Floor Statements

I thank my friend from New Jersey.

Mr. Chairman, this is all about creating a mechanism for competition--fair, open, fully disclosed competition.

The exchanges actually come from maybe 20 years ago. I know that in California when I was elected insurance commissioner in 1991, we established an exchange program. It passed the legislature. Unfortunately, Governor Wilson vetoed that legislation. Had it gone into place, there would have been a marketplace for insurance consumers. Right now consumers are at the whims of the market. They have no power.

An exchange is simply a way to accumulate the purchasing power of thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals and small businesses so that their risk is spread out over that large population. Right now small businesses and individuals simply are at the mercy of the insurance companies. They have no way to spread their risk, and, therefore, their rates are exceedingly high, and in many cases it's impossible to get insurance.

For the life of me, I don't understand why the Republicans want to repeal the exchanges. I always hear from them competition and free market. This is exactly that. This is competition, in which the health insurance companies have to compete with a similar policy, four different kinds of policies, a very rich one and a very basic one, and they have to compete on quality. What's the problem with that? And they'll be able to get insurance. Right now they can't. So they're going to repeal it. It makes no sense.

It also makes no sense that the Republicans would go out and terminate Medicare. Hello? You're going to terminate Medicare, a guaranteed insurance policy for everyone over 65? Oh, I know, only those who are below 55 years of age will never see Medicare. It's gone. It's history. Oh, you're going to give them a voucher, a small percentage of the total cost 10 years out? Good luck. And you throw them to the whims of the insurance companies without an exchange.

What's this all about? I think Congressman Miller may have had it right. How do you view the world? People need health care. Insurance is a way to get health care. An exchange is a way to spread the risk for a large pool of people so the risk isn't there and access to the market.

California has an exchange. California last year established a law to put in place an exchange. It was signed by a Republican Governor, folks. Are you listening? Governor Schwarzenegger signed the exchange program. It's going into operation in a year and a half so that people in California can get insurance. Two million people will not be able to get insurance if this bill were to pass. And the only thing you offer is the termination of Medicare? Oh, and by the way, you're going to reduce Medicaid by $700 billion.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the United States military for carrying out an extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily important task. Osama bin Laden is no more, and we thank them for their duration of this long and very necessary task; and for President Obama, he said he would get it done and he did. President Bush worked at this long and hard. And for all that have been involved in this very important task of ridding this world of the world's most notorious and dangerous terrorist, I congratulate them, and I think all America does, also.

We need to continue to focus like a laser on al Qaeda wherever they may be across this world. This is our task, and we will not relent until we have finally succeeded in putting al Qaeda aside and moving on to a more peaceful world.

Madam Chair, for 8 years I was the insurance commissioner in California. And for 8 years I battled the health insurance industry. What we heard on the floor was that 2011, what will we remember? What it will be remembered for is the death of Medicare, the demise, the death of Medicare. The most successful insurance program, the most successful health insurance program in this Nation.

It works. It is efficient. It is effective. It is a nationwide standard policy available to every American 65 years of age and older and some of those who are younger.

I heard the author of this bill a moment ago saying competition would make it better. In fact, it does not. In fact, it does not.

The private health insurance industry is inefficient. It is ineffective, it is discriminatory and it clearly, clearly harms customers. There is a profit motive that has to be paid for. There are compensations for the sale and compensations for those who sell the insurance. All of that adds up.

It is also extremely inefficient in that there are multiple policies, multiple people that have to be paid, insurance companies that have to be paid, different deductions, different copays. All of that is out there.

My Republican colleagues have done everything they can to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, which had insurance reform in it. Without the insurance reform, which clearly they want to do away with, you are throwing senior citizens to the sharks, to health insurance.

I urge us not to do that.

Will the gentleman yield?

Will the gentleman yield?

If the gentleman would yield, I will answer his question.

Point of order ma'am.

Madam Chair, a point of order.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, we've heard a lot of discussion here this evening about what economic policy works, where do the deficits come from. Let's just figure it out.

Beginning with this man over here--I think we would all recognize him--that would be Ronald Reagan. After every year, at the end of the year, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, makes a projection of what's going to happen in the next 10 years. At the end of Ronald Reagan's period, they did their projection, and they said, voila, a $1.4 trillion deficit in the years ahead. Followed by George Bush the senior. At the end of his 4 years, they did another estimate: What's going to happen in the next 10 years? Well, let's see. That says a $3.3 trillion deficit. How about that?

We were just talking about some economic policy here a minute ago. Well, let's talk about the Clinton period. At the end of the Clinton period, 8 years, another projection was made by the Congressional Budget Office: What's going to happen in the next 10 years? A $5.6 trillion surplus, enough to pay off all of the American debt.

How did it happen? How did it happen?

It happened this way: Early in his administration, they set about to deal with the deficit. There was a tax increase. It cost my Democratic colleagues the House. But they did it. They put it in place. And they also put in place PAYGO and the balanced budget amendment. What happened was that in those 8 years was the largest job growth in America's history except in the 1950-1960 period. It was enormous job growth. More than 20 million jobs were created and extraordinary revenue growth.

So much for the argument we just heard.

In fact, a combination of holding tight on the budget together with a tax increase worked. I was part of that administration, and we were told to reinvent government. We did. At the Department of the Interior, we reduced the number of employees from 90,000 to 75,000, and we maintained and actually increased the efficiency and the effectiveness of that Department. It can and it was done.

However, let's take a look at George W. Bush, the most recent Bush presidency. At the end of his presidency, the Congressional Budget Office did their estimate, and they came up with an $11.5 trillion deficit in the years ahead.

How did it happen? It happened this way: He cut taxes year one, 2001, cut taxes. Year two, 2002, cut taxes. Two wars unpaid for, borrowed money from China, and then backed away from all regulation of Wall Street, and the great crash. The result: An $11.5 trillion deficit. The day Barack Obama came into office, he was handed a $1.3 trillion bill due. That's what the Republican President gave to this Nation and to this Congress. So we've set about solving it.

Now I want to move to another issue here, which happens to be this debate about Medicare. You're not going to solve the Medicare problem, which is one of ever-increasing cost in the underlying health sector of America. When I first got into this in 1991 as insurance commissioner, 9 percent of the American economy was in medical services. This year it's approaching 18 percent. You cannot solve this problem by throwing senior citizens off Medicare. It does not solve it.

Do not throw the seniors to the wolves. The wolves are the insurance companies. I know. I was the insurance commissioner for 8 years, and I fought those characters every year I was in office. I know what they will do to seniors. They will rip them off, they will deny benefits, they will deny coverage, and they will not control cost.

In California this year, insurance companies are raising costs by 20 to 40 percent. Medicare went up 6 percent. Medicare is efficient. Medicare is efficient. It is a nationwide policy. You can get it anywhere in this Nation. There is no administrative cost that even comes close to what the insurance companies' administrative costs are, perhaps 30 percent of the premium. Profit, sales, expenses, all of those things added up, and that includes the chaos at the delivery, the medical delivery. We need to change that.

You want to deal with something more? Take a look at this. This is Medicaid. In Medicaid, the Republican budget intends to cut Medicaid by three-quarters of $1 trillion in the next decade. Who gets Medicaid? Senior citizens and the disabled. The aged, blind and disabled get Medicaid. And this is immediate.

I'm just getting warmed up.

Who gets Medicaid? The aged, the blind and the disabled get Medicaid.

The Republican budget cuts Medicaid three-quarters of $1 trillion. Seniors will be--not 10 years from now, but immediately, as those budget reductions take place, according to the Republicans--thrown out of nursing homes.

I just finished a conversation not more than 2 hours ago with the owner

of nursing homes in California. He said, Don't let them do it. We're just hanging on. Any further reductions, any reductions in the Republican bill will force us to send out of our nursing homes the Medi-Cal, which are people covered by Medicaid.

Who are these children? These are the children in poverty. The children in poverty get medical services from Medicaid, and Medi-Cal in California, 20 percent. Are those the people you want to throw out in the street? You will do it.

Madam Chair, I want to speak directly to the senior citizens of America and to those who want to become senior citizens. The Republican budget destroys, terminates Medicare as we know it today. Under the Republican budget, in 10 years Medicare will no longer exist as it is today, a guaranteed benefit available to every American who turns 65. It will be over. Instead, you will be given a voucher, a voucher that will be insufficient to pay for your health insurance, and there is no guarantee what that health insurance will be.

Let me speak also to those who are on Medicare today. The Republican budget over the next 10 years removes three-quarters of a trillion dollars, $771 billion, from Medicaid. Medicaid provides services to the aged, blind, and disabled. Those senior citizens that are in nursing homes stand the risk of being thrown out of the nursing homes.

I want to now speak to those who want to become 65, who want to live long enough to get into Medicare. If you are 55 years of age and younger, you will not have Medicare if the Republican budget becomes law. It is over. It is terminated. It is gone. Instead, you will be given a voucher to go talk to the insurance companies. And what will you talk about? You will talk about pain, pain, pain.

They say that there is no tax shift in this. In fact, there is a $6,000 tax equivalent to every person 55 and younger.

You are going to wind up paying an additional $6,000.

Mr. Speaker, today we have seen a remarkable event here on floor of the House. During this discussion that's so critically important to this Nation about the deficit and how we are going to deal with our budget, this House passed a bill that will actually increase the deficit, a bill passed today with the support of the Republicans to repeal a provision in the Affordable Health Care Act that will keep Americans healthy.

Healthy Americans don't need medical care, and I suppose the idea of the Republicans here is that they ought to get sick. You take a look at the wellness issue, part of the Affordable Care Act, it provided for numerous activities specifically designed to keep Americans healthy: blood pressure screening for adults, programs for children to avoid obesity, public health programs for vaccination so that our children and, indeed, our adults don't get sick. All of these programs in the wellness portion of the Affordable Care Act would be repealed by the action that the Republicans just voted on not more than a half-hour ago.

What in the world is going on here? What's this all about? Is it some sort of ideological spiritual thing to do what is not very smart?

The Affordable Health Care Act, which they like to call ObamaCare, has many, many provisions in it specifically designed to reduce the cost of

medical care in America. If you are going to deal with the deficit, and we all talk about it here, you have got to deal with the cost of Medicare.

How do you deal with the cost of Medicare? Well, you deal with it by reducing the likelihood that seniors will get sick. You deal with it by reducing high blood pressure in seniors so they don't have strokes. One of the most expensive things that the senior population will endure is a stroke. It's not just the immediate medical care; it's the long-term effect of a stroke. So when we go out and we try to have seniors and those soon to be seniors have blood pressure checks, we reduce the cost of medical care in America. But I guess the Republicans don't see it that way.

They also see it in another way, and that is somehow they believe that we can reduce the cost of medical care in the Federal budget by terminating Medicare. It is unbelievable that the Republican budget would terminate medical care for seniors by terminating Medicare, a program that was started in 1964 to deal with the specific problem that seniors had at that period, and that was the inability to afford medical services. They would literally be into bankruptcy and poverty because they couldn't pay for their medical care.

So, in 1964, Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Democrats in this House and the Senate passed Medicare, one of the foundations of support for the senior population in this Nation. And yet in the Republican budget that will be on this floor later this week is the repeal of Medicare, the termination of it.

So I suppose this is the new way we ought to look at this issue. It's a tombstone. And what it is, it said, Medicare, 1965 to 2011, created by LBJ, destroyed by the GOP. Unbelievable.

Fortunately, today, when President Obama spoke to the Nation, he addressed this issue, and I will paraphrase what he said. He says it more as a professor. I guess I will just say it as a street fighter from California: No way, no how will, in his Presidency, Medicare be terminated.

Are you listening my friends on the Republican side? The President said ``no.'' We are not going down the path of terminating Medicare.

And I know that my caucus, the Democratic Caucus, will stand there with the President. We will fight any attempt any time, anyplace, anywhere that you or anybody else will put before this House a proposal to terminate Medicare. We will not allow it, and thankfully the President has the veto pen. He ought to go back and pull out the pen that LBJ used to sign the Medicare law in 1965 and put it to paper should, somehow, the Republican budget arrive on his desk with the termination of Medicare in it. It should not happen. It cannot happen. We cannot subject our seniors to the kind of poverty that existed prior to the implementation of Medicare in the 1960s. This is something that we will stand and fight on.

The President had also said today, as he laid out his solution for a $4 trillion reduction in the deficit, do not terminate Medicare and don't privatize Social Security. Laying it down. Not a line in the sand, but clearly a mark on the concrete. Social Security will not be privatized during his watch.

Thank you, Mr. President. And you know this, that the Democratic Caucus in this House will stand firmly with you, and we will fight every, every bill, every proposal to privatize Social Security.

Now, we know there is a budget problem. We know that there is a deficit problem here in the United States, and we know that it has to be addressed. The President has laid out two chapters in the Democratic proposal to deal with the deficit.

In his State of the Union speech, he made it clear that Federal expenditures needed to be frozen over the next 5 years, and today he took another step recommending specific reductions in various Federal programs, all to the good, and we will stand there with him and we will work on reducing those Federal expenditures.

For me, I have got one in mind, about $120 billion a year that we could save, $120 billion a year. Now, that's four times, three and a half times what is in the Republican continuing resolution that will be on floor this week.

How do you find $120 billion a year? End the war in Afghanistan. End the war in Afghanistan. Bring the troops home. Bring the money home. Balance our budget. Use that to solve the deficit, or spend that money on building those roads, those facilities here in the United States.

Let's talk about the deficit for a moment. Oh, yes. If you're going to talk about the deficit, you really ought to understand where the deficit came from. It didn't just come out of the blue this year. It didn't just appear during the Obama administration. The deficit is something that has built up over a long period of time here in the United States. When they say the deficit is $14 trillion and is going to increase, well, it's not if the President and the Democrats get their way. It will actually be reduced by $4 trillion.

However, as to the current deficit, where did it come from? From where did it magically appear? Who left us with huge deficits?

Let's take a look. Here are the facts.

This fellow over here, you may recognize him. He is Ronald Reagan. At the end of every year, the Congressional Budget Office makes an estimate of what is going to happen over the next 10 years. At the end of the Ronald Reagan period, his last year in office, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, made an estimate of the Federal budget situation. Where's the deficit? They estimated that, in the next 10 years, Ronald Reagan's budget and the programs that were put into effect during his period would create a $1.4 trillion deficit.

Now, those of you who are familiar with the history of the United States would know that George H. W. Bush--the senior--followed Ronald Reagan. At the end of his 4 years in office, again, the Congressional Budget Office made an estimate. It estimated, should the Bush-Reagan policies go forward, the deficit would be $3.3 trillion in the out years.

Then along came Bill Clinton. In the first 4 years of his administration, Bill Clinton put in place, if extended forward, policies that would deal with the deficit, such things as PAYGO--a word that's common in Washington, but I'm sure, out there in the great American public, people have no idea what ``PAYGO'' is. ``PAYGO'' was the law during the Clinton administration. It required that any bill passed by Congress had to be paid for with either higher taxes or cuts in some other program. In other words, it could not create a deficit. It could not add to the deficit.

There were other programs put in place, part of which I was responsible for implementing, and that was the reinventing of government. I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior during those years, and we were told by the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget that you will reduce the expenditures of the Department of the Interior, and you will continue to do the same things. Only, you will do them better. Effective and efficient government. We reduced the number of employees in the Department of the Interior during those first 4\1/2\ to 5 years by some 15,000 people--from 90,000 to 75,000 people. We performed all of the previous services as well and, in many cases, better. So it is possible to be efficient and effective in this process.

Anyway, Bill Clinton is now President, and he puts all of these policies in place. At the end of his Presidency, the Congressional Budget Office did what it always does, which is to produce an estimate of what would happen in the next 10 years if the same policies were to continue. Guess what would happen. What would happen is a $5.6 trillion surplus, enough to wipe out all of the American debt--no debt, no interest payments, everything paid off.

However, Bill Clinton was followed by George W. Bush, and immediately, in the very first year of the Bush administration, the Clinton-period policies, some of which were voted on by Republicans as well as Democrats, were terminated. Massive tax cuts were put in place not only in year one but in year two. Two wars were started--the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war--neither of which were paid for. It was the first time in American history that wars were not paid for but were, rather, borrowed. Who did we borrow the

money from? China. From other foreign countries? Yes.

Anyway, you now had two massive tax cuts, two wars, and then the Medicare drug program, which was about $700 billion a year--not paid for but, rather, borrowed, not for 1 year but for every year on into the future.

Thirdly, there was a whole set of policies where the government simply stepped back and let Wall Street do whatever it wanted to do. What it wanted to do was to engage in reckless profiteering, resulting in 2007 and 2008 with the crash of the American economy, with the Wall Street crash of 2008, bringing the American economy to its knees, to the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Those policies added up to this rather massive red zone here of $11.5 trillion of deficit, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which projected in the next 10 years, if the same policies continued, an $11.5 trillion deficit.

President Obama came into office in January of 2009. The day he arrived in office, the budget had a $1.3 trillion hole in it. He didn't create it, but he had to deal with it--a $1.3 trillion deficit handed to him by George W. Bush and his policies.

That's the history. Now we're trying to dig ourselves out of that hole. Properly said, when you're in a hole, stop digging. A wise policy. The President couldn't do that, and this Congress couldn't do that in the face of the most serious financial and economic crisis this Nation had faced since the Great Depression. So the stimulus bill was enacted, some $750 billion, and it worked. Despite all the rhetoric, the economists looking at that today, in the cool memory of the stimulus bill, said it worked; it saved this economy; it saved this Nation.

Every other industrialized country in the world did the exact same thing--stimulated their economies. Together, the American and the international economies were stabilized, and we began to slowly grow out of that great recession. We're not out of it yet. We've got to put in place policies that end the deficit, and that's precisely what the President talked about today.

The Republicans have put a proposal before us, and we'll vote on it this week, but it is not a proposal that will help America retain its eminence as the most dynamic, the most creative, the most innovative, and the most successful economy in the world, because of the policies that are in it. It will terminate Medicare, and it will significantly reduce those programs that create future economic growth.

I would like to just take a deep breath now and turn it over to my colleague from the great northeastern part of the United States.

Peter, would you join us and carry on this discussion.

Let me thank my colleague from Vermont, Peter Welch, for this presentation on the tax policy. I think we probably would want to stay with that a few moments. I know my colleague from New York (Mr. Tonko) is here, and perhaps you would like to opine and to share with us your thoughts on these issues of the budget and how we can deal with the deficit.

The chart that you and I shared a moment ago is up here next to me; and it clearly shows that we have seen a middle class in America that has seen very, very little progress over the last two decades and, instead, an enormous shift of wealth and income to the top 1 or 2 percent of the Nation.

There has been a 256 percent increase in income to the very wealthy, and as I said, it trumps all of the income gains by the rest of the economy. Those at the bottom saw maybe a 10 to 11 percent increase. The rest, very, very little.

I look up and I see my colleague, the gentleman from the great State of Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer). Thank you for joining us. We talked earlier today about the upcoming debt limit. Please join with us and share with us your thoughts on what we are doing here, what we shouldn't be doing, or should be doing.

I thank you, and let's just do a colloquy here back and forth. You've talked about ways in which we can bend the cost curve for health care for all Americans, not only those on Medicare. It was in the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform. Our Republican friends like to call it ObamaCare because it actually would reduce the cost of medical services for everybody, whether you are in Medicare or Kaiser or anywhere else. And you mentioned four very, very important ways it does it. One is hospital readmissions, otherwise known as hospital infections. Our former colleague a week ago likely died of a hospital infection. The Affordable Care Act places a heavy burden on hospitals that have a high infection rate, or readmissions. It is a very, very expensive, deadly situation. It is just one of several ways in which the Affordable Care Act reduced over time the cost of medical services.

You were here on the floor. I voted ``no,'' you voted ``no'' on a bill that Republicans forced through this House that eliminates wellness. What in the world was that all about? Why would you ever eliminate wellness: obesity, blood pressure, proper eating, nutrition, public health, vaccinations--all of these things to keep people healthy. Healthy people don't cost money. They

don't run up the price of medical services. So they want to repeal that, and I'm going, that makes no sense at all. You are actually increasing the deficit by doing that. And then they take it to the ultimate step of terminating Medicare.

This has become my favorite. It's the tombstone for Medicare. In the Republican budget is a proposal that would terminate Medicare for all Americans who are less than 55 years of age today. If you are 65, maybe it would continue on. But if you look at the totality of their proposal, it is the termination of Medicare and this is what we have. ``Medicare, 1965 to 2011, created by LBJ, destroyed by the GOP.'' Unbelievable. And along with it, a significant reduction in Medicaid, which in California we call Medi-Cal.

Your expertise, Mr. Blumenauer, on the health care issue and the experience in Oregon on how we can reduce the cost of medical care needs to be heard by every Member of this House. So if you would continue on and share with us this issue of medical services and how we can reduce the cost, save Medicare, and simultaneously addressing the deficit.

Let me add to that and carry on a little piece of it.

The Republican budget, which we will be voting on here on the floor of Congress in the next 2 days, has provisions that are equally harmful to seniors and to wannabe seniors, people who want to get to be 65 or 67 years of age, and these are the Medicaid reductions.

In the proposal that the Republicans will bring to this floor, the Road to Ruin proposal, is a block grant to the States for Medicaid services. In California, we call it Medi-Cal. This is a program that provides benefits to the poor and those who cannot afford medical services because they are severely disabled, mentally disabled, or seniors that cannot afford services in nursing homes. The block grant is less than what is now available to nearly every State, and it is scheduled to be reduced in the years ahead, the purpose of which is presumably to deal with the deficit, but what it does is it takes that whole population of seniors, current seniors, and others who are currently served by the Medicaid program and puts them at risk. The effect will be to throw seniors out of nursing homes, seniors that are on Medicaid or Medi-Cal in California. It is the most onerous and hardhearted proposal I have yet seen. These are people that are in desperate need of services, services for the mentally ill, services for the severely disabled, services for seniors who are in nursing homes and who cannot afford the cost of nursing homes. That's another part of this provision in the budget.

What is happening here is a shift, a shift of costs from the overall American economy in the Federal budget to the individuals, not to the wealthy, not to those who have income, but rather to those who have so little. And it's not the only shift that's occurring.

And the young.

I thank you for that.

I am going to shift to another very, very important part of the Republican budget proposal, and that is their total unwillingness to deal with the reality of the revenues that the Federal Government needs in order to continue to provide all of the multitude of services that are part of a modern society: everything from defense to homeland security as well as the medical and social services that we have been talking about.

I'm going to put this up, it's a little cute, but I think it pretty much illustrates one of the profound problems in the Republican budget.

``What Do They All Have in Common?'' We've got the unicorn over there, we have Bugs Bunny, and then we have this thing that says the corporate tax rate, 35 percent, large corporations like Exxon. It's a fallacy. Large corporations and small corporations in America don't pay 35 percent corporate income tax. In fact, if one were to take a look at Exxon, in 2008 they had the largest profit of any company in the world. In 2009, they had a profit of about $19 billion and their effective tax rate, how much they actually paid in taxes, was zero. Not 35 percent. Not 30 percent. Not 25, not 20, not 15, not 10, but zero.

Now it happens that they're not the only corporation. The Republican proposal actually would make this situation worse. It would take this 35 percent and reduce it to 25 percent.

What are we talking about here? Why would we want to do that? Apparently they want to do that because they want to take their savings, Medicare, by terminating Medicare, Medicaid, by

reducing Medicaid and all of the other savings, the savings that they presume they're going to get from abolishing the wellness programs, high blood pressure screenings and so forth, and on and on and on, and give it to the corporations.

Let's understand that American corporations currently get a tax break for sending American jobs overseas. American corporations currently get a tax break for oil drilling. The oil industry in the United States is the most profitable industry in the world. We just talked about ExxonMobil. All of the other oil companies in the last 10 years have had a profit of $947 billion, just under $1 trillion. Yet they continue to receive tax breaks in the order of $12 billion to $15 billion a year, of our tax money, handed over to the oil companies at a time when they are now charging us over $4 a gallon for gasoline.

And what is that all about? Well, it's all about the ability of the oil industry to maintain a subsidy, a tax break out of the American taxpayer's pocket, handed over to the oil company, and they've had that subsidy for nearly a century. I'm saying, enough of that. Bring that money back into the Treasury, use it for green energy, solar, wind, renewable energy, for research, use it for the things that we need to do, including reducing the deficit. But oh, no. Oh, no. They don't want to do that. Our Republican colleagues want to continue to give to the oil industry the kind of tax breaks that they have.

If that's not enough, our Republican colleagues want to make sure that this fellow, Donald Trump, he wants to be President, probably to maintain the extraordinary tax break that he presently has. The Republicans want to reduce the taxes for Donald Trump and for other billionaires, millionaires, from 35 percent to 25 percent.

You go, why should we do that at a time when we're taking money away from seniors, at a time when we're forcing the middle class to pay more, at a time when you're shifting the cost of all of these services to the middle class, at a time when you're going after the unions and trying to destroy the union movement in America? Why in the world would you give Donald Trump, why would you give billionaires, why would you give those people at the very tiptop of the American economy, those people that now control over 25 percent of all of the wealth in America, the top 1 percent of wage earners in America, why would you give them, not a 10 percent, it's about a 17 percent reduction in their taxes? It makes no sense at all.

We talk about shared sacrifice. The Republican budget proposal that will be on this floor later this week will not be shared sacrifice. It is, in fact, giving to the top of the American heap of all taxpayers, of all wealth, even more. I suppose it must be the trickle-down theory, that if these folks, if Donald Trump and the other billionaires and millionaires have more money, somehow jobs will be created. The fact is it doesn't work. Don't believe me. Take a look at the American economy from 2001 to 2009, the George W. Bush period.

George W. Bush started the first very year of his Presidency with massive tax cuts that created a 2-plus trillion dollar deficit and very few jobs. During the Clinton period, we ended with a $5.3 trillion surplus and the creation of over 22 million jobs, and the tax rate for Mr. Trump and for other millionaires and billionaires was 39 percent. It is, in fact, the history of America's economy that proves that you're not going to create more jobs by reducing the taxes for Mr. Trump and the like.

So what do these things have in common: a unicorn, Bugs Bunny, and the corporate tax rate of 35 percent? They are all fictional, every one of them.

I want to move now to another subject. I'll make this my last, and I'll make it kind of quick. If we're going to grow the American economy, we have to make the critical investments that are the foundation of economic growth in any and every country. Whether you are Singapore, whether you are China or any of the European countries, France or Britain, the United Kingdom or the United States, there are fundamental investments that the society has to make, and many of these investments are made through the general public's government. Let me just turn to those investments.

This is part of our Make It in America agenda, the Democratic agenda of rebuilding the great American manufacturing base. If America is going to make it, we must make it in America. We have to rebuild the manufacturing base of America. We can do it, but it's going to take critical investments. I want to just point them out here as we go through this and then compare these to the Republican proposal, the budget proposal that we're going to be voting on.

The first one is trade. Now, the Republican proposal doesn't deal with trade and goods because they're not going to do any more harm to it, but this is a fair trade policy. This is a policy of trade where we do not give away our manufacturing industry to places like China. I am sick and tired of going into Target or any other store in America and finding ``Made in China,'' ``Made in Europe,'' made everywhere but in America. Enough of that. We need to see ``Made in America'' once again on the store shelves in America.

In California, the California government--not my responsibility, I wasn't responsible for it at the time--when they go out and they build a new bridge from Oakland to San Francisco, a multibillion-dollar bridge, and they buy steel from China because it's 10 percent cheaper, I'm going, Stop it. Stop it. And so today, in the Resources Committee, I introduced an amendment.

Now it's ``Drill, baby, drill.'' It's our Republican colleagues who want to drill anywhere and everywhere and all the time. I think it's the wrong thing to do. We need to move to renewables. But if we're going to drill, then why don't we drill with American-made equipment? Why don't we require that those drilling rigs, those pipes, those technologies, the drill bits, the blowout preventers be made in America? I introduced that amendment. The Republicans brushed it aside saying they didn't want to go that way. Okay, fine. But we need, on trade policy, to make sure that our trade policy does not disadvantage American manufacturers.

Taxes. I just talked about taxes. Why in the world would the Republicans vote against a tax policy that actually is now law? We passed this last December. Why would they vote against a tax policy that would reduce--nearly eliminate--the tax breaks that American corporations get when they send jobs offshore? Why would you vote against that tax break that American corporations have? I don't understand it. It's over, at least partially over, there's more that needs to be done, and my Democratic colleagues and I are asking our Republican colleagues to work with us to eliminate the rest of those tax breaks that American corporations get when they send jobs overseas.

We talked about some other issues here. For example, last December, the Democrats pushed through, Obama signed a bill that allowed American corporations and businesses to write off 100 percent year one--this year--100 percent of capital investment so that we encourage American manufacturers to invest in America so that they can be more productive.

Energy policy, extremely important. We cannot any longer put our economy and our national security at risk to foreign oil producers. So I guess part of the ``Drill, baby, drill'' is to try to deal with that, but that's not going to solve the problem. We need additional and new energy sources, and that's where the green energy, the future energy comes in.

Don't take it from me. Talk to our American military. Talk to the Navy, the Air Force, the Army. They think way ahead, and they know that they cannot depend upon oil. They need to move to other sources of energy. They did it years ago. They had wind on their ships. Then they went to coal. Then they went to oil. They are now using nuclear power. But they also know that many of their pieces of equipment--a jet airplane isn't going to have a nuclear reactor. So they want to free themselves from the grip of the petro dictators around the world and they want to be able to have energy made here in America. This is biofuels, advanced biofuels of all kinds.

We ought to follow the lead of our military here, and we must create energy projects that provide us with clean renewable energy, whether it's

nuclear or the green energy: solar, wind, biofuels and geothermal, all the rest. So energy policy becomes extremely important.

Labor. It turns out, if one were to look at American economic history, you would be able to track the rise of labor in the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties tracking perfectly with the rise of the middle class in America. So as labor became more predominant in America, we saw the American middle class grow right along with the labor movement.

Beginning in the 1970s, we saw the decline of the labor movement. If you track the decline of the labor movement, you will find the decline of the American middle class tracking perfectly with the decline of the labor movement. Now we find all across the Midwest--in Wisconsin and Ohio--a major movement to take yet another shot at labor, to weaken labor or to destroy labor. In the process, you will find the further decline of the middle class of America should they succeed at that.

But this is more than just the labor movement. This is preparing the American worker to be competitive in a modern economy. This is education. This is job training. These are programs to retrain and to bring into the workplace workers who are prepared to deal with the modern machinery and the modern equipment that a well-placed and well- executed economy must have.

I want to move to the next one, which is, in fact, education. Earlier today, I met with the President of California State University, East Bay, part of my district in California.

And the president, Mohamoyad Qayoumi, who happens to be an Afghan, was talking about programs that they're putting in place in the East Bay of California, San Francisco Bay, to encourage the education of children--modern technology, using iPhones, using techniques in computer technology--so that the kids who are into these things in a big way will be able to learn, not going out and buying expensive textbooks every year that are out of date the next year, but rather to use online publications and be able to bring to the students all of the world.

I was going home last weekend, and I got a call from my wife. She said, Can you find a light bulb for the projector? It's out. We need a light bulb for the projector. I said, I just got off the airplane. I don't know what I'm going to do.

I got online, I punched up my Safari, and I looked for light bulbs. In a matter of moments, I found, not too far from the airport, a photo shop that had the light bulb.

The whole world is here. The whole world is available for a student who's just curious. You cannot help but be curious. All you need to do is get online, and you can find out everything about the world around us, anything you're into with science, and it turns out that this little piece of equipment, according to President Qayoumi, is also a tool for the teacher. The test can be taken on this. And in taking that test, the teacher immediately knows what the student does not know. And so the next day in class that could be dealt with.

I think I'm running out of time here, and I'm going to finish very, very quickly with intellectual property. This is the transition of all of the research into the manufacturing sector. Make It in America. We have to do this. We can do this if we have the right policies in place.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth.

For the members of the Budget Committee, you've had a steep and difficult job as the Republicans have attempted simply to ram down the throats of this Congress a really unacceptable budget, one that does destroy opportunities.

I would love to talk about Make It in America, and I will in a moment, but I was just listening to my colleague from California, and she raised the issue of the medical care here in the United States.

It was 1964 that the United States set out on a very, very important mission, and that was to provide health care to seniors. Prior to that time, and I know from my own county where I grew up in Calaveras County, if you became a senior, you were destined for a very, very rough road. There was literally no insurance available for you, and there was no opportunity for you to get yourself out of poverty unless you happened to be among the wealthy. It was a terrible situation.

So during the Lyndon Johnson period in 1964, they created a program called Medicare so that when you became 65, you had an opportunity to get a solid health care program available to you--a doctor program, a hospital program. You had to pay a little bit for the hospital program, but it was guaranteed

available to you. And every American 65 and over had that policy.

Here we are, 40-some years later, and what's taking place? Our Republican colleagues are determined to terminate, kill, stop, eliminate Medicare. They do it in a subtle way.

But I want everyone to know that this year if the Republican budget goes forward, this will be the tombstone for Medicare: ``Medicare: 1965-2011. Created by Lyndon Baines Johnson, LBJ. Destroyed by the

Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth. This is what you were talking about here, a different way of saying the same thing that you discussed. This is over the period of time from 1979 to 2005. This is the income growth by each 20 percent of the population. So those people at the very bottom saw almost no income growth at all, 200 bucks. And as you go to the next 20 percent and the next 20 percent, you get up to the last 90 percent, they did okay. They made about $745,000.

So that's the 90 to 99 percent of the population. Those are very, very wealthy people. They did okay.

But you go to the top 1 percent, the top 1 percent--excuse me, I am wrong. That's the top one-tenth of 1 percent, not even 1 percent. One- tenth of 1 percent. That population saw their wealth increase by nearly $6 million each, and that's what you were talking about, a different way of displaying it.

What's happening in the United States is this enormous shift of wealth to the super wealthy, and our Republican colleagues want to reward them for their good success by reducing their tax rate. So much for shared sacrifice.

And as Mr. Tonko pointed out, the sacrifice is really the middle class, because the benefits that the middle class had, the future opportunity for Medicare, they are going to wind up paying more, getting less, as the Republicans terminate Medicare as we know it today.

The other part on taxes, and then I want to turn to one of my favorite subjects, and that is how did we get to this deficit, Republicans want to continue giving $12 billion to $15 billion of our tax money, this is money that you, I, the stenographer there, the people that work here, the men and women across America that are working, $10 billion to $12 billion of their tax money, and they want to hand it over to the oil companies.

Now, what in the world did the oil companies need a tax break for? They need a subsidy like, well, like they don't need it. Why? Because in the last decade, the oil companies, the big oil companies in the United States, have earned $947 billion dollars in profits. That's just shy of $1 trillion dollars in profits. And yet our Republicans demand that we give them another $12 billion to $15 billion a year.

Now, that's bad enough. But I just came across this fact. ExxonMobil was

the most profitable company in the world in 2008. In 2009, ExxonMobil made $19 billion of profit. Well, good for them. And I am sure they paid their fair share of taxes, right? Wrong.

Their effective tax rate was zero. So since they didn't pay any taxes, we ought to give them another $12 billion, to the oil industry. This is just plain wrong. This is not good economic policy.

One thing, and then I know you want me to talk about Make It in America, and I will in a few moments, but I get so concerned when people talk about the Democratic deficit. Hello? Not so, not a Democratic deficit; really, a Republican deficit.

That fellow over there, that's Ronald Reagan. President Ronald Reagan left at the end of his 8 years with a projected $1.4 trillion deficit, followed by George H.W. Bush. At the end of the George H.W. Bush period the projected deficit going forward would be $3.3 trillion. Thank you, George H.W. Bush. Between the two of you, you really ran up the deficit.

Then along came this fellow Democrat, Bill Clinton, put in policies voted by Republicans and Democrats, raised the tax rate to what you said, 39 percent for the super wealthy, and put in place PAYGO. That PAYGO required that any new spending had to be paid for with cuts or new taxes.

The result? Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a projected $5.6 trillion surplus.

Then along came George W. Bush, Jr. What did he do? First year in office, a tax cut. You were here weren't you, Mr. Yarmuth?

Okay, so you weren't here. A tax cut year one, a tax cut year two, a war, two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq followed by a Medicare drug program that wasn't paid for and the deregulation of Wall Street. The result: He left office with an $11.5 trillion projected deficit going forward. This is where we are.

The day Obama came into office, President Obama came into office with a $1.3 trillion deficit the day he took office, and we worked ourselves out of it. Thank goodness the two of you were here to vote for those pieces of legislation. We are working ourselves out of it. That chart that you showed a moment ago shows the growth of the economy.

We need to understand that we are not going to get out of this deficit with the kinds of cuts that are being discussed by our Republicans. It's going to take a balanced approach.

President Obama has set out a balanced approach. He said no growth, no growth in the discretionary Federal budget. He will probably, tomorrow, talk about how to hold down medical costs, and I gave you some examples a moment ago. Those are the big drivers, and the military.

You want to deal with this deficit? End the war in Afghanistan and bring home $120 billion a year. We can do this. Tax policy? Let's let the wealthy pay their share, let the oil companies pay their share.

Hold the expenditures steady and reduce it, as has been proposed, and do it in a way that creates economic growth. We can do this. I know you gentlemen on the Budget Committee fought hard for that kind of policy. The Republicans refuse.

In fact, their proposal, it's 30 years before you eliminate the deficit. We can't have that.

I will talk about Make It in America before we are finished here, but I am going to turn it back to you Mr. Yarmuth. But I think it's really important for the American public to understand where the deficit came from and how it can be solved over the long run without harming seniors, without taking away Medicare and by making the critical investments that you have talked about, Mr. Tonko, education, research, Make It in America, those kinds of things.

If America is going to make it, we have to make it in America. Once again, manufacturing matters. The problem with the Republican budget is it hollows out, continues the hollowing out of American industry by denying the research, reducing research and reducing job training and continuing the kind of tax policies that actually give corporations tax breaks when they send jobs offshore. We want to reverse that. We're putting together the Make it in America agenda, a real jobs agenda for the middle class.

Mr. Yarmuth, thank you so very, very much for bringing this to our attention and carrying this discussion tonight.

Mr. Speaker, thank you.

I want to turn our attention to the issues that are before us today and see if we can have a better understanding of what has taken place.

We just heard a little bit about honoring our troops. Let's be very clear about this. The Democratic Caucus in this House, the President, and the Senate will always and have always honored our troops. We are in the midst of a very serious budget crisis for this year with very, very serious issues at stake, and the Republicans chose to attach to the funding bill numerous cuts that devastate important programs that affect the well-being of every man, woman, and child in this Nation and, indeed, around the world. Because of those cuts, as well as certain language that was added to the bill, we chose not to vote for the funding.

The President has said, Stop the games. Stop playing around. Give us a straight up and down on funding the government without all of these add-ons and games that are being played by our Republican colleagues.

The President has asked for a clean bill. We should give him a clean bill and carry on to fund the government and provide for our troops and our military families, and we will do that.

Now let's understand what is at stake. Not only in the current year's budget, which is the next 7 months, but in the year beginning on October 12, the Republicans have put together a proposal that would devastate seniors and those who are unable to care for and to provide themselves with medical services--in other words, those dependent upon the Medicaid program.

Very straightforward. The proposal that was put out by the Republican caucus 2 days ago would terminate and stop Medicare as we know it today. Medicare is a program in which every working American pays into it, and when they became 65, they expect to receive the Medicare health care benefits that are guaranteed or at least have been guaranteed for the last 40-some years. That's a uniform benefit package across this Nation. It is a very successful program. It's one that Americans literally live long enough to get into. And yet the Republican caucus is proposing to terminate it, to end the Medicare program. And instead, turn over the $400 billion a year that goes into the Medicare services, turn it over to the private health insurance companies--the biggest gift ever given to the private health insurance companies.

I know those companies. I was the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years. And I spent most every day of those 8 years chasing after the health insurance companies, forcing them to pay claims and stopping them from discriminating against people who had preexisting conditions and developing programs and policies that were underfunded, underpaid, and underperformed.

That cannot happen to our seniors, but that's what the Republicans want to do. And we need to stop it. And we will because the seniors of this Nation already sense what is at hand. They already know that the Republican budget proposed would devastate one of the two pillars of the social safety net that every senior in this Nation at one time or another depends upon.

The second pillar--we've already seen the path that this is going to go on--in 2004, the Republican caucus, together with the Republican President, George W. Bush, proposed to privatize Social Security. Fortunately, the revolt that started in the Democratic caucus of

this House and carried across the Nation stopped that from happening.

We know what's coming down the train track here, and that is another effort to privatize Social Security, to take those hundreds of billions of dollars and turn them over to Wall Street so Wall Street can play additional financial games.

It will not happen, Americans will not give up Social Security and Medicare to satisfy the whims of the Republican caucus that seems determined upon destroying effective government in this Nation.

I'd like to call upon my colleague from the great State of Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). If you will join me in this conversation and we will see where it takes us.

Thank you very much, Mr. DeFazio.

I heard you toss out two numbers. One number was the amount of medical, the percentage of the costs of medical care that seniors now pay. Did you say 28 percent?

If the Republican proposal goes forward, seniors will wind up paying how much?

I see. So we are shifting the costs to the seniors; right?

Of course.

Game's over. You can put that RIP back up.

Please.

I don't think so. It seems to me to be the path to poverty for seniors. And it goes way, way beyond that.

Our colleague from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, has joined us. Ms. Lee, if you would care to comment. I know this is an issue you are deeply concerned about.

Well, we seriously question the morality of the proposal that's being put forward by the Republican caucus.

You said something that I want to focus in on. The details are important. We talked about Medicare and the end of Medicare as we know it. And basically, as Mr. DeFazio was saying, it's a program in which Medicare becomes privatized. The money is turned over to the insurance companies; our future, our seniors' future turned over to the insurance companies and their whims.

But you also raised a very, very important point. And that is all across this Nation there are millions of Americans who are in nursing homes who now depend upon the Medicaid program, Medicaid program for the payment to the nursing homes. In the budget program, there is the block granting of the Medicaid program, and therefore the likelihood that the payments to the nursing homes will be reduced or end and those people will not be able to get care in the nursing home.

Mr. Speaker, I would love to see what that message is. I think we got some sense of it earlier in the day. And I suspect it speaks to the issue of the continuing resolution, and it is the effectuation of the promise he made earlier in the day that should the legislation that passed here about an hour-and-a-half ago, 2 hours ago, that is the continuing resolution, should it arrive on his desk, he will veto it. I haven't seen it, but I will bet that's what's in that envelope.

Well, do you think this particular gravestone here doesn't have to happen?

I am going to take this down because I know that the American public, whether they are seniors now or will be seniors in the future, understand the incredible importance of Medicare to the American society. Whether you are young or old, you know that Medicare has always been there since 1964 to provide medical services to those people 65 and over and some who are younger than 65 that have gone through terrible medical circumstances and unable to care for themselves.

So we are going to take this tombstone, and we are going to bury it, along with Mr. Ryan's proposal to terminate Medicare as we know it. So let's be aware, American public, what's at stake here with the proposal that's coming down from the Republican caucus and from Mr. Ryan.

I want to take up another subject and cover it briefly, or maybe not so briefly, and this has to do with the subject matter at hand, which is the deficit. We need to understand where the deficit came from.

The deficit didn't just get created in the last couple of years. Certainly, the Great Recession had a lot to do with it, the stimulus package, made up of two parts, one part was the bank bailout, $700 million or more, almost all of that has now been repaid to the Treasury, so we don't have to worry about that being the a big part of the deficit. A little bit remains, but most of it has been repaid.

The second part was the stimulus, some $750 million. That was borrowed money that is part of the deficit. But that also created, or it maintained, well over 2 million jobs here in the United States. Those people that stayed at work were continuing to be employed and to pay taxes.

You can imagine what would have happened had the stimulus not been there; but, nonetheless, it is part of the deficit. But that doesn't account for all of the deficit.

Let's go back to where Ronald Reagan was President. At the end of each year, the Congressional Budget Office takes a look at status of the budget of the United States and says here's what's happening today and here's the projection for the future. They do a 10-year projection.

At the end of Ronald Reagan's term, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, not Democrat, not Republican, looked at the budget, looked at the economy and said, well, the way things are, we can project for the next 10 years that the budget will have a deficit of $1.3 trillion.

So Ronald Reagan left office with a deficit. He was followed by George H.W. Bush. And the same projection was made every year, and every year the deficit grew so that at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, before Bill Clinton took office, there was a projected additional deficit of about 3 trillion additional dollars.

Bill Clinton came into office, changes were made, Balanced Budget Act went into effect, PAYGO which required laws to be paid for with new taxes or with cuts--no more deficit financing for new laws--came into effect; and at the end of the Clinton administration, the normal process took place at the end of that year. What will be the deficit going forward?

Whoa. You mean, there is no deficit? Yes, the Congressional Budget Office estimated at the end of the Clinton period that there would be a $5 trillion surplus, literally paying off the entire debt of the United States. Policies were put in place during that Presidency, Democrat, Republican votes on both sides that would, in the 10 years, 2001 to 2010, terminate the American debt.

However, in 2001, George W. Bush and the Republicans in control of the Congress and the Senate passed a massive tax cut that immediately turned that projected surplus into a projected deficit of well over a trillion dollars. The next year, the Afghan war was under way and the Iraq war was begun, two wars, the first time ever in America's history that a war was under way for which there was no way to pay for it except to borrow money.

In previous wars, World War II, World War I, the Civil War, the government raised taxes to pay for the war; but not these two wars. This was entirely borrowed, all of the cost of it. And right now the Afghanistan war is costing $100 billion to $120 billion a year and we just voted today, not more than an hour and a half ago, for $157 billion for the Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq wars, $157 billion.

Now, again, this is all on borrowed money. Despite efforts by the Democratic Caucus to raise money, raise taxes for those wars, taxes on the highest, wealthiest Americans, those votes failed.

Now, the rest of the story is this. My friend, Mr. DeFazio, talked about the Medicare drug doughnut hole. The Medicare drug doughnut hole was added during the Bush administration, well over $600 million a year, again, not paid for but rather borrowed money.

And then the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, that Great Recession added to the deficit because employment plummeted along with tax revenues, so that at the end of the George W. Bush administration, this Congressional Budget Office did what it had done every year in the past 50 years, did a projection, in the next 10 years, what will be the deficit.

Guess what the number was? $11 trillion-plus dollars.

And so during the 2001--2010 period, an enormous growth in the American deficit, Barack Obama came into office in January of 2009. And the day he took office, he had an annual budget deficit handed to him of over $1.3 trillion. The George W. Bush legacy was handed directly to Barack Obama the day he took office, over a trillion dollars. We have to work ourselves out of this hole.

This is a deep, dangerous hole and we have got to work our way out of it. We have to do it with wisdom, we have to do it with intelligence, and we have to always keep in mind where we need to go. Two paths: one, bring the deficit down; and, two, provide those services that are desperately needed by Americans: Medicare, Medicaid, education, services that provide people the opportunity to get jobs. Those are fundamental investments that we must make, research and the like also included.

Simultaneously, we must always achieve efficiency and effectiveness in every governmental program, wherever it happens to be. We know that the medical systems in the United States are inefficient, so the proposal put forth by our Republican colleagues to privatize, destroy Medicare, does nothing to deal with the inefficiencies of the medical system.

There are three parts to the medical system: the collection of money, the payment of claims, and the provision of services. Medicare happens to be the most efficient delivery in the collection of money, the payment of claims and the delivery of services of any of the medical services and medical systems out there.

The private insurance companies, however, are the least efficient, the least efficient created because of the numerous policies that they offer, confusion to the purchaser of the policy, whether it is an individual or business, and to the provider of services. Go into any hospital, and one of the biggest sections in the hospital is not the emergency room, not the operating room, not the intensive care unit. It is the administrative unit. Why? Because they have to deal with thousands of different policies, different deductibles, different copays and different policies from different companies. ``Is this going to be paid?'' ``Who is going to pay that?'' and so forth, creating the least efficient medical delivery system in the world. A full 40 percent of all of the medical costs are in administration.

Keep in mind that Medicare, on the other hand, is the most efficient, spending no more than 3 percent in collecting the money and paying the bills.

So the proposal that we have before us by the Republicans to terminate Medicare and hand it over to the insurance companies will create even additional costs and more inefficiency in

the system, less effectiveness. That is not the way to go.

We talked earlier about the dreaded doughnut hole for Medicare seniors. Why was it that the Republicans refused to allow the Federal Government to negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical companies? It is the most ineffective, inefficient and stupid thing in the world to spend tens and hundreds of billions of dollars a year on drugs and not be able to negotiate but simply to be a price taker, not a negotiator, not to use your purchasing power to negotiate.

I don't understand--well, I do understand. I know exactly what it is. It has to do with the effective lobby and contributions of the pharmaceutical industry. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We can and we must go to the medical system and seek efficiencies, and it can be done.

I have spent a lot of my time as insurance commissioner looking at how it can be done, and we will go into that at another time, but I will give you a couple of items along the way.

A doctor goes into a hospital and scribbles on a piece of paper what he believes to be wrong with the person. He writes on a piece of paper in illegible handwriting what the pharmaceutical will be. Medical errors abound. We know that, in fact, infections occur in hospitals. We know that readmissions occur in hospitals. All of those things need not exist in America. We can significantly reduce the costs of medical services by instituting electronic medical records. That can be done, and, in fact, in the health care reform bill, the Affordable Care Act, it is done. Republicans want to repeal that. Somehow they think that that is going to reduce costs. I don't think so. Nonetheless, that is what they want to do.

There are many other things that can be done. Infectious rate, readmissions, we need to be in front of illnesses. We need to have public health services. But yet in the CR, the continuing resolution that passed this House just this day not more than 2 hours ago, the clinics in America are reduced and people will be lined up in the emergency rooms. We know that is the most expensive place in this Nation to get medical care. Yet we get this kind of CR that comes through here, this continuing resolution to fund the government that reduces clinics all across this Nation.

Well, I think I need a glass of water, and I notice that my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter) has arrived to join us in this moment.

Thank you for coming here.

Two hours ago, the Republicans in this House passed, without Democratic support, a continuing resolution for a while, and there were cuts in those. For the most part, there was no debate here on the floor about specific cuts, but you raised these issues. I'm going to put some numbers to what you talked about. The Women, Infants, and Children program, the WIC program, is for pregnant mothers at risk during their pregnancy and then after their pregnancy so they have adequate nutrition and health care so they have a healthy baby. It saves us money. If that baby is not healthy, it is going to cost a lot of money. The Women, Infants, and Children program, the WIC program, there is a $200 million reduction in it.

We like to fight crime; right? Well, $149 million out of the construction account so that there can be police stations and other facilities for the police across the Nation.

You mentioned environmental issues. $192 million from the Department of Energy's environmental cleanup. What are they cleaning up? They are cleaning up the nuclear waste material from the previous Cold War nuclear programs. We know a lot all of a sudden about nuclear contamination. Oh, good, we are going to take $192 million out and just leave that nuclear waste out there to do what it is going to do, and it won't be good.

And also, there is another. You mentioned the banking industry. We know that between 2001 and 2008 the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve just said they will regulate themselves; we don't need to police the banks. And so we wound up with the great crash.

Well, we passed the Wall Street reform. We put in serious policing. We are going to police those characters. We are not going to let them get away with ``greed is good'' and rip off the public. We need policemen. But the Republicans don't believe in this, so they took a total of $590 million out of the financial services programs. These are the policemen that protect America's financial future.

We got a call from CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two big California pension agencies, which came to Congress and said: Do not do this. Wall Street needs to be policed. Don't cut the police.

I'm going to do a couple more. Let's see, how about clean water and drinking water, $700 million out of the clean water fund. This is for communities to build water systems so there is clean water. You go through this and you say: What are they thinking?

Okay, your turn. Continue on.

You have raised a couple of issues, and I would like to carry them a little further. You raised the tax issue, in the proposed budget, not the CR today that funded the government for another week but rather in the proposal for the next year and beyond. The Republicans propose to continue the Bush era tax cuts of 2001 for the super wealthy in America. Now that's about $700 billion added to the deficit. Not only that, that tax rate is 35 percent. They are proposing to lower that tax rate to 25 percent. So for the super wealthy in America, we are talking about millionaires, people whose annual income is $1 million and people whose annual income is $1 billion, to give them a lower tax rate. Are we talking shared sacrifice here? I think not.

I want to turn to this chart which was handed to me by one of our colleagues who is actually on the President's deficit commission. She said the facts are pretty clear. Not pretty clear--they are crystal clear. She said between 1974 and 2009, there has been a shift in the wealth and the income of Americans. What has happened is that the rich have gotten really rich and everybody else has been treading water, not really going anywhere. So if you take a look at this, you'll see that over that 20-year period for those at the very bottom, they have seen their income go up by $200 a year. As you move on up, as you get to the top, those in the 80 percentile, they have seen better. They have about $100,000. But when you get to the one-tenth of 1 percent of the population, their average annual income has gone up by just under $6 million a year, a $5,978,870 annual increase for the top one-tenth of 1 percent.

Another chart, I don't have it with me right now, would show that for these people, the top 1 percent, they now have 25 percent of all of the wealth of America. Go back, go back to 1974, they had 7 percent of the wealth in America; 1974, the top 1 percent had 7 percent. And 2009, the top 1 percent controlled 24 percent of all of the wealth in America. An enormous shift has taken place here. The middle class has been left behind, basically stagnant, basically treading water.

Now, understanding that reality of America, the stagnation of the middle class, the struggle for not one family earner but two, wife and husband, out working, trying to keep the family together in the home with health care, the kids going off to school, that is the struggle of middle America. So what have the Republicans proposed? Their proposal will shift the tax burden away from the super rich to the middle class because they want to reduce the taxes on the super rich from 35 percent to 25 percent. And inevitably, that is going to raise the taxes for the middle class to make up the difference. We will not let that happen.

I notice that my colleague from the great Midwest has joined us. Thank you very much. I suspect you may have something to say about this.

Tombstone.

Thank you very much, Mr. Ryan.

I will first yield to the gentleman from Colorado, and then we are going to wrap this thing up, and I want to wrap it up on one of our major themes, that's rebuilding the great American manufacturing sector.

I yield to the gentleman.

It also speaks to the fact that the Democrats are willing to put up shared sacrifice on both sides.

I want to just wrap up with this, and every time I come to the floor I want to make it clear that we need to rebuild the American manufacturing base. Twenty years ago there were 20 million-plus Americans in manufacturing. Today there are 11 million. A lot of reasons for it. But these are the kinds of investments you were talking about, Mr. Ryan, that we need to make. We really need to make sure that our policies on trade are fair, that they don't harm our manufacturing industry.

We've been talking about taxes here. We need to make those taxes encourage growth. A couple of examples on taxes: we put out a tax bill without any Republican support last year to end the tax breaks that corporations had to offshore jobs. And we gave corporations and businesses an immediate write-up of all capital gains. So we're serious about tax policy here to encourage manufacturing.

Energy is a huge issue, and there will be a discussion on another day.

Labor policies: let's understand that it was the labor unions that built the base, and you go down through the line--education, intellectual property, research, and, again, building the great infrastructure. These are things we can do. These are critical investments in our budget. We should be doing these things.

I am going to yield to my friend from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter). You get the last word.

Mr. Speaker, we intend tonight to talk about the deficit, solutions to the deficit, where it came from and what can be done about it in the context of creating jobs here in America. But before we get into that, we just heard a whole hour of talk that really is based upon a fallacious foundation, that is, it is just not correct.

Last year in 2010, it was the Republican Senators that blocked every attempt to pass legislation by threatening a veto and denying the 60 votes that were necessary. So when it came time to do a budget, it was impossible to put a budget through the Senate because of the Republican blockade in the use of the filibuster.

Similarly, when it came time to fund the government, to appropriate the money, the same thing happened. It was impossible to get the 60 votes out of the Senate because of the Republican blockade. So everything that we have heard over the last hour about the process that is now under way, the continuing resolutions, began with the blockade in the Senate by the Republicans as they continually threatened a filibuster. That's why we are where we are today.

Now, with regard to the funding of the military, let's understand that the Democrats have always consistently voted to fund the military when it was a straight up-or-down vote. However, in the CR, the first CR that did have funding for the military, it also had extraordinary cuts that would destroy 700,000 jobs in the last 6 months of this fiscal year--March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October--700,000 jobs lost.

The Democrats said no way, no way are we going to throw 700,000 employed Americans out of work, and we rejected that. Put a clean CR for the funding of the military on, and you'll have a 100 percent vote. But when you cobble together the kinds of foolish cuts, unwarranted cuts, 700,000 lost jobs, and then attach to it the military and expect support, you won't get it.

The Democrats want this government funded, and we fought for more than a year and a half to get the government funded. We were blocked along the way. And now, as the Republicans put out these pieces of legislation, the continuing resolution, and attach to it totally unacceptable language and unacceptable cuts, to the American people, not to the Democrats, but to the American people, then we find this gridlock. What we want to do really is talk about jobs.

Joining me tonight are two wonderful legislators. One is imported from Detroit, and another one from the manufacturing capital of the world.

I want to start with an understanding of why we are where we are. I know my colleagues will help me on this.

First of all, the Democrats have been about creating jobs, from the stimulus to today. The GOP majority has been in power for 14 weeks. Zero, no, nada, nothing to create jobs. Not one jobs bill. In fact, the only bill that they have put on that has anything to do with jobs is one that destroys 700,000 jobs. So keep this in mind, American public. Fourteen weeks of GOP leadership in the House and not one piece of legislation that would create a job putting Americans to work this year and next year. That's the fact.

Now, another fact: Where did the deficit come from? In order to understand where we are, we need to know where we've been. Here is what the deficit is all about. Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the budget was not balanced. Ronald Reagan at the end of his term left for the American public a $1.4 trillion deficit in the years ahead. At the end of each year and, therefore, at the end of a President's term, the Congressional Budget Office makes an estimate of what is going to happen over the next 5 to 10 years. At the end of Ronald Reagan's term, they said there would be a $1.4 trillion deficit going forward.

George Walker Bush followed Reagan; and at the end of his administration, the estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was that there would be a $3.3 trillion deficit going forward. That's the numbers provided by the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan group.

Bill Clinton came to office, established the pay-for program, established the balanced budget program; and at the end of his administration, it was projected going forward that there would be a $5.6 trillion surplus, wiping out the American debt. That's what happened during the Clinton administration. So that in the years beyond the Clinton administration, had the same policies gone forward, the American debt would have been wiped out.

However, another gentleman was elected, George W. Bush. In his first year in office, the Bush tax cuts went into effect, the Afghanistan war started, and the deficit began to grow once again. So that in his second year, the second Bush tax cuts were added and the Iraq war was started. Never before in America's history has a war been under way that was not paid for with tax increases. Instead, the Republicans and George W. Bush decided that they would start not one war, but two wars, and pay for it with borrowed money. The fourth piece was the unpaid-for Medicare drug benefit which didn't even require that the Federal Government force the insurance companies to compete for drugs.

The result was at the end--oh, did I forget the Great Recession? I did. You add the Great Recession to it, so at the end of the George W. Bush administration, the projection from the Congressional Budget Office was that the deficit would grow by an additional $11.5 trillion.

The George W. Bush Republican period created the Great Recession, two wars unpaid for, a major increase in the Medicare program, and the result, the Great Recession and the great deficit. This is what Obama faced the day he came into office, the greatest recession since the Great Depression and an $11.5 trillion deficit going forward. Those are the facts. That's where we started this.

Now, what are we going to do about this problem? The President has put forth a budget that would, in 8 years, significantly reduce the deficit so that it wouldn't grow and allow us to pay the interest, not removing it, not paying it all off--neither do the Republican proposals--but it would put us in a position where it would not grow. It takes time to solve the huge deficit problem that George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Bush, Sr. put us into. We can do it. But we cannot do it unless we grow this economy. It's about growing the economy and creating jobs that we would now like to talk about.

I am going to turn now to my colleague from Ohio, Betty Sutton, who has been working on the issue of putting Americans to work for a long, long time. Please share with us where you are now with this proposal that you are putting forward.

Thank you very much for laying out the thematics as well as the past history.

Our theme in the Democratic Caucus here in the House is one of making it in America--once again, going into Target, going down to the local automobile dealership, and finding products that are made in America. The great strength of America, historically for the last 150 years, has been its manufacturing strength, but we need to understand that, in the last decade, we have seen the hollowing out of the American manufacturing industry.

In 1999, there were 17,383,000 Americans working in manufacturing. In the decade that followed, more than 6 million of those jobs were lost, and we saw the hollowing out of American manufacturing. That's the strength. It also happens to be the middle class. So our theme is ``make it in America.'' As you say, if America is going to make it, we must, once again, make it in America. Manufacturing matters.

Let me put up here on the board why it matters to the American public.

What has happened in the last decade has been a skewing of the economy, the great unshared prosperity of America. If we look at the bottom fifth of the population, these are the poor. They've seen a $200 annual increase in their well-being. For the next fifth, 20 to 40 percent, they've seen just under $10,000. As you go up, if you look at the top 10 percent, $300,000. If you look at the top 1 percent of Americans, what has happened with them? Their wealth has grown by over $5,978,870.

So what has happened as a result of the policies of the Bush administration is a push to the wealthy and the clampdown of the working class in America. The middle class in America is losing the race to wealth. It is losing it to the top 1 percent.

Let me put this another way.

There are, perhaps, some people you might recognize at the bottom, the poorest fifth, the folks who work for Wal-Mart. Eleven percent of the wealth went to them. For the second poorest--these are the teachers--it's the same thing. There was very little growth in their income. As you get to the millionaires and billionaires, the Donald Trumps of the world, they have seen a 256 percent--a 256 percent-- increase in their wealth. At the bottom, an 11 percent. For the teachers, an 18, 20 percent. For manufacturing, maybe a 32 percent. Here is where the money is: It's with the super wealthy. They have seen a 256 percent.

Take a close look, America. Take a close look at what was proposed yesterday by the Republican caucus:

Yesterday, the Republican caucus proposed to take this skewing of wealth, the unshared prosperity, and push even more of it to the super wealthy of America. It is unconscionable, but that's what they've proposed to do, and they're going to do it with tax breaks for the wealthy, continuing on, indefinitely, increasing the deficit by $1 trillion--a $1 trillion increase--because they want even more wealth to go to the super wealthy.

At the same time, they're cutting the benefits that the working men and women rely upon. What are those benefits? Well, how about employment opportunities? How about educational opportunities? All of those are cut, and they're taking money out of the economy so that 700,000 men and women will lose their jobs this year, in the next 9 months. That's the Republican agenda.

For those who are not working, the seniors of America, the Republicans are proposing to end Medicare as we know it. It will be the privatization of Medicare, giving every senior in this Nation an $11,000 voucher so that they can then go and negotiate with the rapacious greed of the health insurance companies. If you want to live to be 65 and finally have a health insurance policy that you can count on, don't look to the Republicans, because they intend to terminate Medicare as we know it and turn over the well-being--the health and, indeed, the life of every senior--to the vagrancies, to the rapacious profit orientation of the health insurance industry. That's what's going to happen if the Republicans get their way. We'll do everything we can to stop it, and we will also do everything we can to build the American middle class.

I would be delighted to.

Precisely so.

Look at their budget proposal. Their budget proposal says that the oil companies in the last 10 years have earned a profit of $947 billion. That would be $53 billion less than $1 trillion in profits, nearly $1 trillion in profits. Yet our Republican colleagues say they need to continue to be subsidized by the American taxpayers. Hello? What's that all about? Do you want to balance the budget? Remove those subsidies from the oil companies, and let them pay taxes. Why should we be subsidizing the wealthiest industry in the world, the oil industry? That's what they want to do--and you talk about tax breaks. Good heavens.

I want to turn now to our colleague from the great City of Detroit. We loved that advertisement in the Super Bowl. We now call Hansen Clarke the ``imported from Detroit Representative.''

Please share with us your thoughts here.

Would the gentleman yield for a moment?

In the Republican continuing resolution, H.R. 1, they reduce the research budget for energy research here in America, cutting out vital research at the Department of Energy, at the laboratories across this Nation. And what are they thinking?

Thank you so very much.

And how correct you are in laying out this strategy of how we can move the American manufacturing industry: Education, a well-educated workforce; research on fundamental issues like energy systems, batteries, transportation; and then making those things in America, importing from Detroit to American consumers and selling around the world. However, when the Republicans put together a proposal such as H.R. 1--their continuing resolution that would cut 700,000 jobs out--it also cut out the research budget for energy research, for battery research, for transportation research, and in addition to that, research for health. The National Institutes of Health budget was decimated. That's not good public policy. We need to make these financial investments. And if the Democratic strategy of making it in America is carried forward, Detroit will prosper and America will prosper.

Another part of our country in trouble for manufacturing, but a great manufacturing center of America, is Illinois. Our Representative from that great State is here to join us, Jan Schakowsky.

Go ahead.

Would you yield for a moment?

The Republican budget proposal put out yesterday calls for a tax decrease for that 0.1 percent from 35 percent to 25 percent.

We're talking about super trickle-down theory here.

Our Republican colleagues have consistently said we ought to listen. And apparently all that we know about tax policy, there's

little or no support for reducing the taxes on the super wealthy but rather they go the other way. And we're wondering what they're thinking over on the other side of the aisle as they continue to skew to create the unshared prosperity by even reducing further the taxes on the super wealthy.

And yet we're seeing across this Nation a Republican attack on unions claiming that unions are bad. But the great history of this Nation is that the union movement, collective bargaining over these many, many decades did in fact create the middle class. And so that in the 1960s was the period of time when the middle class of America was at its peak. It had the greatest distribution of wealth. The greatest share of the income went to the middle class. It was also the time when the union movement was the strongest in America. Since that time through a variety of governmental policies, we have seen a decline in the union movement and a commensurate consistent decline in the middle class.

We're going to build the middle class. This is about making it in America. This is about rebuilding the middle class.

I want to now turn to our colleague from the great industrial--the once and future great industrial center of America, Ohio, and share with us--you've got some specific proposals that you've put forward. I'd like to talk about them. I know that our Congresslady from Illinois has, and I do, too, so we're going to talk about specific things that we're going to do to rebuild the middle class by making it in America.

Could you just yield for a moment?

There's a piece of legislation that someone introduced that's called Don't Let American Jobs Go Down the Drain. Do you know who that was who introduced that piece of legislation?

I thought you did.

Well, I love the title, but even more so, I love the purpose of your legislation. Using our tax dollars to build the infrastructure, the water, the sanitation systems that every city, every community needs, and using that money to buy American-made pumps and pipes and fittings and valves and all of the rest of the things that go into those kinds of systems.

It's not the only place where American taxpayers' money can be used.

Let me give you a couple of examples, and these are my pieces of my legislation that deal with a similar theme.

We all pay gasoline tax and a diesel tax--18\1/2\ cents on the Federal side and 25 cents for diesel on the Federal side. Where does that money go? It goes to build our streets, highways, and buy our buses and trains.

We need a firm policy that says if it is American taxpayer money, it's going to be used to buy American-made buses, trains, American-made steel, concrete. We need to use our tax money to build the American economy so that we are making those things in America.

I'm going to give you the poster child for the wrong policy. State of California going to rebuild the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, a multibillion dollar project. Bids went out. An American contractor came in with two bids. One bid was for steel in America, and the other bid was for steel made in China. The Chinese steel was 10 percent cheaper.

The State of California--wrong-headed, big mistake--went out and said, Well, we're going to save 10 percent. Turns out, the Chinese steel was defective, the welds were defective, the bridge was delayed. The 10 percent disappeared. The 10 percent was added. The American jobs were lost. Never ever, ever again should that happen in America. If it's American taxpayer money, then by golly, use American-

made products. I love it. Don't let American jobs go down the drain. Make sure we are making it in America.

One more thing, and then I want to turn to our minority whip to talk about Make It in America.

We also use American taxpayer dollars to build the solar systems and the wind turbine systems in America. Are they made in America? They ought to be. There are American manufacturers that make wind turbines and make solar. Once again, our taxpayer money. Is it going to be used to buy solar panels from China, wind turbines from Europe, or is it going to be used to buy American-made wind turbines and American-made solar panels? We must pass legislation, and it ought to be Democrat and Republican alike, that says finally it's going to be American made. We are going to make it in America so that Americans can make it.

Let me now turn to Steny Hoyer, our esteemed leader, the whip of the Democratic caucus. Mr. Hoyer.

Your kind words are much appreciated. But you are very much a part of this. This logo itself and the theme Make It In America was one that you developed. And we appreciate that and value the leadership that you have put into this.

I want to turn back to our colleague from Ohio. We have about 7 minutes, I believe, and we are going to wrap this thing up. Mr. Hoyer, thank you very much. We really appreciate your work here.

Ms. Sutton, if you will carry on, I am going to find one more of these placards.

I am going to pick up right on the issues that you raised. These are the essential elements of a manufacturing strategy. So if we are going to make it in America, we need to make things in America and these are the essential things.

You talk about trade policy. We cannot continue just to give it all away and just expect to be importers of cheap products made elsewhere. So we need good trade policies that position America's manufacturing sector to be competitive.

We speak specifically here of China, a lot of issues involved in China, currency; and it goes on and on. But this is one of the areas where we must stand firmly or else we will lose it because somebody else is going to make it and ship it here.

Unfairly, taxes. The tax policy of the Nation needs to encourage manufacturing. I want to give two examples that were part of the Democratic agenda, and these are now in law. Last year, as part of our program, we provided a tax break for American manufacturers who invested in capital equipment. We said, don't worry about depreciation. You invest in capital equipment, that is grow your manufacturing capacity and you could write off against your taxes in 1 year, that investment. That's a tax policy.

The second tax policy we said is it's not right for American corporations to get a tax break when they offshore jobs. We said enough of that. No more, you are going to do that. On both of these policies, our Republican colleagues refuse to join us. So presumably they want to continue giving corporations tax breaks when they send jobs offshore, and they don't care whether American companies invest here in the United States with capital equipment.

Energy, crucial, crucial. We cannot any longer put our future to risk on international oil markets. We are seeing it today, the extraordinary rise in the cost of gasoline and diesel, energy policy, energy independence, advanced biofuels, conservation, electric cars, all of those things.

Labor, you talked about labor. Again, it was the labor movement that created the middle class in America by standing firm and saying the workers of America need to share in the great wealth of America. We have seen the decline of labor, and we have seen the equal decline of the middle class. They go together.

Labor, fair labor rules, what's going on in the Midwest, Wisconsin, your State of Ohio, other States, is wrong. The labor movement and collective bargaining is crucial to America's middle class because that gives the foundation, education policy.

What in the world are our Republican colleagues thinking about when they cut education funding? If we are going to compete, we need a well- educated workforce, and you can't do it on the cheap. It requires an investment.

I use intellectual property here; we could just as easily use the word ``research.'' It is from the research that the new products are created. It's in those new products that the great profits are, and it's where we must protect the research.

Again, my Republican colleagues, why are you reducing the research budget for America? Why are you doing that, when, in fact, that's where the future industries come from? Don't, don't cut there.

And, finally, infrastructure, the foundation upon which everything moves, including thought.

We used to think of infrastructure being roads, streets, water systems, sanitation systems, yes. And now it's the intellectual infrastructure, the intellectual highway. All of that infrastructure is crucial if we fail to invest. By the way, in terms of the Net highway, access to the Net, the United States falls behind virtually every other industrialized country in the world and in many cases behind developing countries.

This is a Make it in America strategy. These are the elements: trade policy, tax policy, energy policy, labor policy, education, research, intellectual property and infrastructure. This is the Democratic agenda. This is what we are putting forth. This is what we will fight for because this is how you build the American middle class, by making it in America.

I want to thank my colleagues Ms. Sutton; Mr. Clarke, who was here earlier; our minority leader. We use the words minority whip now. You were our majority leader just a few months ago, and you will once again be because this agenda, the Make it in America, is the American solution to our economy and to our economic growth and to rebuilding the great American middle class.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of discussion here on the floor, around Washington, and across this Nation about the American financial situation.

Some people say America is broke. There couldn't be anything further from the truth than that statement. America is a strong, vibrant economy that far and away is the largest economy in the world. We are nowhere near broke. We do have a problem. We are running at a current deficit, and that deficit is expected to grow. But to understand the deficit and to begin the process of addressing it, we need to understand from whence it came. And so I am going to start this discussion out with, hopefully, an opportunity to get a sense of how it is that the American deficit has risen to the point where it is today.

Really, we need to look back to the Ronald Reagan period. During the Ronald Reagan period, he ended his Presidency with a projected $1.4 trillion deficit for the 10 years beyond his Presidency. So we look at these things saying, okay, Ronald Reagan had 8 years. And then what was projected as a result of the policies during his Presidency? Well, what was projected was that the American deficit would grow by $1.4 trillion.

The first George Bush came into office, and at the end of his Presidency, 4 years, the projection for the 10 years after he left office, continuing the policies that were in place at the end of his Presidency, the deficit would grow to $3.3 trillion.

Similarly, the Clinton administration was in office for 8 years, and the policies that were put in place during those 8 years were projected to literally wipe out the American deficit--literally gone. A $5.6 trillion surplus as a result of the policies that were put in during the Clinton period. Those policies were tax policies. Those were the expenditure policies, a policy that we call today the PAYGO policy. That is, if you are going to start a new program, how are you going to pay for it? If you are going to cut taxes, what are you going to reduce in the expenditure pattern?

So, Reagan, a $1.4 trillion deficit projected beyond his Presidency. Bush, add another $3.3 trillion. Clinton comes along, 8 years, deficits turn into a whopping surplus and literally paying off the American debt.

George W. Bush comes in in 2001, and right off the bat, major tax cuts not associated with spending cuts but just major tax cuts. That was in 2001, followed up with a second round of major tax cuts in 2003, and in between a whole new Medicare entitlement adding a new expenditure at the same time that taxes were being reduced.

And for those of you that remember that period in 2001, we did have 9/11, and immediately we started the Afghanistan war. I think most of us would agree that that was the right thing to do, but it was not paid for. It was actually borrowed money that paid for the early Afghanistan war, followed a couple of years later, 18 months later, with the Iraq war, which once again was not paid for but, rather, borrowed money.

The result of all of that and the total pullback of the American Government from regulating the financial industry, the housing markets, was the Great Recession. At the end of the George W. Bush period, it was projected by the CBO, nonpartisan Budget Office, that the deficit would grow by $11.5 trillion if the same policies were left in place.

So where is today's deficit coming from? It is coming from the Reagan period, the first Bush period, the Clinton policies terminated, and the George W.

Bush policies put in place, leaving us with a projected $11.5 trillion deficit for the next 10 years.

Now, the rest of the story is that, as a result of the Great Recession, the Obama administration came into office looking at this situation: An economy that was headed into not a recession but a depression and a huge deficit. That was put on Mr. Obama's plate the day he took office.

To deal with the Great Recession that could have become a great depression, a stimulus program was put in place, and it was expensive. And a bailout of Wall Street was actually put in place during the last 2 months of the Bush administration. A combination of those was somewhere about $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion, a huge whopping sum of money, but done for a good purpose.

And I don't know many economists, in fact I know of none, who would say it was not necessary. It was necessary that we deal with the Wall Street collapse and successfully stabilized Wall Street, the financial industry. It could have been done differently. Most of that money has now been repaid.

The money that was spent, about $750 billion, on stimulating the economy was similarly successful in stabilizing the economy and causing it to rebound slowly, but nonetheless rebound.

Here we are today debating the best way to deal with the deficit. We have a proposal from the President that over the next 5 years to 6 years would significantly reduce the annual deficit; not creating a situation such as ended the Clinton administration, but bringing the deficit back into a situation that is sustainable. That is the President's proposal, based upon holding steady, no growth in the Federal budget over the next 5 years, having the economy bounce back; ending one of the tax breaks that was put in place by George W. Bush back in 2003, that is, the high income, that is, the millionaire- billionaire tax break which is still in place but would end under the President's proposal.

It is following along closely the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Commission that was appointed.

Now, that is the President's proposal. What we are debating on the floor beginning early this year with H.R. 1, H.R. 1, a continuing resolution to fund the government for the remainder of the year, was a $60 billion reduction in the discretionary expenditures of this government. No one believed that that would have a significant impact on the long-term deficit problem, but it would have a very significant impact on vital, vital programs that are necessary to continue the operations of this government.

So what are we to do? H.R. 1 passed this House and was rejected by the Senate. For me, that was the right thing to do, because H.R. 1 was estimated by two different economists, not Democratic economists, but independent economists, that it would kill 700,000 jobs across this Nation; immediately increase unemployment in America, reducing tax revenues--unemployed people don't pay taxes--but simultaneously increasing the expenditures for unemployment insurance, welfare and the like.

That is not a very wise thing to do, but that is what our colleagues on the Republican side suggested we should do. And it passed, with unanimous Republican support. I think there were three or four Democrats that voted for it. I think they were wrong. I think the Republicans were wrong.

That doesn't solve the deficit. You cannot take 14 percent of the Federal budget, which happens to be the discretionary expenditures that were targeted by our Republican colleagues in H.R. 1, and expect to do anything meaningful about the deficit. The deficit has to be dealt with over a long period of time, and it has to be dealt with in such a way that we actually put in place the foundations for strong economic growth.

What are those foundations? Well, in my view, there are six of them. If this economy is going to grow soon, mid-term and late, that is, in the years ahead, we have to have the best educated workforce in the world. So in the Republican proposal was an elimination of funding for higher education, funding for the Pell Grants that allow young men and women, and older men and women, to go into the university system. Not a wise thing to do.

The second thing, if we are going to have a foundation of good, solid economic growth into the future, we need to have the best research in the world. Once again, the proposal, H.R. 1, and the two subsequent continuing resolutions that have funded the government cut, cut research, critical research at our national laboratories. Nearly $800 million of funding for the Department of Energy research programs would be eliminated, laying off some 6,000 researchers, Ph.D.'s, scientists at the national laboratories that are working on research for energy production.

No one in this Nation would argue that we do not have an energy crisis. Check out the price of gasoline. We have a serious energy crisis. Yet the proposal would go right at the heart of the research that we need in order to solve the energy problem. Conservation, nuclear, cleanup of nuclear, research into photovoltaic, geothermal, all of the renewable energy research largely reduced and in some cases totally eliminated.

Health care. The fastest growing segment of our economy is health care. Research at the National Institutes of Health is wiped out, largely reduced. What kind of policy is that? If we are going to have a strong economy, we need to have a well-educated workforce. We need the research.

Thirdly, we need to take up the issue of manufacturing. We need to make the things that come out of research. Manufacturing really does matter. If we were to take the American manufacturing sector, as weak as it is today, it would still rank as the ninth biggest economy in the world. Manufacturing in the United States took an enormous hit during the Great Recession. About 25 percent of the jobs that were lost were in manufacturing. We hollowed out our manufacturing sector. If we are to grow this economy, if we are to have a serious reduction in the deficit, then we are going to have to make sure that manufacturing returns as a principal part of the American economy.

I am going to move on with the other three elements and then come back to manufacturing.

We need to have a very strong infrastructure. This is everything from water to sanitation to transportation, rail systems and air systems. One of the things that will be brought up on the floor has to do with the air transportation system in the United States. That infrastructure is critical. Yet in the proposal that we have had from our Republican colleagues, we are actually weakening the infrastructure system of this Nation. That is not a wise thing to do. But, nonetheless, our economy depends upon that infrastructure.

International investments are necessary. We need to export. We cannot find our economy growing if we continue to rely on imports. They may be cheap, but in their cheapness, they destroy the American manufacturing sector. So we need to keep that in mind as a principal investment that we need to make. It doesn't come cheaply. It requires us to spend money on the Department of Commerce that is out there helping to open markets for America. It requires us to finance the Export-Import Bank and other Federal Government agencies that actually support the export of goods and services from America.

And, of course, we have got to pay attention to the defense of this Nation. In the Defense Department, we need to always strive for efficiency. Now, I happen to oppose the war in Afghanistan. It is costing us about $120 billion a year. My view is we ought to end that quickly and spend some money focusing directly on the real threat, and that is the threat from al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. We will come to that in a different discussion.

But those are the six critical investments: education, research, manufacturing, infrastructure, international trade, and defense. Are we doing well at those? Not if my Republican colleagues get their way with regard to the discretionary budget cuts.

There are some things that we can do that are not expensive. In fact, they actually will create jobs with no additional Federal expenditure. Let me turn to that at this moment.

My Democratic colleagues and I have developed a program that we call Make It in America. Make It in America. If

America is going to make it, then we have to make it in America. What are we making? We need to make all of the things that this economy and this world needs for energy security--photovoltaic, geothermal, the new biofuels, the advanced biofuels--all of those things in the energy sector that allow us to prosper and to address the energy crisis, including--and I know the problem of Japan and the nuclear systems there. But 20 percent of our energy presently comes from nuclear. And that's going to be part of the future. So we need to make sure that we make it well, safely, and that those systems are made in America.

Manufacturing matters, and we need to make sure that our manufacturing sector is up to speed and actually making things in America. We cannot count on the Chinese or the Indians or any other nation to provide us with our manufactured goods. And the reason is that's where the well-paying middle class jobs are. It's been hollowed out over the last decade by, I think, unwise policies; but nonetheless we can restore it.

Let me tell you a couple of ways that we're proposing to do this in the Democratic Caucus. I love these charts. They seem to actually make a lot of sense and help display what we're talking about.

If we're going to make it in America, we need to make sure that we are educating and researching; and so these are crucial investments that I've talked about before--research, the health sector, science, a well-educated workforce with teachers that are capable of doing what we call the STEM--the science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing kinds of education. And we need to make sure that our workers are prepared to take on these jobs. So that's the first step. That's the education and the research step of it. And these are investments, and we need to make those investments.

Let me give you a couple of other examples of where public policy really becomes important. Photovoltaic, invented in America. Wind turbines, they have been around a long, long time, windmills and the like; but many of the modern technologies that are in the wind turbine system are American research. And, of course, transportation. It turns out that we don't really do much of this--or at least a year ago we didn't do much of this. We were importing the solar systems, the photovoltaic systems, importing many of the wind turbines that are out there in the wind farms providing us with energy and importing from other countries buses and trains and light rail systems.

What we say in the Democratic Caucus is each of these are programs that are subsidized or paid for with your tax money. There are subsidies for solar, photovoltaic systems. Good. We've need to do these kind of things for energy security, and it's a good place to spend tax money to encourage the development of those kinds of systems. All well and good.

But where are those solar panels made? Are they made in America, or are they made overseas? Our view and my own personal legislation is if you want to use American taxpayer moneys to help you buy a solar system either on your business or on your home, then you buy American-made solar systems. If your transit district wants to buy a bus using our tax dollars--this is the excise tax on gasoline--18\1/2\ cents for gasoline and 25-plus cents for diesel fuel--if you want to go buy a bus from your local transit district--good. We need public transportation. But if you're going to use the public's tax money to buy that bus, then you buy a bus that's made in America. Make it in America. If you're using our tax dollars as a transit district or as a business or as a homeowner with a solar panel or a bus, then you use that tax money to buy an American-made bus.

Similarly, with wind turbines. This is a personal thing for me. In 1978, I authored the first State legislation for wind solar tax credits to get that industry started. And it did start. Altamont Hills, California, which I currently represent, has the oldest wind farm in America. Good. We're rebuilding those turbines, putting in new modern turbines, and we're expanding the wind industry in this Nation. Good. We need to do that. And we're using our tax money to subsidize it. That's good, too. But where is that wind turbine built? Is it built in Europe--Spain, Germany, Belgium? Or is it built in America?

Too many of these have been built in other countries using our tax money. And I'm saying with my legislation and the support of others that if you're going to use American taxpayer money to invest in wind turbines, then you buy American-made equipment, period. We don't need to buy Chinese wind turbines when we can make those in America.

These are ways in which we can rebuild our manufacturing base. It turns out that in the San Francisco Bay Area there is the Alameda- Contra Costa Transit District that has within that district one of the last remaining bus manufacturers in America. But until very recently that transit district refused to buy buses from a bus manufacturer in that district that was making buses that were every bit as good as buses made anywhere in the world. They have recently changed that policy.

Similarly, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, BART, was buying trains and wanted to continue to buy over $300 million of trains from foreign manufacturers. Many of us said whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Time out. Don't do that. Let's buy trains that are made in America.

So Siemens, a German company, has established a manufacturing plant and is upgrading a long-existing manufacturing plant in Sacramento to prepare itself to successfully bid for the manufacture of high-speed trains in California and around the Nation, as well as light rail systems, which they are now and have been for some time producing in the Sacramento manufacturing plant. Good. That's how we can use our tax dollars to rebuild the American manufacturing base.

As we do that, we rebuild a vital part of America's economy, that part of America's economy that was traditionally the heart and soul of middle America, the great American manufacturing sector. This is possible. Does it take new money? It takes a redirection of money that we have been spending for some time.

Let me add one more thing to it. As we look at the renewable industry, let us think about where we can find additional money to enhance the renewable energy industry. For one century, America has subsidized through various tax breaks the oil industry. We did that for the purpose of creating a very strong, viable oil industry that provided us with energy. It was eminently successful. The oil industry is the most profitable industry in America, and probably around the world. Very, very successful.

Do they need a continuation of tax breaks? Well, if you ask them, of course. Everybody wants a tax break. But do they need it? Not when they're running over the last 10 years just short of a trillion dollars of profit. The American oil industry in the last decade has earned $950 billion of profit. Do they need a tax break anymore? I think not.

I think we take that tax break, which, depending upon how much and whose estimate, is somewhere north of $10 billion, maybe as much as $20 billion a year, and use that money to build our renewable energy sector, subsidizing these kinds of things--photovoltaic, advanced biofuels, algae fuels, wind turbines--and to enhance our transportation sector.

These are strategies that we ought to employ. However, as to what is happening today, instead of taking the long-term view and making critical investments that actually will give us the foundation and the start to rebuild the American economy, we are going the other direction. I should say, my Republican colleagues are going the other direction. Many of us think it is the wrong direction. We should not shortchange those investments that actually will create short-term and long-term economic growth. It's critical that we continue to invest in those six things: education, research, transportation, manufacturing-- obviously, we have to continue to invest in national defense, but we'd better be very, very wise.

As we do these investments--and, in fact, in everything the government does--we must always strive for two

goals: that every program be effective, which is that it actually achieves its stated purpose, and that it be done efficiently. I call these the two E's: efficient and effective. If it's not efficient, then change the program so that it would be efficient. If it's ineffective and inefficient, it should be terminated. It's very simple. But if it is effective and efficient, then maybe we ought to continue it.

Now, in this recent week, we've had our Republican colleagues put forth four bills that literally terminate all of the Federal Government programs, save two, to rebuild the housing industry in America and, more importantly, to help those families that are in desperate trouble with their mortgages. Of those programs, some of them were ineffective, necessary but not yet effective and not up to the kind of efficiency that we would want. That doesn't mean they should be terminated; that means they should be modified because the problem continues to exist.

There is a homeowner mortgage problem in America of enormous, enormous importance. Some 10 million American homes are underwater. It's a problem. We've got to find a way of dealing with that, not just ignore it and not just wipe out programs that we would need. We need to have efficiency, so we look for not a bill that would eliminate it but, rather, a bill that would modify, create more efficiency, and continue to address the problem.

To this date, our Republican colleagues have only moved to terminate, not to replace, not to rebuild. Similarly, with health care, there has only been a bill to terminate, not a bill to improve when we know that we've got an ongoing problem.

I'm going to just wrap this up and let it go where we are, but let me go back and review very, very quickly.

There has been a raging debate here in Congress about the deficit. Where did it come from? How did we get to where we are? How do we solve this problem in the future?

The deficit didn't start with the Obama administration. It started way back, actually, a little bit before the Reagan administration, the Reagan and the George Bush I administrations. It was dramatically altered by Clinton, which actually would have, if those policies had continued, created a surplus, almost wiping out the total debt of America. Then it was run up bigtime during the George W. Bush administration.

These are projections 10 years following, if we'd continued the same policies, as to what would happen. That's where it started. Then there was the great recession and the effort now to deal with that.

The Obama administration has put forth a proposal that follows closely, along with the recommendations of the deficit reduction commission, that says: Don't--don't--do anything that would harm the current recovery, like make an austerity program, like make massive cuts. Yet our Republican colleagues have done and proposed exactly that. Fortunately, the Senate has not gone along with that, but we are nickel and diming our way towards $30 billion of cuts that may, in fact, cause us to see a decline rather than a continued growth in the economy. We must watch that very carefully. So that's the deficit piece of it.

Manufacturing matters. We need to be sure that we rebuild our manufacturing sector. There are many different pieces of legislation, of tax policy. I didn't mention this earlier, but one of the tax policies put forth by the Democrats last December--it actually went into law--was to encourage investment by private companies in capital equipment, allowing those companies in the first year to write off immediately 100 percent of the cost of capital equipment. A good idea. Unfortunately, very few of our Republican colleagues voted for that. In the manufacturing sector, let's make it in America. Let's use our tax dollars to make it in America. With all of the energy programs, transportation programs, let's use our tax dollars to buy American-made equipment.

Finally, research and education. This is not where the cuts should occur. Yet our Republican colleagues are suggesting that that's exactly where it should happen: major cuts in research, energy, education, health care. You cannot make those cuts and expect this economy to be competitive.

One little fact that I just heard about today is that it is expected in the coming year that the Chinese economy will produce more scientific advancements than will the American economy. This will be the first time in, perhaps, three-quarters of a century that the United States Government will give up its lead in scientific advancements. This is not the time for this Nation to make cuts in our science agenda, whether it's in the medical/health care area, the energy area, or in any of the other kinds of research in which we have always been the leader.

Food for thought. Things for us to consider.

I would like the American people to be aware of the real deficit story. You cannot solve it by making massive cuts in just 14 percent of the budget. Yet that's what our Republican colleagues are doing. We need a long-term plan, one that is 5 years, 10 years, to bring our budget back into balance. We can do it. It was done during the Clinton period.

This little chart here gives you some idea of one half of how the Clinton period brought about a budget surplus. This is the spending side, and these are the expenditures of the American Government as a percentage of the economy.

During the Reagan/Bush period, 22-23 percent of the American economy was for government expenditures. It dropped down to 21, but it basically bounced between 21 and 23 percent. During the Clinton period, as a result of policies that were put in place during his period-- PAYGO, reinventing government, and other governmental policies--we saw a steady decline in the percentage of the economy that was going to the Federal Government. At the same time, we had very strong economic growth. Those are two of the three things that operate together. There was also a Clinton tax increase that took place that basically added an additional tax burden at the very, very top of the income categories. So the combination of those reductions in the percentage of the economy that was used, good economic growth, and a tax increase that occurred in the very early period, particularly a tax increase on the very wealthy, led to a surplus. George W. Bush came in in 2001-2002, and things reversed.

First of all, there's an increase in the percentage of the economy that went to government, principally the Medicare drug program and the wars, and then this very, very steep rise that occurred right at the end of the Bush administration as a result of two things: one, a plummeting of the American economy as the Great Recession took hold in 2008 and the effort to deal with the Great Recession with the stimulus; and right here at the end of the Bush 2, the financial bailout. And so that's why we saw this extremely high line.

Now, you notice that in the last period, which is the 2010-11 period, we've begun to see a decline once again in the percentage of the government, of the economy that is government spending; and, if we follow carefully the budget that's been put together by the Obama administration, this line will continue to fall back into the 20 percent, 21 percent range, bringing back into balance the Federal expenditure. It cannot and will not happen overnight. It's going to take us 5 years, maybe even longer, to bring this thing back into balance.

Keep in mind the words that were used by the recommendation of the budget deficit commission: Don't do anything immediately to harm the American economy by making rapid, unnecessary, unwise cuts in the Federal expenditure. That will put people out of work. 700,000 people would lose their jobs immediately with the proposal that was put forth by the Republicans but fortunately stopped by the Senate. If that had become law, 700,000 jobs immediately lost and a spike once again in this ratio of government spending.

So we've got work to do. We can do this, but we need to take the long vision, and we need to be very careful that we make the critical investments.

Mr. Speaker, had I been able to vote on H.R. 1076, legislation that would decimate public radio in America, I would have voted ``no.''

National Public Radio (NPR) is one of America's most vital and trusted news sources, utilized by 27 million Americans each week. Taking away federal assistance for public radio would hurt 900 public radio stations, especially smaller stations in rural America that lack a sizable donor base.

Access to popular and informative news programming, including All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Forum, On Point, and This American Life, would be jeopardized in smaller markets. Broadly available access to informative and objective news in America would be compromised.

My office has received many calls and letters from residents throughout the 10th Congressional District, urging Congress to preserve NPR's budget. My constituents understand that public broadcasting is a critical and cost-effective American investment, and I stand with them.

H.R. 1076 harms our economy and American competitiveness. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that this legislation will have zero impact on the budget and the deficit, but it will likely destroy 9,000 jobs. Our support of public broadcasting is a tremendous bargain for the American people. At a time of increasing competition in the global economy, America's future prosperity depends on a knowledgeable workforce, and our robust democracy depends on a well- informed citizenry.

H.R. 1076 takes away vital information from the American people, and that is why I am deeply opposed to this pointless and destructive bill.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to talk about what's on the minds of the constituents in my district, and that's jobs. They're worried about the economy, they're worried about jobs, and they want to find an opportunity to get a job.

Unfortunately, it's actually 11 weeks since the Republicans took control of this House, and there's not been one job bill. The big bill that passed here 4 weeks ago was the continuing resolution for the year, and that piece of legislation actually disposed of 700,000 jobs. It was all couched in the terms of how we're going to solve the deficit, but the reality is you're not going to solve the deficit by making small cuts through multiple programs, and that's what it did. What it actually would have accomplished is to destroy 700,000 jobs here in America.

What we need to do is to take the long view. We need to look at the overarching problem, and we do have a deficit problem. Most of it, frankly, was created during the George W. Bush administration. If you look back to the year 2000 when the Clinton administration ended, there would have been, if the same policies had continued, a $5 billion surplus. We would have wiped out the American debt. That didn't happen. Policies changed, two wars, tax reductions, and an incredible deficit, and the collapse of the American and the worldwide economy.

So where are we today? We're left with a problem. We're going to talk about that today.

I've asked my friend from New York (Mr. Tonko) to join us and my good friend from Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, to join us.

Mr. Tonko, if you would start us.

Thank you, Mr. Tonko.

I would also point out that in the continuing resolution, H.R. 1, that passed this House by the Republican Party, the innovation was essentially destroyed. There had been a layoff of over 6,000 researchers at our national laboratories; money for the ARPA-E, which is the advanced energy research program which was decimated, literally stopped, so that the energy issues you talked about would not be funded going forward. And in the National Institutes of Health, cancer research, heart ailment research, those were also cut. So one thing after another, all that new technology, including technology for the health of Americans, was defunded.

If the gentleman will yield, not more than 23 minutes ago, the House, under the Republican leadership, voted to remove almost $120 million of funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's where the information comes from about the tsunami. The tsunami warning came from that agency. And here we find the Republicans pulling money out of that not more than 25 minutes ago here on the floor.

I would like now to turn to our colleague from the great State of Illinois. Jan, if you would share with us. I know that you have got a project underway, a bill that you are about to introduce. Perhaps you can share it with us.

That kind of legislation is the type of policy we ought to be pushing forward here, one that rewards American corporations that are actually making things in America and employing Americans.

I'm going to turn to our minority whip in just a moment, but this Make It in America slogan was created by Steny Hoyer, and there are about six, seven different policies, some of which we have already covered. We haven't talked about trade yet, but tax policy, which is what you just brought forward, a tax incentive for corporations to be good citizens here. Mr. Tonko talked about energy policy. Labor, certainly that's part of what you talked about; education, which we haven't yet covered; intellectual property, which is, in fact, that research agenda; and the infrastructure. These are all elements of the Make It in America agenda.

Mr. Hoyer, this is your concept of using this term ``Make It in America.'' Would you share with us where we are today with this whole agenda and how things are moving along.

I thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer. And we thank you for your leadership on this entire agenda because this is about middle class America. This is the middle class America that was rapidly disappearing over the last 15 to 20 years as we exported American manufacturing jobs. Your agenda, the Make It in America agenda, brings those jobs back to America.

I will note that there are a couple of pieces of legislation that you could add to that list.

I'll come to the future, but I'd like to add one to the past, and that is, in the legislation that we passed last December, without any Republican votes, there was a provision that gave to every business in America the opportunity to immediately write off, against their taxes, 100 percent of a capital investment. So if they wanted to expand their business they could write off immediately, not depreciate over several years, but immediately. Not a Republican vote for that.

There was also in that piece of legislation, actually in a previous piece of legislation, a tax provision, one of the things we talk about here on our agenda, that would eliminate a tax break that American corporations had when they offshored a job. When they sent a job offshore, American corporations received about $12 billion in tax breaks every year. Well, what's that about? We eliminated it. Again, we had no help from our colleagues on the Republican side.

So our agenda started way before this year. We're going to carry it forward with your leadership. And we've got an agenda here of seven different elements in that, tax policy being one of them.

Thank you so much for your leadership on all of this.

You're kind, but Mr. Tonko's been there this entire time. Let me turn back to Mr. Tonko.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer.

Mr. Tonko, your passion and knowledge on this is extraordinary and so well placed.

If we look at what has happened here on the floor in the last 11 weeks, it has only been about destroying jobs immediately. The continuing resolution that was passed by the Republicans 4 weeks ago actually would destroy, if it became law--fortunately, it hasn't--would destroy 700,000 jobs.

And it's not just those immediate jobs that are lost. As you so correctly point out, the key investments in tomorrow's economy were similarly destroyed. The research agenda for the energy economy was wiped out. The program called ARPA-E, Advanced Research in Energy policy, the program, was wiped out. Those are where the clean energy jobs, those are where the conservation, where the new lights, the new energy systems that we need to deal with the reality of our dependence on foreign oil and the climate change issue, just wiped them out.

Similarly, in the National Institutes of Health, where you are talking about cancer research, research in diabetes, the things that hold back the American economy, because people do get sick. And when they are sick, they are not able to work. So this whole array of research, which is one of the fundamental ingredients of future economic growth, was wiped out by the Republican agenda.

Just today, if I might just add this piece to it, I was looking at the details of the continuing resolution which passed this House some 50 minutes ago. On agricultural research, we know that we have a food crisis coming up. There are going to be 7 billion people in this world. We have a food crisis that is imminent; and in fact, much of the disruption that is going on in the Middle East is in part due to the price of food. There are food shortages. Agricultural research to the tune of over $220 million to $230 million wiped out. Where are we going to get the food for future generations? They like to talk about that.

One final point before I turn it back to you is all of this discussion about the deficit. We have to deal with the deficit. But you can't deal with the deficit by cutting off the ability of the American economy to grow and to perform in the years ahead. So it is the research, it is the Pell Grants for education. All of those things are critical for tomorrow's economic growth.

And you cannot deal with the deficit in 1 year. This is a multiyear program. Therefore, we need to be very careful where we are spending our money so that we create the jobs for tomorrow and we create the opportunity for America to make it, to make things in America once again.

Mr. Tonko?

Mr. Tonko, if I could just pick up on one of the issues you raised, which is the ways in which we spend our money.

Now, we all pay gasoline tax. Right now, it seems as though we are being taxed by the oil companies an extra 50 cents or $1 because the price of gasoline is way up there, but actually the Federal tax on gasoline is about 18.5 cents and on diesel some 25 cents. That money is used to build our infrastructure, our streets, our roads, the interstate highway system, as well as trains, buses, and the like.

The question is, where do we spend that money? Now, previously we would spend that money on buses that were made overseas. We would spend that money on trains and light rail cars that were made overseas. But our agenda here is to bring it home to America. If it is our tax money, we want that money to be spent on things that are made in America. Let me give you a couple of examples on transportation.

Buses: Are they made in America? Our tax money, is it being used to purchase buses that are made in America? It can be. I have a bill that I have introduced that says if it is our tax money, it is going to be spent on American-made equipment. It happens to be the exact same policy that China is following, and it is a good policy.

You have talked about solar and you have talked about wind, the energy future of tomorrow. People and economists that look at the energy issues say that if we go to renewable energy, clean energy sources, we can have an enormous new economy in America. But if we fail to take up the challenge, that economy will be overseas.

How can we jump-start the American economy in the new energy sector? We can do it by using our tax money to support American-made solar systems, whether they are panels like this or the new solar thermal programs, the wind systems. It's our tax money that is allowing these systems to be built.

But are those American-made? My legislation would say, yes, they must be American made. I will give you one example of where this has worked, and this is the President's agenda on high-speed rail. It happens to be mine. I introduced a piece of legislation in California in 1989 that established the High-Speed Rail Commission. We need to do that. And in the legislation, and this was the Recovery Act, the stimulus, it said: money for high-speed rail must be spent on American-made equipment. So Siemens, Austin, other companies are establishing manufacturing facilities in America. We can do it with wise public policy.

I know that you have talked about this and you have introduced some legislation of your own. So if you would share with us your views on how this is working.

Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko. You are a tremendous representative of New York State and America. Your passion for the build it in America, Make It in America agenda, is so very obvious. We thank you for that.

I want to wrap this session up by going back to what we dealt with on the floor earlier today. Earlier today, we dealt with a continuing resolution that would go for 3 weeks, and it has a series of cuts in it. Some of those cuts are appropriate. Some of them are very, very detrimental.

For example, about $120 million of reduction in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That is where we get information on tsunamis. That is where we get information on hurricanes. Why we would cut that out, I have no idea. It is going to be very, very detrimental to America.

On research, we have talked about that, not only in this bill. Agricultural research, so we can move forward once more with a new green revolution so that there will be food for the people of this world and for ourselves, that was cut out of this budget.

And if you love to have germs and other problems with your food, well, you will love what the Republicans did earlier this afternoon when they cut some $24 million out of the animal and plant inspection services. Why we want to have contaminated food, I don't know, but apparently our Republican colleagues do know. So, anyway, that has been done.

But if you take the whole thing in context, I want to point out here that in December, with the continuing resolution in December that was a Democratic-sponsored resolution to continue funding the government for about 3 months, we cut $41 billion out of the budget; $41 billion out of the budget.

Now, when the Republicans came in, they decided to do a new resolution a couple of weeks ago, and that resolution would actually eliminate some 700,000 jobs in America. Is it going to lead to a solution to the deficit? Not really, because we are talking about the discretionary spending, which is a very, very small part of the American budget. As such, there is no way you can really solve the deficit problem in that way.

Yes, we need to make reductions. That is why we did $41 billion back in December. But those were targeted cuts that continued to allow America to invest in those things that create jobs.

We are now into a new set of continuing resolutions, 2 weeks 2 weeks ago, another 3 weeks this week. That is no way to run a government, but that is apparently what we have been reduced to.

Now, I understand the argument that we didn't get an appropriation bill last fall. Why wasn't there an appropriation bill last fall? The reason is that it was blocked in the Senate by a handful of folks that threatened a filibuster. That is why we don't have a resolution. That is why we have been thrown into this continuing resolution problem.

What we need to do is take the long term. In President Obama's budget, the long-term deficit is dealt with over a period of 5 years, bringing down the deficit to a point where it is an acceptable part of the American economy. It allows the economy to grow with investments that are made now in infrastructure, education, investments made in research and development, so that we can grow the economy for tomorrow. That is a wise way to do it. But a feeding frenzy of cuts that actually would eliminate 700,000 jobs is not the way you grow the American economy.

We have to be wise. We have to have the long term. And we have had the long term before. During the Clinton administration, we actually balanced the budget for the last 2\1/2\ years of that administration; and had those policies gone forward during the Bush administration, had those policies been kept in place, we would have eliminated the American debt. It would have been gone.

But those policies were radically changed by the George W. Bush administration; two tax cuts, not paid for, most of those benefits going to the high end of the economy, to the very, very wealthy, resulting in a significant increase in the deficit; and then an increase in the Medicare program for drug benefits, again not paid for, increasing the deficit; and two wars, neither of which were paid for, the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war, not paid for but, rather, borrowed money from China and other places.

The result of that was an enormous increase in the deficit followed by the Great Recession, which was basically caused by greed, Wall Street greed and the elimination of regulation. It was as though you had an NFL football game and you wiped out the sidelines, you took the referees off the field, sent them back to the locker room, and said, Okay, play ball, boys. You know what would happen. Chaos. That is what we got in the financial sector when regulation was removed, and we wound up with the Great Recession.

We need to put in place sound regulation, good regulation, and we need to have the referees on the field. We also need to have a long- term vision on how to deal with the deficit, and you cannot do it by just, in a feeding frenzy, wiping out critical programs that create future economic growth. Unfortunately, that is what our Republican colleagues have suggested we do.

We are not there yet. H.R. 1, the resolution that would have lost 700,000 jobs, was stopped in the Senate. We are now into a process of short-term continuing

resolutions to keep the government going.

Be wise as you put forward those resolutions, I would ask my colleagues on the Republican side. It is a great challenge. It is a challenge that we must and we will meet. We need a balanced, long-term vision, bringing the economy along, allowing it to grow and to build in the future, whether that be the green tech economy of the future, the medical systems, the health care systems. We have great opportunity, but those opportunities will not be met if we are not wise and if we have the wrong kinds of deficit reduction plans, which, again, we saw today on this floor not more than an hour ago.

I thank my colleagues for their participation.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, 10 weeks ago on this floor there was great celebration by our colleagues in the Republican Party as they took control of this House, and there were many sermons given to all of us by the Members in the majority party about the need to listen to Americans. I suggest we do that at this moment as we consider this bill.

Madam Chair, 10,780,236 American families are crying out for help. We should be listening to them.

I know the gentlewoman from Illinois has a big heart, and she knows that 430,000 of the homeowners in Illinois are crying out for relief. And I'm certain, Madam Chairman, that the author of this bill, the gentleman from Alabama, is well aware that in his State 35,000 homeowners are crying out for relief. And I'm certain that all of the Members of the Republican Party are listening to the 10,780,236 families in America that are crying out for relief. I can assure you the Democrats are listening.

My amendment, Madam Chair, is one that goes to one of the three reasons why they are crying out for relief.

There was no regulation imposed during the years 2001 to 2009. That was one problem. We attempted to address that with the Dodd-Frank law that's now in place.

The second reason was irresponsibility; and certainly some of those homeowners who are crying out for relief were irresponsible, and certainly some of those who lost their homes already that are crying out for relief were irresponsible. But the big irresponsibility were the bankers in this Nation. They took advantage of millions upon millions of homeowners and engaged in irresponsible activity.

The third item is where my amendment goes, and that is to Wall Street greed. We know, from the commission that was assigned the responsibility of looking at why the great crash occurred, we know from that report that greed was the underlying motivation for Wall Street. My amendment goes to that greed.

In the future, not in the past--and some of my colleagues have spoken to the need for criminal action, which is also part of that report done by the commission--this goes to the future. This amendment goes to the future and says for those in Wall Street, the high and the mighty that get the huge bonuses, most of whom were just in the newspaper this week, that their bonuses should be in the stock of the company in which they are operating and that those bonuses be held in an escrow account for a period of time so that either the good or the bad effect of their action would be known and so that they could not take immediate benefit from their irresponsible actions.

This amendment would put a damper on Wall Street greed. This amendment is necessary to put a damper on Wall Street greed, and it goes directly to one of the reasons why this bill is before us. This bill is before us, I think in an inappropriate way, to deal with the housing crisis. The housing crisis was caused in part by Wall Street greed. We ought to be addressing that. That's what this amendment does, by withholding from immediate benefit those members of Wall Street who have created the crisis in the past and who may very well be in the process of creating tomorrow's crisis.

I ask for the support of this amendment.

Point of Order

I think that it's necessary when we take up a bill that would eliminate a law that is intended to help 10,780,326 homeowners that we look to the underlying reason why the problem exists. This amendment does that.

We ought not be using artificial rules that prevent us from the underlying problem, allowing those rules to stop us from taking up the real problem.

I oppose the proposal to rule this out of order.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Yes, we ought to look to the children. Last Sunday on ``60 Minutes'' was a report about our children in America today. Twenty-five percent of our children in America today are hungry, and many of them are homeless because their parents have lost their homes.

Forty-two families. Yes, this program hasn't yet kicked into its full potential. Forty-two families are in their homes today, and those children are not out on the street homeless.

Listen to America. Listen to the 25 percent of children in America today that are hungry, and a large percentage of them are homeless. Listen to their cry. Listen to them. Yes, we have an obligation as good citizens of this Nation to see to it that our neighborhoods, even if they are the high-end neighborhoods in Alabama, that those problems are addressed.

Ten months ago, the new majority took this floor and they said, Listen, listen to Americans that want jobs. Not one job bill has passed this House. The only bill that's passed this House that dealt with jobs was H.R. 1, the continuing resolution, that destroyed 700,000 jobs and will put more of those children homeless, will destroy more families. Yes, we ought to be listening to the generations ahead of us. But if we do not listen to today's problems, those problems in the future will only be worse.

And $8 billion, yes, that's a lot of money. But it happens to be 8 percent of what we spend every year in the Afghan war. Get our priorities straight here on this floor. You bet I'm worried about the children of today. But 25 percent of Americans' children are hungry, and a large percentage of them are homeless because their parents have been unable to meet the mortgage commitments.

This program is one of four that is going to be terminated by the Republican majority.

So what is it that you are offering those children? The children of today, what is it that you are offering them? The opportunity to be homeless. That's what you're offering.

Come to this floor and talk to me about tomorrow's generation. Yes, do that. And that's my concern also. But I'm concerned about those that are homeless and hungry today.

So don't eliminate this program. Make it work. Don't eliminate the other three programs that are an effort to try to keep people in their homes so that they don't go homeless.

Madam Chair, I know my colleagues on the Republican side care about the children of America, today's children. Why they would put four bills forward this week and next week that eliminate the opportunity for those parents to stay in their home I do not understand. We need compassion. We need to be aware of the deficit. We need to make choices. If our choice is to force more families to be homeless, that's the wrong choice.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, today we want to talk about jobs. The people in my district, the 10th Congressional District of California, in Concord, Antioch, Pittsburg, Fairfield, Livermore, they want jobs. They want to go to work. They want this government to create jobs.

We are now in the 10th week of the new majority, the Republican majority, and thus far there has not been one significant, useful job bill brought to the floor. Instead, we had a CR brought to the floor that, in all probability, will cost America 700,000 jobs. That's what the CR, the first piece of legislation introduced by the Republicans, would do, 700,000 jobs. And it's all across the board: construction jobs, research, manufacturing jobs, education.

We just heard one fellow stand up here on the floor and say he was worried about his children. He should be, because the bill that he voted for less than 10 days ago will destroy thousands and thousands of teaching jobs across this Nation, including 218,000 young children that will not be in the Head Start program. We can't afford that kind of a ``jobs'' program.

Joining me today is Betty Sutton from the great State of Ohio, in the heart of the once very strong manufacturing base of this Nation.

Ms. Sutton, if you would tell us what's going on in Ohio and how you see these issues.

And reduce the budget deficit.

Our President in his State of the Union said that we have to out- educate, out-research, out-manufacture and out-build the rest of the world. Yet the first significant piece of legislation

that the Republicans moved through this House goes in exactly the opposite direction. It does in fact reduce the education. I guess 20,000 or 30,000 teachers are going to lose their jobs. Kids will not be there.

But the thing that really struck me--we were talking earlier with my colleague from Maryland about this--is the research. In the area of research, which are tomorrow's jobs, what does this CR do? What does the Republican Caucus want to do? They want to cut back on the research. You're looking at a significant number. I think it's over 5,000 key researchers.

Could our colleague from Maryland share with us her experience and her knowledge, because you are in one of the research centers.

If America is going to make it, we must once again make it in America. Manufacturing matters, and the first step in the manufacturing of this century is the research. It's the well-educated workforce that's capable of doing the new things and the research that goes with it. You are very fortunate in your district to have some major research facilities. NOAA and NASA are in this area. In my own district I have the Lawrence Livermore labs and, adjacent to it, the Lawrence Berkeley labs and the Berkeley campus as well as the University of California-Davis campus where research is what it's all about.

In the continuing resolution, 700,000 jobs. That's a big number, and we just don't focus on that. But we're talking about real people. This is the job next to you that's going to be lost. Sandia Laboratories was in my office no more than an hour ago talking about research for nuclear power and how we're going to deal with that. I told them if the Republicans get their way, 5,500 researchers at the national labs are going to lose their jobs. So what of tomorrow's energy systems? $1.7 billion would be taken out of the Department of Energy's future energy research. So solar, photovoltaic, advanced biofuels, the research for tomorrow so that we can actually wean ourselves from foreign oil, gone. Gone.

You go, What is this, just a feeding frenzy? Is it wise? Is there any real thought put on this? I think the answer for me is no.

I notice that our colleague, new to the House but not new to the issues from Rhode Island, has joined us. How does this affect Rhode Island? What does this mean to your State?

Thank you very much for the perspective from Rhode Island. I was, years ago, on the Blackstone River, which I think was the heart of the Industrial Revolution here in the United States; and they were using water power for the mills at that time. A fascinating, great history. And now the most advanced technology is also done in Rhode Island, a lot of it having to do with the construction of submarines and the like. Very, very advanced. But all of that comes from the research, the engineering, the STEM education: science, technology, engineering, mathematics.

I would like to turn back to our colleague from Maryland. I see that she has a few more thoughts. She was kind of anxious to get back into this discussion.

Let me pick up a couple of the themes that you hit upon. One of them, continuing on with research in this area of this part of the country, and certainly in the San Francisco Bay area, where I represent, health care research is huge. It is an extraordinarily big part of the economy, both the research and then the spin-offs from it. We call this the biotech. And this is almost entirely health care- related biotech. We also have the biofuels, again coming out of research.

The Republican continuing resolution reduces funding for the National Institutes of Health by $1.6 billion. We are talking about 25,000 health-related research projects that will either stop, be delayed, or pushed off the track--25,000. We're talking about things that are really serious to us: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all of the things that affect every American and literally everybody in this world. The research would be slowed down, stopped, and in some cases terminated as a result of the feeding frenzy that went on here on this floor where more than 400 amendments were considered with very, very little thought.

Our colleague Betty Sutton talked about, yes, cuts, but be smart with your cuts. Don't just take whatever is on your mind, whatever the latest sound bite is, because it may have a very detrimental effect. You are looking at in this case the National Institutes of Health. Human health. Our well-being as Americans; and that means 25,000 research jobs would be terminated.

Now, the press doesn't follow the details. The press follows the game. Is the Senate going to act, or will we have a government shutdown? That's an interesting game. But underlying those will-they won't-they issues are the issues of what actually is in the legislation; and this particular piece of legislation, 700,000 jobs, critical needs that we have as human beings for health, jobs that we need in the future, whether they are in the science field, in the manufacturing field, and jobs for today in the construction industry.

Pulling money out of construction for infrastructure; programs to provide clean water for our communities--thousands of those programs will die as a result of the Republican continuing resolution which is now before the Senate. Hopefully, the Senate will be wiser than what happened here on the floor. We can go on and on.

I developed a list, I call it the dirty dozen, and these are specific things, education, I know that's a big thing in your district, University of Maryland, I think it's adjacent to your district, but you claim it, don't you?

Precisely so.

At the University of Maryland, I suspect it's similar to what I found in the California State University system, which is the largest university system, they would argue, in the world. We may want to find out what China's actually up to, but it's a huge system.

The Pell Grant is a critical element in providing the opportunity for students to stay in school. Yet the continuing resolution supported by the Republicans here on this floor, and now over in the Senate for consideration, would drastically reduce the Pell Grant by some $870 per person at the same time that the tuition at all of the universities is going up, literally making it very difficult for tens or hundreds of thousands of students to stay in school, and these are the future workers in the high-value jobs that we need here in America.

So, it's not just the higher education and the Pell Grants that are being cut, but at the beginning, the Head Start program, we're talking about young children who do not have an opportunity because of their family's poverty to get started in education, a proven program that actually works. Now, not every Head Start program--and last year, we put together a program to weed out those that are not successful and bring in new ones that would be able to replace them. But 218,000 young children from impoverished families are going to be thrown off of the Head Start program, not next year, but as soon as this continuing resolution becomes law. We can't let that happen.

So we will fight. Firstly, and hopefully, the President, should this somehow pass the Senate and come back to this House and be passed, the President should veto it because I know that he wants to out-educate, out-build, and out-innovate every other country in the world; and you cannot do that unless you have a highly educated workforce soon and later, beginning with those children in the Head Start program.

Now, this is a program in your year that I understand that is important to you.

We kind of bracket the United States here. We've got the east coast with Maryland, and I'm out on the Pacific coast, but somewhere in between I believe is the State of Colorado, and I noticed our colleague from the State of Colorado was standing over there, and he had that ``I've got to get involved in this'' look. Please join us and share with us Colorado, which has some of these programs and is very, very important to all of us.

Two wars.

Let's continue the conversation for a few moments here.

Presumably, these cuts were made to deal with the deficit. We've got a deficit problem. Thank you so very much for going back to the history of how we wound up with this huge deficit problem. It did begin in 2000 when the Clinton administration left office.

The projection for the decade 2000 to 2010 was there would be a $5 trillion surplus, $5 trillion surplus. Based upon the policies that were in place when Clinton left office, 2001, $5 trillion surplus, literally paying off all of America's debt--gone, history.

What happened? How well you said it. Two tax cuts that were not paid for that cut the revenue of the Federal Government. Two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, not paid for. First time in America's history that we went to war without having some way to pay for it, that is, some tax policy to pay for it. And then on top of that, a Medicare program, the drug benefit, again, a hundred billion dollar program, not paid for, and then the heart attack.

The crash of the world economy was caused by excess Wall Street exuberance. In many cases, that exuberance was fraud, misdirection, and the collapse of the financial industry taking down the world economy and our economy.

If we were to look at the proposal that President Obama put forth in his budget that came out about a month ago, he put forth a program that would hold government expenditures at a 5-year freeze, that is, no increase, but they're being able to continue to pay for those necessary programs for Aunt Maude and for Nephew Rick--was it Nephew Rick?

Nephew Joey. It was that other uncle that was making off like a bandit.

So that was to freeze the level of expenditure and to put in place tax policies so that your oil company executive would begin paying a fair share, rather than getting a very significant tax break, beginning to pay their share back into this economy.

Over time, and this was about in 7 years, the percentage of the GDP, the gross domestic product, that was to debt, or to the deficit, would fall from around 11 percent down to about 3 percent, so that it would be managed over time.

Going back to your analogy, you've got all of those debts built up during the 2000 to 2010 period or 2008 period, and then, taking time, 6, 7 years, to bring it back under control, not with the kind of chaotic cuts that are now being proposed by our Republican friends where we would actually slow down the economy, throw some 700,000 people out of work, reducing tax revenues, increasing unemployment, unemployment expenses go up, hospital, emergency room expenses go up because people no longer have health care, and on the other end, people losing their homes. They don't have a job, you can't pay the mortgage, you're going to lose your home, so the housing market would also be hit as a result of the proposal that actually passed this floor with Republican support. I think there were only three or four Democrats who voted for it.

We need to have a wise policy. We need to make cuts. To be sure, we need to make cuts. And I want to put one example on the table here before we go any further and people think that we're not supporting cuts. We asked last year the Congressional Research Office, a nonpartisan group, to take a look at governmental programs and to tell us where the duplication is, where the unnecessary programs are in governmental programs.

That report just came out yesterday. And I was thumbing through it quickly. I don't have it in front of me, but I was going through it. And what struck me was that most of the duplication, most of the unnecessary programs and the waste turned out to be in one Department of this government. It happens to be the Department of Defense. No surprise. No surprise. Duplication, unnecessary expenditures and line after line after line came up that that's where we should be focusing. There are other programs, to be sure, but the big bucks, the big dollars were in the Department of Defense.

Now, it is pretty well known, certainly in my district, and I'd like anybody else to know, that I think this war in Afghanistan ought to end right away. That's $120 billion. Let's just say we leave behind in Afghanistan for social and economic development, to deal like a laser on al Qaeda, the real terrorists that may be there and in Pakistan and in other places, let's just say we can take back $100 billion. That happens to be $40 billion more than the continuing resolution that was put forth here. I don't want to get too far off track, but that's a lot of money. And ultimately, we're going to leave, and they're going to go about doing what they need to do over there. But we need to focus on the terrorism and focus significantly like a laser on that.

Maybe I got a little bit off track with it, but if you want to save $100 billion, there's $100 billion.

Please.

I am delighted to hear the gentleman from Colorado's perspective.

Two things immediately on my mind, and I see my senior colleague from the great State of New York has joined us. I will call on him in just a second.

One of the things that we are focused on in the Democratic Caucus is making it in America, rebuilding the manufacturing in America so that America can make it. Manufacturing really matters because this is where the middle class is. This is where the middle class jobs are, when you couple that with the power of the unions to make sure that working men and women, the middle class, get a share of the wealth that is generated when we manufacture things.

Some what is going on in the Midwest, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and other States is really important in making sure that the wealth that is generated in this Nation is available to everyone in this Nation, particularly those people who are making things in America once more. Wouldn't we all love to go into a Target store and find on every shelf ``Made in America.'' Chinese, fine, you guys are doing okay. But I want those things made in America.

Two pieces of legislation that I have introduced, along with many others that my colleagues have introduced, simply say if it is our tax money that is being used to support, for example, solar, photovoltaic systems, the wind turbines, the biofuel systems, if it is our tax money that is being used for the production tax credits or to subsidize the solar cells on your house, buy American-made cells. Buy American. That is American dollars. Use that money in America.

Similarly, you and I, we are paying 18\1/2\ cents on every gallon of gas to support traffic, to support highway construction, buses, trains, and light rail systems. Our money should be used to purchase trains and buses and light rail systems that are made in America.

Certainly, and then I will turn it over to Mr. Rangel.

Mr. Rangel, please join us here.

If the gentleman would yield, first, thank you so very much for joining us and for bringing a perspective of four decades of extraordinary work here on the floor and in the committees, for keeping us on track, and for keeping that vision that America is a great place. Americans are strong and resilient and really want to improve their positions and, even more so, want to improve their children's positions. Therefore, the key investments that we must make for today and on into the future are pretty straightforward.

We need to have the best education in the world. We've got a long way to go. We're not going to get there by eliminating Head Start, by eliminating the Pell Grants, by forcing kids out of school, by shutting down classes or by taking classes from 20 to 35 kids. That's what my daughter faces. She's a second-grade teacher. She now has 33 kids in her class. She'll probably have 35 in a couple of months. She had 20 last year. We can't improve the education system. Research. That's tomorrow. Research is tomorrow. If we don't do it today, we will lose this.

Already I'm getting companies coming to me, saying we have to improve the research. We have to have that research tax credit because what's happening is the manufacturing isn't in America--it's overseas--and now the research is following the manufacturing. We've got to turn that around. Yet the continuing resolution cuts research: energy research, research in manufacturing, research in health care.

So where is tomorrow?

Tomorrow is going to be overseas unless we return it to America with smart investments in the future: infrastructure; transportation, moving people here and there; information infrastructure. The continuing resolution cuts infrastructure. Those are ``today'' jobs that give us the future. We can go on and on here, but we are nearly out of time.

What I would ask my Republican colleagues is to put the feeding frenzy aside and to sit down and look at what really can be cut without harming the future. We can do this. We can make it once again in America if we use our tax policy wisely, if we use our tax money to support American-made products--buses, trains, solar cells, wind turbines. Our tax money should be used to buy those pieces of equipment that are made in America.

I would love to yield to you anytime.

This is a great country, and we're going to have a great future. We're in tough times right now, and we've been in tough times in the past. But if we have wise, thoughtful policies, we'll pull this country together, and we will deal with the deficit. We just can't do it in ways that are not wise and that do not give us the investments for the future.

I think our time has expired. Thank you so very much for joining us. Thank you for your years of service to this Nation as a Member of Congress and as a war hero. We thank you.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Garamendi

Amendment No. 7: At the end of the bill, add the following

new section:

Madam Speaker, today, March 1, marks the 50th anniversary of the United States Peace Corps. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy, together with Sargent Shriver, established the most remarkable, long-lasting, and incredibly successful United States Peace Corps. On the announcement of the establishment of the Peace Corps, countries around the world clamored to have Americans of all ages come to their country and assist in the economic development of those countries.

To date, over 200,000 Americans have followed that call to service and have served in over 130 countries. Today, some 77 countries have Peace Corps volunteers and another 20 countries request the presence of Peace Corps volunteers.

My wife, Patti, and I are proud returned Peace Corps volunteers. Joining me today to celebrate this 50th anniversary are two other returned Peace Corps volunteers. And together with Sam Farr, who unfortunately cannot join us this evening, we comprise the four Members of Congress who are returned Peace Corps volunteers.

I would like to call upon my colleague from California, Mike Honda, to join us here to express his own experiences of his work here in Congress and how his Peace Corps experiences may have reflected upon his work.

Mike, if you'll join us.

Congressman Mike Honda, thank you so very, very much.

Let me now turn to my colleague on the Republican side, Tom Petri, who also served.

Tom, if you could share some of your experiences with us.

Tom, thank you so very much for your experiences. What year were you in Somalia?

MR. PETRI. I was in Somalia in 1966-67.

Those were the same years that Patti and I were in Ethiopia, and we served in the far western part of Ethiopia in a very small town.

Well, that's exactly the case. And it's not unusual to find wars going on. But as Mike Honda was talking about the President of Peru, who started his climb up the economic and educational ladder as a result of his experience with a Peace Corps teacher in Peru, the same thing happens in the countries in which you and I and other Peace Corps volunteers serve.

I recall in 1999-2000, when the war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a group of us became interlocutors trying to figure out how to get these two countries to settle up. And because we were able to stand on the shoulders of so many Peace Corps volunteers that had served in those countries, we were able to meet with the President of Eritrea and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in two separate meetings and just talk to them about peace, about why they were fighting, why this war was going on that killed nearly 100,000 soldiers at that point. And it turned out that they were willing to talk to us. The reason was that in their high schools they were taught by Peace Corps volunteers, and they had this trust. They knew we didn't represent the American Government. They knew that we were there searching for peace as we had when we were volunteers. It turned out that those conversations led to the essence of the settlement of that war, the peace treaty.

And I'll never forget a day when--actually, a gentleman who's here in the gallery at the moment, Chic Dambach was one of our team, and another fellow, Mike McCaskey, who was then the president of the Chicago Bears, he was part of our team. We sat down with the foreign minister of Ethiopia, and we were talking about where we served in the Peace Corps and Mike was saying he served in the northern part of the country. And the foreign minister said, what school? And Mike described the school. It turned out that Mike was the teacher for the foreign minister, and immediately there was a connection. That connection then led to the meeting that we had with Meles and the conversation that ultimately led to a peace treaty. Our role was ended, but the African Union carried on.

Those are the relationships that count. We never know when they're going to materialize. It's quite possible that the people that you taught may one day be the leaders in Somalia once again. And these are the foundations upon which the Peace Corps breeds.

Thank you so very much for joining us. I know that you have another appointment that you need to get to. But the experience of a Peace Corps--and my wife, when she was the associate director of the Peace Corps, would often say that a Peace Corps volunteer leaves to search for peace and returns, and throughout one's life, continues that process. Our work here in Congress is part of that. Thank you so very much for your service and joining us this evening.

The interest in the Peace Corps is not just shared by those of us who are return volunteers; it's also served, and the interest is found, by others.

I'd like to invite here to the well a colleague of mine from California, Congresswoman Lois Capps, who represents the Santa Barbara area up into Santa Maria. Would you care to join us? Thank you so very much for doing so.

Sam, if there was wisdom it was because you suggested it. Don't run off. I would like to ask you a couple of questions about your service.

Sam, the President's words were very touching to me, and I know they were to you, because we were part of the Peace Corps, and we still are, not so much because of our role here in Congress, but rather because once you are a Peace Corps volunteer you never leave the service of peace. Talk to me about where you served and the work that you did as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Before you arrived here, you spent many years in the California legislature, where I had the privilege of working with you. You started the discussion about your own Peace Corps experience by answering the call to action, President Kennedy's very famous call: Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you

can do for your country. I know that for you and for myself, and even more so for my wife Patti----

Certainly the pull personally, but much more important than that was the pull that Patti exerted upon me. I had an opportunity to play professional football, but turned that down to get married and to spend a 2-year honeymoon in the far western part of Ethiopia, where there was no running water, and we literally lived in a wattle, which is a mud-walled home with a corrugated tin roof and an outhouse out back. And it turned out to be the most marvelous honeymoon, and it's still going on now some almost 46 years later. So it was a beautiful opportunity for us to serve.

And then the rest of what you said is a Peace Corps volunteer never leaves a life of service. We transform it into many, many ways. Lois Capps talked about three or four examples from her own district of returned Peace Corps volunteers and the way they inserted themselves into their communities for service, and in one case international food.

Well, it really speaks to the thousands of Peace Corps volunteers that worked in Ethiopia and Eritrea. In the late nineties, a war broke out between those two countries.

There is, here in Washington today, well over 100,000 people from Ethiopia and Eritrea. They were getting riled up and choosing sides. Those of us that served in Ethiopia, together with Chic Dambach, who is here in the gallery, set out to try to get these people here in the Washington area to work towards peace rather than to get into an argument amongst themselves over which country was right or wrong. From there we very quickly found ourselves invited to travel to both Ethiopia and Eritrea, where we were able to meet with the heads of state.

In both cases, the team that was assembled, there were five of us, myself, I was then just leaving Federal Government service as the Deputy Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Dambach had just left the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Association, the National Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Association, a Federal appellate court judge who had served in Ethiopia who was then on the bench in Arizona in the Ninth Circuit; Mike McCaskey, who was then the president of the Chicago Bears; and another fellow who was deeply involved in African relief issues.

We journeyed and we sat down and met with first the President of Eritrea and had a 3-hour conversation with him about the war and why the war was underway, what his goals were.

We then traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where we met first with the foreign minister of Ethiopia, who actually was a student of Mike McCaskey. They talked about it, and there was this bond that was immediately established between them.

Shortly thereafter, the foreign minister arranged a meeting with Prime Minister Meles, and, again, we spent nearly 3 hours with him asking him about the war from his perspective, what there was. It came to the five of us that there was a way to find peace, that there was a path that could bridge these differences that these two countries had that at that point had resulted in nearly 100,000 soldiers, both Ethiopia and Eritrean, having been killed in that war.

We turned that information over to the Organization of African Unity, which was then working towards some sort of a settlement. And, shortly thereafter, within a couple of months, the basic elements of the peace treaty were developed, and they were based upon the work that we had done. There was some more back and forth that took place. But our team was invited to Algeria for the signing of the ceremony of peace.

So the work for peace really never ends, and I know you are doing it here in Congress.

There is another example of an individual who has dedicated his life to peace. He now heads up an organization that is a consortium of nongovernment organizations that are dedicated to searching for peace in countries around the world and trying to resolve disputes before they come to war.

We would just be derelict in our duty if we didn't make a heavy-duty pitch here for people to join the Peace Corps.

Everywhere I go on campuses, people, the young men and women that are graduating, and older people--I think 7 percent of the volunteers today are over 50 years of age. The next election may give us an opportunity to return to the Peace Corps. Who knows what will come of that.

But whatever your age is, the Peace Corps offers you an opportunity to serve.

And as you were talking about Peace Corps volunteers working with young families, our son and daughter served in Paraguay in the Peace Corps, and her work was precisely that, working with her families in her community in Paraguay. They were also in a rural area working on family health on the issues of raising children, healthy children, and providing them with information about how they could better take care of their families and have a better life.

Our son was involved in community development work. Our two daughters also served in the Peace Corps, and for young men and women, and others who are not so young, the Peace Corps offers an incredible opportunity to serve the world, serve this country, and to serve the needs of individuals in a one-on-one relationship in some 77 countries now, and hopefully with a small increase in the Peace Corps budget, which stands just at $400 million.

You issued, you gave a statistic earlier in your discussion that is really, I think, important. For every soldier that we send to Afghanistan, we could send 13 Americans somewhere in the world to work on the issues of poverty, the issues of education, social development, societal development, and peace. So it's a 13-1 ratio, a great investment.

Aaron Williams is the current Peace Corps director. He was a volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970, served 3 years.

There are many, many opportunities that the Peace Corps develops and yes, indeed, they can come home with a new family or wife. You are quite correct about Aaron.

There are 8,655 volunteers, as of today, serving in 77 countries, urban, rural, in all kinds of work. Just some of the statistics are, I think, interesting; education, 37 percent. We were teachers and community development. Actually, Patti and I were involved in the smallpox eradication program, Ethiopia being one of the last countries to eradicate smallpox.

Health, HIV/AIDS, was 22 percent. Business. Do you want to be a graduate of Harvard Business School and really get some experience? Fourteen percent of the volunteers do that.

I have a great example of this. A television reporter, a cameraman in the San Francisco Bay area, is about to retire; and every time I see him, he says, I'm going to go in the Peace Corps. And I say, have you gone online, peacecorps.gov, to put your application in? He says, no. And I said, well, the next time I see you, I want you to tell me that you have your application in. He wants to take his knowledge of reporting and television camera work overseas to work with countries that are developing their own media for the purposes of providing that foundation for a democratic society. And he would be terrific. He's a great reporter.

Sam, we're just about out of time.

Today, March 1, 2011, marks the 50th anniversary, the 50th birthday of the United States Peace Corps. It's been an incredible organization all of these years. Over 200,000 Americans have served, both young and old, in some 139 countries. And so for all of those out there that want to do something very, very special with their life, well, you can Google it or you can go directly to peacecorps.gov. Put your application in and see what the toughest job you ever loved will bring to you.

Congressman Sam Farr, thank you so very much for joining me this evening, for Tom Petri and Mike Honda, the four of us who are in Congress that were--that remain--Peace Corps volunteers, and for Lois Capps joining us and giving her perspective, a very big ``thank you.''

Happy birthday, Peace Corps.

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PEACE CORPS