Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, in Louisville, we have a lot to be proud of--the Kentucky Derby, the Louisville Slugger, Muhammad Ali--and now the NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Champion Bellarmine Knights.

Led by Coach Scott Davenport, the Knights finished their regular season with 24 wins, won their second consecutive conference title, and stormed through the NCAA tournament to bring home the university's first national championship. The Knights corralled Mustangs and tamed Mavericks. And on Saturday, led by all-tourney players Jeremy Kendle and Justin Benedetti, Chris Dowe's 16 points, Luke Sprague's double- double, and clutch free throws from Hobbs and Holmes, the Knights grounded a Jet and sent the Seasiders packing. The Knights are true student athletes who overcame injuries and adversity bound together by trust--trust in their abilities and trust in each other. And let's not forget the trust and support of the fans who traveled by the busload nearly 900 miles to cheer on their Knights.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that you join me today in congratulating Coach Davenport, the team, and the entire Bellarmine community on its 2011 NCAA national championship. This was a victory that made history--and on behalf of everyone in Louisville, we're proud to call the Knights our hometown heroes and national champions.

Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in a process now and over the next week to decide how we are going to fund the government for the next few months and for the next year. Republicans have already decided where they want to put the burden of the cuts that we all know we have to make in the budget. They want to put them on the least fortunate of our country.

Let me read something from The Washington Post this week written by Harold Meyerson. Mark Whitehouse of the Wall Street Journal looked at how businesses were dividing up the pie 18 months into every previous recovery since 1947 and found that 58 percent of their increases in productivity trickled down to their workers in increased wages. What has happened today is the other way around: Only 6 percent of productivity gains have gone to our newly more productive workers. In other words, our people, our working families have already paid the price.

What have the corporations and businesses done with that profit that they have made? Mostly, they are buying their stock back. They are not hiring people or investing in research. So as we decide where we are going to tighten the belt as we move forward on our budget, let's make sure that we tighten it on the fat cats as well as the people who have already been strangled.

Mr. Speaker, the richest 1 percent of Americans now control one-third of our Nation's income, 120 percent more than they did 30 years ago.

CEOs now earn hundreds of times what the average worker does. Wall Street profits are up 720 percent since 2007, and corporate taxes are at their lowest point since the fifties. All things considered, the wealthiest Americans are doing pretty well, much better than the rest of the country, in fact.

So you would think that after all these gains, the super rich--a handful of Americans who control fully a third of our economy--would understandably be asked to help as we try to bring our fiscal house back into order. But the Republican spending plan does none of this. It puts the burden of cuts solely on the shoulders of working families, those already struggling to make ends meet and provide for their families. The Republican plan spares the richest Americans from even the slightest inconvenience.

They have proposed to slash the budgets for programs that help seniors heat their homes, help low-income women find a doctor, and help millions of American students access job training or affordable college or health care. This is a reckless plan. We need to reject it and instead work to create an economy that works for everybody, and not just a wealthy few.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would essentially destroy efforts to put an end to the damage that is wrought by mountaintop removal.

Now, many of my colleagues who are not familiar with mountaintop removal, what happens is you take mountains that look like this, and then you turn them into this. This is what happens. And the consequence of doing that, you blow off the top of these beautiful mountains. You push all of the stuff that you've blown up into the valleys that surround it, poisoning streams, poisoning the people who live nearby, poisoning the water supply that feeds much of Appalachia. This is damage that is irreversible. It will never be like this again because nothing grows here.

Now, I know a lot of people try to justify mountaintop removal by saying this is an economic boon for the region. In fact, since mountaintop removal became a prevalent practice, mining jobs have actually declined by more than 50 percent. This is not good for the people of Kentucky and Appalachia. It's not good for the economy, and it's certainly not good for the environment.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have numerous efforts now in Federal Government finally trying to put an end to this destructive, immoral practice. Many in my State gathered in Frankfort just last week to protest what's happening here, to our State, to our children, and to our economy. We can do much better. The last thing we need to do right now is to say to our country and to the people of Appalachia, we're not going to try to preserve these beautiful mountains that God gave us. This is a tipping point in our history.

Generations from now our grandchildren will ask if we don't stop this practice now, if we don't give the government the resources, they will say: How could you let this become this?

Mr. Speaker, we are involved in probably the most important thing that this body does on a year-to-year basis--figuring out how to spend taxpayers' money.

The budget process is more than taking dollars from one place and spending them in another. It's a statement of our values, a statement of our values as representatives who are trusted by our constituents to do the right thing, and a statement of our values as a Nation.

I think it is pretty clear, from what we have seen in H.R. 1, the Republican version of the continuing resolution proposal, that we have a very distinct difference in our values. At a time when millions and millions and millions of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians are suffering, the Republican continuing resolution would take money and would put the burden of these very, very serious economic times on the people least able to afford them. At the same time, we're taking money away from incredibly important investments that this Nation has to make if it wants to remain competitive in this global economy a generation from now and two generations from now.

Instead, the Republicans would slash money from police departments, slash money from fire departments, slash money from our education system, deal a very serious blow to Head Start, all of the things that we need to fulfill our basic obligation as a government. One is to provide opportunity, one is to protect our citizens.

And then the final thing they would slash is important investments in infrastructure, which we know, if we review history, is one of the most important investments that we can make in terms of long-term economic vitality.

The Republican budget, slashing money from infrastructure, from transportation projects, would cost this economy, according to one estimate, 300,000 private-sector jobs.

Now we are fighting as hard as we can to create jobs. As a matter of fact, for the last entire Congress the Republicans kept saying on this very floor, Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? Now, after 6 weeks of their majority rule in the House, we haven't seen one proposal to create a job. But what we've seen is a budget that is so draconian in its cuts that it would actually destroy American jobs.

This is not the type of values that the American people want to see coming out of this body. All of us agree that we have a serious long- term financial picture in this country. We do need to deal with our deficits and with our national debt. We do need to make some long-term changes.

But if you are a family and you have got a lot of people in your family and are overweight, you don't just say, ``Okay, we're just going to stop eating today. We're just not going to eat.'' No. You say, ``We're going to go on a program, we're going to reduce our calories, we're going to exercise.'' But we still have to do some important things. We have to eat, we have to pay for that roof over our head. We've got kids who are college age. We want to send them to college so they can have a brighter future. We do want to make those investments, even if we have to borrow money. We just don't stop. We can't stand in place, because the rest of the world is not standing in place.

So as we move forward in these few days considering the continuing resolution, H.R. 1, let's remain mindful of what our values as a country are. This is a country that has always made investments, has always looked to the future, has always said, yeah, in a capitalistic society some people are not going to do as well or are not going to have as good of luck or are going to be downfallen, and we've got to lift them up. We've got to help them out.

Over the last 25 years, the percentage of wealth or the amount of wealth owned by the top 5 percent in this country has gone from $8 trillion to $40 trillion, according to David Stockman. He is the former budget director under the Reagan administration.

That is an enormous amount of wealth. That increase in wealth alone, for the top 5 percent of this country over the last 25 years, is more than the entire wealth of the world prior to 1985. So the people at the top have done very well, enhanced and encouraged by tax policies that Republicans have put in place. But, meanwhile, we have got to make sure that those other 95 percent of the American people do well too, and we have got to make sure that the policies we enact, the budgets that we approve in this body, reflect those values.

I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise today to oppose section 1746 of H.R. 1 and to urge defeat of this bill.

In my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and in communities all across the United States, a provision of H.R. 1, section 1746, will effectively ban new construction on power plants, refineries, and manufacturing facilities. By freezing the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to issue a mission-based construction permit, H.R. 1 would halt dozens of ongoing projects in communities like Louisville. Under this provision, thousands of jobs in construction, contracting, and manufacturing could be lost. In Louisville alone, plans to improve Ford's Kentucky truck plant could be derailed, jeopardizing the jobs of thousands of hardworking Kentuckians.

I know what you're thinking, what I'm saying can't possibly be true. But it is. You're thinking, this must be an unintended consequence of section 1746 or perhaps an error in drafting, but it's not. Apparently, this is exactly what the Republicans on the Appropriations Committee intended to do. They will let nothing stand in the way of their feverish rush to handcuff the EPA, not even American jobs. In their effort to slam through a package of irresponsible cuts and to thwart the work of the very agency charged with protecting the air we breathe and the water we drink, the casualties aren't just limited to our national environment but real people and real jobs. Republicans in the House are trying to shut down the EPA at all costs, except they aren't the ones paying the price.

I, therefore, urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 1. It is reckless. It is irresponsible. And it is politics at their very worst.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it takes real heroes and real leaders to believe in the possibility of what we can do through hard work, perseverance, and commitment to make the world a better place. I'm proud to say that my hometown of Louisville has many of these leaders, and this week, one of them, 13-year-old Michala Riggle, was recognized nationally with the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. It's a well- deserved recognition, and I rise to applaud Michala's work with Beading to Beat Autism, which has been nothing but miraculous.

Three years ago, after learning that an underfunded treatment program could help thousands of kids in Louisville with autism, like her brother Evan, Michala stepped up. She planned to enlist her friends and family to raise $200,000 by making beaded bracelets and selling them for $3 each. People told her it was impossible, but she said, It's just like a ball game. If you don't believe you can win, it's game over before you start. You gotta believe. And after 6 months, Michala had reached her goal. To date, she's raised $350,000 to help children with autism. Now, through BeadingtoBeatAutism.org, she hopes to raise $300 million to finance an autism research center in Louisville. And I don't doubt that she can accomplish that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the Members of the House to join me to salute her. I'm proud to wear her bracelets and proud that she's a resident of the Third District of Kentucky.

Congratulations, Michala.

Mr. Speaker, tonight the President of the United States will deliver the State of the Union address, as we all know. If the reports are accurate, what he will talk about today is the need to make serious investments in this country's future.

Now, we have just heard from a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and we have heard from many Republicans over the last few days, concerning the issue of spending and whether or not we need to be spending any more money in this time of admittedly dire financial circumstances.

You know, most families, when they borrow money, they do it for two reasons: either for survival--they need to eat; they need to feed their children; they may need a house for their family; they need to clothe them--or they borrow because they see an opportunity to invest and to make their lives better down the road.

Now, I know that many people don't think of government spending as investment. But if we look back not too long, just over recent history, the last few decades, we have seen numerous instances in which government investment has not only created jobs, it has spawned entirely new industries.

As a matter of fact, even though people made fun of Al Gore many years ago, the fact is that government investment actually created the Internet. Government investment, through the Defense Department and other research institutions, has created literally billions and billions of dollars in private sector growth and created thousands and thousands and thousands of new jobs.

We face a very difficult choice right now. We can sit back while the rest of the world advances, or we can make the tough choices right now to make serious and important investments that will not just create new industries but may, in fact, solve some of our most intractable problems. I am talking here about medical research, for one.

We now invest $6 billion a year in cancer research. Cancer treatment and the cost to society because of cancer amounts to literally hundreds of billions of dollars each year. It costs Medicare. It costs Medicaid. It costs the private system. If we spent $20 billion a year on medical research for cancer and over 10 years finally cured it, made it manageable in an inexpensive way, the long-term payback to this country would be enormous.

One of the problems with analyzing our health care reform proposal, now in the law the Affordable Health Care Act, is that we weren't able to factor in the long-term benefits of preventive care, research, more efficient operations, because they are not quantifiable.

But we know that if we could just deal with two major diseases, diabetes and cancer, then we would probably solve our long-term health care financial issues. So tonight the President will lay out choices for us. And I think this is a very, very important aspect of our public dialogue right now. We need to make sure that not only the American people, but also every Member of Congress, really understand what our choices are. Because it's very, very easy to stand up and say we're going to cut spending by $100 billion in the Federal Government when you're not willing to talk about what specifically you're willing to cut. And my colleague from Minnesota just said the President may not be specific. Well, the fact is, Republicans haven't been specific either.

We need this laid out for the American people. We need it laid out for us. We have difficult choices. We need to make them. I think the President is on the right track. We cannot cut back right now on medical research. We cannot cut back on the type of research that will create new industries, particularly in the energy field. We cannot cut back right now in education when the rest of the world is passing us by in terms of the achievement of their students. And we cannot cut back right now on investments in our infrastructure when much of it is crumbling around us.

So I look forward to the debate we're going to have over the next few months. It's an important debate. It's probably the most serious debate we've had in this country in decades, because we are at a crossroads. We can allow this country to become a secondary international power, or we can maintain our status as not just the world's largest economy, but the world's most ingenious economy, the world's most innovative country, and a society which cares about making life better for every American citizen.

Madam Speaker, in the wake of the tragedy in Tucson 10 days ago, there has been a lot of soul searching, a lot of introspection, and a lot of commentary about what was behind the tragedy there and what motivated Jared Loughner to take the action he did.

It's become the judicious and kind of the politically correct thing to say, Oh, it was just one madman doing something. We can't ascribe responsibility to anything else.

I think that's too easy. I think that's a cop-out.

The fact is that Jared Loughner did not try to attack the community college that threw him out, any of the employers who had fired him, or anybody in his family. He singled out Gabrielle Giffords, an elected official of the United States Government. And one has to wonder whether all of the talk in recent years about tyrannical governments and the demonization of politicians did not in some way guide that madman to her instead of another target.

I think we need to not just write this off as a senseless tragedy and an inexplicable one. We need to delve into it more deeply and decide whether the rhetoric that's out there in the media environment had something to do with this tragic event.

Mr. Speaker, over the course of the last year and a half as we worked to pass incredibly important protections to Americans, opponents of health care reform continued to try to scare people about what we

were doing. And now with this vote today, where the Republican plan is basically to remove all of those protections that we have offered the American public, there are a lot of people out there who will think that after the vote today that these protections are going to go away.

So I want to assure the constituents in my district, the Third District of Kentucky--almost 300,000 of them with preexisting conditions--your protection against discrimination will not go away. Those 15,700 small businesses in my district that will now get benefits to provide coverage for their employees, don't worry about that vote. Those protections are not going to go away.

For those seniors in the doughnut hole, almost 10,000 in my district who have had their prescription drug costs lowered because of what we did last year, this vote today will not take them away.

And as for those 24,000 individuals in my district who will now have access to insurance for the first time, the vote today will not take them away.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we will vote on H.R. 2, the Republican health care bill. This bill is another example of actions speaking louder than words.

Now, many of my Republican colleagues have said they support certain health care reforms: a ban on preexisting condition discrimination, allowing young adults to stay on their parents' health policies until age 26, closing the prescription doughnut hole, and eliminating lifetime limits on coverage.

They could have crafted this bill any way they wanted. They could have guaranteed any or all of just those important provisions--those protections--they claim to support, but they didn't. They could have ensured that, by 2016, annual health care premiums for the average American wouldn't be $24,000 and that, over the next decade, small businesses wouldn't lose more than $52 billion in profits.

They could have crafted the bill that way, but they didn't. They can say whatever they want, but the truth is that the Republican plan is no care--no matter how desperate or how dire your diagnosis, no matter if the alternative saves money, saves jobs and saves lives.

Madam Speaker, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords is one of the kindest, most thoughtful and hardest working elected officials anywhere. It is a shame that it took a despicable act to shine this bright spotlight on Gabby. She is what virtually every American would say they want in a Member of Congress--smart, open, friendly, intellectually honest, and very brave. She cares passionately about all of her constituents and, as she was demonstrating on Saturday, what they think.

Speaker Boehner was absolutely correct when he said an attack on one Member of Congress is an attack on all, but Saturday's attack was more than an assault on a Congresswoman. It was an attack on American democracy. Gabby was doing what her job title implied--listening to her constituents at an event set up like hundreds before, conducting the business essential to effective representation. Dozens of citizens were actively participating in our democracy, asking questions and expressing themselves. The attack on Giffords was an attack on them as well.

Earth-shaking tragedies sometimes create the opportunity for our society to have a reasoned discussion on critically important issues that we often cannot have under normal circumstances. In the wake of catastrophe, our hope is that such a discussion can strengthen our democracy and help our Nation emerge stronger.

Responsibility for this weekend's shooting in Tucson rests solely on the shoulders of the madman who pulled the trigger. However, it is our responsibility, as citizens in the world's strongest democracy, to seriously consider the impact that the accessibility of high-capacity weapons and the increased vitriol of public dialogue have on impressionable or unstable individuals and our society as a whole.

For all of the pain and agony caused by this tragedy, it could also be a turning point for the country. Already leaders from across the political spectrum are discussing the vital need to turn down the rhetorical volume and dial back extremism for the sake of our Nation.

We all are praying for Gabby's recovery and for the families of those who were killed and wounded Saturday. Let each of us resolve to do all we can to protect our democracy from those who would deny and subvert it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and congratulations on your election.

It's a great pleasure to be here today. I could spend the next half hour responding to my colleague from Iowa. I think it's fascinating just that one comment, that he talks about reading the Constitution and then talks about how this is an unconstitutional bill. Well, obviously, he apparently stopped at article II and didn't get to article III, which stipulates that the judiciary and the Supreme Court ultimately decide what is constitutional in this country, not Members of Congress.

The Constitution was read today. I'm glad it was. It's always good to remind ourselves of this great foundational document that we all respect, that all of us--all 435 Members of the House--swore to protect and defend yesterday.

In the Constitution, in article I, section 5, it says each House may determine the rules of its proceedings. Yesterday, the Republican majority in the House put forth a group of rules changes that will determine how this Congress will operate over the next 2 years.

It was fascinating, in light of our discussion about health care, in light of our discussion about the costs of health care, that one of the things it did, these rules changes that Republicans passed, was basically to vest extraordinary power on one Member of the House of Representatives to determine essentially what the cost, what the deficit or the debt, the budget implications on a particular piece of legislation might be, and the relevance of this to the debate we are in now about the Republicans' proposal to take away all of the privileges of rights and benefits granted by the Affordable Care Act that we passed in the 111th Congress and that I was proud to support.

One of the things that it said was, if there is a vote to repeal the health care bill, the Affordable Care Act that we passed last year, that we basically decide that we don't have to abide by PAYGO rules--in other words, saying that, just because the Congressional Budget Office determined that the Affordable Care Act will save the taxpayers $230 billion over the next 6, 7 or 8 years and then another $1 trillion in the following 10 years, we don't have to make the same kind of adjustments that we do for other kinds of additional expenditures. The Republican philosophy is, if you reduce revenues in any way to the government, that's fine; and it doesn't affect the deficit.

Now, a lot of the debate we had in the last Congress over the health care act I heard time, after time, after time, and we heard this with tax cuts and many other things: oh, a business can't operate like this. A family can't operate like this. Well, in fact, I think, in this particular case, that analogy is really relevant because, if I have a family, a two-income family, and all of a sudden one of us loses our job and loses our income, it's really interesting that we could take the position that, oh, it didn't affect our budget, and it didn't affect the family deficit. Just that loss of revenue didn't matter. All we're concerned about is how much we spent. All we're concerned about is the expense side.

What the Republicans have basically done under this new regime, with this new set of rules that they passed yesterday, is to say that there are two separate ledgers--one dealing with expenditures, one dealing with revenue--and that they don't affect each other. It is an astounding philosophy of operation that we are about to embark on.

Under this new rule, when the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy expire in 2 years, we would not have to account for that loss in revenue to the Federal deficit even though, when we start writing checks and we start trying to borrow money to pay for the deficit, we are going to have to come up with that money. They say, no, it doesn't affect the deficit.

If we repeal the Affordable Care Act, which the CBO says will save $1.3 trillion over the next two decades, that's money that we aren't going to have to borrow from somebody else. They say, oh, that's not part of the budget. We don't have to compensate for that.

So it's fascinating that they basically set up these two sets of books, and now they give the power to the chairman of the Budget Committee, who in this case is Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin--a very thoughtful, honest man. You give him the power, however, to make a decision that whatever the CBO says doesn't matter. He can deem, or decide, exactly what the impact of any provision or any act of Congress is on the budget. One person.

Now, I come from Kentucky. We're a big basketball State. Last week, we had a game, a big-game rivalry. Kentucky and Louisville played. It didn't come out the way I would have liked it to. But I had to think, when we set up these rules, that would be like Louisville and Kentucky playing and saying to Coach Pitino of Louisville or Coach Calipari from Kentucky, You get to make all the calls in this game. Our players are going to play. They're going to compete hard, but Coach Pitino, we're taking the refs off the field. You're the one who's going to call fouls. You're going to make all the decisions.

That's basically what the Republicans have done.

What they also said and decided in this process is that the health care reform bill--changing it, repealing it--will have no impact on the deficit, no impact on the budget. That's fascinating because, for the last year and a half, when we debated the Affordable Care Act, they kept talking about how this was going to balloon the deficit, how it was going to explode the deficit. Trillions of dollars it was going to cost the American taxpayer. Well, now they say, No, it has no impact at all on the deficit because you have to understand, if it costs nothing to repeal it, then there was no cost to passing it.

So one has to question who has been honest in this debate. Who has been honest in this debate?

I understand that finding referees as to who is right and who is wrong and what facts are salient and which facts are accurate has been a difficult process. My colleague Mr. King said that, you know, all of a sudden, we keep talking about this, and expect a liberal light to go on in people's heads. Well, we need some light on this subject because there have been billions and billions of dollars spent to create darkness about the impact of this bill, and that process proceeds today.

So I think, as we debate this proposal of the Republicans to do away with many of the benefits which we are so proud of and which millions of Americans are beginning to feel now, we should have the kind of discussion that is honest, that is open, and that sheds light on the subject. No one can do that better than my colleague from the great State of Maryland, Donna Edwards.

I thank the distinguished Congresswoman from Maryland for her comments, and I'm actually kind of glad that Congressman King brought up these major benefits which are now helping families across this country.

Ms. Edwards talked about the benefit of adding your son or daughter under 26 to your policy, and Mr. King basically pooh-poohed that--I don't know if that's exactly a good legislative term, but kind of ridiculed that. And then he talked about lifetime limits and how lifetime limits were not necessarily something that we should worry about in spite of the fact that almost a million Americans a year, historically, over the last few years, have gone bankrupt because they either had no insurance or their insurance was inadequate and they lost everything they had because of health care costs, because of a cancer diagnosis or serious accident. These are real-life stories. These are not abstractions.

And I understand that we have many colleagues on the other side of the aisle who believe, with almost a religious zeal, in certain things like the perfection of the marketplace, in spite of the fact that we've seen time after time after time in this country, not too long ago with the financial system, how our markets often fail, how we have created or allowed to be created enormous sources of power and concentrations of economic power in this country that have basically distorted the marketplaces, and that is very, very true in the area of health insurance.

We have many, many States in which one company, one company, one insurer will dominate the insurance market, 85, 90 percent of the insurance in

that State sold through one insurance company. That is not something that the drafters of the Constitution envisioned. So it's nice to believe in free market principles--and I think Democrats believe in free market principles as well as Republicans do--but the fact is, in real life, not in a history philosophy book or political science philosophy book, in real life markets fail, markets get distorted, and that is when the government is responsible for protecting the general welfare of the population as the Constitution says.

Because we've been joined by another colleague, we want to return to this issue of rules because, again, the budgetary rules that the Republicans have set up to govern this next Congress are creating some incredibly difficult situations for our States, our localities, and our people. And one of those areas in which this has been particularly true--and I know I've been contacted by transportation officials in Kentucky about how dangerous they think these new rules may be, and Joe Courtney from Connecticut has joined us to talk about that implication of the new rules that we are going to be operating under.

So I yield to gentleman from Connecticut.

I thank the gentleman.

And reclaiming my time, the analogy I used earlier was with families, and we all know we're in a difficult budgetary situation. We know we're running huge deficits right now, and we know that the money that we are spending, a large portion of it we are borrowing because tax revenues can't support it. This Republican majority now has basically taken the position that they're going to strangle this government and put a cap on expenditures. And certainly I understand that's part of their honestly held philosophy, but if you're a family and you've got two kids high school age and two income earners, one of them loses their job, are you going to then say under no circumstances am I going to borrow money to help pay for the college education of my two teenagers so they can have a better life and they can be prepared to meet the demands of the future; I'm just going to keep cutting expenses?

And that analogy seems to be working here, particularly with regard to transportation as well and the investment that we have to make.

I thank the gentleman. Again, I go back to these rules that have been adopted now in the House, and they basically give extraordinary unprecedented power to one person to set these budget limits to decide the budgetary impact of an investment in infrastructure or a health care law, the repeal of a health care law or, for instance, the repeal of many of the advances we made in terms of education funding during the 111th Congress.

And it seems to me that, as I read through the Constitution, the Founding Fathers probably didn't anticipate that we would basically disenfranchise 434 Members of Congress in making these incredibly important decisions about how we raise revenue, which is specifically a power that has been given for initiation to the House of Representatives, or to spend tax revenue, that that kind of power would vest in one person and that you would set up a set of rules that sets up two sets of books and say, If you drop revenue, if you cut taxes, if you have a loss in revenue, that has no budget implications; but everything you spend has to be offset somewhere along the line.

And I think in terms of not just investment in infrastructure but also investment in research, medical research which probably is the real answer to our long-term health care financing costs. If we can control or cure diabetes and cancer and make an impact on heart disease, these are the things that are really going to help us in the future. But to set up these kind of rules which basically, again, disenfranchise not just 434 Members of Congress but, in the process, virtually every American citizen from the process of deciding what money should be spent and invested in some very, very important aspects of the general welfare.

And I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from Maryland, Donna Edwards.

I thank you for that contribution. And we've also been joined by the gentleman from Tennessee, Congressman Cohen, and I would like to yield to him.

I thank you for that.

As we wind down, pursuing the analogy with families and also with small businesses, I mean, people legitimately borrow money, and businesses legitimately borrow money for two reasons. One is for survival, to eat, to pay salaries if you are a small business. And they borrow money for investments. We have plenty of investments that we can make in this country that are desperately needed. Infrastructure being one, education being another, medical research being a third category.

And we basically have been told by the Republicans that there is no basis, no justification for spending any more money. And because we're in a deficit situation, borrowing more money--except when it comes to giving tax breaks for very, very wealthy Americans, millionaires, billionaires hedge fund managers, and the like, that's okay. We can do that, and we can balloon the national debt to do that, but we can't do it to help people, to provide people's health care, to invest in needed infrastructure, to invest in the things that will make this American economy the kind of economy that we will all be proud of, that will work for everyone, that will truly live up to the ambitions of the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution that we read today, to create a more perfect union. That's what we are all about. And we'll continue, as Democrats and now as Members of the loyal opposition in this body, anyway, to fight for the kind of balanced and intelligent investment and restraint of spending that will get us to the world that we all envision.

So I thank my colleagues for joining me today.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to say good-bye to some dear friends and colleagues. Four years ago, we arrived in this body, over 40 of us, and we were called the majority makers because we had brought control of the House back to the Democrats. And now 18 of us are leaving for other endeavors. They have become more than colleagues and Members and great Americans, they have become part of a family.

So I salute Baron Hill, Paul Hodes, John Hall, Carol Shea-Porter, Patrick Murphy, Ron Klein, Steve Kagen, Joe Sestak, Brad Ellsworth, Charlie Wilson, Chris Carney, Zack Space, Harry Mitchell, Mike Arcuri, Phil Hare, Bill Foster, Travis Childers, and Ciro Rodriguez. Although their faces will not appear in this body, at least on a frequent basis, the memories and the legacy that they have left will live on forever.

Madam Speaker, last May, President Richard Levin of Yale University delivered a commencement speech, and I think the message he conveyed in that speech is worth repeating here for the Members of this body and also for the American people. I am going to read a portion of the speech and then include the entire commencement speech for the Record. These are the words of Dr. Richard Levin:

``Aristotle tells us that we are by nature political animals. But one wonders whether we would recognize the species we have become. Eighteen months ago, the United States elected a new President who was prepared to address intelligently and collaboratively the most pressing problems confronting the Nation--education, health care, climate change, and improving America's image in the rest of the world. Late in the election campaign, the financial crisis intervened, and economic recovery and financial sector reform were added to this ambitious agenda.

``What has happened since does not inspire great confidence in the capacity of our system to deal intelligently with important problems. Why is this happening?''

Dr. Levin says: ``Let me make two observations and then trace their implications for how you might conduct yourselves as citizens and participants in political life. First, contemporary political discussion is too often dominated by oversimplified ideologies with superficial appeal to voters. And, second, political actors in the United States give too much weight to the interests of groups with the resources to influence their reelection and too little attention to the costs and benefits of their actions on the wider public.

``In the Federalist No. 10, James Madison addresses the second of these observations in the context of the fledgling republic established by the U.S. Constitution. He notes that the tendency to pursue self- interest can never be entirely suppressed, but it can be mitigated by the proper design of political institutions.

``The protections that our form of government offers against ideology and faction have attenuated greatly since Madison's time, for at least two reasons. First, mass communication increases the opportunity to sway voters by appeal to simple formulations. Of course, the rise of mass communication could be a tool for raising the level of discourse through more effective education of the electorate. But it interacts with the second attenuating factor: that the money required to win elections through the media has created a dependence on funding from special interest groups. And it is these interest groups who distort reasoned dialogue by sponsoring oversimplified messages.

``To move beyond ideology and faction, we need to raise the level of political discourse. You, as the emerging leaders of your generation,'' he told the students, ``must rise to the challenge.

``In the first paragraph of the Federalist No. 1, writing about the infant republic whose constitution he was endeavoring to defend, Alexander Hamilton asserts:

``It has frequently been remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice.

``There is much in America's history of the past two-and-a-quarter centuries that would incline us to conclude that Hamilton's question has been answered in the affirmative. Our institutions of representative government have proven themselves to be durable, the rule of law has prevailed, and the scope of personal liberty has expanded far beyond what the Founders envisioned. But today, in the face of oversimplified ideology and the dominance of narrow interests, we must wonder again whether Hamilton's question is still open.

``Women and men of the Yale College class of 2010,'' Dr. Levin said, ``it falls to you, the superbly educated leaders of your generation, to rise above ideology and faction, to bring to bear your intelligence and powers of critical thinking to elevate public discourse, to participate as citizens, and to answer the call to service. Only with your commitment can we be certain that our future will be decided by reflection and choice in the broad best interest of humanity. You can do it. Yes, you can.''

Madam Speaker, Dr. Levin made this call to the young women and men who will lead our Nation in the years to come. But all of us should listen.

As we end this Congress and begin a new one, our Nation faces challenges as complex as they are consequential, and we stand at a tipping point. More special interest money is flooding our political system than ever before. Congress is the most partisan it has been in history. The media is often more a source of polarization than information. And the American people don't know whom to believe, if anyone; and I don't blame them.

The result is that our ability to have serious discussions about serious challenges is severely damaged. And now arguably the most significant challenge facing our country is figuring out how to have those conversations. That must be our calling for the 112th Congress. If we fail in this effort, we not only fail Congress, we fail our country.

Baccalaureate Address: Reclaiming Politics

President Richard C. Levin, Yale University

What a journey you have had! Four years of exploring a

place so rich with treasure: courses taught by some of the

world's most brilliant and creative scholars and scientists,

a library with few peers, museums that expose you to the full

variety of nature and human cultures, musical and theatrical

performances of the highest quality, vigorous intercollegiate

and intramural athletic programs, and classmates whose

excellence never ceases to astonish--and all this set within

the imposing and inspiring architecture of a campus that is

itself a museum. You have had the chance to interact with

classmates from 50 states and 50 nations, and the great

majority of you have taken advantage of Yale's abundant

international programs to spend a semester or a summer

abroad.

In the classroom, you were encouraged to engage thoroughly

and rigorously in thinking independently about the subjects

you studied. You were challenged to develop the powers of

critical reasoning fundamental to success in any life

endeavor. Outside the classroom, as you worked productively

in the hundreds of organizations you joined or founded, you

exercised the skills of teamwork and leadership. In your

overseas experiences, you deepened your capacity for

understanding those whose values and cultures differ from

your own--preparing you for citizenship in a globally

interconnected world. You may not recognize this in

yourselves, but you are ready for what is next.

Understandably, you may be uncertain and a bit anxious

about what lies ahead. But, if history is to be trusted, you

will find many paths open to you. Because of the talent you

possessed before you came here, as well as the intellectual

and personal growth you have experienced here, you will find,

with high likelihood, success in your chosen endeavors. And

we expect you to stay connected. The vibrant life of this

university is greatly enriched by the deep commitment and

active participation of its graduates--think of all the

master's teas and guest lectures and college seminars offered

by our alumni. And keep in mind that when you thanked your

parents a few moments ago, you might also have been thanking

the generations of Yale graduates whose gifts past and

present supported half the total cost of your education.

Perhaps I am overconfident about your prospects for

personal fulfillment and professional success, but I don't

think so. If you will concede my point for the sake of

argument, let's ask the next question, one so

deeply rooted in Yale's mission and tradition that for most

of you, fortunately, it has become ingrained. And that

question is: how can I serve? How can I contribute to the

wellbeing of those around me, much as we all have done in

building communities within the residential colleges and

volunteering in so many valuable roles in the city of New

Haven? Now is an important time to be asking this question.

Let me suggest why, and then let me suggest an answer.

Aristotle tells us that we are by nature political animals.

But one wonders whether he would recognize the species that

we have become. Eighteen months ago, the United States

elected a new president who was prepared to address,

intelligently and collaboratively, the most pressing problems

confronting the nation--education, health care, climate

change, and improving America's image in the rest of the

world. Late in the election campaign, the financial crisis

intervened, and economic recovery and financial sector reform

were added to this ambitious agenda.

What has happened since does not inspire great confidence

in the capacity of our system to deal intelligently with

important problems. We legislated a stimulus package that was

less effective than it should have been, and far less

effective than the corresponding measures undertaken in

China. Fifteen months later, unemployment in the United

States is still 9.9%. After months of stalemate, Congress

enacted a health care bill that extends care to millions of

uncovered individuals and families, but takes only the most

tentative steps toward containing the escalating costs that

will create an unsustainable burden of public debt within the

next decade or two. We failed to address climate change in

time to achieve a meaningful global agreement in Copenhagen.

And, although financial sector reform now seems to be a

possibility, the debate has been replete with

misunderstanding of what actually went wrong and a misplaced

desire for revenge.

Why is this happening? Let me make two observations, and

then trace their implications for how you might conduct

yourselves as citizens and participants in political life.

First, contemporary political discussion is too often

dominated by oversimplified ideologies with superficial

appeal to voters. And, second, political actors in the United

States give too much weight to the interests of groups with

the resources to influence their re-election, and too little

attention to the costs and benefits of their actions on the

wider public.

In The Federalist (No. 10), James Madison addresses the

second of these observations, in the context of the fledgling

republic established by the U.S. Constitution. He notes that

the tendency to pursue self-interest can never be entirely

suppressed, but it can be mitigated by the proper design of

political institutions. In contrast to a direct democracy

where individuals would tend to vote their own interests, a

republican form of government, Madison argues, will have a

greater tendency to select representatives who attend to the

broader interests of the whole. And, he further argues,

representatives in a large republic constituted of a wide

range of divergent interests will find it easier to rise

above parochialism than those in a smaller republic comprised

of a small number of competing factions.

The protections that our form of government offers against

ideology and faction have attenuated greatly since Madison's

time, for at least two reasons. First, mass communication

increases the opportunity to sway voters by appeal to simple

formulations. Of course, the rise of mass communication could

be a tool for raising the level of discourse through more

effective education of the electorate. But it interacts with

the second attenuating factor: that the money required to win

elections through the media has created a dependence on

funding from special interest groups. And it is these

interest groups who distort reasoned dialogue by sponsoring

oversimplified messages.

It is easy to see how these developments have thwarted

recent efforts to shape responsible public policy. For

example, the interest groups opposing health care reform

defeated efforts to contain costs by labeling them ``death

panels,'' and they defeated the creation of a new public

vehicle for providing health insurance by insisting that we

must ``keep government out of the health care business,''

when in fact Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans

Administration already pay nearly 40 per cent of the nation's

health care bill. I am not taking sides here, only pointing

to the fact that intelligent debate on these subjects was

crowded out by ideological distortion.

How can we create a national and global dialogue that

transcends such oversimplification and parochialism? Let me

suggest that we need each of you to raise the level of

debate. You came here to develop your powers of critical

thinking, to separate what makes sense from what is

superficial, misleading, and seductive. Whether you have

studied literature, philosophy, history, politics, economics,

biology, physics, chemistry, or engineering, you have been

challenged to think deeply, to identify the inconsistent and

illogical, and to reason your way to intelligent conclusions.

You can apply these powers of critical discernment not simply

to fulfill personal aspirations, but to make a contribution

to public life.

Every signal you have received in this nurturing community

has been unwavering in its message that the growth of your

competencies is not to benefit you alone. You have learned in

your residential colleges that building a successful

community has required you to respect and value one another,

and, when appropriate, to moderate your own desires for the

benefit of the whole. And so it should be in your lives after

Yale. If you are to help to solve this nation's problems--or

work across national boundaries to address global problems

such as climate, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation--you

will need to draw upon both these fruits of a Yale education:

the capacity to reason and the ethical imperative to think

beyond your own self-interest.

I know that many of you are taking advantage of these first

years after graduation to take up public service, and I hope

that even more of you will consider this path. There are

plenty of jobs in the public sector for enterprising recent

graduates; many are short-term but others may lead to

careers. Many of you have signed up to be teachers. Others

will enter business or the professions. But whatever choice

you make, you can help to strengthen the nation and the

world--by treating political choices not as triggers for an

ideological reflex and not as opportunities to maximize self-

interest. To combat reflexive ideologies, you must use the

powers of reason that you have developed here to sift through

the issues to reach thoughtful, intelligent conclusions. To

combat parochialism, you must draw upon the ethical

imperative that Yale has imbued in you--an imperative that

begins with the golden rule. Whether you serve in government

directly or simply exercise your responsibilities as a

citizen and voter, recognize that we will all be best served

if we take account not merely of our own self-interest, but

the broader interests of humanity. To move beyond ideology

and faction, we need to raise the level of political

discourse. You, as the emerging leaders of your generation,

must rise to this challenge.

In the first paragraph of The Federalist (No. 1), writing

about the infant republic whose constitution he was

endeavoring to defend, Alexander Hamilton asserts:

It has frequently been remarked, that it seems to have been

reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and

example, to decide the important question, whether societies

. . . are really capable or not, of establishing good

government from reflection and choice . . .

There is much in America's history of the past two and a

quarter centuries that would incline us to conclude that

Hamilton's question has been answered in the affirmative. Our

institutions of representative government have proven

themselves to be durable; the rule of law has prevailed, and

the scope of personal liberty has expanded far beyond what

the founders envisioned. But today, in the face of

oversimplified ideology and the dominance of narrow

interests, we must wonder again whether Hamilton's question

is still open.

Women and men of the Yale College class of 2010: It falls

to you, the superbly educated leaders of your generation, to

rise above ideology and faction, to bring to bear your

intelligence and powers of critical thinking to elevate

public discourse, to participate as citizens and to answer

the call to service. Only with your commitment can we be

certain that our future will be decided by ``reflection and

choice'' in the broad best interest of humanity. You can do

it. Yes you can.