Floor Statements

The Republican reconciliation bill, pretending to finally bring a sense of fiscal responsibility to that side of the aisle, having increased our debt by 62 percent in 5 years, actually is bleeding middle-income families, kids who want to get a higher education, $14 billion out of student loans.

Those youngsters in the elementary schools are eating too much. Cut student lunches for those kids. Foster care, the family values side, long-term care for seniors. Why are they cutting all that? So they can bleed the poor and the middle class in this country. And then as they create this giant sea of red ink, they will float the yachts of the wealthy on it by giving them $70 billion in tax breaks, actually increasing the deficit, having already stuck it to the middle class and struggling families.

They are going to increase the deficit in order to finance tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year so their yachts can be a little bigger and float a little higher. They should be ashamed of what they are doing to America and what they are doing to middle-income and struggling families.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the many years of service of House Parliamentarian Muftiah McCartin, who completes her excellent work in this body later this week. Ms. McCartin joined the Parliamentarian's Office in 1976, and has served during the tenure of six Speakers and six Presidents. In 1991, she became the first woman to be appointed a Parliamentarian.

The minority leader, Ms. Pelosi, is someone who understands the importance of breaking glass ceilings. She had hoped to be here personally to congratulate Muftiah on her outstanding work and her dedication over the many years.

She goes on to say Muftiah always had such a wonderful smile and warm demeanor on the House floor, which I might comment often lacks smiles and warm demeanors. Well, it is warm; sometimes heated. As we know, it can get heated in debate and very partisan, but she has always been a calm and rational presence to Members on both sides of the aisle and their staff who seek parliamentary advice. She brought a keen mind and a clear understanding of House rules that have served this institution very well.

In addition to the long, grueling hours she has spent on the House floor, she has managed to raise four wonderful children: Marissa, Elaine, Sandra, and Luke, one of whom has the great, good sense to have moved to my congressional district. That is my district, not Ms. Pelosi's. I am sure she will welcome spending the extra time with her family and her husband, Terry.

Muftiah, today we thank you for your service to this great institution and wish you the very best. You have been a tremendous asset to the work we do every day, and we will miss you. Thank you again for your many years of commitment toward making the House of Representatives a better place.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is correct. I only regret that she trained him too well.

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a new-found sense of fiscal responsibility on the Republican majority side of the aisle. There should be.

Last year, the fiscal year was a record deficit, nearly $600 billion. Not only did the United States of America borrow over $400 billion from investors, and a great deal from China and other foreign interests, they also borrowed the entire Social Security trust fund surplus for the year, about $180 billion, money that was intended to pay for future benefits for Social Security retirees to ensure that those benefits would be there to pay for the looming retirement of the baby boomers.

Mr. Speaker, $180 billion extracted only from people who earn salary and wages and earn less than $90,000 a year was borrowed and spent. Some of it was

spent to give tax refunds to profitable corporations, some of it was spent to give huge new tax breaks to people who earn over $300,000, and some of it was spent on other Federal Government purposes.

Now, they are projecting that the first quarter next year, we will borrow more money in one quarter than any quarter in the history of the United States of America. So they maybe should get some new-found fiscal responsibility on that side of the aisle. They have raised the Federal debt by 62 percent in 5 short years. George Bush has more than doubled the Federal debt in 5 short years.

Now, Dick Cheney, the Vice President, of course says deficits do not matter, but I think they do, and I think the American people know they do. They know they cannot spend more money than they know they have in income every month forever. They know they cannot continuously borrow money on their credit cards or from the bank.

Likewise, the United States of America. Now, what are they doing about it. Well, they are bringing up with great fanfare a bill tomorrow called the reconciliation bill, $53.9 billion of supposed new income or cuts and programs. There are some real cuts. There are real cuts that will hit hard at middle-income and struggling families. The biggest cuts are to the student loan programs, $14.3 billion, adding about 6,000 bucks to the average kid's public school 4-year cost with new interest charges and up-front charges. Cuts in foster care, cuts in long-term care. This is the family values side of the aisle over here, they like to claim, remember. And many other vital Federal programs.

And then they are assuming some phony revenues, 50 times as much per acre to lease out the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge with unknown reserves, as we just got a few months ago for the naval petroleum reserve with known reserve closer to the pipeline. So phony baloney and mean cuts.

But that is not even the end of the story. They are going to follow these mean cuts and the phony baloney with $70 billion in real cuts to the richest among us, predominantly weighted toward those who earn over $300,000 a year, particularly toward those who earn over a $1.2 million a year. They are averaging $120,000 a year in tax cuts now. Under their proposal, it will be even more generous, and that is because those wealthy people, also their contributors, are going to trickle down on the rest of us and bring new prosperity to America and wipe out the deficits with that new prosperity.

After all, when we wax their yachts, when we cut their lawns, when we do other things that they will employ us to do when they are not spending the money overseas or on luxury items produced overseas that will bring jobs to America. As they say famously on that side, they never saw a poor person give anybody a job. No, those poor people are doing the work and paying taxes, unlike the rich people who they are favoring and showering money upon, and they are borrowing money and taking money from programs that are important to middle-income and poor people to give to the rich people.

Trickle down economics. And in the end, guess what? They are actually going to increase the debt of the United States and the deficit because they are going to cut taxes for rich people by $70 billion. They are going to assume some phony baloney and make mean cuts against middle- income and working families for $54 billion. They are going to increase the deficit by $16 billion although they claim that is not true because the rich people are going to trickle on us and that will create more revenue than the $16 billion of new deficit that is created.

You might think it is April Fools, but it is not. It is just another move by the arrogant majority, thinking that America is not watching. Well, I think America is beginning to pay attention; and I urge my colleagues to oppose this mean-spirited, short-sighted legislation. Assume real fiscal responsibility, reimpose tax fairness for this country, and let us give a fair deal to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, the Sunday Washington Post had an extraordinary story as a result of investigative journalism. The FBI has issued 30,000 national security letters. Now, we will have to back up for a moment to understand what that means. Four years ago, this Congress was stampeded under the anthrax attack and 9/11 into passing a bill it had not read, the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, which contained many unconstitutional and dubious provisions, many bad ideas from past attorneys general, rejected by previous Congresses, passed in a hysterical time for the Congress.

Now it is about to be reauthorized, and, in fact, strengthened in many ways. This is one of the most disturbing aspects of that legislation. These national security letters used to be fairly rare. They used to issue about 300 a year. They are now issuing 30,000 a year, a 100-fold increase. This is an extraordinary intrusion into the personal lives of many Americans who are not accused of or even suspected of crimes.

As the Post reports, they are issued by FBI field supervisors, local law enforcement FBI agents, not from the national office, no judicial review, no review by the Justice Department, no review by the United States Congress, totally at the discretion of local field supervisors. In fact, the Bush Administration has defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and they have offered no example, not one, 30,000 a year, and they do not have one example of a national security letter impeding a terrorist attack or actually apprehending a terrorist.

Well, they did apprehend a guy in Portland, Oregon and they did use national security letters. Unfortunately, he was innocent. They were wrong.

As far as we know, it has been used once to apprehend someone and now the government is at risk of paying substantial damages for that false arrest. We do not know of any successful uses. The Bush Administration is defending this. Now they are going to deposit all the information acquired in these massive sweeps of all citizens' credit card records, phone calls, e-mails, everything that relates to who they talk to, who they see, where they go, what they buy, and they are going to put it into government data banks.

But don't worry. Don't worry. They are going to share those private records only with, they say, other Federal agencies, State, local, tribal governments, and appropriate private sector entities. Americans who have had their most intimate lives swept up because of a letter written by a local field supervisor, by the FBI, are now going to have all of that data placed into a data bank, which will be restricted to Federal, State, local, tribal governments and appropriate private sector entities. Maybe your next-door neighbor, too, if they are really nosey.

This is an extraordinary, unwarranted intrusion into the lives of Americans. They cannot even properly analyze and use the data they have. They had the threads of the terrorist attack between the CIA, the FBI and others, they knew a number of these people were in the country illegally, but they could not be bothered to go out and apprehend them or monitor them.

Now they are just gathering up data wholesale on the American people. They are going to share it with other Federal agencies, put it in a private data bank, share it with other forms of government, share it with Native American tribes, for some reason, and appropriate private sector entities. Who are the appropriate private sector entities? Those who could make money off it? I don't know. This is an unbelievable intrusion into personal lives.

If you get one of these letters, and you are in a position to give away someone else's data, if you administer a database for your company or for a credit card company or for a library or a bookstore and you get one of these letters, the new PATRIOT Act is going to say if you tell anybody that you got one of these letters, and you provided indiscriminately massive amounts of data on innocent Americans, you would be a felon if you had told anybody that you had gotten such a letter and you had violated their privacy in that way.

Then, of course, again, the data will be then taken, put into a database, and

shared widely with other governments and appropriate private sector entities. It is unbelievable what this administration is doing to shred our privacy and constitutional rights.

Republicans hope to jam through a reconciliation the day before Veterans' Day, including $54 billion in cuts. He talked about a helping hand? Doubling the origination fee for student loans, cutting $14 billion in student loans is a helping hand for the next generation of Americans? Cutting foster care, school lunches, Medicaid, not to reduce the budget deficit but to make room for $70 billion of tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year. That is what they are doing.

We should reconcile a few things around here. Let us reconcile their hypocrisy. Let us reconcile their purported support for the troops and our vets with the fact that the budget is inadequate to provide promised benefits, and they are doing nothing about that in the budget reconciliation.

Let's have some reconciliation and do things that are right for America.

Mr. Speaker, this is the week upon which the Nation will solemnly recognize the holiday known as Veterans Day, a day out of the year when we should pause to recognize the sacrifice of those 25 million who have served our Nation and the 2.2 million people serving today in uniform, many on the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in other hot spots around the world.

This is not the only day in which we should recognize the sacrifice that those who have served in the past have given or the current sacrifice of the veterans and the active-duty military and their families, but we should do that every day. And the way Congress could do that best would be to assure veterans that the United States Government will keep its promises, promises that were made to them and their families at the time of enlistment.

Unfortunately, we have fallen short. Until this year the administration had consistently underfunded veterans' benefits, and in fact, even earlier this year the President's proposed budget would have claimed a substantial increase in health care funding for veterans, but actually would have done that by taxing veterans with a $250 enrollment fee for 2.2 million veterans and doubling the prescription drug copayment. It was not too many years ago that we had no required copayment for veterans. We should return to that time for vets in need.

These are quotes from the Veterans of Foreign Wars; since we do not want this to be a partisan issue, let us quote from a nonpartisan group about the President's budget:

``This budget will cause veterans health care to be delayed and may result in the return of 6-month-long waiting periods. That is especially shameful during a time of war.'' This is from the VFW, February 7, 2005.

``The message that this budget communicates is that part of the Federal Government deficit will be balanced on the back of military veterans,'' he said, ``because it's clear that the proper funding of veterans health care and other programs is not an administration policy.'' Again, a quote from the VFW.

The American Legion, same day: `` `This is not acceptable,' said Thomas P. Cadmus, national commander. ``It's nothing more than a health care tax designed to increase revenue at the expense of veterans who served their country.'' He went on to say that during his visits to VA hospitals, he had not run into Bill Gates, Donald Trump, or Ross Perot seeking care. He sees mostly veterans, many on small fixed incomes, trying to make ends meet and exercising their very best health care option, Cadmus observed.

``No active-duty servicemember in harm's way should ever have to question the Nation's commitment to veterans. This is the wrong message at the wrong time to the wrong constituent.'' Again, the commander of the American Legion.

Why is the Republican-led Congress not listening to that? This week they are going to struggle mightily to cut programs important to middle-income families, student loans and other programs. Then, in the near future, they are going to struggle mightily to pass $70 billion of new tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year. But are they going to struggle or are they even going to allow a vote here on the floor of the House of Representatives on H.R. 515, the Assured Funding for Veterans Health Care Act?

There is no better way that the elected Representatives could celebrate Veterans Day here in the United States than by bringing up and passing this legislation that would, for all future budgets, assure that there would be adequate funding for veterans. They are already threatening a 2 percent across-the-board cut on that side of the aisle after they do the tax cuts for the rich people, because then we will be having to increase the size of the deficit despite the cuts to middle- and low-income programs, and that, of course, would hit hard again on veterans' programs.

We need assurances that that is not going to happen again. We need to properly recognize their service. The pay raises for Members of Congress, those are going forward in the House, although I oppose them. But somehow we cannot get the additional funding and the assured funding we need for our Nation's veterans.

Please, to the leadership, my Republican colleagues, and those on my side of the aisle, let us not just go home and march in the parades and tell people we are with the veterans. Let us demonstrate that with a vote of support on assured funding, mandatory funding, for every future budget year so that we will not go through these future struggles.

I have had too many calls from too many veterans to my district office where we have tried to help them get

in for critically needed care because of the extraordinary waiting lists in my part of the country, and I know that is not unique. We have got to do away with those waiting lists and deliver on the promises we have made.

Happy Veterans Day.

Earlier, a gentleman from California rose to talk about how the economy was booming and how well the American people are doing with job creation and new prosperity. Unfortunately, it does not look like that for most people in my district. In fact, it really is not that way for most people in America. The combination of misplaced priorities and trade policies that export jobs and depress wages in this country have hurt Americans. In fact, last year, according to the IRS, 99 percent of Americans, all those who earn less than $350,000 a year, saw a decline in their real income. But I think the gentleman from California and the Republican leadership and the White House are looking at that 1 percent, who are doing phenomenally well. The tax cuts have been an incredible boon, over $120,000 per year in tax cuts for families who earn over $1.3 million a year. They are doing just great. Unfortunately, we are borrowing the money to give them the tax cuts and handing the bill to working families and their kids and their grandkids as we continue to reduce the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy.

He said, ``Boy, the economy is booming.'' That is kind of interesting. Over the last 17 quarters, the GDP has grown at 2.8 percent, right around the rate of inflation, but in the last six business cycles, it grew at a rate of 40 percent more than that during recovery periods. He bragged about job growth. The United States only has 1.3 percent job growth, much of it in the public sector, under the watch of this administration, since March 2001, whereas in previous business cycles, job growth was closer to 9 percent over the same period, six times the rate of growth. Private sector job growth is only up 0.8 percent. Wage and salary income has also grown anemically. As I said earlier, 99 percent of families and working people in America saw their real incomes decline last year. One percent, $300,000 to $1.3 million, did pretty well. But the people over $1.3 million, they did phenomenally well.

So what is the answer of the Republicans this week? Cut benefits that might flow to that 99 percent of the people. Student loans for kids trying to learn and do better and have a better ability to earn in their adult lives and become more productive Americans, $14.3 billion in cuts for student loans, double the origination fee for student loans. That is a cut that needs to be made according to the Republican majority.

And then there are the cuts in long-term care, foster care. The family values side of the aisle over there wants to cut long-term care for struggling seniors and their families and foster care. That is extraordinary. And then, of course, they want to slash Medicaid. What they do not tell you is they are dumping that burden on our States who are already struggling. They are going to add to the 45 million people who are uninsured for health care in the United States of America through those cuts. But they say those cuts must be made. Why? Because they have become suddenly fiscally responsible after a 62 percent increase in the debt during the Bush administration and the Republican Congress over the last 5 years? No. Because they want to make room for more tax cuts because, as we heard earlier, trickledown is working great. Those people who earn $1.3 million with that extra 130,000 bucks a year in tax cuts, which are added to the deficit which all the rest of us will have to pay for, they are spending some of that money, some of it even in the United States of America. Sometimes they are hiring people to cut their lawns, or wash their boats. Yachts. They need that money. They need it more than the kid who wants to get a college education. They need it more than the family that is struggling to figure out how they are going to pay for long-term care for their seniors. They need it more than the kids who need foster care in this country. Those rich people need it more because they will trickle it down upon the rest of us.

So that is the game they are playing this week. They are going to pretend they are making tough cuts that need to be made. They won't take on the tough cuts. You want to talk about tough cuts? Let's do away with the stupid idea of going back to the Moon by borrowing $100 billion. We have already been there. Why do we want to borrow $100 billion to go to the Moon? How about Star Wars? The general in charge says, hey, it has better than a zero percent chance of working if anybody ever shoots a missile at us. Better than a zero percent chance at a cost of $100 billion, $10 billion a year ongoing. Farm subsidies for farmers who earn over $100,000 a year on corporate farms, we could save billions there. Not to mention if we just reinstated the rate of taxation for people who earn over $300,000 a year that they paid during the booming nineties, we would save $300 billion over the next 5 years. There is a better way to run this country and we are not hearing it from them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

(Mr. Levin asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I think some of the statistics that have been spoken here on the floor do bear repeating because they are not widely known either in the medical community or among the citizenry of our country.

Ovarian cancer is more common than many believe. One out of 57 women will have an occurrence. It is expected that 22,200 will be diagnosed with the disease this year, again, something that is not widely known, near epidemic proportions here.

It is, as those speakers who preceded me have said, difficult to diagnose because of subtle symptoms, and they can be confused with other diseases.

It is key that we better inform the medical community, key that we begin to invest more money in research toward a test which could more reliably detect the cancer; and if we are successful there, we will dramatically increase survival rates. Early detection causes a dramatic chance in a woman's minimum 5-year survival possibility.

It is key that we invest in those areas, and we are not. Ovarian cancer is rather dramatically underfunded relative to its high mortality rate.

In 2004, the National Cancer Institute allocated only about 20 percent as much funding to ovarian cancer research as to breast cancer research, not that breast cancer should be minimized, but I think we should be investing more in both for humane purposes and for avoiding huge medical costs and complications as these diseases progress to more serious stages. Unfortunately, there was only about a third as much as was allocated to prostate cancer, again, not that we should reduce prostate cancer research, but we should increase ovarian cancer research and the others.

These are investments we are making in the health and well-being of the American people. They ultimately will be not only lifesaving, but cost saving. They are good investments to make, even in tough economic and budgetary times.

So I am hopeful that the passage of this resolution will lead not only to more education among our populace, but more education in the medical community, better diagnostic tools and more money invested in research.

To paraphrase former Vice President Gore, this is not just a women's disease. Everyone has a grandmother or a mother. It is someone's spouse or sister or aunt or friend who are afflicted by this disease, and in that we all cannot feel their pain, but we understand how life changing or how horrible this disease can be for the individuals and for their families.

With that, I urge my colleagues to urge the resolution, and in the near future to support increases in funding for finding better ways to detect and cure this disease.

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

Well, we have the newfound foe, fiscal conservatives on that side of the aisle. They control everything, the House, the White House, the Senate. They have increased the debt of the United States 62 percent in the last 5 years to $8 trillion, and now they want to cut spending.

Now, what spending are they targeting? Is it the big wasteful spending? No. It is duplicative programs like school lunch and breakfast. I guess those kids are taking two meals. Or student loans. I guess those kids are taking a double load of classes and paying too much. So they will cut $50 billion, and the next week they are going to cut taxes for those who earn over $300,000 a year by $70 billion.

Now, in their world, even though that is a $20 billion increase in the real deficit, they say, no, that is not an increase in the deficit, because those rich people, why, they are just going to trickle down on the rest of America. They are going to put the rest of us to work, and they are going to increase productivity, and some day that will increase Federal revenues because working people pay taxes, not rich people, in their world. This is a bizarre turn of events here in Washington, D.C., and their cuts and their tax cuts should be rejected.

Mr. Speaker, well, next week the Republicans have discovered that we are awash in a sea of red ink, supposedly. Under the Bush watch, with the Republicans in charge of both Houses of Congress, the national debt has increased by 62 percent, to $8 trillion in 5 short years, quite an accomplishment. We are borrowing $1.3 billion a day to run the government. If we eliminated everything the government does except for homeland security and defense, we would still have a deficit.

They say they are going to make some infinitesimal cuts and little phony baloney and that is fiscal responsibility. Let us talk about what they are proposing to cut.

Well, the biggest whack they are taking is at students. They do not know any students who have to borrow money or get scholarships to go to school. Why, the children of the rich, they just write out a check and pay cash; they are legacy students at the best schools. $14.3 billion of additional costs on students who want to borrow a little money to get a better education and get ahead, doubling the origination fee, costing them as much as $6,000 over the life of their loans.

Kids are graduating with mountains of debt. That is a responsible cut, according to the Republicans. Well then there are those little guys in the elementary and secondary schools who are eating too much. They are eating too much. They are going to cut back on the school nutrition program and the breakfast program and the eligibility of poor kids to eat.

They are just eating too much. They do not know anybody who is hungry in this country. And then the phony baloney. I am on the Resources Committee. They are assuming over $3 billion for leasing the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, 50 times as much per acre as the Naval Petroleum Reserve was just leased for, where there is known oil, in an area where there is no known oil.

So we got phony baloney and mean spirited cuts. Now, why? Are they really fiscally responsible? Well, this would be a big, you know, almost one-tenth of 1 percent of the projected deficit over the next 5 years. I guess that is better than nothing. Except that there are ways to make much bigger cuts. We could roll back the 2001-2003 tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent, those who earn over $350,000 a year. That would bring in $327 billion, six times what they are pretending to save here.

We could do away with some offshore tax shelters, $65 billion more than what they are talking about here. We could cancel the President's mission to Mars. That is $1 trillion over the next 20 years, $100 billion to go back to the Moon again. That would save twice as much money. No, those things go after the powerful special interests or the contributor class, and God forbid they should take them on.

But they can get the little kids in the schools and take the food off their plates. They can go off the students struggling to rise up or stay in the middle class and double their origination fees for their loans.

But they will not make these kinds of real cuts, ones that would hit at those who earn over $300,000 a year or hit at the powerful special interests who are, you know, who are involved in the Federal contracting with NASA.

And then there is waste and abuse. What about the waste and abuse? Apparently, the Bush administration, Brownie is still writing, Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job. He is still on the Federal payroll for $150,000, and he is letting out contracts, such as a contract, put a blue tarp on a roof. A lot of people in Oregon do that when they find out they got a leak when it starts to rain, they go up, climb up on the roof, put up a tarp. The tarp costs $8.

Well, the Federal Government is paying a contractor $2,500 to put blue tarps per roof down there in the Southeast, yet another great job by heck-of-a-job Brownie, who is still pulling down $150,000 a year from the Federal taxpayers.

So there is a little waste, fraud, and abuse that they can go after. No. But these are the big contractors, Fluor and others, who are benefiting and profiting immensely from gouging the Federal taxpayer.

So we should have real fiscal responsibility; but they have no sense of it, because the real money goes to the powerful and the special interests in this country. They are the ones looting the Federal Treasury, and they have the gall to come to the floor of the House and say it is the Democrats. You have been in charge for 5 years. Five years. The Presidency, the House, and the Senate for almost that whole time, and you have increased the debt by 62 percent.

You have done nothing about the waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, it has gotten worse on your watch, and now you want to stick it to the kids who want to get an education and to hungry children and primary and secondary schools and pretend you are going to sell leases for a heck of a lot more than you will.

You should be ashamed. The sea of red ink spreads, and it grows deeper. Most Americans are drowning, but the yachts of the wealthy are floating high.

Well, the government is in a fiscal crisis. We are borrowing $1.2 billion a day to run the government under the Bush administration and the Republican leadership. They have raised the national debt to $8 trillion in 5 short years, but now they are newly born as fiscal conservatives, and they want to cut $50 billion.

From where? Student loans, the school lunch and breakfast programs, those kids are eating too much, foster care and child support enforcement to help the deadbeat dads. They will, unfortunately, more than overspend their cuts to those struggling people and those good programs. They want $70 billion of tax cuts, $20 billion more added to the sea of red ink that is drowning America in tax cuts for, guess who, the wealthy because trickle-down is the highest form of achievement in Washington, D.C. these days. They want to bleed struggling Americans to float the yachts of the wealthy on a sea of red ink one more time while lying about what they are doing.

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have attempted to remake themselves as fiscal conservatives despite the fact that, with George Bush

in the White House and the Republicans in charge of the House and the Senate, that the debt of the United States of America has increased by 62 percent, over $8 trillion. They are borrowing $1.4 billion a day to run the government. They are borrowing every penny of the Social Security surplus and spending it on other things, including tax cuts for the wealthy.

Now they want to cut. What do they want to cut? Students loans, Medicare, Medicaid, foster care, and other programs that are important to struggling American families, under the guise of fiscal responsibility.

Now they want to do $50 billion of cuts, but they also want to do $70 billion of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. They want to make permanent the cuts in capital gains taxes. They want to reward wealth, not work; and they want to make permanent the cuts in dividend taxes. In order to facilitate that, they want to cut these other programs.

They want to benefit approximately 1 percent of the society, those who earn over $300,000 a year and have estates worth more than $6 million. But one thing we have got to give them is they are relentless and consistent and they are successful. Last year, the IRS says that 99 percent of the people in America saw their real incomes decline. Everybody who earned less than $300,000 after inflation saw a decline. Up to $1.3 million, they did okay. Over $1.3 million, they did phenomenonally well. Now the President's Tax Commission says that is exactly what the future should be. That is trickle down. We want more for the wealth, not for those who work.

Their proposals are extraordinary. They would say that dividends should be free of tax. So if one is someone who is lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, they inherit millions of dollars and they invest it in dividend-paying stocks, they would never pay a penny in Federal taxes because they are a wealth creator, they are a job generator, they are trickling down on the rest of America. Is that not nice of them? But they would not contribute to the society.

And then we have stocks. Well, on stocks they want to say 75 percent of the gain should be tax-free, again benefiting, for the most part, the same people. But the funny thing they are doing here is they want to talk about wealth creators and entrepreneurs, but they stick it to the small business people.

If one has a small business, they build it up and they sell it for a million bucks, guess what? Their tax rate is 33 percent under the President's new proposal. But if they have been speculating in the stock market, they would only have to pay at 8 percent. If they had been happy enough or lucky enough to inherit money and clip dividend coupons, they would have paid 0 percent. But, no, if they built up their small business, they are going to pay 33 percent; and those suckers who work for a living, they will pay on every penny of income. Somebody who earns $25,000 a year will pay a tax rate at about three times the person who invests in stocks and realizes capital gains.

This is their vision of the world: trickle down economics, trickling on the majority of America and last year trickling on 99 percent of the people in America. It is working well, they say, and we should do more of the same. And, ironically, they want to borrow money to perpetuate this. They are going to take all the Social Security surplus and spend it in part to finance these long-term tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

They should be ashamed, and trickle-down economics does not work.

Mr. Speaker, the President has finally discovered that there is a threat of an avian bird flu pandemic despite the fact that it was discovered about 8 years ago. Experts have been talking about the threat of the pandemic for a number of years. Last year the President in his budget spent $182 million on chastity education and $100 million on preparation for a pandemic. That is for all investment in flus, vaccines, and antivirals and research.

I am glad that he has had a change of heart now. Now he is going to begin to adequately fund the threat, but it is getting pretty late. The U.S. does not make the vaccines. In fact, there is not a very good vaccine available. And we do not make the antivirals. And we are going to have to get in line behind every other country in the world that had better foresight than this administration.

Mr. Speaker, Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, the chief architect of the lies and deceptions about weapons of mass destruction in the rush to an unnecessary war to Vice President Dick Cheney, is indicted for obstruction of justice and perjury in an attempt to cover up the plot to lie about weapons of mass destruction and smear those who told the truth.

The Republican spin machine is in high gear. It is not a big deal: Obstruction of justice, perjury, deceiving the Nation into an unnecessary war, not a big deal, not like a President lying about sex with an intern.

Mr. Speaker, I have taken the floor previously to talk about the shortcomings of the administration's efforts in the area of homeland security.

As an expert in aviation security, I have criticized the fact that the Republican majority and the White House have seen fit to arbitrarily cut the number of screeners, which not only causes obvious inconvenience for passengers, but it creates the potential for security threats as the smaller number of screeners are under tremendous pressure to process a large number of people in a short period of time. And they are being asked to do it with 1980s equipment.

Now, you can do it one of two ways. You can have a lot of people with crummy equipment or a few people with state-of-the-art equipment. This administration is trying to do it on the cheap without enough people and with obsolete equipment that cannot detect plastic explosives at passenger checkpoints and often in carry-on bags or checked baggage or cargo.

Our ports, I have talked about that, a tremendous vulnerability, not doing radiological detection. Nobody is going to shoot a missile at us, the failed Stars Wars system notwithstanding, but they may well try and smuggle in a nuclear device in a container. Our ports and our borders are wide open to such smuggling with just a very few deployed radiological devices.

But Katrina brought home another lesson, which is we need to be ready both for unnatural disasters, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. And there is a looming natural disaster that this administration has ignored, and that is the potential of H5N1 flu, the bird flu, so- called, should it become easily transmissible between bird species and humans, and then human-to-human contact could perhaps spread the disease widely.

The numbers are absolutely shocking regarding the potential for loss of life because of this. The administration, the President apparently read a book, that is great, and the book was about the great pandemic, and suddenly he got excited about it. Except experts in his administration and worldwide have known since before he became President that there was a potential for species crossover with this flu, and a tremendous loss of life is potential from this.

This administration last year in preparation for this looming disaster, and it already infected and killed a number of humans at a rate of better than 50 percent in Asia last year, so last year in preparation for this they took some steps. They put more money in the budget for vaccines, antiviral drugs and basic research. Woo, yea for them.

But guess what? The total spending was $110 million, approximately half of what they spent on chastity education in America. That is how high this ideological administration put on the idea of protecting America against an influenza outbreak. They could spend almost as much money as they put together for abstinence-only education.

Now, that seems to be kind of a misplaced priority. Belatedly now they are talking about billions and accelerated research and stockpiling antiviral drugs. I gave a floor speech last summer calling upon the administration to begin to stockpile the drugs. Unfortunately, virtually every other country in the world is in line ahead of the United States of America, and the drugs are not manufactured here to buy those drugs, because those other countries have chosen to stockpile them to protect their people. Even though they do not work very well, they are the only thing we have now.

Now the administration is talking belatedly about a crash program to try to develop vaccines 2 or 3 or 4 years down the road in the hope that this crossover will not take place before then. This is yet another example of poor planning by this administration; the fact that they created this huge new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, that failed so miserably when Katrina occurred.

And, oh, by the way, Brownie, you did a heck of a job. That hack who failed so miserably is still on the Federal payroll. Can you believe that? The guy is pulling down over $100,000 a year sitting over there having failed so miserably. The President cannot even get rid of him, let alone other political cronies in this administration.

And they are failing us in other areas of security that I referenced earlier, and they are failing the American people in this critical health care component.

Much more robust steps must be taken quickly. The clock is ticking. It is already perhaps very, very late. We can only hope that this virus does not evolve too quickly through nature, and I know this administration does not believe in evolution, but that is how viruses happen. They do evolve. All it needs is a couple of small changes, and it will be transmissible. It will be a pandemic. We need to do more to protect the American people.