John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Clyburn, for your heartfelt and very, very appropriate words. The mission that was carried out was not something that came about just in a matter of days. It had been planned over the course of many, many years, and, with determination, the intelligence community, led by most recently Mr. Panetta, worked tirelessly to track down Osama bin Laden. It took a great deal of time and many, many years but ultimately succeeded in ways that the news media is now beginning to report. We can only give thanks and congratulations to that part of this mission and their determination and steadfastness to stay on the track, to follow every lead and to find every stone that needed to be turned over so that ultimately success could be had in locating Osama bin Laden. I think we all now know a great deal more about Abbottabad and what it is, a community, not large, but what was this strange new compound doing in that particular location? We found out precisely what it was doing and we took the steps necessary. I think all of us have seen pictures of the Situation Room at the White House, with American leaders surrounding a table, looking at the television screens, watching in real time what was going on half the world away. I think all of us could see the concern on the faces of those leaders, the President, the Secretary of State, Mr. Panetta and others who were there who had spent their previous hours preparing for the mission and making a very difficult decision. They knew that this was an extremely risky program that could quite possibly fail, and I'm sure they had the failure of the mission that President Carter ordered three decades before to go into Iran to rescue the hostages, I'm sure that weighed heavily on their minds. But nevertheless, the President made a very, very courageous decision to accept the risk of failure and quite possibly to succeed in finally dealing with the mass murderer Osama bin Laden. We must keep in mind that it wasn't just Americans who were murdered here on the shores of this Nation, but in Pakistan and in other countries around the world, al Qaeda murdered far more people in those countries. I notice now that I'm joined here by my colleagues. I'd like to turn to my colleague from San Diego. Susan, if you would care to join us, thank you.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I want to really focus today on an extraordinary event that took place on Sunday, that is, American time, but before I do that, I just want to take a couple of minutes having sat here listening to the last 45 minutes on energy policy, just a couple of things. The President is not suggesting that we raise taxes on fuel but that we eliminate subsidies to the oil industry that has received, for a century, American taxpayers' support, and those subsidies are no longer needed given the extraordinary profits that they are making. We ought to also consider that last year, ExxonMobil paid zero Federal income tax, yet they had billions, about $11 billion, of profit. The second point, the oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is up this year compared to the previous year, and even though there is more production of oil out of the Gulf of Mexico, we've still seen this spike in gasoline prices. So the notion that somehow more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will drive prices down is just not the case, because we've seen more production and yet a spike in prices. Finally, with regard to the bills that were just announced during the middle of this discussion about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Democratic Party wants to make sure that that drilling is done safely; the President wants to make sure that drilling is done safely. And what we have suggested, that when these bills come to the floor, they be amended so that the recommendations made by the commission that studied the blowout on the BP platform, that those safety recommendations be put into the law. I guess that's not such a bad idea, but I want to just get that out here just so we have some understanding about what was discussed over this last hour. But what I really want to do--and I see my colleague from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn) here--is focus on an extraordinary and extremely important event that took place on Sunday, American time, and Monday, Pakistani time. The United States persevered for a decade to get Osama bin Laden. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, was determined during his campaign for Presidency and in the very first moments of his Presidency that he would focus like a laser beam on getting Osama bin Laden. It took some time. It took an extraordinary effort by the intelligence community, by the military, by this Congress in providing the necessary support and by our colleagues in other branches of government to get the job done. It was accomplished, and finally that banner on that aircraft carrier has real meaning--Mission Accomplished. Mission Accomplished. Osama bin Laden is no more. The man that was responsible for the biggest mass murder ever in this Nation's history is no more. President Obama, we thank you. We thank the men and women of this military and the intelligence community that made this happen. We applaud the courage of all that were involved and the wisdom and the determination to get the mission accomplished. Let me now turn to our colleague from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank my friend from New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, this is all about creating a mechanism for competition--fair, open, fully disclosed competition. The exchanges actually come from maybe 20 years ago. I know that in California when I was elected insurance commissioner in 1991, we established an exchange program. It passed the legislature. Unfortunately, Governor Wilson vetoed that legislation. Had it gone into place, there would have been a marketplace for insurance consumers. Right now consumers are at the whims of the market. They have no power. An exchange is simply a way to accumulate the purchasing power of thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals and small businesses so that their risk is spread out over that large population. Right now small businesses and individuals simply are at the mercy of the insurance companies. They have no way to spread their risk, and, therefore, their rates are exceedingly high, and in many cases it's impossible to get insurance. For the life of me, I don't understand why the Republicans want to repeal the exchanges. I always hear from them competition and free market. This is exactly that. This is competition, in which the health insurance companies have to compete with a similar policy, four different kinds of policies, a very rich one and a very basic one, and they have to compete on quality. What's the problem with that? And they'll be able to get insurance. Right now they can't. So they're going to repeal it. It makes no sense. It also makes no sense that the Republicans would go out and terminate Medicare. Hello? You're going to terminate Medicare, a guaranteed insurance policy for everyone over 65? Oh, I know, only those who are below 55 years of age will never see Medicare. It's gone. It's history. Oh, you're going to give them a voucher, a small percentage of the total cost 10 years out? Good luck. And you throw them to the whims of the insurance companies without an exchange. What's this all about? I think Congressman Miller may have had it right. How do you view the world? People need health care. Insurance is a way to get health care. An exchange is a way to spread the risk for a large pool of people so the risk isn't there and access to the market. California has an exchange. California last year established a law to put in place an exchange. It was signed by a Republican Governor, folks. Are you listening? Governor Schwarzenegger signed the exchange program. It's going into operation in a year and a half so that people in California can get insurance. Two million people will not be able to get insurance if this bill were to pass. And the only thing you offer is the termination of Medicare? Oh, and by the way, you're going to reduce Medicaid by $700 billion.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's be very, very clear about this. The Republican proposal, the Republican budget proposal that is before this Congress, terminates Medicare as we have had it since 1965. For those young men and women who are not yet 55, they will never see Medicare. It's over. And instead of having Medicare, which is a guaranteed health insurance program, when they retire at the age of 65, they will be given a voucher that will be worth a percentage of what the insurance will cost. They will be thrown into the market at an age where they have preexisting conditions. And under the Republican proposal, there are no--there are no ways in which they are going to be protected from the insurance companies, who we know have one motive, and that is profit before people. Profit before people is the way it has been for the health insurance companies from the get-go, and that is precisely what the Republicans want to give us. We will not have it. While they're at it, they want to take those reductions in Medicare expenditures and continue giving money to the wealthiest people in America so that the wealthiest people in America can continue to enjoy ever more wealth, while the middle class enjoys ever more poverty. It is an abomination, and there is no way this Nation should abandon a proven program that for 42 years has provided quality medical care to seniors. Now, do you want to go after the cost in medicine? Then let's go after the overall cost of medicine, not deny tomorrow's seniors the benefit of Medicare. It is time to understand precisely what the Republican budget does. It terminates Medicare, while giving benefits to the wealthiest Americans. It should not happen.

Mr. GARAMENDI. The exchanges create a market, ladies and gentlemen. They create a market. It is a market-driven program in which competition occurs, competition between the insurance companies who have to offer quality and price. Have you got a problem with competition? Apparently so. You want to do away with the exchanges. Apparently what you really want to do is to hand the entire game over to the insurance companies, removing all of the controls, removing all of the necessity for them to compete, and apparently create some sort of an association plan so the public can be ripped off. announcement by the speaker pro tempore

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I guess I don't understand. I don't understand what our Republican colleagues want to accomplish here. They talk about free market. They talk about the need to provide options and opportunities. I think that is exactly what an exchange does, so I don't quite understand what this is all about. I was the insurance commissioner, the elected insurance commissioner in California in 1991, and we set up an exchange. Unfortunately, Governor Wilson vetoed it; otherwise, we would have had this exchange years ago. And 1 year ago, the California legislature, with the signature of a Republican, Governor Schwarzenegger, created an exchange based upon the Affordable Health Care Act and they want to put it into effect. The Republican proposal here on the floor would make it impossible for California to do what it wants to do; that is, set up a marketplace in which people have access to insurance. The notion being that, by creating the exchange, you spread the risk over many, many different populations so that, like a huge corporation, you have an opportunity as an individual purchaser or a small business to participate in a large pool and accept the lower rate of insurance. So what is this all about? What are you trying to accomplish here? Is it some ideology that you just simply can't stand the Affordable Health Care Act and you want to rip it apart piece by piece? Apparently so. And you just don't want to stop there. You are going after Medicare, a program that has been in effect for 42 years, that provides a universal insurance policy to anyone over 65. You are going to terminate Medicare. What is that all about? And give it to an insurance company and not have an exchange? So what is an individual going to do when they are 65 and possessing all kinds of preexisting conditions? Go without insurance? Be at the mercy of the insurance company? And, by the way, you want to repeal all of the insurance reforms, all of the protections that individuals have in the Affordable Health Care Act. This doesn't make much sense to me. I don't understand what your goal is here, except maybe to have some political scorecard you can say, yeah, we repealed the Affordable Health Care Act. Good for us. But what effect to the population of America? No exchanges? They are gone. No opportunity for small businesses to enjoy a large market, a large pool in which they can have a lower price? They are gone. Oh, I see. You can have an association health plan. I spent 8 years of my life chasing after association health plans that were frauds. They were out and out frauds, sold across State lines. Is that what you want? Apparently so. I don't get it. I don't understand what the goal is here. The Affordable Health Care Act establishes an exchange allowing individuals and small businesses to be part of a large pool, to have four different options on their insurance. And you want to do away with it. I don't get it. You want to do away with clinics in schools so that kids can have access to health care. I don't understand. You have cut all the money out from the community clinics so that people have to go to the emergency rooms in a more expensive situation. What is this all about? I don't understand what the goal is that our Republican colleagues have in mind. The exchanges make sense. They create a marketplace for small businesses.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the United States military for carrying out an extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily important task. Osama bin Laden is no more, and we thank them for their duration of this long and very necessary task; and for President Obama, he said he would get it done and he did. President Bush worked at this long and hard. And for all that have been involved in this very important task of ridding this world of the world's most notorious and dangerous terrorist, I congratulate them, and I think all America does, also. We need to continue to focus like a laser on al Qaeda wherever they may be across this world. This is our task, and we will not relent until we have finally succeeded in putting al Qaeda aside and moving on to a more peaceful world.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, I want to speak directly to the senior citizens of America and to those who want to become senior citizens. The Republican budget destroys, terminates Medicare as we know it today. Under the Republican budget, in 10 years Medicare will no longer exist as it is today, a guaranteed benefit available to every American who turns 65. It will be over. Instead, you will be given a voucher, a voucher that will be insufficient to pay for your health insurance, and there is no guarantee what that health insurance will be. Let me speak also to those who are on Medicare today. The Republican budget over the next 10 years removes three-quarters of a trillion dollars, $771 billion, from Medicaid. Medicaid provides services to the aged, blind, and disabled. Those senior citizens that are in nursing homes stand the risk of being thrown out of the nursing homes. I want to now speak to those who want to become 65, who want to live long enough to get into Medicare. If you are 55 years of age and younger, you will not have Medicare if the Republican budget becomes law. It is over. It is terminated. It is gone. Instead, you will be given a voucher to go talk to the insurance companies. And what will you talk about? You will talk about pain, pain, pain. They say that there is no tax shift in this. In fact, there is a $6,000 tax equivalent to every person 55 and younger. You are going to wind up paying an additional $6,000.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I'm just getting warmed up. Who gets Medicaid? The aged, the blind and the disabled get Medicaid. The Republican budget cuts Medicaid three-quarters of $1 trillion. Seniors will be--not 10 years from now, but immediately, as those budget reductions take place, according to the Republicans--thrown out of nursing homes. I just finished a conversation not more than 2 hours ago with the owner of nursing homes in California. He said, Don't let them do it. We're just hanging on. Any further reductions, any reductions in the Republican bill will force us to send out of our nursing homes the Medi-Cal, which are people covered by Medicaid. Who are these children? These are the children in poverty. The children in poverty get medical services from Medicaid, and Medi-Cal in California, 20 percent. Are those the people you want to throw out in the street? You will do it.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, we've heard a lot of discussion here this evening about what economic policy works, where do the deficits come from. Let's just figure it out. Beginning with this man over here--I think we would all recognize him--that would be Ronald Reagan. After every year, at the end of the year, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, makes a projection of what's going to happen in the next 10 years. At the end of Ronald Reagan's period, they did their projection, and they said, voila, a $1.4 trillion deficit in the years ahead. Followed by George Bush the senior. At the end of his 4 years, they did another estimate: What's going to happen in the next 10 years? Well, let's see. That says a $3.3 trillion deficit. How about that? We were just talking about some economic policy here a minute ago. Well, let's talk about the Clinton period. At the end of the Clinton period, 8 years, another projection was made by the Congressional Budget Office: What's going to happen in the next 10 years? A $5.6 trillion surplus, enough to pay off all of the American debt. How did it happen? How did it happen? It happened this way: Early in his administration, they set about to deal with the deficit. There was a tax increase. It cost my Democratic colleagues the House. But they did it. They put it in place. And they also put in place PAYGO and the balanced budget amendment. What happened was that in those 8 years was the largest job growth in America's history except in the 1950-1960 period. It was enormous job growth. More than 20 million jobs were created and extraordinary revenue growth. So much for the argument we just heard. In fact, a combination of holding tight on the budget together with a tax increase worked. I was part of that administration, and we were told to reinvent government. We did. At the Department of the Interior, we reduced the number of employees from 90,000 to 75,000, and we maintained and actually increased the efficiency and the effectiveness of that Department. It can and it was done. However, let's take a look at George W. Bush, the most recent Bush presidency. At the end of his presidency, the Congressional Budget Office did their estimate, and they came up with an $11.5 trillion deficit in the years ahead. How did it happen? It happened this way: He cut taxes year one, 2001, cut taxes. Year two, 2002, cut taxes. Two wars unpaid for, borrowed money from China, and then backed away from all regulation of Wall Street, and the great crash. The result: An $11.5 trillion deficit. The day Barack Obama came into office, he was handed a $1.3 trillion bill due. That's what the Republican President gave to this Nation and to this Congress. So we've set about solving it. Now I want to move to another issue here, which happens to be this debate about Medicare. You're not going to solve the Medicare problem, which is one of ever-increasing cost in the underlying health sector of America. When I first got into this in 1991 as insurance commissioner, 9 percent of the American economy was in medical services. This year it's approaching 18 percent. You cannot solve this problem by throwing senior citizens off Medicare. It does not solve it. Do not throw the seniors to the wolves. The wolves are the insurance companies. I know. I was the insurance commissioner for 8 years, and I fought those characters every year I was in office. I know what they will do to seniors. They will rip them off, they will deny benefits, they will deny coverage, and they will not control cost. In California this year, insurance companies are raising costs by 20 to 40 percent. Medicare went up 6 percent. Medicare is efficient. Medicare is efficient. It is a nationwide policy. You can get it anywhere in this Nation. There is no administrative cost that even comes close to what the insurance companies' administrative costs are, perhaps 30 percent of the premium. Profit, sales, expenses, all of those things added up, and that includes the chaos at the delivery, the medical delivery. We need to change that. You want to deal with something more? Take a look at this. This is Medicaid. In Medicaid, the Republican budget intends to cut Medicaid by three-quarters of $1 trillion in the next decade. Who gets Medicaid? Senior citizens and the disabled. The aged, blind and disabled get Medicaid. And this is immediate.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GARAMENDI. My Republican colleagues have done everything they can to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, which had insurance reform in it. Without the insurance reform, which clearly they want to do away with, you are throwing senior citizens to the sharks, to health insurance. I urge us not to do that.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, for 8 years I was the insurance commissioner in California. And for 8 years I battled the health insurance industry. What we heard on the floor was that 2011, what will we remember? What it will be remembered for is the death of Medicare, the demise, the death of Medicare. The most successful insurance program, the most successful health insurance program in this Nation. It works. It is efficient. It is effective. It is a nationwide standard policy available to every American 65 years of age and older and some of those who are younger. I heard the author of this bill a moment ago saying competition would make it better. In fact, it does not. In fact, it does not. The private health insurance industry is inefficient. It is ineffective, it is discriminatory and it clearly, clearly harms customers. There is a profit motive that has to be paid for. There are compensations for the sale and compensations for those who sell the insurance. All of that adds up. It is also extremely inefficient in that there are multiple policies, multiple people that have to be paid, insurance companies that have to be paid, different deductions, different copays. All of that is out there.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Point of order ma'am.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GARAMENDI. If the gentleman would yield, I will answer his question.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Chair, a point of order.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you for that. I am going to shift to another very, very important part of the Republican budget proposal, and that is their total unwillingness to deal with the reality of the revenues that the Federal Government needs in order to continue to provide all of the multitude of services that are part of a modern society: everything from defense to homeland security as well as the medical and social services that we have been talking about. I'm going to put this up, it's a little cute, but I think it pretty much illustrates one of the profound problems in the Republican budget. ``What Do They All Have in Common?'' We've got the unicorn over there, we have Bugs Bunny, and then we have this thing that says the corporate tax rate, 35 percent, large corporations like Exxon. It's a fallacy. Large corporations and small corporations in America don't pay 35 percent corporate income tax. In fact, if one were to take a look at Exxon, in 2008 they had the largest profit of any company in the world. In 2009, they had a profit of about $19 billion and their effective tax rate, how much they actually paid in taxes, was zero. Not 35 percent. Not 30 percent. Not 25, not 20, not 15, not 10, but zero. Now it happens that they're not the only corporation. The Republican proposal actually would make this situation worse. It would take this 35 percent and reduce it to 25 percent. What are we talking about here? Why would we want to do that? Apparently they want to do that because they want to take their savings, Medicare, by terminating Medicare, Medicaid, by reducing Medicaid and all of the other savings, the savings that they presume they're going to get from abolishing the wellness programs, high blood pressure screenings and so forth, and on and on and on, and give it to the corporations. Let's understand that American corporations currently get a tax break for sending American jobs overseas. American corporations currently get a tax break for oil drilling. The oil industry in the United States is the most profitable industry in the world. We just talked about ExxonMobil. All of the other oil companies in the last 10 years have had a profit of $947 billion, just under $1 trillion. Yet they continue to receive tax breaks in the order of $12 billion to $15 billion a year, of our tax money, handed over to the oil companies at a time when they are now charging us over $4 a gallon for gasoline. And what is that all about? Well, it's all about the ability of the oil industry to maintain a subsidy, a tax break out of the American taxpayer's pocket, handed over to the oil company, and they've had that subsidy for nearly a century. I'm saying, enough of that. Bring that money back into the Treasury, use it for green energy, solar, wind, renewable energy, for research, use it for the things that we need to do, including reducing the deficit. But oh, no. Oh, no. They don't want to do that. Our Republican colleagues want to continue to give to the oil industry the kind of tax breaks that they have. If that's not enough, our Republican colleagues want to make sure that this fellow, Donald Trump, he wants to be President, probably to maintain the extraordinary tax break that he presently has. The Republicans want to reduce the taxes for Donald Trump and for other billionaires, millionaires, from 35 percent to 25 percent. You go, why should we do that at a time when we're taking money away from seniors, at a time when we're forcing the middle class to pay more, at a time when you're shifting the cost of all of these services to the middle class, at a time when you're going after the unions and trying to destroy the union movement in America? Why in the world would you give Donald Trump, why would you give billionaires, why would you give those people at the very tiptop of the American economy, those people that now control over 25 percent of all of the wealth in America, the top 1 percent of wage earners in America, why would you give them, not a 10 percent, it's about a 17 percent reduction in their taxes? It makes no sense at all. We talk about shared sacrifice. The Republican budget proposal that will be on this floor later this week will not be shared sacrifice. It is, in fact, giving to the top of the American heap of all taxpayers, of all wealth, even more. I suppose it must be the trickle-down theory, that if these folks, if Donald Trump and the other billionaires and millionaires have more money, somehow jobs will be created. The fact is it doesn't work. Don't believe me. Take a look at the American economy from 2001 to 2009, the George W. Bush period. George W. Bush started the first very year of his Presidency with massive tax cuts that created a 2-plus trillion dollar deficit and very few jobs. During the Clinton period, we ended with a $5.3 trillion surplus and the creation of over 22 million jobs, and the tax rate for Mr. Trump and for other millionaires and billionaires was 39 percent. It is, in fact, the history of America's economy that proves that you're not going to create more jobs by reducing the taxes for Mr. Trump and the like. So what do these things have in common: a unicorn, Bugs Bunny, and the corporate tax rate of 35 percent? They are all fictional, every one of them. I want to move now to another subject. I'll make this my last, and I'll make it kind of quick. If we're going to grow the American economy, we have to make the critical investments that are the foundation of economic growth in any and every country. Whether you are Singapore, whether you are China or any of the European countries, France or Britain, the United Kingdom or the United States, there are fundamental investments that the society has to make, and many of these investments are made through the general public's government. Let me just turn to those investments. This is part of our Make It in America agenda, the Democratic agenda of rebuilding the great American manufacturing base. If America is going to make it, we must make it in America. We have to rebuild the manufacturing base of America. We can do it, but it's going to take critical investments. I want to just point them out here as we go through this and then compare these to the Republican proposal, the budget proposal that we're going to be voting on. The first one is trade. Now, the Republican proposal doesn't deal with trade and goods because they're not going to do any more harm to it, but this is a fair trade policy. This is a policy of trade where we do not give away our manufacturing industry to places like China. I am sick and tired of going into Target or any other store in America and finding ``Made in China,'' ``Made in Europe,'' made everywhere but in America. Enough of that. We need to see ``Made in America'' once again on the store shelves in America. In California, the California government--not my responsibility, I wasn't responsible for it at the time--when they go out and they build a new bridge from Oakland to San Francisco, a multibillion-dollar bridge, and they buy steel from China because it's 10 percent cheaper, I'm going, Stop it. Stop it. And so today, in the Resources Committee, I introduced an amendment. Now it's ``Drill, baby, drill.'' It's our Republican colleagues who want to drill anywhere and everywhere and all the time. I think it's the wrong thing to do. We need to move to renewables. But if we're going to drill, then why don't we drill with American-made equipment? Why don't we require that those drilling rigs, those pipes, those technologies, the drill bits, the blowout preventers be made in America? I introduced that amendment. The Republicans brushed it aside saying they didn't want to go that way. Okay, fine. But we need, on trade policy, to make sure that our trade policy does not disadvantage American manufacturers. Taxes. I just talked about taxes. Why in the world would the Republicans vote against a tax policy that actually is now law? We passed this last December. Why would they vote against a tax policy that would reduce--nearly eliminate--the tax breaks that American corporations get when they send jobs offshore? Why would you vote against that tax break that American corporations have? I don't understand it. It's over, at least partially over, there's more that needs to be done, and my Democratic colleagues and I are asking our Republican colleagues to work with us to eliminate the rest of those tax breaks that American corporations get when they send jobs overseas. We talked about some other issues here. For example, last December, the Democrats pushed through, Obama signed a bill that allowed American corporations and businesses to write off 100 percent year one--this year--100 percent of capital investment so that we encourage American manufacturers to invest in America so that they can be more productive. Energy policy, extremely important. We cannot any longer put our economy and our national security at risk to foreign oil producers. So I guess part of the ``Drill, baby, drill'' is to try to deal with that, but that's not going to solve the problem. We need additional and new energy sources, and that's where the green energy, the future energy comes in. Don't take it from me. Talk to our American military. Talk to the Navy, the Air Force, the Army. They think way ahead, and they know that they cannot depend upon oil. They need to move to other sources of energy. They did it years ago. They had wind on their ships. Then they went to coal. Then they went to oil. They are now using nuclear power. But they also know that many of their pieces of equipment--a jet airplane isn't going to have a nuclear reactor. So they want to free themselves from the grip of the petro dictators around the world and they want to be able to have energy made here in America. This is biofuels, advanced biofuels of all kinds. We ought to follow the lead of our military here, and we must create energy projects that provide us with clean renewable energy, whether it's nuclear or the green energy: solar, wind, biofuels and geothermal, all the rest. So energy policy becomes extremely important. Labor. It turns out, if one were to look at American economic history, you would be able to track the rise of labor in the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties tracking perfectly with the rise of the middle class in America. So as labor became more predominant in America, we saw the American middle class grow right along with the labor movement. Beginning in the 1970s, we saw the decline of the labor movement. If you track the decline of the labor movement, you will find the decline of the American middle class tracking perfectly with the decline of the labor movement. Now we find all across the Midwest--in Wisconsin and Ohio--a major movement to take yet another shot at labor, to weaken labor or to destroy labor. In the process, you will find the further decline of the middle class of America should they succeed at that. But this is more than just the labor movement. This is preparing the American worker to be competitive in a modern economy. This is education. This is job training. These are programs to retrain and to bring into the workplace workers who are prepared to deal with the modern machinery and the modern equipment that a well-placed and well- executed economy must have. I want to move to the next one, which is, in fact, education. Earlier today, I met with the President of California State University, East Bay, part of my district in California. And the president, Mohamoyad Qayoumi, who happens to be an Afghan, was talking about programs that they're putting in place in the East Bay of California, San Francisco Bay, to encourage the education of children--modern technology, using iPhones, using techniques in computer technology--so that the kids who are into these things in a big way will be able to learn, not going out and buying expensive textbooks every year that are out of date the next year, but rather to use online publications and be able to bring to the students all of the world. I was going home last weekend, and I got a call from my wife. She said, Can you find a light bulb for the projector? It's out. We need a light bulb for the projector. I said, I just got off the airplane. I don't know what I'm going to do. I got online, I punched up my Safari, and I looked for light bulbs. In a matter of moments, I found, not too far from the airport, a photo shop that had the light bulb. The whole world is here. The whole world is available for a student who's just curious. You cannot help but be curious. All you need to do is get online, and you can find out everything about the world around us, anything you're into with science, and it turns out that this little piece of equipment, according to President Qayoumi, is also a tool for the teacher. The test can be taken on this. And in taking that test, the teacher immediately knows what the student does not know. And so the next day in class that could be dealt with. I think I'm running out of time here, and I'm going to finish very, very quickly with intellectual property. This is the transition of all of the research into the manufacturing sector. Make It in America. We have to do this. We can do this if we have the right policies in place. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. And the young.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me add to that and carry on a little piece of it. The Republican budget, which we will be voting on here on the floor of Congress in the next 2 days, has provisions that are equally harmful to seniors and to wannabe seniors, people who want to get to be 65 or 67 years of age, and these are the Medicaid reductions. In the proposal that the Republicans will bring to this floor, the Road to Ruin proposal, is a block grant to the States for Medicaid services. In California, we call it Medi-Cal. This is a program that provides benefits to the poor and those who cannot afford medical services because they are severely disabled, mentally disabled, or seniors that cannot afford services in nursing homes. The block grant is less than what is now available to nearly every State, and it is scheduled to be reduced in the years ahead, the purpose of which is presumably to deal with the deficit, but what it does is it takes that whole population of seniors, current seniors, and others who are currently served by the Medicaid program and puts them at risk. The effect will be to throw seniors out of nursing homes, seniors that are on Medicaid or Medi-Cal in California. It is the most onerous and hardhearted proposal I have yet seen. These are people that are in desperate need of services, services for the mentally ill, services for the severely disabled, services for seniors who are in nursing homes and who cannot afford the cost of nursing homes. That's another part of this provision in the budget. What is happening here is a shift, a shift of costs from the overall American economy in the Federal budget to the individuals, not to the wealthy, not to those who have income, but rather to those who have so little. And it's not the only shift that's occurring.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, and let's just do a colloquy here back and forth. You've talked about ways in which we can bend the cost curve for health care for all Americans, not only those on Medicare. It was in the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform. Our Republican friends like to call it ObamaCare because it actually would reduce the cost of medical services for everybody, whether you are in Medicare or Kaiser or anywhere else. And you mentioned four very, very important ways it does it. One is hospital readmissions, otherwise known as hospital infections. Our former colleague a week ago likely died of a hospital infection. The Affordable Care Act places a heavy burden on hospitals that have a high infection rate, or readmissions. It is a very, very expensive, deadly situation. It is just one of several ways in which the Affordable Care Act reduced over time the cost of medical services. You were here on the floor. I voted ``no,'' you voted ``no'' on a bill that Republicans forced through this House that eliminates wellness. What in the world was that all about? Why would you ever eliminate wellness: obesity, blood pressure, proper eating, nutrition, public health, vaccinations--all of these things to keep people healthy. Healthy people don't cost money. They don't run up the price of medical services. So they want to repeal that, and I'm going, that makes no sense at all. You are actually increasing the deficit by doing that. And then they take it to the ultimate step of terminating Medicare. This has become my favorite. It's the tombstone for Medicare. In the Republican budget is a proposal that would terminate Medicare for all Americans who are less than 55 years of age today. If you are 65, maybe it would continue on. But if you look at the totality of their proposal, it is the termination of Medicare and this is what we have. ``Medicare, 1965 to 2011, created by LBJ, destroyed by the GOP.'' Unbelievable. And along with it, a significant reduction in Medicaid, which in California we call Medi-Cal. Your expertise, Mr. Blumenauer, on the health care issue and the experience in Oregon on how we can reduce the cost of medical care needs to be heard by every Member of this House. So if you would continue on and share with us this issue of medical services and how we can reduce the cost, save Medicare, and simultaneously addressing the deficit.

Mr. GARAMENDI. The chart that you and I shared a moment ago is up here next to me; and it clearly shows that we have seen a middle class in America that has seen very, very little progress over the last two decades and, instead, an enormous shift of wealth and income to the top 1 or 2 percent of the Nation. There has been a 256 percent increase in income to the very wealthy, and as I said, it trumps all of the income gains by the rest of the economy. Those at the bottom saw maybe a 10 to 11 percent increase. The rest, very, very little. I look up and I see my colleague, the gentleman from the great State of Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer). Thank you for joining us. We talked earlier today about the upcoming debt limit. Please join with us and share with us your thoughts on what we are doing here, what we shouldn't be doing, or should be doing.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me thank my colleague from Vermont, Peter Welch, for this presentation on the tax policy. I think we probably would want to stay with that a few moments. I know my colleague from New York (Mr. Tonko) is here, and perhaps you would like to opine and to share with us your thoughts on these issues of the budget and how we can deal with the deficit.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, today we have seen a remarkable event here on floor of the House. During this discussion that's so critically important to this Nation about the deficit and how we are going to deal with our budget, this House passed a bill that will actually increase the deficit, a bill passed today with the support of the Republicans to repeal a provision in the Affordable Health Care Act that will keep Americans healthy. Healthy Americans don't need medical care, and I suppose the idea of the Republicans here is that they ought to get sick. You take a look at the wellness issue, part of the Affordable Care Act, it provided for numerous activities specifically designed to keep Americans healthy: blood pressure screening for adults, programs for children to avoid obesity, public health programs for vaccination so that our children and, indeed, our adults don't get sick. All of these programs in the wellness portion of the Affordable Care Act would be repealed by the action that the Republicans just voted on not more than a half-hour ago. What in the world is going on here? What's this all about? Is it some sort of ideological spiritual thing to do what is not very smart? The Affordable Health Care Act, which they like to call ObamaCare, has many, many provisions in it specifically designed to reduce the cost of medical care in America. If you are going to deal with the deficit, and we all talk about it here, you have got to deal with the cost of Medicare. How do you deal with the cost of Medicare? Well, you deal with it by reducing the likelihood that seniors will get sick. You deal with it by reducing high blood pressure in seniors so they don't have strokes. One of the most expensive things that the senior population will endure is a stroke. It's not just the immediate medical care; it's the long-term effect of a stroke. So when we go out and we try to have seniors and those soon to be seniors have blood pressure checks, we reduce the cost of medical care in America. But I guess the Republicans don't see it that way. They also see it in another way, and that is somehow they believe that we can reduce the cost of medical care in the Federal budget by terminating Medicare. It is unbelievable that the Republican budget would terminate medical care for seniors by terminating Medicare, a program that was started in 1964 to deal with the specific problem that seniors had at that period, and that was the inability to afford medical services. They would literally be into bankruptcy and poverty because they couldn't pay for their medical care. So, in 1964, Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Democrats in this House and the Senate passed Medicare, one of the foundations of support for the senior population in this Nation. And yet in the Republican budget that will be on this floor later this week is the repeal of Medicare, the termination of it. So I suppose this is the new way we ought to look at this issue. It's a tombstone. And what it is, it said, Medicare, 1965 to 2011, created by LBJ, destroyed by the GOP. Unbelievable. Fortunately, today, when President Obama spoke to the Nation, he addressed this issue, and I will paraphrase what he said. He says it more as a professor. I guess I will just say it as a street fighter from California: No way, no how will, in his Presidency, Medicare be terminated. Are you listening my friends on the Republican side? The President said ``no.'' We are not going down the path of terminating Medicare. And I know that my caucus, the Democratic Caucus, will stand there with the President. We will fight any attempt any time, anyplace, anywhere that you or anybody else will put before this House a proposal to terminate Medicare. We will not allow it, and thankfully the President has the veto pen. He ought to go back and pull out the pen that LBJ used to sign the Medicare law in 1965 and put it to paper should, somehow, the Republican budget arrive on his desk with the termination of Medicare in it. It should not happen. It cannot happen. We cannot subject our seniors to the kind of poverty that existed prior to the implementation of Medicare in the 1960s. This is something that we will stand and fight on. The President had also said today, as he laid out his solution for a $4 trillion reduction in the deficit, do not terminate Medicare and don't privatize Social Security. Laying it down. Not a line in the sand, but clearly a mark on the concrete. Social Security will not be privatized during his watch. Thank you, Mr. President. And you know this, that the Democratic Caucus in this House will stand firmly with you, and we will fight every, every bill, every proposal to privatize Social Security. Now, we know there is a budget problem. We know that there is a deficit problem here in the United States, and we know that it has to be addressed. The President has laid out two chapters in the Democratic proposal to deal with the deficit. In his State of the Union speech, he made it clear that Federal expenditures needed to be frozen over the next 5 years, and today he took another step recommending specific reductions in various Federal programs, all to the good, and we will stand there with him and we will work on reducing those Federal expenditures. For me, I have got one in mind, about $120 billion a year that we could save, $120 billion a year. Now, that's four times, three and a half times what is in the Republican continuing resolution that will be on floor this week. How do you find $120 billion a year? End the war in Afghanistan. End the war in Afghanistan. Bring the troops home. Bring the money home. Balance our budget. Use that to solve the deficit, or spend that money on building those roads, those facilities here in the United States. Let's talk about the deficit for a moment. Oh, yes. If you're going to talk about the deficit, you really ought to understand where the deficit came from. It didn't just come out of the blue this year. It didn't just appear during the Obama administration. The deficit is something that has built up over a long period of time here in the United States. When they say the deficit is $14 trillion and is going to increase, well, it's not if the President and the Democrats get their way. It will actually be reduced by $4 trillion. However, as to the current deficit, where did it come from? From where did it magically appear? Who left us with huge deficits? Let's take a look. Here are the facts. This fellow over here, you may recognize him. He is Ronald Reagan. At the end of every year, the Congressional Budget Office makes an estimate of what is going to happen over the next 10 years. At the end of the Ronald Reagan period, his last year in office, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, made an estimate of the Federal budget situation. Where's the deficit? They estimated that, in the next 10 years, Ronald Reagan's budget and the programs that were put into effect during his period would create a $1.4 trillion deficit. Now, those of you who are familiar with the history of the United States would know that George H. W. Bush--the senior--followed Ronald Reagan. At the end of his 4 years in office, again, the Congressional Budget Office made an estimate. It estimated, should the Bush-Reagan policies go forward, the deficit would be $3.3 trillion in the out years. Then along came Bill Clinton. In the first 4 years of his administration, Bill Clinton put in place, if extended forward, policies that would deal with the deficit, such things as PAYGO--a word that's common in Washington, but I'm sure, out there in the great American public, people have no idea what ``PAYGO'' is. ``PAYGO'' was the law during the Clinton administration. It required that any bill passed by Congress had to be paid for with either higher taxes or cuts in some other program. In other words, it could not create a deficit. It could not add to the deficit. There were other programs put in place, part of which I was responsible for implementing, and that was the reinventing of government. I was the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior during those years, and we were told by the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget that you will reduce the expenditures of the Department of the Interior, and you will continue to do the same things. Only, you will do them better. Effective and efficient government. We reduced the number of employees in the Department of the Interior during those first 4\1/2\ to 5 years by some 15,000 people--from 90,000 to 75,000 people. We performed all of the previous services as well and, in many cases, better. So it is possible to be efficient and effective in this process. Anyway, Bill Clinton is now President, and he puts all of these policies in place. At the end of his Presidency, the Congressional Budget Office did what it always does, which is to produce an estimate of what would happen in the next 10 years if the same policies were to continue. Guess what would happen. What would happen is a $5.6 trillion surplus, enough to wipe out all of the American debt--no debt, no interest payments, everything paid off. However, Bill Clinton was followed by George W. Bush, and immediately, in the very first year of the Bush administration, the Clinton-period policies, some of which were voted on by Republicans as well as Democrats, were terminated. Massive tax cuts were put in place not only in year one but in year two. Two wars were started--the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war--neither of which were paid for. It was the first time in American history that wars were not paid for but were, rather, borrowed. Who did we borrow the money from? China. From other foreign countries? Yes. Anyway, you now had two massive tax cuts, two wars, and then the Medicare drug program, which was about $700 billion a year--not paid for but, rather, borrowed, not for 1 year but for every year on into the future. Thirdly, there was a whole set of policies where the government simply stepped back and let Wall Street do whatever it wanted to do. What it wanted to do was to engage in reckless profiteering, resulting in 2007 and 2008 with the crash of the American economy, with the Wall Street crash of 2008, bringing the American economy to its knees, to the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Those policies added up to this rather massive red zone here of $11.5 trillion of deficit, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which projected in the next 10 years, if the same policies continued, an $11.5 trillion deficit. President Obama came into office in January of 2009. The day he arrived in office, the budget had a $1.3 trillion hole in it. He didn't create it, but he had to deal with it--a $1.3 trillion deficit handed to him by George W. Bush and his policies. That's the history. Now we're trying to dig ourselves out of that hole. Properly said, when you're in a hole, stop digging. A wise policy. The President couldn't do that, and this Congress couldn't do that in the face of the most serious financial and economic crisis this Nation had faced since the Great Depression. So the stimulus bill was enacted, some $750 billion, and it worked. Despite all the rhetoric, the economists looking at that today, in the cool memory of the stimulus bill, said it worked; it saved this economy; it saved this Nation. Every other industrialized country in the world did the exact same thing--stimulated their economies. Together, the American and the international economies were stabilized, and we began to slowly grow out of that great recession. We're not out of it yet. We've got to put in place policies that end the deficit, and that's precisely what the President talked about today. The Republicans have put a proposal before us, and we'll vote on it this week, but it is not a proposal that will help America retain its eminence as the most dynamic, the most creative, the most innovative, and the most successful economy in the world, because of the policies that are in it. It will terminate Medicare, and it will significantly reduce those programs that create future economic growth. I would like to just take a deep breath now and turn it over to my colleague from the great northeastern part of the United States. Peter, would you join us and carry on this discussion.