Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, we are now less than 6 weeks away from a magical date, August 2. That is the day when the Secretary of Treasury said we will essentially have to foreclose on the United States of America. We will begin paying China before we pay our troops. That is right. That is the day we run out of tricks to avoid raising the debt ceiling in this country.

Just Sunday, my senior Senator, the minority leader of the Senate, said on CBS News that he was actually threatening basically to derail whatever deal comes on raising the debt ceiling if we don't do a deal on entitlements. It is an interesting threat, and I would like to point out what Ezra Klein wrote in The Washington Post. He said:

``But what, specifically, is the threat here? That Republicans will endanger the economy and run a campaign demanding deep Medicare cuts necessitated by an unrelenting hostility to tax increases on the richest Americans in an election year? That's not a credible threat. At some point, Democrats need to begin saying no to this stuff, and now's as good a time as any.''

I say no.

I thank my colleague from Colorado.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the rule. When the Republicans last fall traveled around the country asking the American people to return this House to their control, they promised two things. One, they were going to create jobs. Secondly, they were going to promote fiscal responsibility and try to reduce the deficit and reduce the debt. Well, on the first score, it's been 6 months and we haven't seen the first item of job-creating legislation. On the second item, we should have known better. We should have known better than to trust them to actually try and rein in the deficit.

Today, with the rule under consideration, the Republican majority is proposing to waive the very rules they wrote to supposedly cut spending.

The GOP proposed the CutGo rule last year, saying it was part of their plan to rein in spending; and now, just a few short months later, they're violating their own rules. We heard the gentleman from Florida actually concede that they're violating their own rules. That is award- winning hypocrisy, but it's not surprising because, as has been mentioned, the Speaker of the House said last year, We routinely waive the Budget Act's requirements to serve our purposes.

Maybe we could excuse that if they were, say, proposing legislation to create jobs, but we know that isn't happening. In fact, the underlying bill does exactly the opposite.

It stifles innovation and entrepreneurship. The surplus fees that are collected by the Patent and Trademark Office could be used to protect patents and to process new ones so that there are new inventions, new innovations coming to market, creating jobs; but the Republican majority wants to take those funds and put them into the general kitty where they can spend it on other things like--who knows?--more tax breaks for the rich or maybe Big Oil companies.

Only time will tell that.

But now, for today, it is best advised to reject this rule and to not allow the Republicans to get away with violating their own CutGo rules and then to pass this legislation that would stifle innovation in America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the exemplary service of Colonel Keith A. Landry. This month, Colonel Landry will end his tenure as Commander of the Louisville District of the Army Corps of Engineers after establishing a record of service that has helped strengthen and protect our community. While he may be leaving Louisville, his service and contributions will be visible for decades to come.

Born in North Carolina and hailing from Beaufort, South Carolina, Colonel Landry was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1985. From there, he embarked on a career driven by his dedication to service and country that has taken him around the world and back. After completing combat tours during both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, Colonel Landry began his command in Louisville in 2008, leading the District's significant engineering achievements to include over a billion dollars worth of military construction, the inspection of hundreds of miles of levee, and operation and maintenance of reservoirs, locks, and dams.

Since arriving in Louisville, Colonel Landry has worked to ensure that ``River City'' is not just our nickname, but a source of pride. His committed leadership helped shepherd the McAlpine Locks and Dam expansion project to completion, ensuring that Louisville would continue to benefit from the billions of dollars of cargo transported up and down the Ohio River year after year. And thanks to his expertise and guidance, the Ohio River has not had an unexpected closure to commercial navigation for more than a day during his command--an extraordinary feat, given extreme weather and flooding that we experienced during that time.

Through his 26 years of service to our nation--and counting--Colonel Landry's work has not just helped improve our infrastructure and safeguard our communities, but it has contributed to our economy and the strength of our nation. We in Louisville are grateful for the time he has dedicated to our city, and will surely miss his expertise, commitment, and leadership.

I am proud to join all of our community in thanking him for his outstanding service, dedication, hard work, and faithfulness to our nation. And I urge all of my colleagues to join me in wishing the best to a true public servant, Colonel Keith Landry, and his family in this next chapter of their lives.

Mr. Speaker, before I came to Congress, I was a newspaper editor in Louisville, Kentucky. And as an editor, my job was to make sure that our stories revealed the truth and made things easier to understand for our readers. Right now, the Republican majority in Congress is editing to obscure the truth and to hide the facts from the American people.

Ever since a Republican candidate in New York lost a special election in a heavily Republican district because she supported the reckless GOP plan to end Medicare, the majority in this body has been petrified about what it might mean for their political careers if the American people actually found out the truth, and they are doing everything they can to hide the truth.

The Republican-controlled Franking Commission--which controls content of mailings from congressional offices--is now dictating that any reference to the end of Medicare be cut out from correspondence. Whenever the word ``end'' is used, they say we have to use the word ``change.'' They won't let the truth be told. But the truth is, if you have eliminated something, you haven't changed it. You can't change something that has been killed. That's what the American people need to know. That's what the Republican majority is trying to hide, but they will not deceive the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast the recorded votes for rollcall No. 377. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' for this measure.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot in the media about the political tea party. You know, there is another kind of tea party; that's where children play with their imaginary friends.

We saw an example of that kind of imagination last night in this Chamber. We saw Republicans bring a bill to the floor and then vote to defeat it, not to raise the debt ceiling in spite of the fact that they passed a budget that will raise the national debt by $8 trillion over the next 10 years. They imagine that that $8 trillion will magically disappear.

Another example of their vivid imagination is believing that the American people will sit back while they end Medicare, turn over seniors' health care to insurance companies and ask them to pay up to 70 percent of the cost of their health care.

This is not an imaginary world. These are real people with real problems, and the American people are not going to sit back while the Republican Party plays with their imaginary friends.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday on this floor a number of my Democratic colleagues took the floor to talk about the Republican plan to eliminate Medicare as we know it. Now, in response to that, some of my Republican friends stood up and said, well, where is the Democratic plan? I don't know whether they were sleeping through the 111th Congress or just failed to read the bill that they voted against and now want to repeal, but our Democratic principles were very much reflected in the Affordable Care Act that we passed in the last Congress. We found savings in Medicare, we extended the life of the program for at least 10 years, we are closing the doughnut hole, we are providing new services for seniors, all of that in addition to saving $1 trillion in the second 10 years of the program.

So the Democrats have a plan for Medicare, and we passed it in the last Congress. The Republican response: repeal what we did and end Medicare as we know it--a very creative approach to solving one of the problems that faces this country and many of our seniors.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast the recorded votes for rollcall Nos. 330, 331, and 332. Had I been present I would have voted ``yes'' for these measures:

H.R. 1627--On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, as Amended, rollcall No. 330, ``yes.''

H.R. 1383--On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, as Amended, rollcall No. 331, ``yes.''

H.R. 1657--On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, rollcall No. 332, ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, this past Tuesday, 41 House Republicans sent a letter to President Obama pleading with him to stop the criticism of the GOP's plan to turn Medicare into a private voucher system--a system that would cost future seniors thousands of dollars each year. Let bygones be bygones, these Republicans said. Let's wipe the slate clean. Well, I can't help but laugh at the irony.

Last year, in districts all throughout the country, Republican candidates for Congress attacked Democrats for supporting the Affordable Care Act, claiming it cut $500 billion from Medicare-- wrongly, I might add.

Fast forward 1 year later, and those same Republicans now in Congress just a few weeks ago voted for a budget that actually embraces the very same $500 billion in savings we found in Medicare in the Affordable Care Act.

There's a difference, though. In the health care law, Democrats took that $500 billion and reinvested it in Medicare to increase the life of the program for more than a decade. What did the Republicans do? They take that $500 billion and use it to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and giant oil companies. And Medicare? They dismantle it, forcing future seniors into a new system that will require them to pay upwards of $180,000 more for their care.

The American people will not let them forget.

Madam Speaker, with gas prices in my district in Louisville, Kentucky hitting $4, as they are all over the country, ExxonMobil just reported earnings of $10.7 billion for the quarter, almost 70 percent higher than last year. BP, Conoco, Shell, and Chevron already reported huge increases in profits. And we are still giving them taxpayer-financed subsidies.

Last week, the chairman of the Budget Committee said he thinks we ought to do away with these subsidies. And yet, he and the rest of the Republican majority are pushing a budget that not only sustains those giveaways to oil companies, but also would lower taxes for billionaires, all at the expense of our seniors, our students and our struggling families who are paying that $4 a gallon all over the country.

We ought to do away with these subsidies, and the Democrats have introduced the Big Oil Welfare Repeal Act to do just that. If we are serious about deficit reduction and equity in this country and fairness, we will pass the Big Oil Welfare Repeal Act, and we will help to begin to return this country to having an economy that works for everybody, and not just for ExxonMobil.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, we know that budgets are about values. As the chairman of the Budget Committee has mentioned, they are about choices.

And we know that this reckless Republican budget makes a very disastrous choice. It chooses to sacrifice the safety net of millions and millions of Americans in favor of millionaires and billionaires.

Every time we mention that, the other side says, class warfare. Oh, the Democrats are engaged in class warfare. Guess what, Mr. Chairman? That war is over. The wealthy class has won.

The wealthy class has already declared victory. That's why the 1 percent of income earners, the top 1 percent, now has as much wealth in this country as the bottom 90 percent. So when we are talking about what we can do to try and get our fiscal house in order, the idea that we would ask that 1 percent that has accumulated enormous wealth, the greatest disparity of wealth in the history of this country, to pay a little bit more, the Republicans say ``no,'' that's class warfare. Instead, they would rather cut security for seniors, for our students, for our struggling families, because millionaires and billionaires, left to their own devices, will make everybody's boat rise.

We have been down that road before, Mr. Chairman. We have seen what has resulted when that choice was made. This budget, when we asked for millionaires, people making a million dollars or more to pay a little bit more, to pay that 39.6 percent, the highest rate under the Clinton administration, the Republicans all said ``no.''

We can't even ask people making a million dollars or more to pay a little extra to help balance this budget. This is unbalanced, this is unfair. It doesn't call for shared sacrifices. It ends Medicare. And while the Budget chairman says, and I know he believes this, that he is trying to preserve Medicare for the next generation, he does nothing. The Republicans do nothing in this budget to make sure that the people who are now in Medicare, or somebody who is 56 or 57, is going to have that program 30 years from now, not one reform measure to help save Medicare.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor a giant of Kentucky's legendary bourbon industry, Bill Samuels, Jr., president of Maker's Mark Distillery, on the occasion of his retirement.

His father's recipe first got bourbon invited to the top shelf. His mother had the radical idea of dipping bottles in red wax. His godfather was Jim Beam.

Bill's career path seemed obvious, but ``obvious'' was never Bill's path.

Everyone agrees distilling bourbon isn't rocket science, but only Bill makes the claim with authority--he's excelled at both. He designed fuel injectors for Polaris missiles and graduated from Vanderbilt Law School. Finally, four decades ago, he decided to give the family business 1 year--but he never left. When his time came, he didn't merely take over. He took Maker's Mark to unimaginable heights.

Then a little-known brand, Makers is now among the world's most sought-after spirits, its red wax a renowned icon. And every barrel maintains the same recipe and craftsmanship as Bill, Sr.'s first batch in 1954.

As cochair of the Congressional Bourbon Caucus, I urge my colleagues to join me in toasting Bill as he passes the wax-tipped baton into the capable hands of his son, Rob.

Bill's service to Maker's Mark and Kentucky--like his bourbon-- continues a family's tradition, makes our Commonwealth proud, and is simply the stuff of legend.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor to be here on the floor of the House of Representatives talking to the American people about one of the most critical things that this body does, and that is to decide how much money we ask our citizens to contribute to the government and how that money is going to be spent.

I didn't come here intending to respond to the gentleman who spoke before me, but he cast in one respect the whole debate over our budget very well when we had Mr. Broun's four-way test. The first thing that Mr. Broun listed was: Is it right/moral? And I agree with him because when we debate the budget of the United States, when we debate how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money, the first question we should ask is: Is it right, and is it moral? The converse is if we don't spend something, is it wrong and is it immoral.

Today, I had the great honor of visiting Walter Reed Hospital. I got to speak with several of our extremely brave, courageous soldiers who have been injured in battle. And one young man who lost both legs, one just above the knee and one all of the way to his pelvis, and lost a little bit of finger on one hand was on what can only be described as bionic legs which he said are extremely good, the technology is extremely advanced; but they still don't help him walk. He talked to us for a long time about what he had been through, the progress he had made, and what he hoped to achieve with technology.

His parting comment to us was that this is the result of the Federal Government spending money on medical research. This is helping people not just in the military, not just in the Armed Forces, but also in the private arena as well.

So I look at what the Republican budget has done, which we will consider later in the week; and it slashes money for medical research. I say let's apply Mr. Broun's four-way test: Is it right? Is it moral? Also, does it make any sense to cut medical research when we have brave men and women who after making incredible sacrifices are reacquiring some of their lives because of the taxpayer money we have spent in funding critical research? It would be immoral--Don was his name--to deny Don his request that we continue to fund medical research that is going to help him regain his capabilities, his physical function, as well as to continue to fund the medical research that will help the thousands of young men and women who have sacrificed so much for us.

So as we enter this debate this week on the Republican budget proposal/the Democratic alternative budget proposal, we have choices to make. That's always what government is about. It's about choosing: How do we spend the taxpayer money that we ask our taxpayers to contribute to the general welfare of this country?

Last week, we sat in the Budget Committee and considered the Republican budget. I'm sure that my characterization of the Republican budget will be different than the Republicans' characterization of their budget. Yet I will say one thing, that we all agree that we have a fiscal challenge in front of us. We have enormous deficits. We can argue about how we got here, but I'm not going to spend time debating that tonight. We clearly have a challenge, and the future is even more challenging. So the question is:

As we approach this budget deficit, this future of deficits, a very, very large national debt, what is the best way to approach it?

Now, the Republican answer is that there is only one side of the ledger. Most homes, most businesses have two sides of the ledger. They have an income side, and they have an expenditure side. As far as the Republicans on the Budget Committee are concerned, we only have an expenditure side. You've heard the Speaker of the House say we only have a spending problem; we don't have a revenue problem. You've heard my senior Senator from Kentucky, the minority leader of the Senate, say we don't have a taxing problem, a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.

In fact, if you look at our situation right now, we're no different, in a lot of respects, from the average household or the average business. If we have a financial challenge, we do a couple of things. We ask, Okay, where can we cut costs? Then we ask, How can we generate more revenue? Those are the two options. As far as the Republicans are concerned, there is only one option. It is to cut expenditures. Unfortunately, my characterization is that they cut

the programs which help the most vulnerable people in our country.

On the other hand, what do they do on the revenue side? They say, Well, let's see. Millionaires and billionaires haven't done quite well enough over the last decade or so. Twenty years ago, they only earned 9 percent of all income in the country. Now they earn 35 percent of all income in the country. That's not quite good enough. Let's give them another tax break. The Bush tax cuts were okay, but they weren't quite large enough. So instead of cutting their rate from 39.6 to 35 percent, let's cut their maximum rate to 25 percent, and let's see what that does for the economy.

I think most of my Democratic colleagues would agree that, if we're going to approach this deficit and the national debt in a responsible way, we'll look at both sides of the ledger. We will ask people who have done extremely well and who have the capacity to give more to pay a little more, and we will make responsible cuts that are balanced across the sector.

There are so many ramifications to this debate, and we're going to be debating it all week, so I am proud to have with me today some members of the Budget Committee from the Democratic side to help me discuss this.

It is my great honor now to yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

I thank the gentleman. He mentioned the ``road to ruin.'' It's also a road we've been down before.

It is a road we've been down before.

Back under the Reagan administration, this whole magical economic theory of trickle-down economics was developed. And the idea was, you let people at the top make as much as they possibly can, do as well as they possibly can, and that will trickle down and help everybody else. The man who was largely responsible for that policy under the Reagan administration, David Stockman, who was his budget director, he said just last year, ``I find it unconscionable that the Republican leadership, faced with a $1.5 trillion deficit, could possibly believe that good public policy is to maintain tax cuts for the top 2 percent.'' That was last year when we were actually debating whether to return to the Clinton-era tax rates--the Clinton era, by the way, which resulted in one of the most impressive decades of job growth in this country.

Now they even want to double down on that. They not only don't want to go back to the Clinton era tax cuts; they want to cut it even further. And their theory is that by cutting the tax rate by 10 percent more on the wealthiest people in this country, that they will create more jobs. Where do they get this stuff? Well, the only source they have for that theory is the Heritage Foundation. Now the Heritage Foundation was also the group that said that if we cut taxes under the Bush administration, that we're going to have this enormous job growth and this enormous surplus. It didn't quite work out so well. But they're saying now--this is what I call the ``Harry Potter budget.'' You wave your magic wand and you make anything sound like it's true-- cut taxes further on the rich, slash spending to help the low- and moderate-income people in this country, and the economy will bloom. Well, I'm not buying it. I don't think most Americans will buy it. But again, it's a road we've been down before, so we have some evidence.

At this point, I'd like to introduce and yield time to a great new Member of Congress and also the Budget Committee, the gentlelady from California (Ms. Bass).

I thank the gentlelady for her contribution and for her work on the Budget Committee.

I know somewhere toward the end there the gentlelady mentioned jobs, and this is something that is kind of at the core of what we're trying to work toward.

We're trying to find a budget, develop a budget that will stimulate the economy, that will create jobs. And we know that under the Ryan budget, again, according to the Heritage Foundation, the way they get to some kind of fiscal sanity is they project that unemployment in the country will be reduced to 2.8 percent by 2016.

Now, I don't know any reputable economist in the country that thinks that's feasible, particularly when you're slashing a lot of government spending that does create jobs, particularly in the health care arena; but no one has been more vocal and more knowledgeable and more articulate about what it takes in this country to create jobs than Mr. Garamendi from California.

I welcome him to the discussion and yield to him now.

I thank the gentleman for his contribution and also want to segue from what he said because he talked about Medicare and the ability to save money in Medicare. One of the ironic things about this debate has been that last year when we were passing the Affordable Care Act and found $550 billion over 10 years that we could save in Medicare and reinvest in new benefits, during the campaign that year, we were chastised for slashing Medicare. Yet those same Republicans, in developing their budget and saying how great they are at cost-cutting, are using the same savings that we found, the same savings of $550 billion, that they ran millions and millions of dollars against Democratic candidates last year. And they're taking credit for that in their budget, which is interesting.

I know Mr. Tonko is chomping at the bit to talk about Medicare some more, so I'll yield to him at this point.

Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko. There are so many aspects of this that deserve to be discussed. One of the things that's kind of sad is that the Republicans, in talking about their plan to privatize Medicare, say, oh, this is just like the plan that Members of Congress have. Well, first of all, Members of Congress have the same plan as every other Federal employee, so it's not necessarily anything special that we have.

But the only thing that is somewhat similar about this is that you have some options in the private sector. We buy insurance from private vendors, and we have a certain allowance. And under the Ryan plan, the Republican budget, seniors, all those under 55 now, when they become seniors they would have a certain amount that they could spend--not just could spend, had to spend in the private sector because they won't be allowed to buy into any Medicare program or a public option. The difference is, as you pointed out in your graphic there, that Members of Congress and Federal employees pay about 28 percent of the premium. Under the Republican budget, seniors are going to pay 68 percent of their premium.

This is shifting the burden, the cost, and putting it on seniors who are on fixed incomes, who don't have the ability to pay. And what's going to happen to them? This is so unlike the Federal insurance program. It's frightening in its dishonesty.

But I want to talk about one thing quickly and then yield to Mr. Garamendi again, because we talked about taxes and tax rates. In the Budget Committee last week I offered an amendment to the Ryan budget that would have restored the Clinton era tax cut, highest tax rate of 39.6 percent on Americans making $1 million a year or more. Now, that is a very small percentage of Americans. Very small percentage. Less than 1 percent of the Americans make over a million dollars a year.

I said let's just have them pay what they paid under the Clinton era. Not one Republican voted for that. And their argument was, and I know they believe this because they keep saying it and have always said it, that if you raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans that they're going to lose incentive, that they're not going to work as hard, that they're not going to make investments because you are eliminating their incentive.

Well, for those with a long memory, the highest marginal tax rate in this country's history back in the sixties was 91 percent--I am sorry, under the Eisenhower administration--was 91 percent. When my father built his company in the sixties and seventies, the highest marginal tax rate was 70 percent. When Ronald Reagan took office it was 50 percent. Now it's down to 35 percent, and they want to cut it even further.

Now, they had this belief, again, that if you raise rates you're going to destroy incentives. I built a company, both my brothers have built very successful companies, my father built a very successful company. Not one of us has ever said, oh, my gosh, because I can only keep 60 cents of that next dollar I make rather than 64 cents or 65 cents, I am just not going to make that dollar. Just doesn't make any sense for me to work harder. Business people don't think that way. That is not human nature.

I have one brother who is very successful. He is in the barbecue restaurant business. You have all heard me tell this story a hundred times. I am going to tell it again. I asked him, ``What about this marginal tax rate thing?'' And he said, ``You know, if people can't afford barbecue it doesn't matter what my tax rate is.'' And that's really where we are as a country. That's where we've come as a country. Because we have let the middle class decline, because their buying power has declined not just in relative terms, in absolute terms over the last decade, while the wealthiest Americans, these people making $1 million, $1 billion and more have done extremely well.

Right now 1 percent of the American people make as much as the bottom 90 percent combined. We have the greatest disparity in income and wealth in this country that we have had in almost 100 years. Yet ask millionaires and billionaires to pay a little bit more--not a lot more. We are not saying go to 70 percent. We are saying go to 39 percent from 35 percent. Not one Republican vote.

We've seen in the past what's happened with tax rates. We have been talking a lot about history tonight. Under the Clinton administration, during the Clinton years, top tax rate of 39.6 percent, 20.8 million jobs created. After the Bush tax cuts, reducing that top rate to 35 percent, 653,000 jobs lost. That is not evidence for cutting the marginal tax rate on the highest-income Americans even further.

We have seen again right now the Bush tax cuts--this is the job loss thing--the economy floundered after the Bush tax cuts went into effect. So again, all we're saying is if we're going to ask people to sacrifice as we try to get our fiscal house in order, we need to ask everybody. In particular, we need to ask the people who have done the best and who have earned the most and who have the most wealth.

Again, the person who has talked more about what it takes to create jobs in this economy is my colleague from California. I yield to him again.

I am sorry, no, I wasn't here. I didn't have the honor of voting against those.

I thank the gentleman. Just to elaborate a little bit on the issue of what creates jobs and what kills jobs, under H.R. 1, which was the Republican continuing resolution that was passed earlier this year--we are still fighting that battle, and we will be fighting it this week--but these are the principles that were reflected in here that are now are reflected in the Ryan budget.

And this is what various economists said would happen if H.R. 1 would go into effect, and this was just for 6 months of the year. Call it ``Slash-onomics.'' Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke--again this is 6 months, 200,000 jobs lost; Mark Zandi, who was John McCain's economic adviser during his Presidential campaign, 700,000 jobs lost; the Economic Policy Institute, 800,000 jobs lost; and the Center for American Progress, just shy of a million jobs lost. That's over 6 months.

Now as we saw on the chart before, contrast that with what's happened just under the Obama administration and the policies that we adopted when we were in the majority. Job growth now, over 200,000 private sector jobs last month created. We are on the right track.

And to slash spending the way that the Republicans have proposed, without an accompanying increase in revenue, is going to do further damage to what is now a solid recovery that's under way.

I just have to laugh a little bit again about the projections of the Ryan Republican budget, because they have made a big deal out of saying this is $6 trillion better than the Obama budget over the next 10 years.

Well, the way they get to that, once again we said it earlier, is to project that unemployment will come down to 2.8 percent in 5 years, which no economist says it would be. But more importantly, they say, that we will increase revenues by almost double from $2.2 trillion dollars last year to $4.3 trillion 10 years from now.

Now, to put that into perspective, the 10 years before that we went from $1.9 trillion in revenue to $2.2 trillion in revenue. Now, we have been up higher, we have been up around $2.5 trillion. That's the highest we have been.

Now they're saying we're going to cut taxes on corporations from 35 to 25 percent, we're going to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans from 35 to 25 percent, and yet we're going to experience unprecedented growth in revenue even though we are cutting taxes. Again they can't get anybody to verify this except the Heritage Foundation, which has not been particularly accurate in the past. This is the Harry Potter budget. This is their theology: Cut taxes, the economy explodes.

We've been down that road before, Mr. Tonko. I would like to yield to you to talk about the Road to Ruin that we are about to be asked to drive.

I thank the gentleman. We have a couple minutes left. I would just like to yield to my friend, Mr. Garamendi, for some closing comments about making it in America.

I thank the gentleman and thanks for his participation. I just want to say in closing that budget battles are more about dollars, and I think all of us on both sides of the aisle believe that and live by that, or want to live by that. Budgets are about values. Budgets are about what we care for in America. And one of the things that I think we have always stood for in America is the idea that anyone has the opportunity to reach his or her full potential, and to be wealthy, but certainly to be happy and to be healthy.

What the Republican budget does is destroy much of that hope, destroy much of that dream, slashing education, slashing research and development, and slashing investment in infrastructure while at the same time giving more and more tax breaks to wealthy individuals, millionaires, billionaires, oil companies, Wall Street hedge fund managers, and the people who have already had more than their share of the American blessing.

So as we proceed in this debate this week on the budget and throughout these next few months in the Congress, I want to make it very clear that our values are at stake, not just our dollars, but our values, and whether you call it the Road to Ruin, or as I look to call it, the Pay Back for the Prosperous, the Republican budget does not reflect our values. It does not lead to a brighter future for the vast majority of Americans, and it should be rejected. We should move forward with a budget that invests in our dearest, dearest asset, and that is the American people.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor for me to come to the floor of the House of Representatives this afternoon to join some of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the Budget Committee to talk about choices. You know, government is all about choosing. It is setting priorities, and it is choosing what we are going to spend the people's money for, how much we are going to ask the people to pay to the government, and how we are going to spend those dollars. It is all about choosing.

It is also about values. This week, this issue of choices is playing itself out in two arenas in government, one in the continuing resolution battle that took place on this floor this afternoon, the idea that we have to figure out how to fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year ending September 30, and whether or not we are willing to let the government shut down tomorrow night because of the choices that we either make or refuse to make. And it is also playing itself out now in the development of the budget for the following fiscal year, 2012.

Yesterday in the Budget Committee, we considered the budget proposal offered by Chairman Ryan and the Republicans that offered some very stark choices for the American people. They are similar to the choices that we have been debating week after week after week for the last couple of months about how we are going to fund the government for the rest of the year.

From the Democratic perspective, at least I know from my perspective, the reason I have not been willing to support the Republican versions of the continuing resolutions that have come to this floor is that they make choices which don't seem very fair to me. They don't seem to represent the values that this country has always embraced, the values of fairness and justice and the idea that we are all in this great journey together and that we are trying to create a country that works for everybody and not just for a very few.

Today, the Republicans brought to the floor a continuing resolution to fund the government for one more week. These are the choices they made as to what we should cut in order to avoid shutting the government down: they wanted to eliminate $143 million for school lunch assistance programs; $187 million for education for the disadvantaged programs, school improvement funds, education innovative improvement programs, and adult education. It cuts the WIC program, nutrition for low-income families, women and their children; the Office of National Drug Control Policy. They want

to cut $495 million from FEMA's first responder program.

All these things they wanted to cut; and yet when you ask them whether they want to have other people, the wealthiest people, the big corporations, the people who have done very well in this country over the last couple of decades, if you ask them, why don't we make them share some of the burden of balancing this budget, they say: Oh, no, we can't do that. We can't do that.

Let me just illustrate with this chart one of the choices that they made in the 2012 budget proposal. They chose to include, refused to eliminate, $800 billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, and instead cut $771 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. This was a choice.

Do we want to make sure that our senior citizens have access to nursing homes, that our disabled population has access to assisted living facilities and home care? Our young, low-income, poor families, do we want to make sure that they have health care? Or do we want to make sure that the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans continue to have their cake and eat it, too? Their choice in the budget and in the continuing resolution is to let those wealthiest Americans have their cake and eat it, too, and let the most vulnerable segments of society pay the price of helping to balance the budget.

I am a big fan of political cartoons, and today's cartoon in The Washington Post I think said it all, because one of the other proposals that the Republicans made in their 2012 budget proposal was not just to maintain the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, but to increase them. They want to cut the maximum tax rate from 35 percent, which was the rate that it was cut to by the Bush administration, they wanted to cut it even further to 25 percent. In other words, a 10 percent additional tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

As a matter of fact, I offered an amendment in the hearing to rescind the Bush tax cut for only those people making over $1 million a year, only those people making over $1 million a year. They voted it down unanimously.

But here is the cartoon by Tom Toles in The Washington Post. It has, and I won't name him, but a Republican member of the Budget Committee, offering a platter that says ``More Tax Cuts for Wealthy.'' And the ``Truly Rich Guy'' says: ``Stop!! I can't eat another bite!'' And the Republican says: ``Sorry, everybody has to share the pain.''

This is one of the choices we have. It is stark: again, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, or health care, education, nutrition for the other 90 percent of the American people who have not done so well.

So as we move through this process of choosing both how we are going to fund the government until September 30 and how we're going to fund it into the future, the American people need to know whose side the Republican majority is on and whose side the Democrats are on.

With that, I yield to my colleague, a member of the Budget Committee from New York (Mr. Tonko).

I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from New York and thank him for his work on the Budget Committee as well, and standing up for all Americans as we try to recover from the greatest economic crisis we've had since the Great Depression 80 years ago.

I forgot to mention one thing earlier when I was talking about the proposal to raise the taxes of people making

over $1 million a year back to the Clinton-era tax levels. And what's interesting about those Clinton-era tax levels, when the highest rate was 39.6 percent, during that time, 20.8 million jobs were created in the United States in the private sector. Then came the Bush tax cuts and took the maximum level tax to 35 percent; 653,000 jobs lost in the private sector.

I know it seems counterintuitive because the mythology has grown out there that when you lower taxes, it stimulates economic activity. The reality is quite different: 39.6 rate, 20.8 million jobs created; cut it to 35 percent, 653,000 jobs lost.

What about annual growth rates? Again, during the Clinton years when the high rate was 39.6, 3.9 percent real GPD growth over that period. When 35 percent, 2.1 percent real GPD growth. So the reality is that lower tax rates do not necessarily equate with better growth or more jobs. What they do equate with is a continuing separation of the very wealthiest Americans from everybody else.

Over the last 30 years, the percentage of all the income earned in the country by the top 1 percent has gone from 9 percent to 33 percent; 33 percent of all the income earned in this country goes to the top 1 percent. They make more and they own more than the bottom 90 percent of the people in this country.

So all we're saying is, we know that everybody is going to have to share in this sacrifice to try and get our fiscal house in order, but we're only asking the most vulnerable people to share. The people who have been doing the best in this country, we're not asking them to even have a little bit of an inconvenience.

And someone who can speak so articulately and passionately about the wrong choice that the Republicans are making is someone who has come from that world, who lives with that world every day, who represents the great city of Milwaukee, our colleague, Gwen Moore.

I would like to yield to her now.

You're absolutely right. If we're going to be revenue neutral and we're going to cut the taxes of some people, then other people are going to have to pay more. And, unfortunately, in this particular proposal, it's going to be the people who can afford it the least.

I thank the gentlelady for her contributions.

I want to welcome another colleague from the Budget Committee, Allyson Schwartz from Pennsylvania, who has been instrumental in developing the Affordable Care Act as a member of the Ways and Means Committee in the last Congress and the Budget Committee and who now serves as a very prominent member of the Budget Committee.

I yield to the gentlewoman.

Thank you.

I would like to yield again to Mr. Tonko, who has another illustration he wants to give us.

Again, a perfect illustration of the choices that we face as a country as we move forward over the next decades.

We know we have fiscal problems. We know we have very difficult choices. The Republicans have chosen to put the cost of balancing the budget on seniors, on low-income families, on working families, and to completely spare oil companies, millionaires and billionaires, hedge fund managers, and anyone else who has made the most of America, who has done the best, and who needs the least help. The Republicans leave them without any role to play.

Just in the few seconds remaining, I would like to ask Representative Moore if she has any closing comments.

I want to thank my colleagues from the Budget Committee for joining me, and thanks to the American people for paying attention to this very important process we are in now.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the cloud hanging over this Chamber is the threat of a government shutdown. We are engaged in what is literally a life-or-death debate about our priorities as a country, and the Republican majority's reckless spending plan doesn't just betray our national values, it highlights their values.

They are demanding cuts to financial aid for students and assistance to homeless veterans or they'll shut the government down. They want to slash heating assistance for low-income seniors or they'll shut the government down. They're even demanding we sacrifice the needs of police officers, firefighters, nurses, seniors, and even pregnant women. And on top of all that,

they're fighting to protect billions in tax breaks for Wall Street and oil companies or they'll shut the government down.

In other words, they demand sacrifices from everyone except millionaires, billionaires, and their corporate benefactors. That's why I think we ought to call the reckless GOP spending plan ``good old payback.''

Mr. Speaker, we cannot let politics and corporate profits trump smart and compassionate policy and the well-being of our Nation. I urge my colleagues to reject these demands and fight to create a government and an economy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy few.