Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps') motion to instruct energy bill conferees to strike the MTBE liability waiver provision from the final energy bill. The conferees should understand that we want an energy bill, not an energy subsidy bill. What is more important? The profits of oil companies or the health of our people and the financial health of States and communities in which we live? The liability waiver assumes that Congress mandated MTBE use in 1990. But that is really not true. Congress mandated the use of an oxygenate in reformulated gasoline, but MTBE is not and was not the only oxygenate. MTBE was used extensively in non-RFG areas where no mandate applied. Furthermore, MTBE was marketed and used extensively before 1990. Maine's experience really illustrates the MTBE problem. Maine volunteered to phase into the Federal reformulated gas program in 1991. And in 1995 reformulated gas containing MTBE entered the marketplace in Maine. Two years later, in 1997, the Maine Bureau of Health reported MTBE in 7 percent of Maine public water supplies. One year later, 1998, MTBE was detected in 16 percent of the public water supplies. So starting that year, 1998, Maine began phasing out the use of MTBE, and in 2007, Maine will impose a partial ban of MTBE. This liability waiver creates a massive unfunded mandate. Communities face a 25 to $85 billion bill to clean up the MTBE. And juries in some cases have recently found the MTBE manufacturers, lax Texas oil firms, were dishonest about the impact of their product on groundwater. The juries concluded that the companies are liable for the cost of cleanup. One reason is when you go back to 1981, the Shell engineers were joking with each other that MTBE stood for ``menace threatening our bountiful environment'' or ``most things biodegrade easier.'' They knew what the impact of this substance would be. Just this month, just this month EPA developed a draft risk analysis that concludes that MTBE is a ``likely'' human carcinogen. If finalized, this would dramatically increase the cost of MTBE cleanup. So this liability waiver provision takes away the best claim that communities and States have to require manufacturers to help clean up the mess they created by manufacturing a defective product. Now, finally, we hear a lot about a deal in the works to address this crisis. I would ask, will this deal protect communities from having to pay to clean up MTBE? Will this deal cover the cost of cleaning up the water, or will it just pay to remove leaking tanks? Will this deal be subject to an annual appropriations at a time when funding for clean water programs here in Congress is being cut, or will it charge cleanup costs to the American people in order to bail out Texas oil companies? I encourage all of my colleagues to support the motion.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for organizing this event to talk about the Federal deficit and the Federal debt. And the chart he has up there is really significant. What our Republican friends are doing, if we look at what they do and not what they say, they have decided that the most important thing in this country is to increase payments for interest on the national debt. It makes no sense, but that is what they are doing. And let me give a couple of numbers. In 2004, the Federal Government paid $160 billion for net interest on the Federal debt held by public investors. By 2010, we will be spending about $312 billion, almost double the $160 billion that we spent last year. So it is pretty clear when we look at the chart in front of us here today that over the next 6 years education spending will not go up much at all, environmental spending will be about the same, spending on veterans benefits will go up slightly; but there is an explosion in interest on the national debt. So the Republicans in this House are basically saying we are not spending enough on interest on the national debt. The trouble with that is that it is of virtually no use, virtually no use to any of us. Think about the contrast between fiscal year 2005, which we are in, and fiscal year 2006, the coming year. There is an increase in spending on interest on the national debt of $36 billion. That is with a ``B.'' Thirty-six billion dollars, that is what we will spend on interest in the national debt next year more than we have spent this year. And then let us look at what we are doing. This year how much is the increase that the Department of Education is getting from Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill? $118 million. That is the increase in the bill, a tiny increase. Far less than 1 percent. $36 billion more this coming year for interest on the national debt, $118 million more for education. Those priorities are completely out of whack.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield further?

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, just one more point here. I think we have a moral obligation to our children that can be easily summarized: number one, protect them from harm. And that is what governments at all levels do, try to do, and that is what a lot of social service agencies try to do, protect our children from harm. Number two, we need to give them a healthy start in life. We have to provide them with quality health care. Number three, we have to create opportunity for them, and that means investing in education, giving them a chance to succeed in life. So as I said before, $36 billion more is what the Republicans in the House want to spend on interest on the national debt. But they are cutting the Maternal and Child Health block grant by $24 million, or 3 percent. They are failing to raise the maximum Pell grant by even $100. They are doing that by only $50. The bill is making a 5 percent cut in the Healthy Start Initiative, which makes targeted grants to improve prenatal and infant care in areas with high infant mortality rates. So in those areas with high infant mortality rates, we are just saying we are going to take money away from those parents and their kids. We are going to take it away because we have to pay interest on the national debt. They are freezing money for the child care block grant at last year's level. They are freezing after-school health care funds. It goes on and on. It is just an abomination. To do what we are doing in this budget to our children, cutting their health care funds, decreasing opportunity, simply so we can pay for tax cuts and a war in Iraq is beyond belief, and we need to reverse it. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for letting me go at this moment in the proceeding. And I am very grateful for all the work the gentleman from South Carolina is doing.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the underlying bill, H.R. 2745. I also believe that these two amendments are probably superfluous. But, broadly speaking, clearly the Oil-for-Food scandal is a problem. It needs serious attention. I think all of us in this House agree that the U.N. is in need of serious, ambitious reform, but the underlying bill seeks to achieve that reform by assuming once again that the United States can dictate to the rest of the world. The United Nations does need to clean up its act, and it has already begun to do so. It is establishing a Management Performance Board to monitor senior managers, appointing the top U.S. State Department finance expert as the U.N.'s new management chief, and consolidating a comprehensive antifraud and corruption policy, in part based on a recent model developed by the World Bank. These are just a few of the many actions the U.N. is taking. In short, the organization's top bureaucrats are pressing for reform, and they need to, because the world is watching. But this U.N. Reform Act ignores this reality. It is self-destructive in its isolationism. In shifting funds from assessed to voluntary contributions, the Hyde bill attempts to legislate for the world by circumventing the General Assembly, where budgetary matters must be approved by consensus. Measures such as these breed resentment and weaken our credibility. At a time when the U.S. public image abroad is already suffering, member states do not need a new excuse to think of the U.S. as a bully. The Hyde bill would halt the expansion or creation of new peacekeeping missions if the U.N. does not meet a very unrealistic time line for reform. Such a move would signal a U.S. disengagement from the world's problems, including the worst humanitarian crisis of our time, the genocide in the Sudan, and it would make the U.S. appear narrowly focused on our pocketbook, rather than grave humanitarian concerns. I would add, the Oil-for-Food scandal is not one where the U.S. has perfectly clean hands. We have several golden opportunities these next few months to make the world safer and to fight global poverty. We have the G-8 meeting in Scotland in July and the U.N. General Assembly summit in New York City in September. The U.S. should be showing leadership regarding the proposed Peacebuilding Commission, which the administration supports, and increasing the effectiveness and amount of aid. The Hyde bill is an unfortunate distraction that detracts from U.S. leadership and undermines the potential of the U.N. There is a price to be paid for putting the U.S. at odds with some of our closest allies. Our allies and other nations are going to be less willing to cooperate with the U.S. on antiterrorism or other efforts if the U.S. continues to refuse to be a global team player. For those reasons, I urge my colleagues to support the Lantos-Shays substitute, which removes these harmful provisions.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Bradley-Herseth-Simmons-Allen amendment to postpone the base closure process. Why are we closing military installations when we are at war? Why are we building new bases in Iraq while closing them in America? Will our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have the right facilities to come home to? These are the questions my constituents are asking. I do not have good answers, but neither does the Pentagon. This BRAC was formulated in 2001 before September 11 and before our occupation of two countries. The world has changed, but the process has not. The Pentagon says it wants to bring home 70,000 troops, but the Overseas Basing Commission has found that the massive realignment of forces requires that the pace of events be slowed and reordered. This validates our concern that this BRAC is the wrong process at the wrong time. If we do not do this right, our Nation risks losing key assets that can never be reconstituted, like the nuclear shipyard in Kittery, Maine. We jeopardize our security if we close infrastructure before we first come to consensus on an overall defense and homeland security strategy. Our amendment puts the horse where it belongs, before the cart. It requires implementation of the Overseas Basing Initiative, the Quadrennial Defense Review, the National Maritime Security Strategy and the Homeland Defense and Civil Support Strategy before BRAC takes effect. It is the right process, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the Bradley amendment.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 207, 208, and 209, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on all 3.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) for yielding to me, my friend and colleague. I stand here as a person who believes fundamentally that the task we have here in the Congress is to create a stronger and more competitive America, number 1; number 2, to encourage a broader prosperity among citizens among all walks of life in the country; and 3, to create a better future for ourselves and our children. It really comes down to being pretty much that simple. I also stand here as someone who, in the past, has voted for some trade agreements and voted against others, and I wanted to speak tonight on why I believe CAFTA is a bad deal for the American people and a very bad deal for Central America as well. Our history has shown that the free enterprise system, and free markets in particular, are essential in order to have an efficient allocation of resources and to encourage economic growth, but our history has also taught us that free markets do not, by themselves, assure that the benefits of a free economy will be distributed fairly among the population. In fact, in many places around the world, it is the case that wealth and power are concentrated, and in America, in the last four years, wealth and power have become concentrated at an alarming rate. We are doing anything in this country but encouraging broader prosperity. We, in fact, are doing tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country and making it harder every day for the middle class to get by, to pay for their mortgage, to get a good education, to pay for their health care, and to otherwise create for themselves and their children the kind of life that we thought America promised to everyone. So, some of my criticisms of CAFTA relate to the policies of our Republican colleagues in the Congress and to the Bush administration because when we listen to people on both sides of the aisle, both sides of this issue, the proponents of CAFTA say the agreement will create jobs in the United States. The opponents say it will cost jobs. I believe that both are right. It will create some jobs in the United States, and we will lose many, many other jobs, in all probability many more. So, if both are true, the question is, what are we doing as a country to take care of those people who lose their jobs as a result of CAFTA? The answer from this administration is nothing. The answer from this Republican Congress is nothing, nothing at all. Because what we have done are tax cuts for the wealthiest people, major tax cuts in 2001, irresponsible tax cuts in 2003 that followed, and when we look around, look what the result is. Here it is. We have turned budget surpluses to deficits as far as the eye can see. The International Monetary Fund says that American budget deficits are threats to global economic stability. Our growth is sluggish, stocks are flat, wages are stagnant. When we look at General Motors, $1,500 of every automobile goes to health care, two-thirds of that to retirees who are not even making the vehicles. That is not true in Japan. It is not true in Canada. This is the year when Ontario will go past Michigan in North America as the place where most automobiles are manufactured. The U.S. cannot compete in this kind of playing field because it is not level. So if we look at the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress, what are they doing for people who get laid off as a result of CAFTA, as they surely will be? Well, the budget that was just passed by Congress cuts funds for job training, cuts funds for vocational education, cuts funds for adult education, community development, zeros out the section 7(a) loan program for the Small Business Administration. So if you lose a job because of our trade policy, and you want to start your own business, the administration's answer is forget it, we want to take away the ability of the Small Business Administration to help you. If we are going to keep America competitive in the 21st century, we have got to invest in emerging technologies to give us a competitive advantage. Green technologies that make automobiles, power plants and businesses more efficient and clean would be one key area. Our economic strength basically depends on our investment in people, both people who are trying to get an education for the first time, people who are trying to get an education or job training to recover from a job loss, in industries that are cutting edge technologies for the future. This is not what we are doing here. So we do not have the comprehensive national plan to deal with job loss. The administration and the Republican Congress have just watched jobs fleeing overseas, and the response has been, ho hum, well, that is just the way the market operates. Now, let us turn from that and look at the trade agreements themselves. In CAFTA, because these are poor countries, we have got to have strong labor provisions. The labor in Central American countries have much weaker labor laws than we do. So a trade deal must include provisions to prevent companies from taking advantage of that gap by exploiting the lack of labor protections for workers in Central America. CAFTA fails this test hands down. The agreement requires these countries to enforce their own laws rather than enforce internationally recognized worker rights. Yesterday, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) released reports commissioned by the Department of Labor, which confirmed that laws in Central America do not adequately protect the right to organize in accordance with international labor standards. The lack of enforceable standards is bad for workers in CAFTA countries trying to lift themselves out of poverty makes it very difficult to create a middle class in those countries, and it is bad for American workers and businesses who want to expand international markets without resorting to the exploitation of workers overseas. CAFTA also fails the balance test on the environment. It is not balanced. It does not work. It creates incentives for American companies to move production to Central American countries where the environmental protections are weak and lack the proper enforceable mechanisms, and CAFTA does nothing to help. When you look at those areas, labor and environmental issues, they are examples of where this agreement, CAFTA, tilts too far toward unmanaged, free markets, but there is one area where CAFTA tilts too heavily against free markets and against competition and that area is pharmaceuticals, no surprise. The CAFTA agreement continues a dangerous trend of using trade policy to extend intellectual property protections that stifle generic drug competition and erect market barriers to affordable medicines. These provisions are bad for public health. Generic drug competition is proven to lower prices and expand access. Several years ago when generic AIDS medications were introduced, it drove the annual cost of treatment in developing countries from $10,000 a year to $300 a year, and no one can argue that that was not an important development. But CAFTA would delay generic entry for prescription drugs by forcing trading partners of the CAFTA countries to accept 5- to 10-years extension of what is called data exclusivity during which generic makers are denied access to patent holders' clinical data that could expedite regulatory approval of generic versions of drugs. In other words, CAFTA gives a huge break to the brand name pharmaceutical industry at the expense of the generic pharmaceutical industry but, more importantly, the public health of people in Central America. A year ago, the Guatemalan legislature changed its law to promote the availability of generic drugs in the Guatemalan market, and using CAFTA as a weapon, the United States has forced the Guatemalan legislature to repeal that legislation. In other words, we have done something for the pharmaceutical industry by forcing Guatemala to change its laws and for no benefit to anyone else in America. So the bottom line is CAFTA does not work for the Central American workers. CAFTA does not work for American workers or American businesses. It needs to be voted down, and I want to thank the gentleman from Maine for holding this Special Order tonight.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) for yielding me time. The Republicans have a view that is unstated, if you repeat something that is untrue over and over again, people will believe it to be true. And take the signature line of my friends on the majority, this budget will cut the deficit in half in 5 years. It is not true. There is no year-to-year deficit that ever gets to that point, and this budget does not do it. What they did is they puffed up the deficit number, the projection, a year and a half ago. They puffed up that number and now they are talking about a reduction from that puffed up number. It simply is not true. But what I really want to talk about is Medicaid, what you are doing to Medicaid with this budget. We now know that the Medicaid cuts in this House reconciliation bill could be as high as the entire Energy and Commerce instruction to reduce $14.7 billion over 5 years. Two days ago this body passed a motion to protect Medicaid by an overwhelming vote of 348 to 72, 152 Republicans joined all Democrats to oppose cuts to Medicaid. And so what do we get? We get a budget that is going to reduce Medicaid by a substantial amount of money, $10 billion, $14 billion, we do not know. Any cut to Medicaid is a significant hit on our States. But the bottom line is Republicans today with no notice, with a few hours notice of this budget, will troop down here and they will vote for a budget resolution that cuts Medicaid, and two days ago they all stood up and said, oh, no, no, no, we are opposed to Medicaid cuts. That is what we have got here. If this budget could stand the light of day, an extended light of day, frankly, we would see more time than 3 hours to review it. But the bottom line is cuts to Medicaid will have a devastating effect on our society. They will make the system less viable for health care providers. They will have an impact on seniors and impoverished children. This budget is an outrage and should be rejected.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. If I could just jump in here, I wanted to come to a conclusion about what this means, these huge deficits, these unprecedented deficits, the highest deficits in American history. They mean higher interest rates in the long run, higher interest rates than we would have otherwise.

Mr. ALLEN. On car loans and home mortgages and on business loans. That is number one. And because it means higher interest rates in the long run, it means slower economic growth, slower economic growth than we would have with more responsible policies. What does slower economic growth yield? Fewer jobs. Fewer jobs for the American people. So we have higher interest rates, slower economic growth, fewer jobs. It is hard to believe the people who care about America would do what the Republican majority is doing to the American people through these budgets. They have fed the wealthiest people with tax cuts, the largest tax cuts in American history, and they are taking from the middle class opportunities for education and job training and advancement that ought to be part of what this country means. I think it is embarrassing, it is a shameful activity, and it clearly is the worst fiscal irresponsibility that I can remember in the last 100 years.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is true at the local level you learn in a very short time the importance of a partnership between the Federal Government and the States and local governments. Clearly, it has been forgotten here. I do want to thank the gentleman for the knowledge that he brings to this particular debate, the information he brings. I mean, the gentleman knows more, in my opinion, about this budget than anyone else in the Congress. At some level, it seems to me, this should not be that hard, because the Federal budget should, number one, be designed to create a stronger and more competitive economy. I mean, after all, what we want for people in this country is to have opportunity, we want them to be able to get a good education, to get a job and be successful in competing, because we are all competing in one way or another in a global economy. We know that the Chinese economy is growing very rapidly, that India has very strong schools these days, particularly in engineering, and so we need the best educated, best trained work force we can have. Now, if we look at this budget, we are not going to get the best educated, best trained work force out of what the Republicans are trying to do to this country. As the gentlewoman from Nevada was saying, there are so many programs, adult education, job training programs, technical education that are being reduced, being reduced, simply to pay for tax cuts for the richest people in the country. So how do we build a stronger, more competitive economy when we are reducing the ability of people to get the education and training they need; when we are turning around and passing a resolution, as we did today, a resolution that said, we are for a small business Bill of Rights, and then reducing funds to the Small Business Administration to make it harder for entrepreneurs in this country to get the financing they need, the technical assistance they need to get a business off the ground. It takes your breath away.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, just quickly, the thing that strikes me, that is astonishing to me is the median household income in this country is something like $48,000, $49,000. Half of the households, or less than half of the households earn more. We have a deficit of roughly $427 billion projected for this year. That is more than $1 billion a day that we are borrowing, a lot of it from Chinese and Japanese banks. Yet, $89 billion will be enjoyed by households earning over $350,000 this year, next year, the year after that, the year after that; $89 billion that they did not have in the prosperous 1990s because of the tax cuts that the Republicans passed for the wealthiest people in the country, and they are going to do anything to protect those tax cuts. So what they are doing is they are cutting aid for small businesses, they are cutting vocational education, they reduce funding for adult education, they reduce funding for the Small Business Administration to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country. It is hard to see how that will provide a stronger and more competitive economy, and it certainly will not provide broader prosperity because that, in my view, is the second goal we ought to have here. We ought to be trying to make sure that opportunity in this country; the chance, if you work hard and play by the rules, to have a reasonable opportunity for a reasonable level of prosperity. That is missing in this budget. The middle class in this budget takes it on the chin. This is no budget for middle class Americans.

Mr. ALLEN. If the gentleman would yield, you know, I find a couple of things astonishing here. One is the Office of Management and Budget used to do 10-year projections of the budget. But they do not anymore. They just do 5 years under the Bush administration because from year 6 to year 10 is such a horrifying picture, they do not want the American people to know how bad it is. And you do not have to take it from us, from Democrats. Before the 2003 tax cuts were passed, Paul O'Neill, George Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, said if you pass these 2003 tax cuts, if you do that, you will not be able to do anything else that you want to do. And he was right. He was absolutely right. Because this year, as a percentage of total economic activity, tax revenues to the United States of America are at the lowest level since 1959, before Medicaid, before Medicare. We are trying to run a 21st-century government on revenues that are, you know, really, as a percentage of the economy, 1950s revenues. And it is all because Republicans have, at least they say, they think if you cut taxes, revenues to the government increase. That is what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) has stood up and said. The CBO disagrees and the real world does not work that way because every time they do a big tax cut, revenues decrease. We have got an administration that is the most fiscally irresponsible administration in the last hundred years at least, maybe forever, because they have turned the deficit, turned a surplus generated during the Clinton administration into huge deficits that go on and on. And I just think in terms of what happens to our children, because part of this deficit, part of this budget ought to be to prepare a better future for our children. That is what all Americans want. And we are simply piling debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren. We are spoiling their chances for a good life. And frankly, the people who are doing it have to know it.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Capps amendment. This is really about what are we really doing here in Congress. Are we here to protect the profits of oil companies, or are we here to protect the States and communities from which we come? Let me just tell my colleagues the story as it applies to me. In 1995, reformulated gas containing MTBE entered the marketplace in Maine. Two years later, the Maine Bureau of Health reported that they found MTBE in 7 percent of Maine's public water supplies. One year later, in 1998, it was found in 16 percent of Maine's water supplies. So that is how we learned about MTBE. But let us just go back 15 years, go back 15 years. In 1981, Shell engineers were joking that MTBE stood for Most Things Biodegrade Easier, or Menace Threatening Our Bountiful Environment, or Major Threat to Better Earnings. We have had a discussion here about what Members of Congress knew back in the 1990s. What we know now is that the industry knew in the early 1980s that this was a hazard to groundwater and they went ahead and put it in the gasoline anyway. So now the question is, who pays? The manufacturers or the taxpayers in all of our communities? The majority is saying the taxpayers should pay. Well, there is a court in Manhattan yesterday, New York Federal District Court refused to dismiss 80 lawsuits brought on the ground that the majority is trying to eliminate, and the judge said, innocent water providers and, ultimately, innocent water users, should not be denied relief from the contamination of their water supply if defendants breached a duty to avoid an unreasonable risk of harm from their products. That lawsuit includes the State of New Hampshire as plaintiff, many municipalities, the City of New York. So here we are, here we are. Who will pay? The majority says, certainly not the manufacturers. The Capps amendment and we say, those responsible should pay.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, refinery emissions cause asthma. Since the refineries pose a threat to human health, they are regulated under the Clean Air Act; but this energy bill undermines EPA's ability to enforce clean air standards at refining facilities. The provision moves the task of environmental protection from the EPA to the Department of Energy where it does not belong. The bill would place the Secretary of Energy in charge of the permitting process, the official record and the only environmental review document. DOE is even given the power to issue permits which EPA and State governments have denied. EPA's three decades of expertise would be supplanted by an agency without experience enforcing the Clean Air Act. It may be time to expand existing refineries or build new ones, but EPA is not the problem. EPA has no outstanding refinery permit requests; and if there were a problem, there would be a backlog, and there is none. Putting DOE in charge will create more bureaucracy, not more refineries. EPA's Clean Air Act knowledge is an asset in expedited permitting, not a liability, because the DOE is much more likely to issue permits that will be struck down in court. Please vote for the Solis amendment.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to S. 256. This bill helps big credit card companies at the expense of working families in crisis. A Harvard University study reports that more than forty-five percent of all bankruptcies are filed because of a health emergency. Approximately ninety percent of all bankruptcies are due to a health care debt, job loss, or a divorce. When this personal crisis happens, families are driven into crushing credit card debt that they ultimately cannot manage. Working families are being squeezed by skyrocketing health care costs, gas prices, and housing costs. At the same time, this Republican Congress is reducing the social safety net for working families: Medicaid, Social Security, and now, bankruptcy protections. Mr. Speaker, I know there are people abusing the bankruptcy code. But There are also companies marketing loans to people who cannot afford them. Credit unions and community banks make responsible loans and do responsible underwriting. But this bill does nothing to make big credit card companies curb their abusive marketing strategies or practice responsible underwriting. Vote ``no'' on S. 256.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, the budget is a reflection of our values and priorities as a Nation. Congress should support a Federal budget that will make us more competitive in the global economy, spread prosperity to more Americans and reestablish fiscal discipline to ensure a better future for our children. This budget resolution takes us in the wrong direction. In order to cover up the President's mismanagement of the economy and the resulting mountains of debt, the Republican budget sacrifices important domestic priorities like Medicaid. This budget resolution cuts Medicaid more deeply than the President's proposal, as much as $20 billion over 5 years. Slashing Medicaid will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable in our society. Medicaid is the health care safety net for impoverished children, elderly and the disabled. Reductions to Medicaid will cause lasting harm to current Medicaid beneficiaries and make the system less viable for health care providers. Exactly who will be affected by cuts to Medicaid? Thirty-nine million low-income children and parents, including one in every five American children; 13 million elderly and disabled individuals who are receiving acute and long-term care coverage. This budget would set back the quality of nursing home care. With Medicaid funding half of the Nation's nursing home care, cutting or block granting the program would set back efforts at improving the quality of care provided to seniors and people with disabilities in the Nation's nursing homes. This budget would unravel an already fraying health safety net, jeopardizing support for providers like hospitals, clinics, doctors and health plans that serve low-income people. This budget would increase the number of uninsured which has already risen to 45 million people under the President's watch. Sick people cost more when they are uninsured and receiving care in emergency rooms than when they are covered by Medicaid. This budget would put children at risk. If children have less health coverage, they are more likely to compromise their ability to learn in school and to grow into healthy, contributing members of society. Cuts to Medicaid will shift costs to States, increasing their already significant fiscal burdens. Cuts in block grants do not address the real challenges States are facing, Medicaid enrollment increases which have occurred as a result of more people losing their health care coverage. Shifting additional costs to the States will likely drive them to cut Medicaid coverage and services. This administration has provided huge tax cuts to the highest earning households in the Nation over the last few years. Now we see the rest of the plan. To reduce or eliminate health care coverage for poor, elderly and disabled people in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is inequitable and not in line with our Nation's values.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thought I would say a few words about an event I did not so long ago, just before the election, or right after the election in my district in Maine. I went to Windham High School, which is not so far outside of Portland, and talked to a group of students, civics students and their teacher, Bruce Bowers. They had asked me to come and talk to them about the Federal deficit, the Federal debt, the growing national debt, and what it means to them, because I had said on numerous occasions during the course of the campaign that the Republican budgets which have been passed here are immoral. We are passing on our current expenses, our current choices, to our children and grandchildren. Well, they had studied the issue. They knew more than people in this House did, in many cases, I think, and they held up these signs. They had these signs in back of where I was speaking, and believe me, I got a grilling. But here were some of the signs: ``Pay as you go.'' ``No taxation without representation.'' ``Fiscal mismanagement should not tax our future.'' These kids understood what is not immediately obvious; that they were going to pay the bills for tax cuts that had been passed today or in the last 4 years, and for the war in Iraq, because essentially we are borrowing money to do those things. And they know that 20 years from now, when they want to be sending their kids to college, they will be paying taxes to the Federal Government, and there will be less of that money to pay for education, there will be less of that money to help them get job training, there will be less of that money to help their kids find the assistance they need to go to college, there will be less of that money to pay for their own national defense, because they will be paying exorbitant interest, levels of interest on the national debt; much more of what our tax dollars pay for 20 and 30 years from now will be just interest, interest on today's obligations. Let us talk just about a couple of those. We are spending $1 billion a week in Iraq. Remember Paul Wolfowitz, the Assistant Secretary of Defense, who came before the committee and said, this is a case where Iraq can pay for the cost of its reconstruction, and reasonably quickly at that. Wrong. Not just wrong about weapons of mass destruction, not just wrong about the connection to al Qaeda, but wrong about what we would be paying. We are paying over and over again, and we are borrowing that money and our kids will pay the bill, eventually. But it is also true that in 2005, $89 billion would go to people in tax cuts, $89 billion would go to people for tax cuts from households earning $350,000 a year or more; $89 billion. And those kids in Windham understand. They know that that is going straight to add to the annual deficit, the overall Federal debt that they are going to pay interest on that bill for years to come. Not just the $89 billion in 2005 that go to tax cuts for the rich, but probably $100 billion in 2006 and on and on and on. The Republicans in the House and the Bush administration are bankrupting this country. They are imposing a burden on our children and grandchildren that is unconscionable, and they will sit and tell us, oh, well, we will grow our way out of this. These revenues will simply vanish. And the truth is, now, after all they have done to hurt the American middle class in the last 4 years, they have now come up with these cockamamie private accounts in Social Security idea that will, by itself, double the national debt in 20 years.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 17, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act. Despite the increase in world attention toward Sudan in the past months, the genocide in Darfur has continued without any serious attempt by the Sudanese government to do what governments primarily exist to do, protect their citizens. Instead, Khartoum has been complicit in propagating the brutal acts of violence committed by the Janjaweed, has failed to disarm these Arab militias, and has hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid to Darfurians in dire need. Congress has spoken out and acted several times to address this crisis, and I commend this body for its aggressiveness on this issue and for contributing more funds for humanitarian assistance than any other country. However, we have a moral obligation to do more. As the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) has said, we must continue to set an example for the rest of the world. The punitive measures contained in this bill need the cooperation of the world in order to truly succeed in putting pressure on the Sudanese government. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I note that the genocide in Darfur cannot be addressed without seeing it in the context of Sudan's other tragic conflicts: the 21-year North-South civil war, and Sudan's support for LRA bases on Sudan's border with northern Uganda. We should remain careful to address all of these conflicts comprehensively, for none of them persists in a vacuum. I also support the gentleman from California's call for NATO to get involved in addressing this most serious humanitarian crisis. The Khartoum regime will do what it must to survive. In 1995, sanctions led Sudan to cut its ties with terrorists and expel Osama bin Laden. The international community should take the same forceful action now to save hundreds of thousands of lives. If the world has learned anything from the horrific tragedy of Rwanda and all previous genocides, we must not commit the same mistake again.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2028, the so-called Pledge Protection Act. I believe that the phrase ``under God'' should remain as part of the Pledge of Allegiance, and I believe that the statute that fixed that phrase as part of the Pledge is constitutional. But I cannot support this misguided congressional power grab that would prevent the federal courts from interpreting a law passed by Congress, or deciding its constitutionality. In the name of custom, our Republican colleagues disregard 200 years of legal and constitutional customs and precedent just to score political points in an election year. Despite its name, this legislation does not protect the Pledge of Allegiance. It does, however, undermine the very foundation of our system of government. We teach our children to respect the work of the Founders and the Constitution's system of checks and balances. Judicial review is a vital component of that system. Unfortunately, the so-called conservative Republican majority shows no respect today for the traditional role of our federal courts. The bizarre effect of this bill would be to allow fifty different state courts to interpret the United States Constitution in fifty different ways. Never in our history has a state court had the final say on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. That is the role and duty of the federal judiciary by history, custom and law. But for the Majority, there is no tradition, no custom, no practice, no matter how broadly accepted, that is immune from Republican assault. The Framers, our original revolutionaries, were wiser and more tolerant. Reject this election year stunt.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to make one point because I think it is worth going back to March of 2001 when the President was traveling the country pitching the first tax cut, the big tax cut; and he came to my hometown, he came to Portland, Maine, and he went to the Merrill Auditorium in city hall and he spoke to almost 2,000 people. And I remember sitting in the front row and listening to him speak. And I will never forget what he said, and this is about as close to word for word as you can get. He was selling his tax cut and he said, I know these are big numbers, but this is reality we are talking about. We hold spending to a 4 percent increase. I would say, well, not exactly, because the Department of Defense had not submitted its budget yet. He went on. We pay down $2 trillion worth of debt. Well, only if the whole program works. Then he said, We set aside a trillion dollars for contingencies. There was no trillion dollars contingency account. They made it up. They simply made it up. So all over the country the President went around saying we have set aside a trillion dollars for contingencies; and then he said in Portland and around the country, and there is still money left over. But the hard cold truth was there was no contingency account; once the tax cut was passed, once it was signed into law in the big ceremony in the Rose Garden, you cannot find the words ``contingency account.'' The administration never said as the economy deteriorated and spending went up. They never said, boy, thank God we have that trillion dollar contingency account to fall back on. So right from the beginning, this tax cut was oversold. It was oversold. They went out and said things to justify the tax cut when they did not have the evidence to support it. And I think it is worth remembering that, because it is not easy to dig a 14.8 hole for yourself when you are starting at $3.87 billion. In just a few short years they have managed to drive this country in a direction where our children and grandchildren will be paying a bill for decades to come. I would like to come back to that at a later time.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Virginia will yield, I want to follow up on the gentleman's comments about the consequences of running these huge deficits, because we have the numbers now. We know where the Federal budget is headed, and it is not a pretty picture. But there are some very serious consequences. I wanted to mention several. First of all, Social Security, when you look at the administration's budget over the next 10 years, they spend, on general government purposes, every single dollar of the social security's surplus. And the Social Security surplus for the next 10 years may be quite substantial. So, every single dollar. Then we have Alan Greenspan turning around and saying, oh, we have long-term problems with Social Security. We really should be reducing Social Security benefits. And there is the President of the United States saying, what we really need to do is to create individual accounts, which is another way of saying we need to reduce Social Security benefits. They both come to the same thing. So the first impact is on Social Security, and it could be absolutely devastating. But the second impact goes to the question that I think the gentleman was raising about are these tax cuts effective. We have now had 4 years of an administration doing three rounds of tax cuts. If you judge an economy by jobs and wages and health care, then let us first look at jobs. As the gentleman pointed out, we are down about a million private sector jobs over the 4 years. No job recovery. Worst record since Herbert Hoover. Clearly, jobs have not come back despite the three tax cuts.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, that is a very good point, and it goes to the second point I was going to make about wages. The median wage in this country now has dipped down slightly in these last 4 years. And if we look at health care, a third component of whether or not we are in a healthy economy or not, there are 5 million more Americans who do not have health insurance today. We are at 45 million instead of the 40 million uninsured when George Bush took office. So there has been deterioration across the board. And the worst is yet to come, because the Office of Management and Budget has a memorandum out there and that makes it very clear that in the 2006 budget, which is coming right down in front of us, there are going to be deep cuts in many government services, including cuts to education, veterans' health care, environmental protection, job training and child care. The last thing that I personally wanted to say about this is that I have been thinking a lot about my father's generation. My parents are both gone now, but they went through the depression and the Second World War, and a lot of people did not come through the Second World War. The guiding principle of my parents and their whole generation, I believe, was to make sure their children and grandchildren had more opportunity than they did. They sacrificed a lot that might have been for their own immediate pleasure in order to be sure their kids had a good education and that we had opportunities that they had not had when they were growing up. That generation would never have done to us what the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans are doing to our children and grandchildren, sticking them with a debt that is so large that they will be paying exorbitant interest on the national debt for decades to come; and seeing cuts in education, cuts in job training, cuts to the Small Business Administration, the squeezing of economic opportunity out of this country because of fiscal policies that are essentially tax cuts today and a billion dollars for Iraq every week. The guiding philosophy that was expressed by the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), when we were debating last year the March 2003 tax cut, he said ``Nothing is more important in a time of war than cutting taxes.'' In other words, stick it to our kids. Force them to pay for the Iraq war and force them to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent in America. It is an embarrassment. It is an absolute embarrassment, it is wrong and, as I said before, the greatest generation, the World War II generation, would never have done to us what George Bush and the congressional Republicans are doing to our children and grandchildren.