Neil Abercrombie

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. A parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker, is it in order to direct remarks from this floor to the President?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I object to Mr. Walker's contention to me. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] just stated on the floor the gentleman has been maligned, so that is equivalent to the President.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, the President is being maligned. That is against the rules of the House. Mr. Speaker, I demand that those words be taken down.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, am I to take it from the just-concluded remarks that I am now to deliver a short lecture on the Christmas spirit?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I certainly hope that I will be able to maintain the spirit of the discussion here on the floor. After all, Christmas is a magical time. Christmas is a time of fantasy, and inasmuch as this resolution is a fantasy and it will take magic to actually balance the budget, as opposed to the hard work that is necessary, I suppose one could be for it. Mr. Speaker, I regret that I have to be against it, because my reading of the Congressional Budget Office numbers are that using the honest numbers that are attributed to it is that the budget cannot be balanced by the year 2002 under the present methodology. We might be able to accomplish it over the long term by some other method, but simply to pass this resolution to perpetuate the mythology of a balanced budget, I think, is not in our interest. I have a letter, for example, dated December 14 from the Congressional Budget Office that the deficit in the general fund for this year will be $270 billion. So, I wish you 270 billion dollars' worth of a Merry Christmas at this time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I know that there are a number of speakers, due to the nature of the business on the floor, who would like to have perhaps a minute to contribute to the debate.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to extend debate 5 minutes on both sides.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am the essence, the heart, the soul of charitable endeavors.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding to me. I am very happy to be here today, because you are looking at a new million-dollar man here in the House of Representatives. I am here to collect from this man right here: Haley Barbour. This is one about the Republicans cutting Medicare. He has an advertisement in the Roll Call magazine this week, and he is offering anybody who can show the following: In November 1995, the U.S. House and Senate passed a balanced budget bill. It increases total Federal spending on Medicare by more than 50 percent from 1995 to 2002, pursuant to Congressional Budget Office standards. He says he will give $1 million to anybody who can prove that is not true. Mr. Speaker, you are looking at the guy that can do it. You put my name, Mr. Haley Barbour, right there. It says, your name here, Abercrombie, A-b-e-r-c-r-o-m-b-i-e, I will fill in the rest, it is OK, just like Abercrombie and Fitch, in case you cannot remember it, and I will see that that million dollars goes to the people that deserve it: the children that you are attacking, the elderly that you are attacking, the disabled that you are attacking. Now, Mr. Speaker, I know, I am used to seeing jolly Republican guys like Haley Barbour out there attacking weak people, but when he says he is going to give $1 million, and by the way, it is interesting that the Republicans have millions to give away, millions of dollars on Medicare, they say, let us see who they are going to give it to. They do not have a balanced budget by the standards of the Congressional Budget Office. Mr. Speaker, I have been in my special orders down here, and I say to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] that I will not take all the time up today, but the gentleman knows that I can show and have shown in these special orders over and over again, and I think my good friend, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi], is going to be able to show you some figures from her area, that proves there is no balanced budget here. On the contrary, the deficit is going to go up by billions and billions of dollars. They are going to expropriate from the Social Security trust fund money to try and make up that deficit. Mr. Speaker, I will tell my colleagues where that money is going to go from this unbalanced budget. We can prove that budget is not balanced. It is not going to be spending on Medicare. On the contrary, we assume, and the average American assumes, when you say Medicare spending, that is going for expenditures having to do with the medical needs of the people of this country. Yet, what is it that is being proposed by the Republicans in Medicare? This is from the New York Times, October 31 of this year. The plan would give doctors new ways to make money. It is not Medicare for your mom and my dad. This is Medicare-looting for the doctors and the insurance scams all over this country. Mr. Speaker, this is not me saying it. Let me tell my colleagues what the New York Times says. Medicaid measures working their way through Congress would remold the role of many doctors, turning them into medical entrepreneurs, permitting them to engage in business enterprises now forbidden. The House version of the legislation would allow doctors to start physician-run health groups without financial and regulatory requirements that States impose on similar organizations. The bill would make it easier for doctors to set prices in ways that now violate the antitrust rules. Can you imagine what a boondoggle this is? It is not being spent on Medicare; it is being spent on people who are going to give campaign contributions to the guys that are bringing them the Medicare money. That is what it is all about, and their medical savings accounts. I have the analysis right here by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that proves that these medical savings accounts is another scam artist activity for the insurance companies that will have the following effect. Under these medical saving plans unhealthy individuals are going to be unlikely to gain. Under certain scenarios, the traditional Medicare Program may cease to exist or exist in a reduced form. I am telling the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], friends and neighbors, colleagues, we are in the chips. I want Haley Barbour to have that pen ready to write my name on that check so that we can follow up, and we are going to be down here every day exposing how the Republicans have taken something as serious as Medicare, as serious as that is, to the mothers and fathers and the families of this country, having to count on Medicare, and take it and try to turn it into a joke where they are putting a $1 million check up there as if it is some kind of a sideshow that they want to put on. Well, we are taking them up on it. We are showing people that this Medicare expenditure is a serious issue with the Democrats in this Congress, a serious issue for the families in this country, a serious issue for children, for the elderly and for the disabled; and we are going to expose this for what it is.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would be kind enough to yield for a moment, I agree with what the gentleman is saying, although I think the gentleman is being entirely too kind. Not only was the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] correct in the analysis that she made, but I was showing even further cost transfers that are being made. Mr. Speaker, we cannot say that we are spending more on Medicaid, except by an accounting trick, if at the same time, simultaneously, we are increasing the deficit and the interest that must be paid on that deficit. If we are transferring money out of the Social Security trust fund, which must be paid back with interest, what happens is, on a net basis, not only are we not spending more on Medicare per se, but we have actually increased the indebtedness of the people of the United States with respect to that budget. So on any grounds that we want to put it, if we want to compare the tax cut, I should say the tax giveaway that they want to put out there is in the neighborhood of $240 billion to $250 billion, and even Mr. Barbour, at his most hyperbolic, says that under their plan, the government spent $289 billion on Medicare, just on the tax giveaway alone, 250 that is already gone. That leaves 30 right there that we are dealing with. As I said, that can be made up just with the other points that the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) made up and that the gentleman made up. So the plain fact of the matter is that on paper and paper only, by way of illusion, and by accounting trickery can we even presume that we are going to spend more on Medicare. The actual facts of the matter are that the public debt will increase from $5.2 trillion to $6.8 trillion over this 7-year period by the accounting methods that are used in the Republican budget document itself.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, those of our colleagues who are observing and those in the gallery must think they are in a fantasy world, and I really do think that we should not have been taking this time to deal with what obviously is expected by our Republican friends over here not to be passed, not to ever see the light of legislative day, and yet they got up and said, ``We are here to protect Social Security. This is a key vote. Everyone should watch. We should not borrow from our children.'' I have here a copy of the Republican budget. I can tell you exactly what is going to happen. When the crocodile tears were shed over here about the $5.2 trillion public debt, let me tell you what the Republican budget proposes for the year 2002, 7 years from now, $6.8 trillion in public debt. I will tell you what the debt increase is going to be. It is going to be $300 billion this year, and it is going to be another $185 billion in 2002. So where do you get off today, trying to stand up here and talk about what you are taking from your children and protecting the Social Security fund? The Republican budget calls for looting the Social Security trust fund of $636 billion plus interest over the next 7 years in the illusion that they are balancing the budget. You intend to take from the Social Security revenues in order to pay for your budget over the next 7 years. To come to this floor today and say you are trying to protect it where the debt limit is concerned is the height of illusion.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I certainly would be glad to, but I am making an inquiry of the Chair.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes, it is, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I understand the motivation and am reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I yield with this proviso, the Chair understand why I am asking the question. I have been forbidden to quote a Member of the other body with respect to legislation that is pending before us.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I have been informed in the past by the Parliamentarian that it was forbidden under rules of the House to quote directly from a Member of the other body, or to refer to a Member of the other body, or to quote on this floor from speeches or pronouncements made by a Member of the other body. Mr. Speaker, I did not bring it up during the gentleman's recitation because I think he did it in good faith, but that was what I was instructed by the Parliamentarian, and I would like to know if that is, in fact, the case.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So, further parliamentary inquiry: Then one may not quote anyone who is currently in office either by name or in terms of what they may have said or done?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I have the time. There is no budget proposal on this floor that is going to balance the budget in the year 2002. It cannot be done. It cannot be done unless you use the most draconian methodology that would, as I indicate, eviscerate the capacity of the country to sustain itself, either socially or economically. On the other hand, if the gentleman wants to balance the budget, if that is what his goal is, then the gentleman is going to have to do it the sensible way that anybody else does it, the way other municipalities and States and countries and villages do. The gentleman is going to have to have a capital expenditures budget. The gentleman is going to have to have an operating budget and find a methodology for dealing with it. How much revenue is coming in? How much is going out? How much can we afford to spend in a given year? And then lay that out over a 10-, 20-, or 30-year period in order to achieve it. That is the way we do it. My colleagues are not going to do it by the intuitive method of the Speaker of picking out a 7-year period in which they increase the deficit, increase spending, and at the same time claim that they are balancing the budget.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I would be delighted to respond to that. I would not accuse the Washington Post of demagoguing, especially if they are an editor of the Washington Post who has health insurance and is not likely to lose it. It is very interesting, I have indicated, and as far as the President's budget is concerned he has indicated, and the news page from the New York Times, which I just showed, this agrees exactly with what the gentleman just said in terms of increased spending. I said already this morning that both the Republicans and the Democrats are proposing increased spending. The difference is if the spending does not match the need, then we fall behind. What the Republican proposal is, is that they want to throw a 10-foot rope to someone who is 12 feet out in the water and drowning. The fact that they are throwing a 10-foot rope does not do anything for the person who is drowning, because they need 12 feet in order to reach him. What is happening is that under Medicare and the expenditures under the proposal by the Republicans is that they are going to make the insurance companies richer. The Republicans are going to take nine steps backward. They are not going to have a sufficient amount of money to be able to deal with the need, particularly if they put on a Medicaid proposal in conjunction with it that sees to it that more people are ineligible for Medicaid spending, so they will be showing up in the emergency rooms, and those who do have health insurance will be paying even higher premiums to take care of those who do not have insurance. So, all the Republicans have done with this proposal and so-called increase is shift the burden of paying for it to those who already do have insurance.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, if they do not understand it, I will attempt to explain it once again. I think there is a certain amount of calories one needs to be able to sustain one's existence. Supposing it is 1,800 calories a day. If we are putting out 1,500 calories, we are 300 calories short. What I am indicating to the gentleman is that the proposal for block granting Medicaid and for the so-called Medicare increase, when it does not match the need, then we are going to fall down and someone is going to have to pay for it in society. Does anybody really believe, Mr. Speaker, at this point that, on the one hand the Republicans can be claiming, ``Oh, no we are going to increase spending,'' and at the same time we are going to have tremendous savings? And at the same time we are going to increase the deficit, but at the same time we are going to balance the budget? Now, I do not know about someone else's definition of demagogue, but I think that that might qualify at the very least. Let me ask the gentleman a question, then, in turn. As I said, I believe I have indicated my answer to your question about the Washington Post editorial on Medicare. It does not make any sense because it does not get to the target. Is it not a case, I ask my good friend, that the conference report, and I hope that he will take my word that I do, in fact, have a bona fide copy of the conference report on the budget before me. The concurrent resolution for the budget. Does it not indicate on page 3 under deficits, that for purposes of enforcement of the resolution, the amount of the deficits are as follows: 1996, 245,600,000,000. Is that not the deficit figure that the Committee on the Budget is using in its report?