Floor Statements

Today, every American who fills up their gas tank is going to pay an extra 70 cents per gallon as a tribute to speculators on Wall Street. That's right. Seventy cents a gallon is due to hedge fund speculation, derivatives and commodity speculation on Wall Street.

It didn't used to be this way. Before Enron, we prohibited this sort of speculation on Wall Street. There was a special law passed for Enron. ``Ken Boy.'' Remember that? George Bush's favorite guy. Enron, bankrupt. Ken ``Boy'' Lay, who knows where he is now. But the law still lives on.

It was changed in Dodd-Frank to give new opportunities for the Commodities Future Trading Commission to begin to regulate speculation on Wall Street. But the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail against the regulation of speculation on Wall Street. Today, we'll consider a bill that would deprive the Commodities Future Trading Commission, the watchdogs, of new computers. Republicans say, We can't afford $60 million for computers at the Commodities Future Trading Commission to track a $400 trillion market; to track speculators that spent $25 billion on supercomputers last year so they could drive up the price of gasoline and manipulate markets without detection. No, we can't afford that. They've got your back, speculators. The Republicans are with you all the way.

Every American who buys an airplane ticket today, who can still afford it--some--to take their family on vacation, you'll will see a little surtax on fuel. That's another tribute to the speculators on Wall Street who have unnecessarily driven up the price of oil and gas. There is at this point a surplus of oil and gas in the world--more than we've seen for years. Production is up. Demand is down. Stockpiles are up. And the price is up. Guess what? The profits at the oil companies are up phenomenally and the profits on Wall Street are obscene.

Do the Republicans want to do anything about that? No. They would like to distract you. They don't want you to look at who's profiting from your pain and from destroying our economy--their generous friends on Wall Street. They are oh-so generous at election time to the Republican side of the aisle. The Republicans' friends in Big Oil, who are oh-so generous to the Republicans at election time. It's not them. Price is driven by supply and demand. If we drill more, drill here, drill now, that will solve the problem. It won't solve the problem because the speculators are controlling the markets. If we could double U.S. oil supply tomorrow, they'd still be charging us 70 cents or more a gallon through unbridled speculation.

We have an opportunity to rein that in. If we reject the Republicans' proposal today to take away computers and staff from the regulators, to prevent the reform from going into place to finally begin to close the Enron loophole created by Republicans for Republicans and for Wall Street, we could almost immediately drive down the price of gasoline 70 a gallon. Nothing they're proposing will do that. What we're proposing will benefit Americans family today, the economy, put people back to work. And yes, unfortunately, it will rein in some of the obscene profits at ExxonMobil and some of the obscene profits at Goldman Sachs and that other speculators on Wall Street are making today. They might have to go out and make honest loans and earn an honest living instead of gambling.

So it's a pretty clear choice. Who are you with? Are you with the speculators or are you with the American people?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Elizabeth Bickford, director of financial aid and scholarships, at the University of Oregon for her years of service.

Ms. Bickford is retiring after 30 years at the university. Since 2000, she has led the university's student aid programs. During her time as director of financial aid and scholarships, Elizabeth Bickford has been a pioneer and leader, including helping to make the University of Oregon one of the Nation's first direct lenders in the early 1990s. I had the privilege of working with Ms. Bickford on many student aid issues including implementation of my contributions to the University of Oregon Presidential Scholarship Fund. I commend her for making a priority of promoting financial literacy for students and parents as well as meeting the financial needs of students and their families. Ms. Bickford has led UO's financial aid programs with an eye to compliance with federal rules. A member of the Cherokee Nation, Ms. Bickford has contributed to a host of efforts throughout our state to support and promote student access to institutions of higher education.

Well, yesterday the House resoundingly rejected a so- called ``clean'' increase in the debt limit, as it should have. But different people are going to draw different conclusions from this vote. The Republicans will say this means unlimited spending cuts, that's how we'll balance the budget. And on my side of the aisle, there will be those who say this puts revenues back into play. Actually, both should be right.

There is no way, no way to deal with a $1.7 trillion deficit--I guess we're down to $1.4 trillion this year; money is coming in a little better than expected--to deal with that without dealing with both sides of the equation, that is, revenues and cuts in spending.

Now, unfortunately, around here it seems that coming together for the problems of the Nation is somewhat quaint and old fashioned. I've been here long enough to remember when we used to do those things, when we had the surtax on millionaires back when Bush I was President and brought back some fiscal sanity, before my time when Ronald Reagan raised taxes three times because he realized that supply-side economics didn't work. Well, we're now back to supply-side economics over here. It doesn't work. And more tax cuts, they're proposing more tax cuts in the face of deficit. Absurd.

So how are we going to force that discussion? I believe we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We actually passed one when I was here in 1995. I voted for it. It failed by one vote in the Senate. Now, just think, had that been in place when, in the last 2 years of the Clinton Presidency, we not only balanced the budget, we began to pay down debt for the first time since 1969. Then came Bush II, and he said we're going to give that money back to the people. And even when we went into deficit, he said, well, we need more tax cuts. That's what we need is more tax cuts, because we're running a deficit now and that's how you deal with deficits is to cut taxes because then people will--whatever. Somehow that creates more money. If we had had the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in place, Bush couldn't have gotten away with that. He couldn't have launched an unnecessary war in Iraq and cut taxes at the same time; the first time our Nation has gone to war while cutting taxes. And he managed to double the debt in 8 short years, ending with the spectacular crash on Wall Street and the TARP bailout, which many forget was the Bush TARP bailout--I voted against that, too--not the Obama bailout; although Obama continued those same Wall Street friendly policies, to his discredit.

And then the Obama stimulus. Forty percent of that was Bush tax cuts. What is it? What is it we don't get that cutting taxes in the way that George Bush wanted to do and did do with trickle-down economics and piling up more debt does not put people back to work? It's not investment. It doesn't generate economic activity and jobs.

The theory is, oh, the rich people have so much money, they'll invest it in meaningful ways. Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. Wall Street billionaire hedge fund managers pay a 15 percent rate of tax, half that of an Army captain. Are they investing in a meaningful way to put people back to work? No. They're speculating and driving up the price of gas and screwing the American people and depressing the economy.

It's time to get real around here. I believe a balanced budget amendment would focus the minds and deal with this deficit and debt in a way that is serious, both with dealing with revenues and dealing with spending cuts. I voted against extending all the Bush cuts in December--not just the ones on the rich people, all of them, a little bit of shared sacrifice. That would have cut the deficit in half--by $5 trillion--over 10 years. Then we wouldn't have

been screaming in January after everybody--many people on that side of the aisle--voted for extending the Bush tax cuts. They were shocked, shocked, shocked that we had a record deficit this year. Huh? You just voted to reduce revenues by $400 billion and you're shocked that that increased the deficit? And has it been putting people back to work? Not much that I've seen in my district, I'll tell you that.

Then comes the Ryan budget. A serious budget. Destroys Medicare. Ends Medicare as we know it. Cuts Medicaid. Most people just think that's for poor people. Well, actually, most of the money goes to either kids or seniors in nursing homes. So that's going to be kind of a tough one. So, huge, devastating cuts. More tax cuts. More of the joke economic policies. Let's cut taxes and that will help us deal with the deficit. More tax cuts for rich people and big corporations. And he doesn't balance the budget--even under his rosy scenario written by the Heritage Foundation--until 2040. That's a serious attempt at dealing with our debt and deficit? That's the Ryan budget. The Obama budget is even worse. I don't know if it gets there by 2050.

Neither side is dealing seriously with these issues. We need to focus people's minds, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is the best way to do that.

Mr. Speaker, today's debt limit vote will fail to pass because neither Republicans nor Democrats have made meaningful progress on balancing the federal budget. The Republican 2012 budget makes devastating cuts to transportation, education, ends Medicare as we know it. Despite these cuts, they fail to balance the budget for three decades. The Democratic 2012 budget would take even longer to restore balance. Neither is a serious long term plan to restore fiscal sanity.

Today's vote was necessary to conclude the debt limit theatrics and bring us closer to negotiating a comprehensive budget. Neither party has the necessary votes to extend the debt ceiling without a bi- partisan deal on the budget.

We need to pay our debts and obligations and I will be urging the Republican leadership to tie future debt ceiling legislation to a balanced budget amendment. I have long supported a balanced budget amendment and had it passed in 1995, we wouldn't be in this mess. A balanced budget amendment would force both sides to make some tough decisions on both budget cuts and raising revenue.

Balancing the budget does not need to be a partisan issue. For example, in his second term President Reagan increased taxes several times to reduce the massive deficits created by the failure of supply side trickle-down policies. Again in the late 1990s, Clinton and a Republican Congress balanced a budget from 1998 to 2001 because they compromised on both spending cuts and increased taxes.

With adoption of a balanced budget amendment Congress could balance the budget in ten years. This begins with repealing the Bush tax cuts, cutting the deficit in half. To reduce federal spending, Congress should bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, cut antiquated cold war weapons systems, and cut agriculture subsidies. Further cuts can be made by eliminating special interest tax breaks and subsidies for ethanol, big oil, and prescription drug companies. Finally, Congress should continuously scrub the rest of the budget for further reductions to ensure a balanced budget in ten years.

This Memorial Day weekend, families all across America have cancelled their travel plans. Others are digging deep to pay 60 bucks for a fill-up. And $10 of that $60 is going to speculators on Wall Street.

Just yesterday, finally, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed its first suit against Wall Street market manipulation and speculation gouging the American people. The Republican reaction: Cut the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission--that's what they proposed this week--and block any regulation of energy speculators.

So while families across America are struggling to keep their lifestyle, fill their tanks, and have a little fun with their families, the Wall Street speculators can ride down in their private elevators and relax in the backseat of their limousines while the chauffeur whisks them out to their third house in the Hamptons, because the Republicans have their backs and will protect the speculators at any cost.

Earlier this month, the House stood in silence when we observe and honor those who serve in our Nation's police forces, and I rise today in memory of Eugene Police Officer Chris Kilcullen.

Officer Kilcullen died in the line of duty April 22, 2011. He was an exemplary member of the Eugene Police Department, served with valor and distinction, and received 85 commendations in his 12 years in the department. He served as a member of the traffic enforcement team and was a skilled negotiator with the crisis negotiation team. He saved lives.

Officer Kilcullen loved to be a police officer. At his memorial service, he was honored by hundreds of uniformed police officers and dozens of elected and public officials. He was remembered by his peers for his exemplary service, kindness, collegiality, endearing good nature, and unmatched rapport with the public he served.

His tragic death is a sobering reminder of the dangers confronted daily by men and women in law enforcement. One American law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty every 53 hours.

In a final tribute at his service, a ``last call'' went out for ``One Mary 18.'' Dispatchers refer to Eugene motorcycle officers as ``Mary units.'' After there was no response to the call, the faceless dispatcher called out, ``All units be advised, One Mary 18 is secure. He may be gone, but he is not forgotten. Rest in peace, Chris. Rest in peace.''

Christopher Kilcullen is survived by his wife, Kristie Kilcullen, and daughters, Sydney and Katie Ann.

Well, it's happened. Gas is over four bucks a gallon. It's killing our economic recovery, American families and small businesses.

Now, Goldman Sachs, not exactly a friend of the consumer, says that 60 to 85 cents per gallon is purely useless, speculative activity. And what are the Republicans running the House of Representatives going to do about that? Nothing. They're going to pretend that future possible leasing off Virginia 10 years from now will do something about today's prices. It won't.

But why are they like, bait-and-switch? Why are they passing these phony bills and not taking on the price gouging and the speculation? Because that would mean taking on Big Oil and Wall Street. And, guess what? They're always looking forward to the next campaign, and Big Oil and Wall Street have been so generous to the new majority that they don't want to upset them. So they want to pretend they stand with their constituents and consumers, but they're really standing behind Big Oil and Wall Street.

Congratulations, guys. You just stuck it to the American people and the economy.

Mr. Speaker with gas prices exceeding $4 per gallon in much of the country, American families need real action, not meaningless gestures, to help deal with skyrocketing transportation costs. As gas prices continue to rise, people are increasingly turning to mass transit, yet high fuel prices coupled with cuts in local funding have forced nearly 60% of transit agencies nationwide to reduce service or raise fares in recent years. The Republican Budget for Fiscal Year 2012 would make matters worse by making significant cuts in transit funding which will result in more fare hikes, more service cuts, and more pain for American commuters and families.

In response, I am introducing the Providing Gas Price Relief Through Public Transportation Act of 2011 today. This legislation will provide support to struggling and increasingly overwhelmed transit agencies to allow them to maintain service and keep fares low. It ensures that people will have an affordable alternative to driving, and it helps those who need it most.

The bill authorizes $1.7 billion over two years of additional capital and operating funds for transit agencies to reduce fares and expand transit services. It would increase the Federal share for clean fuel and alternative fuel transit bus, ferry, or locomotive-related equipment and facilities from 90 percent to 100 percent. The bill would extend transit benefits to all Federal employees. And the bill would establish a two-year vanpool pilot program. Similar legislation was passed by the House in 2008 by a vote of 322-98.

I am pleased to have Representatives Hirono, Filner, Larsen, Nadler, Bishop, Boswell, Cummings, Richardson, Quigley, and Lipinski join me as original cosponsors of the bill. I am also pleased to have the support of a number of transit stakeholders including the American Public Transportation Association (AFTP), Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), Transportation for America, Association for Commuter Transportation, VPSI, Inc., and AVEGO.

I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this important legislation.

American families and small businesses are being crushed by $4 a gallon gas at the pump.

Now, the Republicans tell us, oh, it's plain old supply and demand; drill here now and fast in the future and that will solve the problem.

Well, actually supply is up--U.S. crude inventories are 12.6 million barrels over the 5-year average--and demand is down. So what's really going on?

Well, it's Big Oil and it's Wall Street. Goldman Sachs--no one less than Goldman Sachs--said that the culprit for inflating oil prices $20 higher than what supply and demand dictate is excess speculation. Now, we wouldn't want to rein in the speculators because that's Wall Street and they're very generous to Republicans. And we wouldn't want to take on Big Oil, who's manipulating the market prices, because they contribute big-time to Republicans.

So let's just play pretend. Let's pretend we're doing something for consumers while hiding the culprits in plain sight. Speculation on Wall Street. They traded 189,000 contracts--that's 189 million barrels--by computer in 1 day last week, driving up the price for all Americans. Useless speculation.

Rein in the speculation. And take on Big Oil.

We are headed toward $4.25, $4.50 a gallon by Memorial Day, the usual oil company run-up when the driving season starts, crushing the dreams of American families, small businesses, and our economic recovery. But, hey, the profits are up. It's good.

Republicans say, It's just supply and demand. It's simple. So if we add a small increment to future domestic supply, 5 or 10 years from now, that will bring down the price.

No, it won't. Remember, it's a world price commodity. In fact, supply is up. The U.S. has 12.6 million more barrels in storage than the 5- year average. Demand is down. Americans can't afford the price and the economy is depressed. Libyan lost production has been made up by the Saudis. Every gallon of that has been made up.

So what is really going on? Well, it's market manipulation, price gouging, profiteering and speculation. But the Republicans won't take on their benefactors from Big Oil and Wall Street. Even Goldman Sachs says that $20 a barrel is excessive speculation. Twenty dollars a barrel. That's 60 cents a gallon. We could stop that tomorrow. Put a tax on speculators. Or encourage the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate what you're trying to block. But you're not going to do that because, hey, that would upset the speculators on Wall Street who are making a fortune.

On the NYMEX Exchange, 45 percent of the trades in one day were driven by computers. They traded twice the world's daily oil consumption, by computer, in one day, driving up the price, and the Republicans say, Oh, it's supply and demand.

It's not supply and demand. It's market manipulation. It's price gouging. It's speculation. Do something about it. Those tools are before us.

Yeah, if you want to have a debate about future domestic supply from natural gas or offshore drilling or biodiesel or whatever, let's have that debate. If you want to get people relief this year, save our economic recovery, save American families, then take on Wall Street, take on Big Oil, take on the speculators. Or I guess you're afraid they won't contribute to your next campaign.

Before Medicare, 25 percent of the seniors in America lived in poverty, many driven there by the lack of affordable, decent health insurance. Medicare passed with virtually no Republican support. It solved that problem. Seniors today are guaranteed quality, affordable health care. They pay about 27 percent of the cost.

While under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the Republican budget wants to turn back the clock to the good old days. Throw the seniors into the private health care market again. And the estimates are seniors would have to pay 68 percent of their health care costs under the Republican plan. That would drive many into poverty.

It's opening day of the 2012 fiscal budget year, and President Obama has a chance to hit the first pitch out of the park by declaring Medicare will not end during his Presidency, on his watch. He won't stick it to seniors. He's going to stand up for seniors.

I thank the gentleman. Certainly his extraordinary and extensive experience as an insurance commissioner ably qualifies him to comment on what's going to happen when the Republicans kill Medicare and instead force future seniors into private insurance plans presumably sold through some sort of exchange.

Now, of course the Republicans just spent the last year reviling ObamaCare, which creates exchanges for people who are uninsured. They said people who are uninsured should not be forced to go to exchanges and buy good standard policies. Well, now what they want to do is force future seniors to give up Medicare and force them to go to exchanges and buy private policies with some premium support.

Now, there are a few problems with this issue. Among the things they repeal are the reforms of the insurance industry. And one of the most critical reforms, as far as seniors or older workers or older Americans go, or Americans who've ever been ill or ever had an ill kid, is removing the condition that an insurance company can have a preexisting condition exclusion. That is, you were sick once, they won't sell you a policy. Maybe they'll sell you a policy, but they will exclude that condition and other conditions they think you might have, and they're going to charge you 4, 5, 6, 10 times as much for your policy because you're a risky person. They only want the gravy.

It also repeals another little trick of the industry. This has already stopped now. This is one of the most horrific things the insurance industry has done to people in America. Pay your premium every week. Your employer pays your premium every week.

You get sick. This happened to a woman in Texas, actually Joe Barton's district. She had breast cancer. Needed serious treatment. The insurance industry, the insurance company she had, put a team on her case. Isn't that great. They want to help her out. No. They want to find out a way to throw her off the plan. And they found that once she had gone to a dermatologist and didn't tell them about it. And that might have been related to her breast cancer, so they threw her out of the plan.

Now, the dermatologist wrote a letter to the insurance company and said, well, no, actually, no, this woman just kind of had a skin condition that has nothing to do with cancer, and you can't do this. And they did. And finally, to give them credit, Joe Barton intervened, called the president of the company and said, you're getting one big black eye here. Give this woman back her health insurance. And she got it back. But quite a bit later, her cancer had advanced, and it hurt her chances for a full recovery. That's called recision.

Under the Republican proposal, recisions are back. You get sick? Your company gets to comb through your life and find out a way not to pay your policy. And oh, by the way, if you're sick now and your policy lapses at the end of the year, they won't have to renew it because they're doing away with that reform, too.

So we will take away those horrible reforms that the Democrats put on the anticompetitive insurance industry--and oh, by the way, the insurance industry is exempt from the antitrust law. So the insurance industry can and does and has discriminated in these ways. It can and does fix prices. Can and does share or divide markets to drive up their profits. All of those things are back under the Ryan proposal. Isn't that great?

Now, how is this going to serve seniors? So now, here they are. They're going to get a little premium support--that is, the Federal Government will not let them have the money; they don't even get a voucher so they could just say well, I'm going to go do something on my own. They have to buy one of the health care plans that the Republicans would dictate they can buy--presumably through an exchange--and they'll get a little premium support. The government will give the money directly to the insurance company.

Now, the insurance company can charge them whatever premium they want. So this is problematic.

Now, around here, the Republicans are a little schizophrenic. Some days they love the Congressional Budget Office--when it gives them results they like. And other days they hate the Congressional Budget Office--when it gives them answers they don't like.

So in this case the Congressional Budget Office looked at it and said well, actually, under the Ryan plan, seniors who today pay 25 percent of their health care costs in the aggregate under the Ryan plan of the future, they will pay 68 percent of their health care costs. Guess what that means? That means we are back to 1964.

Now, there's not many people around here old enough to remember '64. I certainly wasn't serving here but I know what happened then. Congress passed, Lyndon Baines Johnson signed, Medicare. Now one of the principal drivers of that was we had a poverty rate for seniors--that is, our parents and grandparents--they were at twice the poverty rate that they are today because of medical costs.

Nobody can save enough money to provide for their medical care. And if you can't buy insurance--which most seniors can't and couldn't--and you get sick, you're bankrupt. You lose everything. And the principal thing that drove seniors into poverty and bankruptcy in those days was medical costs. So Medicare was established.

And now the greatest legacy proposed here by Mr. Ryan, the chair of the Budget Committee, is to end Medicare. And he's doing this under the guise of the path to prosperity. The question is whose prosperity? Not the seniors. Perhaps it's the insurance industry.

It's about 25 percent on average of all of their medical costs, the ones for seniors who are eligible for Medicare.

Sixty-eight percent of their health care costs.

Right.

If the gentleman would yield.

We are not going to do anything about the costs of medical care or the premiums charged or the egregious practices of the insurance industry. We are just going to shift the costs onto future seniors. Many of these people, if they are 55 today, they have been paying into Social Security and Medicare for 35, 37 years, and now, suddenly, oh, sorry, can't have it.

If I could, just one other point.

The one other thing, since the Republicans seem to want to roll back the clock, are they are going to bring back the doughnut hole. Now, the doughnut hole is this bizarre construct of the Republican prescription drug benefit. Remember, instead of designing a low-cost prescription drug benefit that was uniform and available to all seniors on Medicare--we could have done that at a very, very low cost--the Republicans said let's subsidize the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and create a confusing mix of plans, and that's what we'll do for seniors. $750 billion over 10 years to subsidize the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and give seniors the doughnut hole.

Now, last year we began to close the doughnut hole, and this year the pharmaceutical industry has to give discounted prices to seniors in the doughnut hole. Mr. Ryan would undo that. No more discounted prices for seniors in the doughnut hole. That's eating into the obscene profits of the pharmaceutical companies. So they've got a little provision in this bill. The doughnut hole is back. Make the world safe for doughnut holes. That's the Ryan path to prosperity.

Yesterday, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Republican chair of the Budget Committee, revealed his projected future for seniors in America

and their health insurance coverage. It's very interesting.

What he says is, starting with people who are age 55 and younger, there would be no traditional Medicare. That's a pretty radical departure. But he says don't worry. What we will do, what in the Republican vision we will do, is the government will take money and it will give it to private health insurance companies. Seniors would be forced to go to those private health insurance companies and buy a policy from them, and it would be offset by the amount of money that the Federal Government gave to the private health insurance industry. And market discipline would prevail in the Paul Ryan view of the world. Isn't that a wonderful thing?

Well, guess what? We've got that today. We have an unregulated health insurance industry in this country exempt from anti-trust law, unlike any other business in America. And over the last 10 years, premiums for people who buy health insurance have doubled in my State, pretty much the same all around the country. Some places more than doubled, other places a little bit less. But that's over 10 years.

But in Paul Ryan's view of the world, that's a success. Why is it a success? Well, because insurance company profits are up very dramatically. So what if people are paying twice as much for their policies and they have more and more exclusions every year?

There's another little problem with his proposal. Other than the fact that this is not a competitive industry, they are allowed to collude, red-line people. They are allowed to get together and collude and drive up prices. They are allowed to get together and collude and decide which States they will go into or get out of to help their sister and brother companies make more profits. He would do nothing about that. That system would continue.

Then there's the little problem that he would repeal so-called ObamaCare. Well, one of the things I think most Americans liked about that legislation was it prohibits insurance companies from refusing to sell you a policy because you were sick once. That's called a preexisting condition. It also prohibits insurance companies from taking away your policy the day you get sick, something called a recision.

In Paul Ryan's world, those things are back, preexisting condition exclusions.

Guess what. Aging is a preexisting condition. Go out today, if you're 55 years old and you've been sick once in your life, and try to buy at any reasonable price a private health insurance policy. In Paul Ryan's world, market discipline will take care of that. No.

What he's doing is a massive shifting of costs onto seniors, the kind of thing that drove seniors into bankruptcy back in the 1950s and 1960s and had their poverty rate at 20 percent. That's why we adopted Medicare in this country, so that seniors wouldn't be driven out of their homes and into bankruptcy in their later years when most people require more health care. In Paul Ryan's world, the heck with that.

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office--which some days he likes when they give him answers he likes, and some days he doesn't like when they give him answers he doesn't like, but it's an impartial group, bipartisan group, and at this point controlled by the Republicans--has said that under Paul Ryan's world, seniors, instead of paying 25 percent of the costs of their health care, which they do today and they would in the future if we continue Medicare, will pay 68 percent of the costs of their health care.

Now, how many people, how many seniors in this country--other than the people he pals around with on Wall Street and at the country club-- but other than them, how many of them can afford to pay 68 percent of their health care costs? What middle class American can afford that in retirement no matter how prudent they've been their whole life, no matter how much money they've saved in their whole life? Very, very, very few.

So we have here a plan to enrich the private health insurance industry, allow them to return to all of their bad old ways--recisions, pre-existing condition exclusions and all of that--so that the government can give them money. And he says this will save the government a lot of money. Well, it might, but it's going to kill a lot of seniors or drive them into bankruptcy, just like the days before we had Medicare.

If one looks at the other Republican creation of the last decade, Medicare Part D--you know, that thing where we helped seniors with their pharmaceutical costs, with their drug prescriptions--that wasn't done through Medicare; it was done through the private insurance industry. It cost three-quarters of a trillion dollars, $650 billion-- 650 thousand million dollars--over 10 years. Borrowed money. That's Paul Ryan's world. Give all the money to the insurance companies.

Good work, Paul.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a person who has made an important impact on the state of Oregon and the federal research enterprise through his work at the University of Oregon as Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. Dr. Richard Linton is the longest serving vice president of research in the University of Oregon's history and among the longest-serving vice presidents of research within the Association of American Universities' membership.

He leaves the university after more than a decade of service. Dr. Linton's leadership has markedly improved the university's federal research enterprise, enabling university faculty and researchers to engage in discovery, innovation and scholarship that contribute to society's well-being and our understanding of our world.

Dr. Linton deserves special recognition for his guidance of sponsored programs, research initiatives, graduate education, technology transfer and the university's research park. Under his leadership, UO has seen sustained growth in federal research grants and technology transfer activities. He has guided the UO in growing and launching interdisciplinary centers and initiatives spanning the innovation cycle, from basic discovery to commercialization.

I am particularly pleased that companies directly derived from University of Oregon research currently employ more than 255 Oregonians and in 2010 generated more than

$32 million in revenue for Oregon's economy. A remarkable accomplishment.

At the core of Rich Linton's decade of accomplishment at the university is his ability to be collaborative and to establish important strategic partnerships that have contributed greatly to the region's economic security and future. Thank you, Dr. Linton!

A lot of talk around here about millions, billions, and trillions, but let's just try to put a face on some of the cuts the Republicans put in H.R. 1.

I think one of the meanest of their cuts and the stupidest of their cuts is to eliminate a program called YouthBuild. Now, I'm sure most of them don't know what it is. They have never met with the kids who come back here every year.

This is a program that started in 1992 under George H.W. Bush. It's a program that takes kids who have generally dropped out of high school, had problems with drugs, alcohol, other things, but at some point decide they want to get straight and they want to do something better with their lives.

So this program takes kids between 16 and 24, helps them get their GED, gets them some counseling, gets them involved in peer groups. They learn leadership skills, teaches them how to build houses and the houses they build are for low-income Americans.

In the long term we have found incredible results with this program. Last year--and these are almost 100 percent high school dropouts with problems--78 percent of the kids completed the program. That's pretty extraordinary. Now, after, when they leave the program, the longevity of the effect of this program, 7 years after completing the program, 75 percent of the YouthBuild kids, kids who had problems with drugs, alcohol, homelessness, dropped out of high school, everything else, are either in college or employed in jobs earning more than $10 an hour.

That's a pretty darn good investment. And what does this cost, and why would the Republicans zero it out? Well, it cost $102 million last year for 20,000 students.

Now, we could, I guess, instead leave them in the street without their high school degree, hopeless, maybe they would get back on drugs, maybe they will get in trouble, maybe we will them in jail, and then we will spend $30,000 a

year to support them in prison. Twenty thousand bucks for 1 year to get these kids straight and have them become productive members of our society zeroed out by Republicans.

Now, it is a lot of money. That's almost 1 hour of spending for the Pentagon across the river, almost 1 hour. And there's no waste at the Pentagon, though. We are not allowed to look at the Pentagon for waste. It's almost 2 days--that's a lot--of agriculture subsidies, paying people not to grow things.

So 2 days of paying people not to grow things or a year's funding for a program that takes kids who have been in trouble but want to do better, want to learn some skills, want to be productive members of society and helps them get a leg up. But, no, in the Republican world, that's wasteful spending. They have zeroed out this program.

I met with eight of these kids last week. I meet with them every year when they come back--I urge my Republican colleagues, for once. I asked if they had seen their Republican member of my delegation. They said no. They met with a staff person, maybe an intern. Republicans can't seem to be bothered.

But they should listen to these kids, there's a lot of wisdom there and, I think, future leaders there. They have gotten their lives straight and they have gone through some hard times, and we gave them a little help, yes, 1 year. They get $500 a month while they are in the program, while they are building houses for low-income people, learning skills. And as taxpayers in the future, they will pay that back pretty darn quickly.

Now I wonder why they eliminated this program. First of all, I am sure they don't know what it is. They have never met with the kids, they don't care. These aren't people who go to the country club after all. But, secondly, probably because it's housed in the Department of Labor, and we hate anything on the Republican side of the aisle that has the word ``labor'' in it.

God forbid that America should do things for working people in this country or working people should be allowed the right to organize and have a better life. Well, this is a program that should be continued. It should, in fact, be enhanced. They had 19,000 kids who couldn't get in the program last year, on the waiting list, 19,000.

We should double the size of this program, maybe triple it. That would be a huge amount of money. That would be 3 hours of spending at the Pentagon, or almost a week of subsidies, paying corporations not to grow things on surplus lands.

Boy, I guess we can't afford that, can we? But we can't cut the subsidies, and we can't look for waste at the Pentagon, but we can stick it to these kids.

Good work, Republicans.