis, inexplicably this budget that we are talking about tonight cuts loan counseling for those at risk of losing their homes. The name of the program is the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. It cuts it by 87 percent, at a time when we are struggling as a Nation with a subprime crisis that the world has never seen before, or at least America has never seen before. At a time when the crisis is at its most acute point, we are going to cut by 87 percent the program that helps those most at risk, 2 million people in this country at risk of losing their homes. The people most at risk of losing their homes are facing an 87 percent cut. It is ludicrous.

That is right. The gentleman talked about the assumption in the budget being submitted. Because the gentleman wasn't here when I showed this, I want to show the gentleman, as he knows, what $3.1 trillion looks like. This is what it looks like. This is what the President dropped on your desk and mine on Monday. This is the budget we are talking about. So for our colleagues who are joining us late, this is the budget that we are discussing tonight.

The assumption that was made in putting this budget together by the administration, by President Bush, was that Congress would act on the Alternative Minimum Tax, and, of course, we will. We are not going to allow that to lapse, which would result in an increase for 23 million people in the country, a tax increase, 70,000 in my district, I think the gentleman said 80,000 additional in his district. So, of course, we are going to deal with the AMT.

It is tough. It is a difficult way to have to do policy, to do it year-to-year. It is probably not the best way. We made a tough decision in December, we will make another tough decision at the end of this year, and the President knows we are going are to have to do it and we are going to have to pay for it, because that is what we have to do. It is not included in the cost of this $3.1 trillion budget.

I know we are running short on time, so I did want to just summarize a few of the other programs, saving one in particular for the end that near and dear to my heart, that are cut in this budget. Because, again, people say what are we talking about when you talk about all these cuts?

We talked earlier about the subprime mortgage funding and so forth. How about highway funding? Is there anyone in the country that can disagree that we have a national crisis with infrastructure? We had the unfortunate situation last fall with the bridge collapse in Minnesota which highlighted a problem that many knew but really in a very tragic way shined the spotlight on the incredible need that exists in this country for infrastructure improvement, for bridge repair, for highway repair. We simply do not have anywhere near close to the amount of money necessary to fix the roads and bridges that need fixing right now, let alone all the new construction that needs to take place.

The district that I represent, we are talking about funding for bridges and roads and docks and dams along the riverways. Well, with highway funding in particular, the President's budget unbelievably proposes to cut funding for highways by $800 million below the amount guaranteed by the previous transportation reauthorization bill that we did several years ago.

Every $1 billion in new infrastructure investment creates 47,500 jobs in this country and a shortfall in highway revenue is projected in fiscal year 2009, which is what this budget covers. So we have a projected shortfall, yet the President still recommends a $800 million cut. And at a time when we lost jobs in January, who knows how many jobs we are going to lose in the months ahead as we face what may turn out to be a recession, we are talking about a problem that can create nearly 50,000 jobs for every $1 billion in new investment, and we are going to cut $800 million. It makes no sense.

Homeland security, the gentleman from Connecticut talked about the importance of homeland security, which nobody can dispute, perhaps the number one issue facing the country today. Well, so what does the President's budget do? The calculation of his budget excludes $2.7 billion in border emergency funding from Congress, which was approved in fiscal year 2008. When this is taken into account, the President is only proposing to increase less than $100 million for fiscal year 2009 for homeland security needs for the entire agency.

In addition, the budget slashes funding for State Homeland Security Grant programs, first responders, police, firefighters, EMTs, people right out there on the front lines in our communities, many of them volunteers. This President's budget cuts $750 million, 79 percent below the current year's funding level. For firefighter grants, $450 million, 60 percent below, just for firefighter grants, and 79 percent below for all first responders.

It is incredible that this is the budget that was put before us. Who could possibly argue that that is a good policy decision, to cut funding for first responders by 79 percent?

I thank the gentleman. I am going to talk about the most egregious, in my opinion, of all these cuts. And I know it is hard to believe having walked through them that there could be one in particular to point to. There is one that is particular to my constituents and to something that I support. We are going to turn it over momentarily to our freshman colleague, Mr. Yarmuth from Kentucky, who I am sure is going to talk more about some of these issues.

As Members of Congress, we are all given the opportunity to testify before

the Budget Committee and say here are our priorities. These are the one or two or three at the most things that we care about that we really want to see addressed in the budget.

I was asked over the break that we had in between the first session and the second session during the holidays, somebody came up to me in a shopping center and recognized me and said, hey, you know, how has the first year been? What are your experiences? What are you most proud of?

Without hesitating, for me, what I am most proud of that this Congress did last year was we had the highest funding increase for veterans health care in the 77 year history of the VA. We had to fight tooth and nail. We had to do it over multiple opportunities throughout the year. But in the end, the budget that we passed exceeded even the recommendations of the service organizations. The VFW, the American Legion, the Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, those organizations every year present to Congress their recommended funding levels for what they feel that they are going to need. For the first time ever, this Congress exceeded that.

So I am very proud of the work that we did as a Congress on veterans. And it was a bipartisan effort. It is something we can be proud to have worked together on.

Well, what does this budget do for veterans, something that I have made my number one priority in this Congress. And I think we as Congress have a good record so far on veterans, and I want to keep that good record going, and I want to prevent the cuts that the President's budget talks about.

It cuts veterans health care by $20 billion over 5 years. Let me repeat that. This budget cuts veterans health care by $20 billion over 5 years and cuts funding for constructing, renovating and rehabilitating medical care facilities in 2009, for which this budget is authorized.

Now, for me, that is very parochial, because I have $200 million of VA health construction going on in Western Pennsylvania, a lot of which is in my district. Two different projects, $200 million. So the President is coming in here at a time when we have the opportunity in Western Pennsylvania to be the preeminent health care system in the entire VA, top notch facilities, he is going to cut the construction funding, and he is going to cut funding even more egregiously for veterans health care by $20 billion.

I am sure the gentleman can agree, there is no group that should stand ahead of our Nation's veterans when it comes time to make funding decisions.

That is right. I thank the gentleman. We are going to wrap it up as our time has expired. I would only point out on that note that this is the sixth year in a row that this budget raises health care costs on 1.4 million veterans, imposing $5.2 billion in increased copayments on prescription drugs and new enrollment fees on veterans over 10 years. I wish I had more time to talk about that.

At this time I am going to thank the Speaker for the opportunity to address the House this evening with my colleague Mr. Murphy from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, economists say the most important thing Congress can do to stimulate our struggling economy is to act quickly, and that is exactly what this House is going to do today.

House leaders from both parties worked with the President to craft the bipartisan agreement that is before us. We came together, and by acting quickly, we are hoping that our actions spark our economy.

The package is going to provide some relief to middle-income families who have been left behind in many ways over the last 7 years. This bill gives 117 million Americans a tax rebate so they can begin to breathe a little easier when paying their bills in the coming months.

Equally important, this economic package also gives tax breaks to small businesses to help spur investment and job creation.

Mr. Speaker, economists said we need to act fast, and that is what we did. Let's get to work and pass this economic stimulus package today.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 933) commending the Louisiana State University Tigers football team for winning the 2007 Bowl Championship Series national championship game, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I request 5 legislative days during which Members may insert additional material relevant to H. Res. 933 into the Record.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. ALTMIRE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend the Louisiana State University Tigers football team on winning the 2007 Bowl Championship Series national championship game, and to congratulate the players, coaches, and LSU fans on a tremendous 2007 football season.

On January 7, 2008, the LSU Tigers took on the Ohio State University Buckeyes in a newly reopened Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The 2007 BCS national championship game was a treat for fans all over the Nation, and a celebratory moment for New Orleans as the Superdome observed its return to hosting big events after the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. And it was quite a celebration as the Tigers defeated the Buckeyes 38-24.

Ohio State got off to a 10-0 start, but LSU never backed down and went on to score 31 unanswered points. Led by game captains quarterback Matt Flynn, safety Craig Stelz, fullback Jacob Hester, punter Patrick Fisher and defensive tackle Glen Dorsey, the Tigers proved that they deserved to play in the championship game.

This Tigers team played with extraordinary heart all season. In 2007, LSU beat seven nationally ranked teams, and their only two losses each came in triple overtime games. A very talented senior class created a sense of urgency throughout their leadership, and the rest of the team never stopped playing with heart throughout this record-setting season.

Defensive tackle Glen Dorsey won four prestigious awards, including the Lombardi Trophy, and has been a model player off the field as well by encouraging young people to ``dream big'' this year. Quarterback Matt Flynn threw 21 touchdown passes this season and had a career high of four touchdown passes during the championship game. Finally, Jacob Hester rushed for 1,103 yards and scored 12 touchdowns during the 2007 season. This was truly a multi-talented team.

I want to extend my congratulations to Coach Les Miles and the rest of the LSU coaching staff. The players and staff have come together to create a preeminent football program with a record two BCS titles in just the past 5 years.

In his tenure as head coach at LSU, Miles has led his team to three bowl victories and an impressive 34-6 record. Congratulations are also in order for the dedicated State and university community. The avid Tiger fans have supported their team all season and helped to set a Superdome record of 79,651 people in attendance for the BCS championship game.

In the words of former Governor Kathleen Blanco, the Tigers ``embodied Louisiana's fighting spirit.'' The entire State deserves to celebrate this title and begin to look forward to the 2008 season.

Mr. Speaker, once again, I congratulate the Louisiana State University Tigers football team, and I urge my colleagues to pass this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is no greater fan of the LSU Tigers than Mr. Melancon from Louisiana, and I yield him such time as he may consume to speak about this championship for the LSU football team.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 938) commending the West Virginia University Mountaineer football team for exemplifying the pride, determination, and spirit of the Mountain State and overcoming adversity with skill, commitment, and teamwork to win the 2008 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I request 5 legislative days during which Members may insert material relevant to H. Res. 938 into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. ALTMIRE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Today I rise to congratulate the West Virginia University Mountaineers for their amazing win in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.

Four short weeks ago, West Virginia University captured its third consecutive bowl victory and cemented their third consecutive top 10 finish. They defeated the University of Oklahoma Sooners 48-28. College football fans throughout the Nation were treated to an exceptional college football game.

I want to extend my congratulations to West Virginia head coach Bill Stewart, athletic director Ed Pastilong, West Virginia University president Mike Garrison, and West Virginia's student athletes for winning the Fiesta Bowl.

I also want to extend my congratulations to the Oklahoma Sooners and their student athletes for a great season. Oklahoma won the Big 12 championship game and had an 11-2 regular season record.

The WVU Mountaineers were pregame underdogs against No. 3 ranked Oklahoma, whose defense had previously allowed only 92 yards a game. The exceptional play of Mountaineer quarterback Pat White, the Fiesta Bowl offensive MVP, helped the Mountaineers produce 525 yards of total offense. Reed Williams, the Mountaineer linebacker and Fiesta Bowl defensive MVP, helped his teammates hold the Sooners to only six points in the first half and a total of 28 points for the game.

Mr. Speaker, once again I congratulate the West Virginia Mountaineers for their success.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have a colleague who represents Morgantown, West Virginia, with us, Mr. Mollohan, and I know there is no greater fan of the West Virginia Mountaineers than he. I am sure he is justifiably proud; so I will yield him such time as he may consume.

Mr. Speaker, just to tie this whole thing together, we have just celebrated the LSU Tigers' national championship and West Virginia's championship in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. As a Member from western Pennsylvania, I would like to take a brief moment and remind my colleagues of the role the University of Pittsburgh played in this whole scenario, because were it not for the improbable upset that the University of Pittsburgh was able to pull off on the last game of the regular season, we may have been doing these in a little bit different order than we were today. So I congratulate West Virginia and LSU. But I did want to put in that plug as well.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, we are increasingly concerned about the downturn in our economy. The declining stock market, weak dollar, high gas prices and home heating costs, and stagnant wages have caused financial insecurity for families across America. Unemployment is now at a 2-year high, and personal debts are at an all-time high.

More and more families are being squeezed financially, making it harder for them to afford basic health coverage. The SCHIP bill we are considering today affects 10 million children living in families that work hard and play by the rules but can't afford health care for their kids.

We in Congress continue to work in a bipartisan manner to stimulate the economy and help American families threatened by this recession. I can think of no better way than to vote today to override the President's SCHIP veto. Failure to do this will lead to an increase in the number of children living in America without health care.