Jason Altmire

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from Ohio. I wanted to think about this in the terms of what this Congress has done to resolve some of the issues that we are talking about right now for our brave service men and women and their families. Because anyone listening to this debate would say, well, that is great that you are talking about what the problems are; but what have you done to solve the problems? And I want to tell anyone who is willing to listen that we have a tremendous record of accomplishment in supporting our troops. Not just saying the words, but supporting the troops with our actions, not just our words. And we are in the sixth year of the war in Iraq right now, and here are some things that this new Congress has done, bills that have been signed into law to address the issues that we are talking about. The gentleman from Ohio talks about traumatic brain injury and the incredible impact that has had. TBI is the signature injury of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, because people who would have been killed in previous wars, thanks to better medical technology and better armor and equipment, thankfully they survive; but, unfortunately, in many cases they are horrifically injured, the type of injuries the gentleman witnessed at Walter Reed. I took a trip to Walter Reed, myself, and I saw the same types of injuries, the lost limbs, the spinal cord injuries and the traumatic brain injuries. But what happens is, when these men and women come back and they are still in the Defense health care system, they are treated for the apparent physical injuries that you can see in front of you. And because they are moving so quickly, they don't think to screen them for TBI if it is not a severe case of TBI. They move them over to the VA. The VA has no record of them having had a head injury, so it doesn't become part of their medical record and we have symptoms that go undiagnosed the rest of the time they are in the VA health care facility. So what this Congress did is said that every VA facility in this country has to have somebody on staff who is equipped and trained to treat traumatic brain injury, and we created a national data base for all of those cases where we establish treatment protocols to make sure that those brave men and women who suffered from TBI get the highest quality care anywhere in the country. That is something that is going to directly impact people's lives. Because of that law that we passed in this House and that has been signed into law, every veteran who enters a VA health care facility is going to be screened for traumatic brain injury, so never again will it go undiagnosed.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from Florida, and I look forward to continuing the discussion tonight on all these issues the gentleman has brought up. The gentleman closed with Iraq. We are going to have General Petraeus and we are going to have Ambassador Crocker come before Congress again next week and give their status report on what they see on the ground in Iraq. As the gentleman from Florida knows, he and I traveled to Iraq together last year. One of the things that you would see over there is that the military situation, without question, our brave men and women are doing incredible work over there. It's amazing to see firsthand the men and women in action and seeing the great things that they have been able to do with the situation that they have been presented with in Iraq. But I cannot say the same thing about the politicians in Baghdad, the Iraqi politicians. We have had for several months now, if not more than a year, a situation in Baghdad where the politicians have just refused to step up and make the necessary political accommodations to administer their own government and run their own affairs. This situation in Iraq can only be resolved by the Iraqis themselves. It is their country. Our brave men and women in the military have provided a bubble of security around Baghdad to give the decisionmakers, the Iraqis in Baghdad the opportunity to make the tough political accommodations that are necessary, and they have refused to do it. What we have seen in recent weeks, unfortunately, is the situation in Iraq regress. We will hold judgment on that until I hear from General Petraeus next week and Ambassador Crocker and hear what they have to say. But it does not appear that the situation in Iraq over the past several weeks has gotten any more stable. I hope that General Petraeus has good news. But nobody can argue that our brave men and women in the military, the best and brightest this country has to offer, have done everything they can possibly do to give the Iraqis the opportunity to take the reins of power and control their own affairs and manage their own destiny. Unfortunately, it appears that they have refused to do so, the politicians in Baghdad. So we will certainly talk more about that. I also wanted to touch on the economic downturn that we are in. There's a lot of debate on what you call it; is it a recession, are we in a recession, or are we not. I really don't care what we call it, what I know about is when I go back to my district in western Pennsylvania and I talk with people who are struggling in this economy, I can see firsthand what has happened and what the impact of this economic downturn has had on my constituents in southwestern Pennsylvania. We hear stories from all around the country of families going through the same trouble and turmoil as my constituents are in western Pennsylvania. One of the things I hear over and over again is, well, these are just people who bought too much house. They got in over their heads and they bought more house than they can afford. You know what, they are getting what is coming to them. That is not what happened. What we have had is people all across this country that have a mortgage, but they also have health care costs. They have kids in school, where they are paying college tuition that is going up three and four and five times the rate of inflation. They have perhaps businesses to run. They have costs with fuel and gas prices and everything that that affects, with food prices going up. Perhaps they took out a second mortgage, and maybe then they got overextended because they couldn't afford their daily household expenses because of everything else happening in the economy. This wave came on, and we had over 1 million foreclosures last year. We are on schedule this year to perhaps double that in 2008. And I don't think anyone can argue that the economy is certainly in trouble right now. It is in a downward spiral, and we are hoping to prevent a recession, if we are not in one already. But I think to have an argument, as we have had on this floor many times with people on the other side who want to deny that this is a recession or not, that is missing the boat. I don't care what you call it. What I want to do is get out there and make a difference for the American people in a way that is going to make their life better and help them pay their daily household expenses and avoid bankruptcy and avoid defaulting on their mortgage. And that helps everybody. Perhaps you do say, well, these are people who bought too much house and they got what they deserve. Even that is not the case. If those people live in your neighborhood and they default on their mortgage and their house is foreclosed, guess what? That is going to hurt your property values. That is going to have a direct impact on you, and maybe at that point you might take a second look at it. I don't want it to get to that point. I want to take proactive action. The President this week, when he talked about what his economic plan was he was moving forward, it sounded a lot like Herbert Hoover and what his plan was in the 1930s. And if you sit on your hands and you do nothing, I can promise you, this is not going to correct itself. This problem is going to continue to get worse. So I am grateful that we have come here tonight to talk about these important issues and to take action on these issues as a Congress, because working together we can take a giant step in solving these problems for the American people, hopefully avoiding a recession, if we are not in one, but in the long term making policy decisions that are going to directly improve the lives of our constituents all across the country. With that, I would now yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke).

Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman for that clarification, because that is instructive when we do hear from the other side, the unproductivity alleged of this Congress. How about this. The gentleman from Florida talked about the tremendous strain, as did the gentlewoman from New York, the tremendous strain our families of our men and women who are in the Guard and Reserve that are being deployed not once, not twice, but multiple redeployments, four, even five times now as we head into the sixth year of the war in Iraq, and we have been in Afghanistan since before that. So these families are left behind, and they have to struggle just to make ends meet. What has this Congress done about it? We are being told on the other side we haven't done anything, we don't have any record. Well, let me tell you what this Congress has done about it. This has been signed into law. We expanded the Family and Medical Leave Act for the first time to cover the families of our military Guard and Reserve, people who are putting their lives on the line for us with multiple redeployment overseas. And now, because of the action in this Congress, you can use Family and Medical Leave Act time to care for a wounded service man or woman when they come back, to use time to reassimilate as a family, to get to know your kids again and get to know your spouse again after being away for 15 months. And while they are gone, the spouse can use that time to attend these deployment briefings that happen often during the workday and they can't get time off of work, they can use it for child care, they can use it to get their economic house in order and deal with the household finances, things that weren't covered before. That is a law that is going to directly impact people's lives. It is going to make it a little bit easier for the families of our military Guard and Reserve, and that is something that we did in this Congress after the previous Congresses had done nothing to address the issue. So, I do take offense to the comment that the gentleman from Ohio relayed that had been made about how we had done nothing.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Speaker, last month the Bush administration approved the Federal bailout of an investment giant, Bear Stearns. You would have thought that the crisis on Wall Street would have opened the administration's eyes as to what is happening on Main Street. Reminiscent of Herbert Hoover, President Bush continues to oppose any efforts by this Congress to address the extreme hardships of Americans struggling in today's economy. House Democrats have crafted a foreclosure prevention package that would help stabilize the housing market, and Senate Democrats have similarly been working on legislation to help struggling families keep their homes. But rather than support such efforts, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, and Senate Republicans voted to block it from even coming to the floor for a vote. Madam Speaker, it's time President Bush and Republicans recognize that the crisis affects Main Street as well as Wall Street, and they should join us in our efforts to help families hard hit by this economy.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Chairman, I'm proud of this budget because it continues on the great work that we did last year after years and years of chronic underfunding of the veterans health care system. We added $13 billion in funding for the VA, which is the largest increase in the 77-year history of the VA, and that was great work. And we are following that up this year by adding $4.9 billion in increased funding and including steady increases over each of the next 5 years. This budget is true to our American veterans. In contrast, the President's budget, which does include a modest $1.7 billion increase this year, it decreases funding in real dollars over the next 4 years, and over the 5-year period, contains a cut in veterans health care spending. And there are 120,000 new veterans entering the system this year. Is there anyone in this body that thinks that health care costs aren't going to go up, that the number of veterans isn't going to go up, people entering the VA health care system? And instead of following the President's lead and cutting veterans health care spending, we're increasing spending to the largest levels in history. It's endorsed by the VFW, the American Legion, the Vietnam Veterans of America, just to name a few. And this funding means that we're going to clear up the 500,000 case backlog that currently exists in the VA due to that chronic underfunding that took place over the past several years before we increased funding last year. It's going to make improvements at VA clinics, help keep up with growing populations of veterans, including in my home district a $180 million expansion of the VA health care facility. It's going to increase research on traumatic brain injury and prosthetics to help our wounded warriors and our wounded veterans. It's going to help us recruit and retain the highest quality health care professionals to ensure that our veterans get nothing less than the highest quality health care available anywhere in the country right at our VA centers. So, lastly I would say to the gentleman, we have stepped up to the plate. We are going to support our veterans not just with our words, but with our actions. We're going to continue the great work we did last year with a $4.9 billion increase this year. I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, last March Congressman Kennedy came to western Pennsylvania to hold a hearing with me and Congressman Tim Murphy about the critical need for mental health parity legislation. Now, almost exactly 1 year later, I am proud to rise in support of the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act. This much-needed legislation will eliminate the discrepancies between health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses by ensuring that patients seeking mental health services are no longer penalized with higher copayments and coverage restrictions. Passage of this bill is a key step towards ending the stigma surrounding mental illness. Of the 44 million Americans living with mental illness, two-thirds did not receive the treatment they need. Treating mental illness is not only critical to mental health, but also prevents physical ailments that arise when mental health conditions go untreated. So, Mr. Speaker, this bill will help improve the mental and physical well-being of millions of Americans, and I ask my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. And I want to commend Dr. Kagen for his leadership on this issue. As all of our colleagues know, Dr. Kagen, right from the very start, has made health care his priority here in Congress using his expertise. I have a health care background as well, health care policy is my professional background, and the gentleman and I have spoken numerous times about the importance of health care. And I wanted to come down today to talk about the need for health care reform as we are currently discussing, but also just to commend the gentleman for his continued leadership on this at a time when clearly the political system is in unchartered waters, with a Presidential election that is going on around us, divided governments, we have a Congress with the House and the Senate that are having issues with other things going on. But we continue to see the health care system get worse and worse. And I think the gentleman and I agree on many things, but most importantly on the need to do something about the health care issue right now. It would be very easy to say let's kick the can down the road another year. We'll come back here in March of 2009 and everything will be different and we'll take up health care then. That's great. You know what? When next year comes along, we are going to take up health care. And there is a variety of differences of opinion on what the approach should be for health care reform, how expansive do you want it to be. But there are things that we can do now, this year, in this political environment, that are realistic. And that's what the gentleman and I have been discussing. We want to do things this year that would be considered, if not low-hanging fruit, at least issues that we can all agree on or most can agree on that we can pass and set the table for a further discussion next year on health care reform. We have a country where there is over $2 trillion that gets spent every single year; 17 percent of our GDP goes to health care. And I don't think in my district there's an issue that I hear about more often than health care reform when I go around and visit my constituents, and the reason is this is an issue that affects everybody. It's not just your wallet. Obviously, a $5,000 premium, as Dr. Kagen was describing, something that we can all relate to, the exponential increases in health care costs. Small businesses every day in this country by the thousands have to make decisions on what to do about their health care costs for their employees. Do they shift the cost to an unmanageable level? Do they stop offering health care? But they know they can't afford it and it affects everything that we do. $1,500 of the price of your car, if you buy an American-made car, is due to the health insurance costs of the automaker. Your State taxes are higher because of exploding Medicaid costs. Health care is the last remaining item on the table in every labor dispute in the country. That's why those issues come up. And we have a system that in many ways is better than any other system in the world. It's why people from all over the world come here for their transplants and for their high-end, high-tech care. We have medical innovation and technology advances that far surpass anything happening anywhere in the world. That's if you can get in, if you can afford our system. The problem is when we are compared to other countries as a nation in life expectancy and infant mortality, we're not just in the middle of the pack; we're at the bottom of the pack when compared to other nations. We have tremendous issues. We're talking about 47 to 50 million Americans that lack access to health care. They don't have insurance. There are tens of millions more that live in fear of losing their coverage. They are one accident or illness away from losing everything. So we have major issues to discuss. Most important, and I know the gentleman is going to deal with this issue at some length tonight, is the fact that if you're an individual or you're a small business owner and one of your employees gets sick or injured, you get a call from the insurance company, and they say guess what, we have to drop you because you've had this incident. And I think everyone can agree that your individual health status shouldn't be a factor in your health insurance rates. And something that the gentleman has taken a leadership role on, which I'm going to leave him with because I'm on a limited schedule myself, and I appreciate his giving me the time, is talking about ways that we can incentivize the 47 million Americans and others who have insurance to join large risk pools, community-rated risk pools, whether it be the 180 million people in the country that are privately insured, that would be everybody, or metropolitan statistical areas, regional groups, whatever we can agree on. And I realize that there are differences of opinion on how big the group should be. But we can all agree that your individual health status should not be a factor in setting your individual health rates. It should be a larger pool's health status, which would lower the costs for almost everybody. So at this point I am going to thank the gentleman for allowing me to say a few words and commend Dr. Kagen for his work.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida, and I'm glad the chart is up today and our colleagues are able to look at that. Those are the six items that we identified as our top six legislative priorities for the 110th session of Congress and starting with the very first day, January 4, 2007. So, going back more than a year, we began work on these projects. And as the gentlewoman pointed out, four of the six have become law. They've been signed into law by President Bush. All four of them passed with strong bipartisan support. The other two that did not become law, both passed the House. In the case of stem cell research, it passed the House twice and it passed the Senate twice and was vetoed by the President twice. Unfortunately, we were unable to override the veto. The Medicare prescription drugs, that failed in the Senate. But all six of these passed the House with strong bipartisan support. Four of them have been enacted into law. I'm glad to hear about the stimulus package, too. That was the vote that we cast today. And I'm very excited with the quick response that this House and the Senate gave to the American people. We worked together in a bipartisan way to address the problems with the economy. Just about any economist that you talk to, bipartisan, across the spectrum, will say that we are in great danger of slipping into a recession if we are not already in a recession. So coming back at the very beginning of the year, working together, the first week back, we put together the stimulus package. We passed it out of the House. We sent it to the Senate. They took a little bit longer, but they got their work done, and I congratulate them for that. They passed it today, sent it over to us. We immediately passed it out of the House, and now we are going to send it on to the President. And this is a stimulus package that is directly going to impact people's lives. This is a tax rebate that is going to put money in the hands of consumers who are going to spend it. And I know we are going to talk in some more detail about that. I will leave that discussion for after Mr. Murphy speaks. But I did want to point out the issue that we are talking about is bipartisanship. We came back from the holidays, saw the need, heard from the economists, and immediately sprung into action, put together a package in a bipartisan way. Got it done. Both sides of this Capitol. Now we are sending it to the President. The reason this is so important is because of some of the issues that Ms. Wasserman Schultz was talking about. The subprime mortgage issue that we all have heard so much about. One of the issues that people need to think about among our colleagues is that when you think about mortgages that are unable to be paid and foreclosures taking place with the subprime mortgages, in many cases this is not a case of somebody buying too much house, buying a house they can't afford, being unable to pay their mortgage. Certainly that does happen. The bulk of these mortgages that go bad in the foreclosures that take place are second mortgages. There are people who are unable to pay their bills because of rising gas prices, because of rising health care prices, because of higher education costs. They're simply unable to make ends meet. They take out a second mortgage to pay their daily expenses and unfortunately get in over their heads and lose their homes as a result. So this stimulus package, by putting money into the hands of people who are going to be able to use it to pay bills and stimulate the economy and buy merchandise and hopefully get the economy kick-started again and prevent a recession, or at least lessen the impact of a recession if we are already in one, this is a very important piece of legislation that both the House and the Senate passed today.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Right. And Mr. Murphy held up his chart with all the Presidents on it and talked about big spenders and fiscally irresponsible people, and I think Mr. Hoover may not be remembered in those categories, but he is certainly not going to be remembered as a job creator, let's put it that way. So for this administration to have the worst record of job creation since the Hoover administration, I think really spells out the failure of these economic policies.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I want to talk about a few things that the President is leaving behind as he leaves office going into next year, and we look forward to working with him certainly throughout this year, $400 billion in annual deficits, deficits as far as the eye can see, as Mr. Murphy talked about, an exploding debt burden, a slowing economy; and this is something that I think really needs to be talked about because we had in January a net loss of 17,000 lost jobs. And there was a lot of talk in the administration about how, well, this was the first loss in 4 years in job growth in a month, which is true. Now, any economist will tell you, anyone who studies these issues will tell you that because of the population growth in the country that works, we are experiencing in any given month, it takes between 100 and 150,000 new jobs being created just to keep pace with the increase in population growth in the country. So just to maintain, you have to have at minimum 100,000 new jobs. Well, many of the months that we are talking about going back 4 years, we have had much fewer jobs created per month than 100,000. And in fact, this administration, if you look at the job growth that has taken place over the 7-plus years of this administration and pro rate it, this is the weakest record of job growth in any administration since the Hoover administration.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I can't think of a group that we should be helping more than our Nation's veterans. And to have a budget submitted to us at a time when all of us can agree that there is nothing more important than taking care of the people who are putting their lives on the line for us, wearing the uniform of the United States every single day, making every possible sacrifice, and to have a budget submitted to us that slashes funding for veterans programs is an offense. It literally is an offense.

Mr. ALTMIRE. And it's particularly frustrating to Mr. Murphy and I, who are in our first term and we had our second State of the Union address just last week, a week ago, and the President of the United States stood right behind where I am standing right now and said to the Congress you need to be more fiscally responsible. And he lectured us on how he perceived this Congress to have been fiscally irresponsible. And literally a week later, 1 week later to the day, he drops on all of our desks a budget that is out of balance by $407 billion. So when you talk about living in a world where you can say one thing and do another, I would suggest you look no further than that budget that was submitted to us. And the gentlewoman asked about the COPS program, and I appreciate her bringing that to our attention. I had in front of me funding for something that's near and dear to my heart, and that's for veterans, which was the third category on the chart that she showed several minutes ago when we talked about education funding and other accounts that pale in comparison to interest on the national debt. I just wanted to talk about what the President's budget does for veterans. It cuts health care for veterans by $20 billion over 5 years and cuts funds for constructing, renovating, and rehabilitating medical care facilities in the year 2009. And I would remind everybody what happened at Walter Reed, which is a defense health care facility, last year, at about this time last year, when we heard reports of substandard living conditions and paint peeling and rodents. And we are then going to look at the VA, according to the President's budget, and actually cut funds for constructing, renovating, and rehabilitating medical care facilities at a time when we've had a national scandal at one of those facilities? I think that's disgraceful. And for the 6th year in a row, the President's budget raises health care costs on 1\1/2\ million veterans by imposing $5.2 billion in increased co-payments on prescription drugs and new enrollment fees for veterans.

Mr. ALTMIRE. And, Mr. Murphy, you're leaving out one of the key facts, that they live in a world where you can charge everything to the national credit card. Everything that you do, every expense of the Federal Government, just charge it to the credit card, and that bill is never going to come due. Well, guess what? That bill has come due. And the reason we're facing a recession right now is because we have been living through that fiscally irresponsible time.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk a little bit about the chart that Ms. Wasserman Schultz was referencing and still has up. It shows the interest on the national debt and how that account dwarfs spending on education, veterans, and homeland security. But the truly sad part of that chart is that the red bar that shows net interest on the national debt is growing exponentially while the President, in the budget he submitted to us, slashes funding for education, for veterans, and for homeland security. And Mr. Murphy and I went over this a little bit last night in our talk on that 30-Something Group. But I just wanted to talk about those three accounts, education, veterans, and homeland security, and talk about what the President has decided to do. Instead of investing in innovation in the classroom, his budget eliminates the $260 million program providing grants to States for classroom technology and freezes the $179 million mathematics and science partnerships. Now, that's a program that's targeted at improving achievement in math and science. And instead of making college more affordable, something that this House took a giant step towards doing just today, the President's budget inexplicably eliminates supplemental education opportunity grants. And the Perkins loan program, one of the staples of higher education assistance in this country, the President eliminates it in his budget. He also eliminates the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program, the LEAP program that we know about. And they all provide necessary funding for needy students. His budget also eliminates funding for vocational education. This is completely unjustified. We talked about homeland security, something that's very important to every Member of this House. Well, the President's budget slashes funding for State Homeland Security Grant Programs. And I would repeat that. I'm speaking correctly. It slashes funding for State Homeland Security Grant Programs at a time when we're at war.

Mr. ALTMIRE. And I know that the gentlewoman is going to talk about this next issue, and Mr. Murphy and I talked last night at great length about the fact that the second largest line item on the budget that the President submitted to us on Monday, the second largest line item in a $3.1 trillion budget that is literally a foot thick page by page is interest on the national debt. The Pentagon budget is first, and interest on the debt is second. I believe the gentlewoman has a chart showing it's approximately $240 billion, just interest, on the national debt. So when you think about that $407 billion deficit for 1 year that the President submitted to us, more than half of that is due solely to interest on the debt that he has accumulated over the last 7 years.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Murphy, I would like to direct a question to our colleague from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz). She has been here for two terms now, we've been here for one, so I'm going to ask her a question. Maybe she can enlighten us and anyone else that may be listening. What are the nations that we're talking about here when we're talking about foreign-held debt? What are some of the countries that we are lending this money to?

Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentlewoman may have a different chart than I have.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I'm being facetious, obviously. A $407 billion deficit for 1 year is a very significant deficit, third highest ever submitted behind only the budget he submitted last year and the budget from 2004. But I really appreciate the gentlewoman giving us a little walk down memory lane because we're in a Presidential election year this year, so people are thinking about Presidential politics. And I like to remind my colleagues to think back to the 2000 Presidential election, and let's remember what the discussion was at that time. The Clinton administration was wrapping up. We're in our fourth consecutive year of budget surplus at that time. And as the gentlewoman pointed out with the previous chart, those surpluses were forecast as far as the eye could see, $5.6 trillion forecasted deficit over 10 years. So the discussion during the Presidential election in the year 2000 between Vice President Gore and then-Governor Bush was, what are we going to do with all this money? This is an incredible surplus. We're awash in money. Are we going to shore up the Social Security trust fund? Are we going to pay down the debt? What are we going to do with this money? Well, now it's 8 years later, and unfortunately we are not having that discussion anymore, because instead of having had a $5.6 trillion surplus, as the gentlewoman pointed out, we have had a $3.5 trillion deficit over just the past 7 years. So that $5.5 trillion surplus was a 10-year projection, $3.5 trillion over 7 years. And as the gentlewoman points out, that's almost a $9 trillion swing. And I often ask, when we discuss the budget, if you had said to an economist or any group of economists after the new administration took over and they were facing this $5.5 trillion surplus, if you had said, well, what would it take to have a $9 trillion swing to the negative in the surplus to a deficit, just about any economist you talk to would have said, well, that's impossible. You can't possibly mismanage the economy to such an extent that you would have a $9 trillion swing over just 7 years. Well, unfortunately, this current administration has done the impossible; they have added $3.5 trillion to the national debt, which now stands at $9.2 trillion.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I certainly will.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I would say, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, not to interrupt, but the President did tell us last year that he was going to reduce the deficit, and I see here that last year we had a $410 billion deficit. And he did, in fact, reduce it. Let's give credit where credit is due. The deficit this year is only going to be $407 billion.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Chairman, over the past 20 years, the average price of textbooks has nearly tripled. College students now spend $1,000 a year on textbooks, and for some majors it can be up to $2,000. This dramatic rise in textbook prices is a significant contributor to the increase in overall cost of college education. To remedy this, I'm offering this amendment today with Congressman Ryan. Our amendment creates a pilot program to award 10 competitive grants to establish rental textbook programs. Rental programs could reduce textbook expenses by up to 75 percent. A recent report by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance highlighted textbook rental programs as a way to significantly reduce textbook expenses. The same report noted that the primary obstacle to these programs is the start-up costs associated with implementing them. The Ryan-Altmire amendment will enable institutions to create textbook rental programs and, as a result, save students money. I encourage all of my colleagues to support it. And I thank the gentleman from Niles, Ohio, for allowing me to attach my name to his amendment.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Chairman, I want to take a moment to highlight a few aspects of this bill that I worked to include. During committee consideration of the bill, I offered and passed an amendment to encourage colleges and employers to form partnerships that identify high-demand occupations and create educational pathways for students to pursue them. These partnerships will help students succeed in the job market and provide local businesses with the skilled workers they need to grow. This bill also includes my legislation that requires the Department of Education to forgive the student loans of veterans who are determined to be totally and permanently disabled by the VA. This will end the duplicative and burdensome process that disabled veterans currently must endure. It also includes my legislation to provide grants for teacher preparation courses at minority-serving institutions to help them recruit and prepare the teachers of tomorrow. This legislation will expand our teaching pipeline and improve the diversity of our Nation's teachers and teaching force. The College Opportunity and Affordability Act significantly improves our higher education system, and I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Speaker, I would like to wish the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Organization of Chinese-Americans a happy and healthy New Year for the year 4706, the year of the rat. I hope this New Year brings the Chinese-American community of Pittsburgh much joy and thanksgiving. I am thankful for the positive impact this organization has had on the lives of Chinese-Americans and Pittsburgh as a whole. Chinese-Americans have greatly contributed to the progress of Pittsburgh as well as the entire nation. I am very honored for this opportunity to wish them a very happy 4706. I ask my colleagues in the United States House of Representatives to join me in wishing the members of the Organization of Chinese-Americans a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. And the gentleman knows that there are three legs to this stool that we are talking about. One is the increase in spending leading to the deficit. One is the misplaced priorities of the cuts to programs that are critically important. The third is what's left out of this budget that we all know we have to deal with, and I'm going to save that discussion for a little bit later as we walk through some of these programs. But the full cost of the Iraq war and the cost of the alternative minimum tax relief for this year are not included in this budget. So a $407 billion deficit without even including probably the two largest items that we are going to have to face in the next year, we'll get to that point, but there are a lot of issues here. When I talk to people when I go back home in the district, I hear a lot about entitlement spending, and when I go home, I think I can make a pretty good case that Medicare is important and we shouldn't be cutting Medicare at a time when the number of people qualifying for Medicare is rising exponentially and health care costs are going up. I can make a pretty good case, I think, for that. But I will still hear people say, You know what? I'm not on Medicare. That's an entitlement program. I don't care about that. Cut it. It's a boondoggle. Just cut it. I do hear people say that. They're wrong, but they say it. Well, there are some things in this budget that nobody, nobody in their right mind could justify freezes or cuts in these types of programs. And maybe our colleagues are out there and they say, Show me. What are you talking about? What is in the budget that we shouldn't cut? Well, how about research, health care research through the National Institutes of Health? I think that's something that affects everybody. If you're not directly affected by health care research, you certainly have somebody in your family or you have somebody, a loved one or a friend, that is affected. And let's talk about the type of research that we are talking about. This budget freezes funding for lifesaving medical research at the NIH, National Institutes of Health, regarding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease. At a time when our medical technology in this country is greater than anywhere else in the world and our research and our ability to find treatments and cures for these diseases exceeds any time in the history of the planet, we are going to cut funding for medical research for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease? I think, Mr. Murphy, that we make a pretty good case that that's not a cut that should happen. This budget also slashes funding, and this is inexcusable, slashes funding by $433 million, 7 percent of the overall budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, responsible for infectious disease control, prevention programs, and health promotion. So we hear a lot about the avian flu, the bird flu, the possibility of a pandemic through diseases, whether it be a terroristic issue or just something we can't control on the health side. That may be the number one public health threat facing the country right now, the possibility of a pandemic flu, a worldwide spread of some disease, and we're going to take this opportunity to cut the Centers for Disease Control specifically for infectious diseases by 7 percent? That's what we are going to cut in this budget when we are adding $407 billion to the national debt for 1 year? I think it's inexcusable. So I really don't think there is anybody that I am going to run into in my district that's going to say that's a good idea.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Well, and again, the things that were said as far as fiscal responsibility made some sense, and I was happy to hear them. And you're right, we had not heard them over the past 7 years, and that led to the deficits that the gentleman and I have both talked about. Now, we sat here and we heard that. And I thought that hopefully that would translate to the President submitting a budget where the actions actually matched the words that we had heard a week ago. Unfortunately, it didn't. The President, a week later, submits to Congress a budget that's $407 billion out of balance. And we're living in a time when the second largest line item in the Federal budget that is before us is the interest on the national debt, which is $9.2 trillion. The second largest line item in this budget is interest on the national debt. Now, that alarms me, Mr. Murphy, and I'm sure it alarms you. And I would want to do something about that if I was submitting a budget before Congress. And I would want to show, having just talked about fiscal responsibility, that I was committed to fiscal responsibility. But, unfortunately, we have a budget that makes all the wrong decisions because it is fiscally irresponsible, it does have misplaced priorities, it does move in the wrong direction as far as increasing the deficit at a time when we already have a record debt, but it cuts programs like Medicare and Medicaid. This is at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to afford health care, especially senior citizens. And to propose a budget that cuts Medicare by $556 billion over a 10-year period, at the same time freezing payments to hospitals, to nursing homes, to hospices, to home health agencies, it just doesn't make any sense because health care costs aren't going to stop. Health care costs have been going up above the rate of inflation every year for as far as anyone can remember. The technology that's used for health care, the increase in the amount of baby boomers that are qualifying for the Medicare program for the first time this year, in 2008. The costs of Medicare are exploding. So to just say we are going to cut Medicare over the next 10 years by $556 billion doesn't mean health care is going to be less expensive, fewer people are going to qualify for Medicare, and fewer people are going to use the program. And certainly it doesn't mean that home health agencies, hospices, and hospitals are going to have fewer expenses just because we are going to be reimbursing them.