Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill, and I choose my words carefully when I say this, but this bill really, in my opinion, is a cynical attempt to make a campaign promise good. When I say that, I mean it's three things: number one, in the guise of budget reconciliation, the reason this bill is here so quickly to the floor, through conference so fast, out of the other body is they brought it to the floor through budget reconciliation.

What is budget reconciliation? It's a way of reducing the deficit, $752 million of savings for over $20 billion of spending. That's a cynical attempt to exploit the budget deficit reduction process to create a brand-new government program and an avalanche of new spending.

Why else is it cynical? It cuts student rates in half for 6 months, and then it doubles it 6 months later to try and shoehorn this bill into compliance with the majority's PAYGO. To try and say that they are paying for this bill, they give students, graduates, not students, graduates a cut in their interest rates for 6 months in half and then double it 6 months later.

It also, cynically, creates five new entitlement programs. What are entitlement programs? Entitlement programs are spending programs that go on autopilot. It has sunsets in these programs, but the most permanent thing in Washington is a temporary government program, especially a temporary entitlement program.

Take all this together, and assume that Congress, down the road, will not eliminate these five new entitlement programs once they've been established. Assume they won't just cut interest rates for graduates for only 6 months, but for longer, and you've got another 20 to $30 billion of spending out the door.

And lastly, Madam Speaker, this takes from the private sector and gives to the government. This puts onto the taxpayers' liability these liabilities. This says, instead of private firms that are out there processing loans right now that worked really well, my student loans came from these sources,

this says, no, we want the taxpayer to bear the burden. We want the taxpayer to be on the hook for these loans if they default.

Look, we have problems with loans all over. We have this meltdown in the mortgage markets with sub-prime loans, and we're saying, now, in Congress, let's put more liability on the taxpayer books? If it ain't broken, don't fix it. We have a system that works well. We have a system that helps students.

This bill does nothing to address the high cost of tuition. It cynically attempts to make it appear as though it makes borrowing a little less expensive for people after they graduate, and then it doubles the interest rate 6 months later.

For all of those reasons, Madam Speaker, the abuse of the budget reconciliation process, the increase of taxpayer liability, and the creation, irresponsibly, of five new entitlement programs, when three current entitlement programs right now are bringing us into a mountain of debt, a mountain, a legacy of debt to our children and grandchildren, the last thing we ought to do is create five new entitlement programs.

For all those reasons, I urge a ``no'' vote, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this bill and the bill that just passed before us is a fiscal Frankenstein. It is a typical pattern: more budget gimmicks on spending, more tax increases.

Last week, a farm bill passed. Budget gimmicks, tax increases. Earlier this week, the SCHIP bill passed. Budget gimmicks, tax increases. Today, right now, these energy bills are passing. What are they? Budget gimmicks, tax increases.

Right now, the bill that just passed before had $6 billion in savings that were used last week in last week's farm bill, all to give the appearance that the majority is keeping their word on their PAYGO.

More importantly, these bills, in addition to their budget gimmicks, raise taxes on consumers. This will cost our constituents at their pocketbooks and at the pump.

The worst part of this bill, I think, aside from the fact that it seeks to pick winners and losers in the marketplace, to do nothing, nothing, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to reduce our independence, it has $6 billion of walk-around money, of green pork, for large city mayors and Governors. No accountability. Just as long as it is in the spirit of green, in the spirit of, you know, energy, you get the money.

Every time we have ever built a new program before, as this one does, you have example after example of waste, fraud and abuse. It doesn't do a thing to help the environment, it doesn't do a thing to help our fiscal balance sheet, but it does everything to create a new program that wastes money, that requires higher taxes.

We are seeing a consistent pattern here: more spending gimmicks and more tax increases. These tax increases will raise prices. They will raise prices on energy. They will raise gas prices.

This is a missed opportunity, and the missed opportunity is we could have worked together to make ourselves less dependent on foreign oil, do a better job on energy conservation, and advance the cause for renewables.

Sadly, this does not do it, because it is more budget gimmicks and spending increases.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

I rise in opposition to this for a number of reasons. Does anybody on Earth think that by raising taxes on oil and gas that we're not going to raise prices on oil and gas? Does anybody believe that we're not going to raise gas prices with this bill? Does anybody believe that we're not going to make it more expensive for people to heat their homes? Does anybody believe we're not going to make us more dependent on foreign oil? That's what this bill does. This bill raises gas prices, makes it more expensive for us to heat our homes, make us more dependent on foreign oil, and less competitive internationally.

It could have been a good bill. It could have done more to make us less dependent on foreign oil. It could have helped us do more to make us energy independent, renewable. And why are we raising all these taxes? So we can come up with a new pork barrel spending program to give to big cities to spend as they wish.

Why on Earth would we do that when we're going to make our constituents pay higher gas prices? The intentions are noble. The delivery is bad. This policy has been tried before, and it has failed.

I urge defeat of this bill because it is a missed opportunity. It's a missed opportunity to a real bipartisan success, like we had in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, where we invested in hydrogen, in renewable energy, in conservation and, yes, in more domestic production. That's what we should do. You can't do one and not the other.

We need to produce more energy here so we're less dependent on foreign oil. That's very important. This does none of that. It goes in the wrong direction.

We need to incentivize conservation. There's some conservation incentives here. We need to do more on renewables and do it in such a way where it's not picking winners and losers; where the best technology gets funded. Sadly, this bill says we're going to pick this technology and not that technology, and by doing so, we're hurting tomorrow's breakthroughs, tomorrow's innovations.

What we really ought to do is make us less dependent on foreign oil, lower gas prices, lower home heating costs, more conservation, and not pick winners and losers, and incentivize tomorrow's breakthroughs so the genius of America can continue to expand and come up with those new technologies we never heard of before.

Sadly, this prevents that from happening. It disincentivizes that. I urge a ``no'' vote because we shouldn't be raising taxes, doing budget gimmicks and making it more expensive for us to take our kids to school, to go to work and heat our homes.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this debate is really puzzling. If this was a status quo bill, if this was the same law that we already have in place, no new people, then why does it cost $130 billion in more money? Why does it cost so much more?

This bill goes way beyond insuring low-income children. If this was all about just giving health insurance to uninsured low-income children, no problem. You would have a near unanimous vote out of here. That's not what this bill does.

They say this bill doesn't have those income limits. This bill has no income limits. This bill says to the States, give it to whomever you want, no asset test, no income limits. That's why this test costs so much money.

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office is saying in analyzing this bill that they will push 2.4 million kids off of private insurance onto government health care, not my statistics, the Congressional Budget Office.

They are already acknowledging that this is more about insuring low- income, uninsured kids. This is really about putting people on government health care, especially those who even have health insurance today.

My friends, our constituents, the U.S. taxpayer, don't want to pay for health care that's already being paid for by someone else. But that is what this bill does. This bill creates an enormous budget mess.

I find it kind of ironic that the majority that could not find $1 worth of entitlement savings in their budget comes to this floor with $200 billion of cuts to Medicare to pay for expanding this new program. When it came time to reducing the deficit and keeping taxes low, no savings to be found. Now, hey, $200 billion in Medicare cuts, cut 3 million seniors off the Medicare Advantage program to grow a new entitlement.

Yes, this is a new entitlement program, a new entitlement for States. It gives them a never-ending spigot of new money. But what's so, so critical, what's so hypocritical about this bill is, after cranking up spending for 5 years, after putting 5 million children on health care, kicking 2.4 million off of private health insurance, what do they do to conform with their PAYGO rules? What do they do to shoehorn this huge program into their budget? They just kick everybody off. They just rescind the program. They just turn the spigot money off.

Does anybody believe that after putting 5 million people on health insurance we are just going to take it away from them in 2014? No, we're not.

So this whole thing really is a bug sham. What they are saying is, with this legislation, we want to give 5 million people health insurance for kids, no matter what income limit. But, in 2014, we are taking it away from them. That's crazy. That's not budgeting. That's creating a new program, a new entitlement, and not paying for it.

This puts our fiscal house, which is already messed up, in serious jeopardy.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill.

I appreciate the applause.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is important that we do everything we can to save money in light of the fact that we are creating a massive new entitlement program later this week with this bill that is coming to the floor. I think it is important that we show leadership at every facet of the Federal government. That is why this amendment, which now I believe saves $100,000 from the USDA Administrative Account Budget, is worth supporting, simply because of the fact that the new SCHIP bill opens a whole new open-ended entitlement.

In the past, SCHIP has always been a program that was capped, that had an authorization. Now we have a program that has no income limits, that requires people to actually self-certify. If they say they are eligible, they are eligible. Anybody can get it. Warren Buffett's child could get SCHIP.

More important to the fact is this, Mr. Chairman. The reason that it is important to save $100,000 from the USDA budget is it is going to cost a lot of money when this SCHIP bill passes and it pushes people out of private health insurance onto government health insurance. That is precisely what this will do.

Eighty-nine percent of the children in families with incomes between 300 percent and 400 percent of poverty and 95 percent of families above 400 percent of poverty have private health insurance. What this bill will do is push those children out of the private health insurance that their parents and their employers are paying for and make taxpayers pay for that health insurance. This is an enormous, enormous expansion of our government program, which takes choice away from patients on health insurance and makes them take this government one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic-driven health care. And that is why we need to support removing $100,000 from the administrative budget from the USDA, because we have a long ways to go to save the money to pay for this bill.

This bill, as it left the Ways and Means Committee, was $76 billion over the budget in that it violated the majority's PAYGO by $76 billion. The bill that was brought to the Energy and Commerce Committee that wasn't reported out was $91 billion PAYGO noncompliant.

Why is this, Mr. Chairman? Well, another reason why I think we need to save money by cutting $100,000 from the USDA's administrative budget is that they cut Medicare. Not just a little bit, but deeply. They raid the Medicare trust fund, and they cut and eviscerate the Medicare Advantage program.

Mr. Chairman, I bet every one of us has done a town hall meeting whereby we have heard constituents when we are talking about Medicare say: You know what? You people in Congress ought to give us the same health insurance that you have.

Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what Medicare Advantage is. Just like we as Members of Congress have, just like we in the Federal employment health benefit, we have the ability to choose among providers who are competing against each other for our benefit. We get to choose among providers. We have choice. That is exactly what we are giving to Medicare beneficiaries with the Medicare Advantage program.

These plans compete against each other for the beneficiary's business, and each Medicare beneficiary gets to choose traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage plan, and that active choice has driven down prices and has driven up quality and customer satisfaction.

The bill coming to the floor this week will cut 3 million people off the Medicare Advantage program. It will say to all those people who chose to have this plan that gives them comprehensive Medicare coverage: No, you have to have the one-size-fits-all government monopoly plan. You can't have this choice that looks like what Members of Congress have.

That is why we need to cut $100,000 from the USDA budget, because all these deep Medicare cuts to pay for a massive expansion of a new entitlement program at a time when all these other programs are going bankrupt is a step in the wrong direction. That is why I urge adoption the gentleman's second-degree amendment, and I thank him for yielding me time.

I rise in opposition to this rule, Mr. Speaker, for many reasons. Number one, this has become common practice for the new majority. But the farm bill reauthorization calls for massive new entitlement spending, no serious reform, and it makes a complete mockery of the PAYGO process. Number one, this is not a fair rule.

An amendment that I offered on a bipartisan basis with Mr. Blumenauer from Oregon to cap farm payments, which was made an order in 2002, which received 200 votes, was denied.

So based on the lack of fairness on this rule, I urge that it goes down.

But what about the substance of this bill? This bill extends farm commodity programs with no real reforms. At a time of record-high prices and prosperity for many farmers, this extends the commodity programs at 5 years with no reform. The payment limit is a sham. It has thin window-dressing payment limits on commodity programs while actually removing the payment limits on the marketing loan program. It has an anticompetitive tax increase in here which will raise taxes on American businesses that are owned by foreign companies: Nestle, Case New Holland, Chrysler. This will tax jobs out of America, and it increases entitlement spending.

And the only reason this bill ends up adding up on paper is because of a bogus $4.7 billion timing shift. CBO has already told us that this bill will spend $5 billion more than it pretends to spend simply out of the timing window within which it spends. What that means, Mr. Speaker, is on paper they are showing savings. In reality and in real life, they are spending over the limit, and they are breaking the budget by at least $5 billion.

And what is worse, Mr. Speaker, is this engages in the worst form of protectionism. This bill raises taxes on our taxpayers, raises prices on consumers, and it does so at the expense of people in the developing world. It hurts people in the developing world from lifting their own lives up out of poverty and despair.

So while we had a chance to have a good, bipartisan farm bill that had reform, that brought the market reform to bear, that could have helped the family farmer, we are saying no.

The farm bill ought to be about helping the family farmer in tough times, not giving million-dollar checks to big farmers, not giving checks out at good times. Unfortunately, that is what this bill does in addition to the phony PAYGO and shifting of $4.7 billion around like Enron accounting.

With that I urge a ``no'' vote on this rule.

Madam Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment for a number of reasons. Number one, it's high time we reform our agricultural programs which are Depression-era. This is a modest amendment from the original aggressive reforms. It puts in place the reforms that the USDA experts said that we ought to put in place for the safety net.

Let me just address what the safety net really is. Should we or should we not give million-dollar checks to farmers making $1 million? Should we have a farm program that helps the family farmer at a time when they're struggling? Should those payments go to farmers when they're making record high prices, when they're doing well? Or should these programs go to them when they're hurting? That's what this amendment does.

This amendment also pays for itself; no budget gimmicks, no timing shift, no tax increases. It actually reduces the deficit by $2 billion in 5 years and $14 billion over 10. It actually boosts conservation. It actually boosts nutrition.

Let me just address the payment limit. This bill right here says we will allow farmers to have aggregate program payments that are at least 12 times the poverty rate. Isn't that high enough? The average poverty rate for a family of four is $20,500. This amendment says let's allow the farm payment to a family of four be as high as a quarter of a million dollars. Yet the committee's bill says, no, that's not good enough. It has to be unlimited in some senses or a million-dollar AGI for others.

Madam Chairman, let's get our priorities straight. Lets have a farm bill that doesn't distort our trade posture in the international community. If we pass the base bill, it hurts us internationally to get better trade agreements and open markets for our farmers. If we pass the base bill, it hurts us from helping people in the developing world lift their lives out of poverty.

If you vote for the Kind-Flake amendment, you will help us internationally open markets to farmers, you will preserve a modern safety net that helps farmers when they need it and the family farmers when they need it, and you will save money for the taxpayer, you will put savings in nutrition, you will put savings in conservation, and you will help reduce the deficit.

This is a responsible amendment. It's a responsible bill. It is the right way forward, and this is what really, truly, needy family farms need. We don't need to be cutting checks in the seven-figure range for people with AGIs, adjusted gross incomes, of $1 million. We need to say 12 times the poverty rate's enough. That's what we need to say, and by voting for this amendment, that's what we are saying.

Help the family farmer, help conservation, help nutrition and reduce the deficit. Vote for this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for posing this amendment.

The reason we are here today, Mr. Chairman, is because this is overbudget. Take a look at this bill right here. It is $2.8 billion above the President's request and includes a $3.1 billion boost for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There are also some phony gimmicks in this spending bill.

As noted, the bill provides phony offsets for spending increases by rescinding budget authority with no outlay savings. So what you are doing, you are actually canceling something that doesn't really exist to show paper savings so you can spend it somewhere else. Now, this is an old trick that has been done on both sides of the aisle over the years, but it still doesn't make it right.

The problem we have with this bill, as the preceding bills and the following appropriations bills, is it is $34 billion above last year's spending level just for what we have passed so far. That is $19 billion above the President's request. This majority's spending bills are going to be $81 billion above last year's spending level.

When you look at the budget resolution, this bill does conform to the budget resolution. It meets 302(b). What that means in budget talk is they are conforming to their budget. But what does their budget do? Their budget leads to the largest tax increase in American history.

If you accept these spending increases, which, on average, are 9 percent spending increases for discretionary spending, three times the rate of inflation, three times the rate of

wage growth, three times the ability for families to be able to afford this expense, three times the rate that our family incomes go up at best, if you accept these spending increases, that means you are accepting the plan in the budget, and the plan in the budget is to raise taxes. Not by a little bit, by a lot.

What tax increases are they specifically calling for in the budget resolution that this is a part of? Getting rid of the marriage penalty, bringing it back altogether; reducing the child tax credit in half; raising income tax rates across the board for every single working American and every single working family; bringing the death tax back in full force; raising taxes on capital gains and dividends, which makes it easier for people to save for retirement, and that creates jobs.

So the problem we have here, Mr. Chairman, is not a revenue problem. We have had double-digit revenue increases coming to the Federal Government for the past 3 years in a row.

The deficit just went down this year again by 18 percent because of faster revenue growth. So we don't have the problem with the money coming in. We don't need to raise taxes. Plenty of money is coming in to the coffers of Washington.

The problem we have is spending. We are just spending too much money too quickly. If we want to balance the budget without raising taxes, we have to control spending. That's the lesson we've learned.

Now, what does this bill do? This bill irresponsibly increases spending too fast. Are there important functions that are in this bill? Yes. Are there important things that the government needs to do, roads and bridges and transportation? Yes.

The problem I have with this bill is it doesn't have fiscal discipline. It doesn't contain a budget cap that makes sure we won't raise taxes.

So, by subscribing to the budget increases, the spending increases in the bill and the appropriations bills before it and the ones that are yet to come, it puts us on that glide path, on that trajectory to having the largest tax increase in American history. We don't want those taxes to be increased, and we sure don't want to support budgets that put us on the path to making it a sure thing, and that, Mr. Chairman, is why I think we should vote against this.

I think we should also have better budgeting. I don't think we should be rescinding phony budget authority to then use it for outlays. So, if we get rid of the gimmicks, this thing wouldn't even comport with the budget resolution itself.

So with that in mind, Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the gentleman for his leadership on health care issue, not only the fact that you're practicing physician, but also your leadership here in Congress, and the gentleman from New Jersey as well.

I just listened to this conversation you're having in my office, and I wanted to come down and just add maybe a few facts. I missed part of your debate as I walked over here.

But we're looking at all these various SCHIP bills to renew this program, and we looked at what the other body is doing over in the Senate. They propose a new $35 billion expansion of the program, but what we find in their legislation is that, not only do they provide a $35 billion expansion, they provide another $35 billion expansion after that in 5 years. Then to contort their budgets to make it all work, they actually say that we will cut off 4.5 million children off of SCHIP insurance to make their numbers work, meaning they have a budget gimmick.

The budget gimmick is, they're going to put as much money into this program as possible, but to fit in their contorted budget window, they will just assume that in about 9 years everybody's knocked off of health insurance.

Both you and I know that that's not going to happen, but what we have over here in this body is an even larger SCHIP expansion, a $50 billion SCHIP expansion which translates into $100 billion SCHIP expansion if their full 10-year ambitions are realized.

And what does that mean? What they're talking about is having all families at 400 percent of poverty, a family of four earning $80,000, being on government health care. What they're talking about is the largest expansion of Washington-controlled bureaucratic health care we have seen in decades, and this expansion of Washington-controlled bureaucratic health care is not the recipe for America.

All of us know from the fact that we represent Americans that the cost to health care and the cost of health insurance is an enormous crisis in America today. Finding good quality, affordable health care is a big problem.

And so what the majority is doing is, rather than attacking the root cause of health care inflation, rather than looking at what is producing these high costs, they're simply saying we will just pay for more of that from the government. They simply want to take more control in Washington and go down the same path, the same path where, today, we spend two-and-a-half times per person on health care of any other industrialized world; yet, today, we have 46 million people who have no health insurance.

We have a system today where all the fiscal experts in Washington and across America from the left and the right are telling us health care's unsustainable, the entitlements in this country are bankrupting America, that our children and grandchildren simply won't be able to pay for the government of tomorrow because of the cost of health care today and the trajectory it's on.

We believe in a different philosophy, a different alternative. We believe we can have affordable, accessible health care that is patient- centered, that is patient-driven and patient-controlled health care.

And so that is why we have a very different vision of this Washington-controlled bureaucratic health care, where the patient and his or her doctor are making the decisions in health care, where we actually go at the root cause of health care inflation and attack those causes so that people get affordable health care at a good price and good quality, and that the patients are the ones who are the drivers of the system.

Today, under the third party payment system we have today, either an HMO bureaucrat or a government bureaucrat's making the decisions, and we as consumers really don't care what things cost because someone else is paying the bills. We can't shop around based on quality and price because we don't know what quality and price is or we're told who and where we've got to go to by our closed network. That's a system that's unsustainable. That's a system that we have today, but this is the system that the majority wants to not only expand, but they want to turn more of it over to Washington, more of it over to government bureaucrats making our health care decisions which will cost us even more money, $50 billion to be specific, in this bill that's going through the Ways and Means Committee and Commerce Committee this week.

But the key here is that we have 16 percent of the GDP, 16 percent of the economic output of this country is dedicated to just health care. The Democrats want that to grow and grow and grow. What's ironic about this is the other 84 percent of health care doesn't work like the 16 percent of GDP that health care consumes, because the other 84 percent of our economy operates on the basic free market premise of competition, competition on price, competition on quality. If you don't do a good job, you don't get more business. If you're not price competitive, people aren't going to buy your product.

Unfortunately, that is not how health care works today, and those are the reforms that we want to inject into health care so that people can get affordable, accessible health insurance coverage, health care that is very high quality and that doesn't grow at 6, 10, 20, 18 percent of price increases every single year.

So we have two different philosophies, two different visions of where we want to go to with health care. We very much believe in putting the patient at the center of the equation, giving the patient and their physician control over the health care system so health care providers, rather than oligopolistic pricing, rather than just raising prices on everybody, will compete again for our business on price and quality.

What the majority wants to do is continue this system, where providers continue to raise prices over and over and over, third parties make the decision whether it's a bureaucrat at an insurance company or a bureaucrat in Washington, and they simply want to raise more taxes to pay for more of this.

In this particular bill, they want to cut Medicare patients. They want to raise taxes on low-income individuals in order to pay for this unprecedented expansion of Washington-controlled bureaucratic health care. To me, that's not the right way to go. It's not the right priorities, and what it will do will be to get more difficult for small businesses, individuals, families and even large businesses to be able to afford health insurance.

That's not the path to take. That's the way that's going to bankrupt this country. That's going to raise our taxes and that's going to take health care decisions away from individuals and families.

That's the approach that we want to go, and I just am pleased to see that my colleague from Georgia and New Jersey have joined in this debate on the floor because it's a very important debate. I would argue that the cost and affordability and accessibility of health care is the largest domestic crisis facing America today, and it's high time we do something about this.

I just want to thank the gentleman for including me in this debate.

All I would say is I think most Americans realize, if you're spending someone else's money, you are not going to be judicious with that money like you are with your own, and that is what we do here in government.

And in health care, by asking Washington to spend our taxpayer dollars, they are not spending it like it's their own money. Think of what's happening in health care. In health care, they're spending someone else's money, our money, and they're spending it in a very irrational way, and it's giving us high health care costs. That is the basis of this third party payment system.

And so by simply saying we're going to raise taxes to spend more money in Washington on health care in a system that takes control of health care out of the hands of the patient, him- or herself, is just wrong.

I can't think of a more intimate and personal decision you experience in your life than making a decision over your own health care. Yet, they want more bureaucrats to make that decision than individuals. They want Washington to control this system. They want HMO bureaucrats to control this system and not the patient and their doctor.

That is the real core of the issue here, who you trust. Do you trust Washington with your money to make personal decisions for you or do you trust individuals to make them for themselves?

I would argue, and I think the evidence is clear, that when individuals make the decisions for themselves, when they're spending their own money, when they're talking to their doctor and making decisions on their own treatments, with affordable insurance, that the system's going to be far better, people are going to be much more satisfied, and we're going to save a lot more money and we'll have healthier outcomes.

So it's a real difference in philosophy, and where we see competition working, prices go down and quality goes up, even in health care.

I will just give one final conclusion. I used to have really bad eyes. I had 8.5 in this eye and 8.0 in this eye, which means you have really bad eyes, about 2800 vision. In the year 2000 after years and years of wearing contacts, I decided I'm going to get this LASIK surgery, and that LASIK surgery cost me $2,000 an eye for a total of $4,000 out-of-pocket discretionary spending in elective surgery. They used this Excimer Laser at the time, and it went very well. I can see your charts extremely well. I can even see the detail on your tie. You're standing about 20 feet away me, and the LASIK worked well.

Well, what is LASIK procedure now in the year 2007 where it was in the year 2000? It costs $800 an eye at the same place, and they've revolutionized this procedure, revolutionized this Excimer Laser they use four times over. So the procedure is much better in quality, it's much better in recovery, and it costs $800 an eye instead of $2,000 an eye. $1,600 instead of $4,000 seven years ago. Better quality, lower price, because of competition.

So, even in health care, with complicated things like eye surgery, you can see where competition is allowed to work, is allowed to flourish, that good results can occur, and that is the way out of this. That is the way forward, and that is the lesson that we need to learn as we go through this, instead of raising taxes on Americans and having more Washington-controlled bureaucratic health care, which has given us this double digit inflation on health care.

And with that, I'd be happy to just yield back to the gentleman, and I thank him for including me this time debate.

So what the gentleman is saying is because you have so many families and children with private health insurance, with this new expansion, taxpayers will be replacing that private health insurance and paying for families who already have health insurance?

At 400 percent?

So in the bill that's coming to the House which takes SCHIP to have government, Washington-controlled, bureaucratic health care, for all children at 400 percent poverty, those families, 89 percent of those family already have health insurance. We are talking about having the government step in, raising taxes on taxpayers, and having the government take over the provision of health care for a group of families, 89 percent of whom right now have private health insurance?

So just to expand on this point a little bit further, we have here a situation where 89 percent of the children in these families are already covered by private health insurance that their parents had purchased, that their parents and employers probably had provided them. So what we are proposing here in this bill is that we raise taxes on the American taxpayers, and that we pay for government-controlled health care to replace that health insurance that they already have.

So we are going to pay for a system that we already have coverage of so that we can raise taxes and have the government control their health care system. That is a system, that is a sense of priorities that just doesn't square with the American people that I know. That is not what people in Wisconsin sent me to Congress to do.

I don't believe the American people, if they really know the truth and the facts surrounding this issue, want to see their taxes raised so that Washington controls the health care for all of these families, for all of these children, especially when they already have health care provided to them.

I think people understand that if we truly have uninsured poor children, that they ought to get health insurance. I think there is no disagreement here about making sure that uninsured low-income children receive health insurance.

But talking about providing government-controlled health care to families that already have health insurance and raising taxes to do that, that just doesn't jive with the priorities of the American people and the American taxpayer, in my opinion.

All three entitlement programs that are in place today, Medicare, Medicaid Social Security, all go bankrupt in about 10 years. It's because we are doubling the amount of retirees in this country at a time where we were only increasing those taxpayers into the program by 17 percent.

So we are seeing a 100 percent increase of the consumers of those three entitlements, while only experiencing a 17 percent increase of the taxpayers in these entitlements. That's why these three programs are going bankrupt. That's why these three programs will consume 100 percent of our budget by about 2030. By about the year 2040, when my kids are my age, they will have to pay twice the level of taxes we pay today just to keep today's Federal Government going at that time.

We have run this Federal Government remarkably constant at about 18 percent of GDP. We have had to tax the U.S. economy at about 18 percent of the output of the economy just to run the Federal Government for about the last 40 years. And what we are on the trajectory today because of the aging of America and way the entitlement programs are designed and the baby boomers retiring, my children will have to pay 40 percent of GDP just to keep today's Federal Government going when they are at my age group. You can't have a strong growing economy, a high standard of living.

So what we are in the middle of doing here, we are deciding whether or not we are going to sever that American legacy to our children and grandchildren. And the American legacy that I was taught by my parents was that you leave the country better off for the next generation than when you received it. You leave a standard of living better off for your children and grandchildren than that which you received from your parents. We are at risk of severing that legacy for our children and grandchildren if we are going to confound them to a system to where they will literally have to pay twice the amount of taxes to just the Federal Government than we do today.

At a time when we are in tough competition and globalization with China and India, it is impossible to pretend that we are going to be able to enjoy this kind of standard of living if we are requiring our kids and our grandkids to pay double the amount of taxes they pay today to Washington when they are in our age bracket. It will just be fundamentally irresponsible if this is the future we would confine them to, yet that is exactly the trajectory we are on today.

And if the gentleman will yield, so the blue portion, which is what we call discretionary, that is national defense, the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, Transportation, roads, bridges, the Pentagon, all of those things are the blue portion. There won't be any money left for those, Will there?

I just think that we have a different vision, and that vision is that we believe we can provide a system that gives us universal access to affordable health insurance for all Americans, where they and their physicians are the nucleus of the medical system. What the majority is offering is a bankrupting entitlement system, massive tax increases unprecedented, in addition to the largest tax increase in American history that they have already passed here on the floor this year, and more Washington-controlled bureaucratic health care, where bureaucrats, either HMO bureaucrats or government bureaucrats make the decisions in health care rather than patients and their physicians. We can come up with a system that is patient centered, where every American has access to affordable health insurance, where we have universal access to affordable health insurance throughout America. Or that person who has a risky health care profile, may be overweight and has diabetes, has a history of cancer in the family, we can come up with a system where that person, too, can get affordable health insurance and get access to it without having the government run the entire system, without have to go through a government or an HMO bureaucrat to make decisions on how you get your care. You ought to be able to go to your doctor and come up with a good treatment plan that works for you, and that is where the decisions ought to be made.

And more important to that, all the health care providers, the hospitals, the physicians, all those who are in charge of providing care in the health care system will compete against each other for the consumers and the patients' business. That is the vision we see, where everybody has access to affordable health care and it is a patient- centered system, not a government-driven, government-run, bureaucratically controlled system. And I just thank the gentleman from Georgia and the gentleman from New Jersey for taking this time to address this incredibly important issue.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Yes. I will just explain the amendment and then I would be happy to yield back the balance of my time.

I appreciate the Chair's indulgence and I will just take a moment to explain what this amendment does, and then I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, there is a recent troubling report entitled ``CDC Off Center,'' which was produced under the direction of Senator Coburn with a report in the Senate Government Affairs Committee. Instead of using its resources to fight life-threatening diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer, the CDC has instead spent money on needless luxury items and nongovernment functions.

For example, the CDC's Office of Health and Safety recently provided its employees with a new, extravagant fitness center that includes such items as rotating pastel ``mood'' lights, zero-gravity chairs, and $30,000 dry-heat saunas. The CDC has also spent over $1.7 million on a ``Hollywood liaison'' to advise TV shows like ``E.R.'' and ``House'' on medical information included in their programming, clearly an expense that should have been covered by the successful for-profit television shows, not by our hard-earned tax dollars. They also further squandered taxpayer dollars in an office intended to help improve employee morale. This program, which currently costs $250,000 per year, has yielded just 98 complaints since it was created last year. At this rate it is costing taxpayers about $3,000 per complaint. Despite the program's lack of use, the CDC is planning to spend at least $1 million more to expand it.

In a time when we are facing increasing risk of bioterrorism and disease, these are hardly the best use of taxpayer dollars.

My amendment simply would ensure that the CDC would not be able to spend any more Federal funding on these three boondoggles described above. And it is my hope that we can get the CDC focused on doing its job, which is very important and they do a good job on that, and not on these kinds of boondoggles. This report shows dozen of examples of these abuses.

And I appreciate the Chair for his indulgence and the acceptance of the amendment.

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

Offered By: Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin

Amendment No. 26: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

I thank the ranking member for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the student aid bill that passed out of the Committee on Education and Labor is nothing but a Trojan Horse for new spending. In fact, the bill creates nine, count it, nine new entitlement programs and abuses the protection of reconciliation procedures through token budgetary ``savings.'' It also favors the government-controlled and costly direct lending program over the nonprofit and commercial lenders, promoting a back-door expansion of taxpayer-financed student support and a substantial increase in taxpayer liability.

I want to make four basic points, Mr. Speaker: Number one, budget experts have unequivocally warned Congress, experts from the left and from the right and center and everywhere else, that the unrestrained growth in entitlement spending programs is the most

fundamental challenge and the largest threat to our Nation's long-term economic health. Comptroller General David Walker refers to the rising costs of entitlements as a ``fiscal cancer'' that threatens ``catastrophic consequences for our country'' and could ``bankrupt America.'' Despite all of these warnings, the majority not only failed to address the problem in their budget; they are choosing to make the problem even worse by creating nine new entitlement programs in this bill alone. That is nine new entitlement programs and nothing, not a zilch, of reforms. They're not expanding. They're not replacing. They are creating nine new entitlement programs. While the bill claims that some of these programs will sunset, we all know entitlement programs, once created, never die.

Second, this creates a new mandatory Pell Grant program. Among the new entitlement programs created is an unprecedented mandatory Pell Grant. The Pell grant is a great program, and under Republican leadership, we saw a tripling of Pell Grants from the year 1996 to 2006. Suddenly, this authorizing committee doesn't think that it is enough, and it is planning on taking the committee away from the appropriators into their jurisdiction, making an entitlement which, in my opinion, reduces congressional oversight.

Third, this contains no meaningful reform whatsoever. The bill contains none at all. It represents business as usual for existing programs, except that interest rates and limits in existing programs are changed to make room for more spending. Rather than maybe putting the savings in special education or deficit reduction to fund an unfunded mandate in local schools or reducing our deficit, it creates all of these new programs and this new spending. They will add from $15 billion to $32 billion in spending over the next 5 years alone on top of the already unsustainable entitlement costs we are facing today. Instead of reducing long-term spending, they are using a vehicle originally intended to limit spending to do just the opposite, to fund these new programs.

This bill gets Fast-Track legislation under the guise of deficit reduction, under the guise of controlling spending. Yet what we see here today is a bill that takes $18.58 billion from student loan providers only to spend more than $17.13 billion on new entitlement programs. The savings of this bill is 9 percent, a net savings of 9 percent.

Look at these two bars on the chart next to me. Does it look like the savings are anywhere near the new spending level, or does it look like a sliver of savings is being used to abuse the process of expedited reconciliation protection so they can create all of these new programs?

I offered an amendment in the Rules Committee that would have required that the bulk of these savings be going toward deficit reduction. It is the same amendment that Senator Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, offered and was passed by unanimous consent on the Senate floor. I couldn't even get this amendment past the Rules Committee, much less on the floor of the House.

There is one last point, Mr. Speaker, that bears repeating, and that is, this favors government over markets. It increases taxpayer liabilities. It favors a government-controlled and costly direct lending program over nonprofit and commercial lenders, promoting a back-door expansion of taxpayer-financed student support. As students are pushed toward the government monopoly, the student benefits and services provided by nongovernment lenders to attract business would be lost. Further, the government-run program only handles 20 percent of the loans today. It would be overwhelmed with the new business and shut done, as it has been in the past, when large volumes shifted to the program.

I just want to finish with one quote from the Democrat chairman of the Budget Committee: ``The reconciliation instruction that led to this bill'' we are seeing here today is a ``stalking horse for a significant expansion of spending.''

Please join me in opposing this back-door expansion of new entitlement spending. Let's use budget reconciliation for what it was made for, reducing the deficit and controlling spending, rather than creating nine new entitlements.

Madam Speaker, last week, Kenosha, Wisconsin, lost a longtime community leader--Joseph Torcaso, who has run Torcaso Shoe Repair shop on 52nd Street for over 60 years. A lifelong resident of Kenosha, he started learning the shoe repair business from his father in 1937, at the age of 9, and his shop is one of the touchstones of the Kenosha community. Joe passed away on Friday.

Everyone knew and liked Joe, and his lively wit and sense of humor brightened countless people's lives. He was known as the ``Mayor of 52nd Street'' or, by some, as the ``Oracle of 52nd Street'' for his knack at forecasting political victors.

More than just an exceptionally skilled craftsman and a small business owner, Joe was a man of great character. He helped give Kenosha its strong sense of community, and the city will sorely miss this devoted family man and friend who lifted so many customers' spirits. Joe was also a great friend of mine, and I will miss him deeply.

My thoughts and prayers are with his wife, children, and grandchildren during this difficult time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment and the next couple of amendments. Just as the gentleman said, I would like to ask the gentleman from Ohio a quick question: Does this amendment propose that this bill spend less money this year than it spent last year?

Mr. Chairman, we hear this word ``cut'' all the time. Cut. Cut. Cut. Only here in Congress, only here in Washington is spending the same amount of money this year as we spent last year a deep horrible, awful, disastrous cut. We are proposing to spend almost 10 percent more next year.

How many family budgets went up by this much money, an 8.9 percent increase? How much did wages go up this year? How much did pay raises go up? Did they go up 8.9 percent for most families this year from last year? No. So why should we be giving government such a huge pay raise?

What we are doing by doing this is we are taking more money away from the paychecks of working men and women to give government a bigger paycheck, to give government a bigger pay raise.

Mr. Chairman, what this is about is about trying to bring discipline to the way we spend taxpayer dollars. The budget we are operating under today contains within it the largest tax increase in American history. The budget we are operating on today says that all those tax cuts that expire at the end of the decade, we want them to expire. And do you know what? We are going to start spending that money now.

So the reason this amendment is important, and other amendments like this are important, is we are trying to reduce the spending appetite of government, of Washington, so we can make sure that we don't raise those taxes. Because if the incumbent budget resolution actually fulfills its promise, this money will get spent and those taxes will get raised. That is what this is about.

It is different approaches, different philosophies. We don't believe in all these huge increases: triple the rate of inflation, triple the rate of our constituents' ability to pay their taxes. We believe government should live within its means.

Let me be the first to say that both parties have done a lousy job of keeping track of this over the years. Both parties have some of the blame to share. But in the last couple of years, this party, which is now in the minority, did do a better job of holding the line on domestic spending. This party did take on entitlements. This party did stand against tax increases.

So, Mr. Chairman, you see here an emerging difference between whether or not we ought to have the largest tax increase in history and whether or not we ought to be increasing spending, and not at the rate of inflation, not at twice the rate of inflation, but at three times the rate of inflation.

I am pleased that this committee allocation is under the President's request. I wish all the subcommittee allocations were underneath the President's request, including the Defense.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to address the Dent amendment concerning off-reservation casino applications.

Two proposals are currently under consideration in southern Wisconsin on which I have taken a neutral position.

Voting in affirmative on this amendment would violate my position of neutrality. Therefore, I will vote no and remain neutral on these pending applications.

Madam Speaker, I, along with Congressman Artur Davis and Congressman Joseph Crowley, introduce today the Generating Retirement Ownership Through Long-Term Holding (``GROWTH'') Act of 2007. This important bill gained the bipartisan support of 73 House colleagues in the 109th Congress. We introduce this important legislation in an effort to address one of the issues making it difficult for today's working investors to save for retirement.

Most of our Nation's mutual fund shareholders report that retirement is the primary purpose for which they are saving. More than 31 million American households are saving through taxable mutual funds, either to realize a greater return on their savings, to supplement their employers' retirement plans, or because they do not have access to such plans. Seventy-two percent of fund investors say that their primary goal is to save for retirement. At the same time, almost half about 75 million of 155 million workers--are not offered any form of pension or retirement savings plan at work.

Mutual fund investors are overwhelmingly middle-income Americans investing for the long term. For many of these investors, mutual funds are the low-cost, professionally managed, diversified way in which they are saving on their own for retirement. Currently, investors who buy shares in a mutual fund and hold for the long term find themselves taxed as they go--even though no fund shares were sold and no income was received. This legislation allows mutual fund shareholders to keep more of their own money working for them longer by deferring capital gains taxes until they actually sell their investment. The ``GROWTH'' Act makes it easier for these individuals to meet their goals and enjoy a secure retirement.

Those investors who opt in advance to leave capital gains generated by the fund manager reinvested in the fund are doing what so many of us want to see--they are holding for the long term, contributing to national savings, and building up their own retirement nest egg.

The GROWTH Act will encourage Americans to save more and to save for the long term to better prepare for a secure retirement. I urge my colleagues to join us in this effort and cosponsor this legislation.