Jason Altmire

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. To complete whatever it is that you want to say. So the Medicare and Medicaid cuts of $300 billion, that is outrageous, that at a time when the number of Medicare beneficiaries is growing every year, the baby boomers are starting to qualify for Medicare in fiscal year 2008, which is where this budget takes us, and they are going to start retiring en masse in 2011 which is during the 5-year budget, that they would reduce spending for Medicare beneficiaries at a time when the number of beneficiaries is going up exponentially. Now, these Medicare cuts include premium increases for millions of beneficiaries totaling $10 billion over the next 10 years. Let me repeat that. Medicare beneficiaries at home, many of them, are going to see their premiums increase to the point where it is going to add up to $10 billion in premium increases over the next 10 years. But, at the same time that this budget slashes Medicare funding, of course it protects special interests, it leaves untouched massive overpayments by Medicare to the HMOs in the Republican's Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Now, many of the Federal Medicaid cuts simply increase cost to the State. These aren't costs that are going away, they are just passing the buck along to the States. So instead of assisting State efforts to reduce the number of uninsured, this budget actually impedes progress on States being able to insure children and others.

Mr. ALTMIRE. That is because you weren't listening. I did mention your name. I am going to give a broad overview, and then I am going to give you as much time as you need.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate Mr. Murphy's remarks. And for the folks here listening, I just wanted to let them know how we are going to approach this tonight for the remaining time that we have. I am going to give a broad overview of the cuts that have been made in some of these programs at the national level included in this budget that we received today; then I am going to yield time to Mr. Ryan, who has joined us and can ably respond to his side of things and how he views this budget. Then, Mr. Murphy, you can go again. And then I am going to focus my remaining time on Pennsylvania specific programs and how this is going to affect my home State of Pennsylvania. But for the national overview, I mentioned that this budget cuts Medicare.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Reclaiming my time on that point, what the President has done does not coincide with what the Congressional Budget Office says the cost of these programs is. Just because in his budget he estimates costs and ignores issues like the Alternative Minimum Tax, which needs to be fixed, doesn't mean those things aren't going to happen. He can ignore some of the costs of the Iraq war and the actions in Afghanistan and pretend like we are not going to spend as much money as it is going to take to carry on activities there. That doesn't mean those dollars don't add up. And the Congressional Budget Office and any reasonable economist who has taken a fair look at this budget shows that he is hundreds of billions of dollars below in his estimations what it is going to cost to carry out those.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are going to initiate the 30- something Special Order, as we have done so many times in the past. I am filling in for our colleague Mr. Meek from Florida, who usually is in this spot leading the way. But he attended the Super Bowl, which was in his district yesterday, and made it back today and had some things to take care of. So we are going to do ably in his absence tonight. But I appreciate the Speaker's generosity to give us the hour tonight. We are going to talk tonight about the President's budget and the impact that is going to have not only on the Nation and on the Congress and what we are going to need to do, but I am going to talk specifically about what this budget does to my home State of Pennsylvania. I have some statistics on health care and veterans and Social Security recipients, and we will go right down the line and talk about my home State, but also what this budget is going to do for the country and what we are going to have to deal with as a Congress. I brought down a copy of the budget so the folks at home can see what was dropped in our lap today. Each office got a copy of this budget. This is what we are talking about tonight. It is the President's fiscal year 2008 budget which we are going to talk about. Now, as he has done in the past, 6 years in a row, now seven including this budget, the President's fiscal year 2008 budget continues with more of the same, the wrong priorities from the past 6 years and the same fiscal irresponsibility and misguided priorities that have been taking our country in the wrong direction. The President's budget is fiscally reckless and adds $3.2 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years when we use honest accounting. Despite the President's claim, his budget does not achieve balance, Mr. Speaker, in the year 2012. The President leaves out many programs and uses accounting gimmicks to reach what he claims is a balance. But an honest assessment of what this budget does shows an increase in the deficit of $3.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Now, that is on top of what has already happened over the past 6 years, which has been to increase the Federal deficit, the Federal debt, by $3 trillion. I would remind my colleagues that when this President took office, we had just had four consecutive years of budget surpluses and those surpluses were forecast to continue as far as the eye could see. In fact, the 10 year budget projection was a surplus of over $5 trillion. Well, now we are 7 years down the road, and let's take a look at what has happened since then. As I said, instead of having a surplus of $5 trillion, this President has added $3 trillion to the national debt, and from this point forward, using honest accounting, this budget which the President has submitted here today is going to add $3.2 trillion more to the national debt. This is fiscally irresponsible, but the cuts that the President makes in programs are morally irresponsible, and this is what I am going to focus my remarks on tonight. He cuts health care. He cuts Social Security through his privatization scheme which he continues to try to push, even though the public clearly opposes it. He cuts $300 billion from Medicare and Medicaid programs. He cuts terrorism funding. He cuts the COPS Program. Mr. Speaker, this is just incredible, that the President came here for the State of the Union and talked about what his budget priorities were and what his goals were, and this budget doesn't represent any of the rhetoric that we heard in the State of the Union. Unfortunately, the reality of this budget doesn't match the rhetoric that we heard. Now, we have been joined once again by our 30-something colleague from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy, and I would yield to him to discuss his views on this budget.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to one of my constituents, Mr. Lou Falconi, who recently retired after 33 years at Farrell High School. I wish to recognize Mr. Falconi for his service to the Farrell Area School District both as a teacher and a football coach. Mr. Falconi took over the high school football program at Farrell in 1980. Over the course of his legendary career, he led the team to three appearances in the State finals, winning two State championships. Amazingly, he has been honored eight separate times as ``Coach of the Year.'' In total, Coach Falconi led the high school football team for 27 years and ended his coaching career as the second winningest coach in Mercer County history. On Friday, February 9, 2007, the friends, family, and colleagues of Mr. Lou Falconi will come together to celebrate and honor his life's achievements and his commitment to the community. I plan to join them in thanking him for his service and the positive impact he has had on hundreds of kids in Farrell and throughout the Fourth Congressional District of Pennsylvania.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. I have a question. Does the gentleman know off the top of his head, with the major legislation that we passed in the 100 hours and what we have done subsequent to that, including the continuing resolution, approximately how many Republicans we have seen cross the aisle and join us in a bipartisan manner?

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I did want to talk for just a moment about how important it is that veterans were taken care of in this continuing resolution. I do want to commend Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Obey, and the rest of the Democratic leadership who did a great job of putting together what was a mess that was left to us. As Mr. Ryan talked about, we had nine out of eleven appropriations bills to fund this Government that were left in our lap, and we had to deal with that, and we had some tough decisions to make. But under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Obey we did what needed to be done. I made clear to the leadership, and they agreed, that we needed to make sure that nobody should stand in front of our veterans when it comes time to pass funding resolutions. We have people fighting for us in the field overseas right now. We have veterans coming back from Iraq and, of course, veterans of every age. That need does not go away. That need does not stop. As the Congressional Budget Office has indicated, the cost of caring for those veterans goes up year after year; and we have an obligation and a duty as Members of Congress to make sure that the VA health care budget goes up enough to maintain the current level of services for every veteran that walks through the door. I want to commend Chairman Obey for taking care of that under this continuing resolution. I also wanted to just take a walk down memory lane and let's take a look at what the Republican leadership did for veterans' health care over the past several years. I have a chart here. It might be difficult for some to read. January, 2003, the Bush administration cut veterans' health care for 164,000 veterans; and that is just the start. March, 2003, 2 months later, the Republican budget that passed this Congress cut $14 billion from veterans' health care. March, 2004, 1 year later, the Republican budget shortchanged veterans' health care by an additional $1\1/2\ billion. March, 2005, the following year, President Bush's budget shortchanged veterans' health care by another $2 billion and cut veterans' benefits by $14 billion over 5 years. That is what we were left with. Now, in the summer of 2005, after they had been warned when they passed that budget back in 2004 and after enormous pressure from the Democrats and from people around this country and especially from veterans' organizations, the Bush administration finally did acknowledge that they shortchanged the veterans; and they added back $2.7 billion after months of Democratic pressure to put that money back in. But then only a few months later, in March, 2006, President Bush's budget cut veterans' funding by an additional $6 billion over 5 years. Mr. Speaker, that is the mess that we were left with, this continuing resolution, and that was what needed to be resolved. And I said throughout my campaign and I say every weekend when I go back and speak to these veterans' groups that we are, as a Congress, going to make a new commitment to our veterans, a commitment that has not been there for the past 12 years; and we are going to put veterans' interests first when it comes time to deal with these funding resolutions. So what did we do? In this continuing resolution that passed this House today, the Democrats increased the VA health care budget by $3.6 billion. Now that is in an atmosphere of having left nine spending bills completely undone, and the Republican leadership made no effort to increase that funding. But we found the will, as Democrats, and we added $3.6 billion to the veterans' budget. That is leadership; and for that I commend Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Obey and the rest of the Democratic leaders who were involved in putting that together. That is what we have done here today. So, at this point, I am going to yield to the gentleman from Ohio so he can continue to run the show.

Mr. ALTMIRE. And I did want to follow up on what the gentlelady from Florida had talked about earlier, what was left to us, and the reason that it was left to us. This was a politically, cowardly maneuver, calculated to gamble on the outcome of the elections. They left nine spending bills unfinished, hoping that they would then win and come back for a lame duck session where they could ram through further spending increases and increase the Federal budget deficit even more, as they have done every year for the past 6 years. Instead, the results of the election were not to their liking. The Democrats are retaking control of Congress at that point, and they made a calculated decision. Instead of finishing the work that their constituents sent them here to do, they, instead, dropped the ball and left all nine spending bills until the new year and the new Congress, and countless programs languishing, twisting in the wind while the new change in Congress came. And again, under the leadership of the new Democrats who have taken control of Congress, we were able to pass, within a month, nine appropriation bills that they couldn't pass over the course of an entire year. So I can't say enough about the work that this House has done and that this Congress has done in putting together a package that was very, very difficult to do, and it is just a great accomplishment. Mr. Meek has joined us. I would ask, does the gentleman wish to comment on this?

Mr. ALTMIRE. And then today 57 more, as the gentleman said. I didn't mean to put the gentleman on the spot, but I wanted to just reemphasize the point that he was making that this is not a partisan majority ramming it down the throat of the Republicans. This is working in a bipartisan spirit, something that has not been seen in this Congress for more than 12 years. And here we are, the end of our first month in office, we passed another major piece of legislation joined by 57 Members on the other side. And the gentleman is right that this is something that we should be applauding. And this is new to Congress. This is not something that has happened recently. So I would hate for people on the other side during the debate to characterize this as a partisan bill and a partisan effort. It is not. We again, with an average of 62 Republicans, 57 again today, have done this in a bipartisan way, crafting it so that all sides can support it, because we all agree that we need to do things that are to the betterment of the American people and to the benefit of the American people. I would yield again to the gentleman from Florida to continue, but I did want to just reemphasize that point.

Mr. ALTMIRE. You are right. Those are the two things that we did the very first couple of days, right after we swore in that new class of freshmen and Democrats took control of Congress. We did away with the gifts and travel and the golf outings and the meals that had been so pervasive in Congress over the past several years. More importantly to what we are talking about tonight, we reinstituted the PAYGO budget scoring system. And for those Members who talk to their constituents at home, it is what they do in their home kitchens at the end of month. It is what we do when we have to balance our own budgets. You have to have money on one side of the ledger to pay for what goes out on the other side. It is a very simple concept. Unfortunately, this Congress right after this President took office decided to let that expire. That was required in Congresses past. But, unfortunately, this administration had other ideas; and so they ran up mountains of debt because they were no longer required to have money on the other side of the ledger when they wanted to continue their free- spending ways. The result was when President Bush first took office he inherited 4 consecutive years of budget surpluses that were forecast to continue as far as the eye could see. In fact, the 10-year budget projection was $5.3 trillion, trillion, with a ``T,'' in surplus over the 10-year period from 2001 to 2010. Well, what has happened since then? They allowed pay-as-you-go to expire. They have run up the deficit, $3.5 trillion of debt over the past 6 years. The President next week is going to submit to us his budget for fiscal year 2008. It is going to be his seventh consecutive out-of-balance budget. Those deficits continue as far as the eye can see. What we did in the first week when Democrats took control of Congress, we said, enough is enough. This must stop. We instituted the PAYGO scoring system, which is what turned the record deficits of the 1980s into the record surpluses that we had in the 1990s. Now that led us to have to make some very difficult decisions in the continuing resolution that we passed today, but we have done it. We have done the hard work. We have talked about the increases that were included in the bill and the funding for veterans and for Pell Grants and for the new expanded health centers that are going to serve 1.2 million patients around the country. But I do want to make clear to everybody that this measure also includes more than 60 different program cuts to help pay for that, to help balance that situation. So those 60 programs were reduced below fiscal year 2006 funding proposals, and that provided the $10 billion in savings that we needed to offset those increases that we made in veterans health care and the other programs that we talked about.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate the gentleman from Connecticut alerting me to that. For the Members who would like to tell the constituents how they can learn something more about the 30 Something Working Group, I would encourage them to e-mail us at 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov or they can visit the Web site at www.speaker.gov/30something.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Absolutely.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman, and I would address the Chair. We have a situation in this country as was just outlined where we have 47 million Americans with no health insurance at all. We have tens of millions more that live in fear of losing their coverage. Employers often are unable to offer insurance to their employees. This is an epidemic in this country, and I heard about it back in the district this past weekend, I hear about it everywhere I go, because health insurance is an issue that affects everybody. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, live in an urban setting, rural area. No matter where you are from, health care affects you directly. And, unfortunately, for the past 6 years this issue has been ignored. And truth be told, it has been ignored for longer than that. And we need to look at this issue because this is affecting our economy. At General Motors, $1,500 of the price of producing a car is because of their health benefits. We can't compete with the rest of the world when other countries have health insurance provided. So we are starting $1,500 in the hole. So I do commend President Bush for including health care as one of his top priorities in the State of the Union address. It is something that is long overdue, and I am happy that he has finally decided to look seriously at this issue. Unfortunately, the plan that he has proposed is not going to be more than a drop in the bucket to solving that problem. We have a President who has now proposed a solution based on changes in the Tax Code to solve a problem that I have outlined. We spend $2 trillion a year as a Nation on health care, so he has recommended that he in some cases actually raise the costs to people's out-of-pocket expenses by taxing health care benefits for people. And I want to tell you something, if you don't have enough money to buy health insurance right now, you are one of the 58 million families that don't have any taxable income now because you are not making enough money to pay taxes, a tax deduction is not going to help you afford health insurance. And under the President's most optimistic estimations, his plan only offers health insurance to 3 million of the 47 million Americans that currently lack health insurance. So there may be a role for a Tax Code solution to the health crisis that we are facing in this country, but it is a very small part of what is happening. I am glad that the doctor from Wisconsin has joined us, and I am sure he will have a lot to say.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I did want to talk about some of the out-of-pocket costs that individuals and families are going to be facing with this plan. I did want to say how happy I am to see the gentlewoman from Florida, a very distinguished graduate from the Florida State University School of Law, here to join us tonight. I was excited to hear your remarks as well. Something that has not been talked about but I want Members to think about this when they go home and talk to especially their seniors, but also folks who maybe are just starting in the workforce and have years, maybe decades left ahead of them to pay into the Social Security system and look forward to their Social Security benefits, I want those Members to talk to their constituents about the fact that this plan, as proposed by the President, does the tax deduction up to $15,000 of taxable income. So what that does, as we have talked about it, is it taxes your health care benefits above that level, but more importantly, from the perspective of Social Security, it reduces your income subject to the calculation of Social Security year after year after year, compounding itself, and that is going to reduce the Social Security benefits, your monthly check, for millions of Americans. That is something that is not even being discussed in this debate. We all know the out-of-pocket costs on our health care, and I am going to talk about that in a moment, but I want folks who have years ahead of them to pay into the Social Security system to think what that would do to have $15,000 removed from your calculatable income for the purposes of determining your Social Security benefits. That is a direct hit on working-class Americans. I also want folks to think about the fact that that $15,000 is going to be subject to a cost-of-living-type adjustment, inflation adjustment each year, but the cost of health care rises often three and four times greater annually than the cost of living in this country. So if you are a younger worker paying into this system year after year, you are going to lose money year after year after year in inflation-adjusted dollars because it is adjusted on the $15,000 based on the cost of living, not the actual cost of increases in the health care. That is a real hit to working Americans and working families in this country. Lastly, I spoke earlier about the fact that this provides an incentive to younger and healthier workers to opt-out of this system and maybe opt for catastrophic, high-deductible plans, hoping that they will not get sick. What young families do not realize, the exact people that I am talking about is often in almost every case, maternity care is not covered under those types of plans. So for those Members who want to go back and talk to some of their young families in their district, I would ask them to consider how expensive that would be if they had to pay out of pocket for the costs of their maternity care. I know Dr. Kagen could certainly comment on what those costs would be. We are talking about a real hit to working-class Americans. This does not benefit the majority of Americans, and, in fact, this makes the cost of health care more unaffordable for individuals. It raises costs on small businesses, employers, and it especially hurts the self-employed because it removes the current deduction on health care for our self-employed. So, again, the President has moved us in exactly the wrong direction that we need to be going.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman. And what this does is provide an incentive for younger and healthier workers to purchase insurance outside of the employer's plan because those benefits will be taxed, leaving only the older and sicker workers in the employer's risk pool, which is going to raise costs not only for us as individuals but for employers. And that is the last thing we need to be doing. That is going in exactly the wrong direction, because ultimately the employer's insurance is going to become unaffordable as it is left with nothing but sicker people in the risk pool. And we need a more efficient system where we encourage people who are younger and healthier to participate in the same risk pools as everybody else, because right now if you are a small employer especially and one of your employees get sick, you get a phone call from the insurance company that says, You have two choices: we are either going to quadruple your premiums, or we are going to drop you entirely. And this plan that the President has proposed exacerbates that problem. It makes it worse, because now your benefits are taxed on top of having your premiums quadrupled.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I wanted to comment on what the gentleman from Wisconsin was discussing with regard to community rating, which means there are approximately 160 million people in this country that are privately insured, get their insurance through their employer, pay for it themselves, but they participate in the private market. What the gentleman is recommending, which I think would be a good step, is to put those people, or at least a large portion of those people, in the same community-rated risk pool for the purposes of setting their insurance rates. You are still getting your insurance from the same people. You still have the same freedom of choice in the market and to choose your own health plan with this initial step, but the difference is, instead of you being viewed as an individual for the purposes of setting your rates, or small business, only your 10 employees being viewed together, you have 160 million people that are in the same pool. So if you or a member of your family, or one of your employees in the case of a small business, has the misfortune to get sick or injured, you don't get that phone call from the insurance company saying, we are going to raise your rates, because you have your rates set by the health status of the pool at large, 160 million people, not just you as an individual or your employees. I would commend the gentleman from Wisconsin for recommending that. I do think that would be a step in the right direction.

Mr. ALTMIRE. And it is going to flood the insurance market with people who can't afford health insurance because of health problems. Now if you are young and healthy and wealthy, that is a great plan. That sounds fine. Go out in the insurance market and buy a high- deductible, catastrophic plan, and you will be fine. But for most American families in this country, we are going to see our insurance costs increase. Even if we are not participating in any of the new plans and nothing changes for us, our costs are going to go up because folks who are younger and healthy are now outside the system, and we are in the same insurance pool with everybody else.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, during the Democrats' 100-hour agenda, the House overwhelmingly passed six bills that are going to make a real impact on the lives of everyday Americans. We have done what we said we are going to do and what the American people wanted to us do, and most important, we did it in a strong bipartisan fashion. Sixty-eight Republicans joined us in implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations; 82 Republicans joined us in raising the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years; and 124 Republicans joined us in cutting in half the interest rates on student loans. These bills received strong bipartisan support because they are important to the American people. Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that as we move forward we can continue to move legislation that can garner the support of both Republicans and Democrats in this House so that we can continue to make the lives of the American people better.

Mr. ALTMIRE

Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk about what we did today. We have had a fantastic couple of weeks with the 100 hours, and we are going to talk a lot about that, but today specifically we did something that is going to impact just about every American with children in this country. We cut the interest rate on student loans in half. And currently interest rates are 6.8 percent; we are going to cut them down to 3.4 percent, and that is going to have an impact on people all across the country. I wanted to take a few moments today and talk about what this is going to do for students in my district and for the impact per college in my district. I have a college called LaRoche College where I served on the board of trustees for two terms. It is in my district. It is a private liberal arts college, and for students who are entering this year, over the lifetime of their loan, they are going to see savings of $2,120 over the time of this loan. And because this is phased in over 5 years, for students in 2011, for those parents who may have children that are going to enter college in 2011, over the lifetime of their college, if they go to LaRoche College, they are going to save over $4,000. On average across the country, it is over $4,500, and I think that is something we can be proud of in this House of Representatives.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Absolutely. And I was also back in the district this weekend and I heard the same things that we are talking about. There is a sense of excitement, that it really is a new day in America and this Congress has instilled a sense of confidence that has not been seen in this country in a very long time. And if you look at what we have done here over the past 2\1/2\ weeks, as the gentleman from Ohio said, some would argue that is more than the previous Congress did in the past 2 years or maybe longer, and we have done that in the first 100 hours of business here in this Congress, and we are going to keep going when this is over. And I am excited that tomorrow we are finally going to complete that first 100 hours agenda, and then we are looking forward from hearing from the President thereafter. But what we have done, no one should overlook the fact that this is extraordinary. What we have done here in the beginning of a new Congress with a turn in the leadership and a new group leading, we have taken right from the beginning when we looked at the lobbyists and special interests and took away the meals and the travel and the golf outings and the gifts that have been prevalent here in Congress over the past several years, and then we moved right into the pay-as-you-go where we had a system where 6 years ago we had come off four consecutive budget surpluses. That seems like an extraordinary thing now. We had surpluses as far as the eye can see in the year 2000, and now you look back, the President is going to give us in a couple of weeks his seventh consecutive budget that is out of balance, running a deficit, and that is unacceptable. And the reason that has happened is because they allowed pay-as-you-go budget scoring, which is what we all do in our home checkbooks. You have to have money on one side of the ledger to pay for it out of the other. That is what all the families do at home, that is what I do, that is what we all do. But that is not what Congress has done. Congress has just been able to spend freely without having a revenue source on the other side. So we are going to make the necessary cuts to balance the budget, which is something that fiscal responsibility has not been a part of the congressional landscape over the past several years. We did that on the very first day. We followed that up with implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Who can argue that we need to implement the recommendations to make this country more secure? Well, they had languished in the previous Congress. We took care of that the first Monday when we got back after the weekend. Then we moved on to minimum wage. We raised the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years. Is there any other group of citizens that didn't even get a cost of living adjustment let alone a pay raise over the last 10 years? We did that with a bipartisanship vote. As the gentleman from Florida pointed out, these are not things that the Democrats are supporting on their own and ramming it down the Republicans' throat. These are issues that get bipartisan support. We moved on to embryonic stem cell research; then we did Medicare prescription drugs; today we did student loans. These are issues that affect every American and working families across this country. So I would yield back to the gentleman from Florida for him to continue this, but I just want to reemphasize how proud I am to have been a part of this historic beginning of a new session of Congress.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I would welcome the gentlewoman from New York as well, who has become a good friend. This is an issue I hear about every day. It is an issue that we get calls about in our office every day. Mr. Murphy and I were discussing earlier the fact that we had been back in our districts for the first time this past weekend. I have to tell you, everywhere I went, this issue resonates with people because they see it every day. When they drive past the gas station and they see the price, and of course it is winter season now and we are having a little bit of a cold spell where I come from in western Pennsylvania, and I know New York and Ohio and Connecticut, as well, but probably not in Florida, Mr. Meek's area. But this is an issue we hear about because home heating is a big part of this as well. So it affects everyday Americans and it affects working families. I think it is appropriate on the last 100 hours as we hit the finish line that we are going to address an issue, like the others that we have discussed, that really has a day-to-day impact on working families all across this country.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I would say to that criticism, and we all heard it today on the other side, that there is an immediate reduction. We are not cutting it in half immediately, but there is a reduction for students who are going to go into college this fall. You are going to see a reduction in your interest rates for student loans, and if you are a parent of children who are deciding where to go to school, maybe entering high school right now and they are deciding to go to college in the year 2011, the interest rate is going to be half of what it is today, and that is because of the action we took in the House today. And I was proud to cast my vote. In Pennsylvania, we have the fifth highest cost of tuition in the entire country as a State, and we have some great State universities like Penn State. Everybody knows about Penn State. There are 32,000 students on student loans at Penn State University who are going to benefit from what we did today, and the ones who are entering school this year have a $2,250 lower payment over the course of their loans. Students who enter Penn State in the year 2011 are going to see a reduction in what they pay over the lifetime of their loans of $4,360. That is real savings, and there is nobody on the other side who can say that we have not taken strong action here today. So I am proud of what we did today, along with all the other action we have taken in the last 2 weeks.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I wanted to, Mr. Speaker, remind my colleagues that are here with us tonight if they wanted to share with their constituents, our website for this working group, it is www.speaker.gov/30something. Or they could send an e-mail directly or have their constituents send an e-mail directly to 30somethingdems@mail. house.gov. And at this point I would like to yield back to my friend, the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. ALTMIRE. Well, one of the things that has struck me in our first few weeks here, and I'm sure my new colleagues would agree, is that these are issues that, as we discussed, should not be controversial. Somehow, 71 Members on the other side voted against cutting the interest rates on student loans in half. Somehow, Members on the other side voted against raising the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years. As I said during the debate on the floor last week, how could anyone vote against or even argue against allowing Medicare the right to negotiate group discounts on behalf of their 40 million beneficiaries to lower the cost of prescription drugs for every Medicare beneficiary? How can anybody be on the other side of that? So what has struck me is, yes, we are getting bipartisan support, and we should all be grateful for that, but there are still folks on the other side who are arguing against these things. And what is amazing to me is, how is it we are able to pass these with such bipartisan support now, 300-plus votes today on the student loan bill, when in the past they couldn't even come up for a vote. Wouldn't even bring them up on the floor for a vote. Now, in the first 100 hours, we have done all these things. So I just can't say enough about the new leadership in Congress and how well the entire Congress, including the other side, has worked together to make these things happen, and I just look forward to continuing my service over the next 2 years and working on these issues. It is such an exciting time, and I am grateful to the gentleman from Florida for allowing me to join him this evening, and now I would yield for closing remarks to Mr. Ryan.