John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. If America is going to make it, we have to make it in America. Once again, manufacturing matters. The problem with the Republican budget is it hollows out, continues the hollowing out of American industry by denying the research, reducing research and reducing job training and continuing the kind of tax policies that actually give corporations tax breaks when they send jobs offshore. We want to reverse that. We're putting together the Make it in America agenda, a real jobs agenda for the middle class. Mr. Yarmuth, thank you so very, very much for bringing this to our attention and carrying this discussion tonight.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Okay, so you weren't here. A tax cut year one, a tax cut year two, a war, two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq followed by a Medicare drug program that wasn't paid for and the deregulation of Wall Street. The result: He left office with an $11.5 trillion projected deficit going forward. This is where we are. The day Obama came into office, President Obama came into office with a $1.3 trillion deficit the day he took office, and we worked ourselves out of it. Thank goodness the two of you were here to vote for those pieces of legislation. We are working ourselves out of it. That chart that you showed a moment ago shows the growth of the economy. We need to understand that we are not going to get out of this deficit with the kinds of cuts that are being discussed by our Republicans. It's going to take a balanced approach. President Obama has set out a balanced approach. He said no growth, no growth in the discretionary Federal budget. He will probably, tomorrow, talk about how to hold down medical costs, and I gave you some examples a moment ago. Those are the big drivers, and the military. You want to deal with this deficit? End the war in Afghanistan and bring home $120 billion a year. We can do this. Tax policy? Let's let the wealthy pay their share, let the oil companies pay their share. Hold the expenditures steady and reduce it, as has been proposed, and do it in a way that creates economic growth. We can do this. I know you gentlemen on the Budget Committee fought hard for that kind of policy. The Republicans refuse. In fact, their proposal, it's 30 years before you eliminate the deficit. We can't have that. I will talk about Make It in America before we are finished here, but I am going to turn it back to you Mr. Yarmuth. But I think it's really important for the American public to understand where the deficit came from and how it can be solved over the long run without harming seniors, without taking away Medicare and by making the critical investments that you have talked about, Mr. Tonko, education, research, Make It in America, those kinds of things.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth. This is what you were talking about here, a different way of saying the same thing that you discussed. This is over the period of time from 1979 to 2005. This is the income growth by each 20 percent of the population. So those people at the very bottom saw almost no income growth at all, 200 bucks. And as you go to the next 20 percent and the next 20 percent, you get up to the last 90 percent, they did okay. They made about $745,000. So that's the 90 to 99 percent of the population. Those are very, very wealthy people. They did okay. But you go to the top 1 percent, the top 1 percent--excuse me, I am wrong. That's the top one-tenth of 1 percent, not even 1 percent. One- tenth of 1 percent. That population saw their wealth increase by nearly $6 million each, and that's what you were talking about, a different way of displaying it. What's happening in the United States is this enormous shift of wealth to the super wealthy, and our Republican colleagues want to reward them for their good success by reducing their tax rate. So much for shared sacrifice. And as Mr. Tonko pointed out, the sacrifice is really the middle class, because the benefits that the middle class had, the future opportunity for Medicare, they are going to wind up paying more, getting less, as the Republicans terminate Medicare as we know it today. The other part on taxes, and then I want to turn to one of my favorite subjects, and that is how did we get to this deficit, Republicans want to continue giving $12 billion to $15 billion of our tax money, this is money that you, I, the stenographer there, the people that work here, the men and women across America that are working, $10 billion to $12 billion of their tax money, and they want to hand it over to the oil companies. Now, what in the world did the oil companies need a tax break for? They need a subsidy like, well, like they don't need it. Why? Because in the last decade, the oil companies, the big oil companies in the United States, have earned $947 billion dollars in profits. That's just shy of $1 trillion dollars in profits. And yet our Republicans demand that we give them another $12 billion to $15 billion a year. Now, that's bad enough. But I just came across this fact. ExxonMobil was the most profitable company in the world in 2008. In 2009, ExxonMobil made $19 billion of profit. Well, good for them. And I am sure they paid their fair share of taxes, right? Wrong. Their effective tax rate was zero. So since they didn't pay any taxes, we ought to give them another $12 billion, to the oil industry. This is just plain wrong. This is not good economic policy. One thing, and then I know you want me to talk about Make It in America, and I will in a few moments, but I get so concerned when people talk about the Democratic deficit. Hello? Not so, not a Democratic deficit; really, a Republican deficit. That fellow over there, that's Ronald Reagan. President Ronald Reagan left at the end of his 8 years with a projected $1.4 trillion deficit, followed by George H.W. Bush. At the end of the George H.W. Bush period the projected deficit going forward would be $3.3 trillion. Thank you, George H.W. Bush. Between the two of you, you really ran up the deficit. Then along came this fellow Democrat, Bill Clinton, put in policies voted by Republicans and Democrats, raised the tax rate to what you said, 39 percent for the super wealthy, and put in place PAYGO. That PAYGO required that any new spending had to be paid for with cuts or new taxes. The result? Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a projected $5.6 trillion surplus. Then along came George W. Bush, Jr. What did he do? First year in office, a tax cut. You were here weren't you, Mr. Yarmuth?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth. For the members of the Budget Committee, you've had a steep and difficult job as the Republicans have attempted simply to ram down the throats of this Congress a really unacceptable budget, one that does destroy opportunities. I would love to talk about Make It in America, and I will in a moment, but I was just listening to my colleague from California, and she raised the issue of the medical care here in the United States. It was 1964 that the United States set out on a very, very important mission, and that was to provide health care to seniors. Prior to that time, and I know from my own county where I grew up in Calaveras County, if you became a senior, you were destined for a very, very rough road. There was literally no insurance available for you, and there was no opportunity for you to get yourself out of poverty unless you happened to be among the wealthy. It was a terrible situation. So during the Lyndon Johnson period in 1964, they created a program called Medicare so that when you became 65, you had an opportunity to get a solid health care program available to you--a doctor program, a hospital program. You had to pay a little bit for the hospital program, but it was guaranteed available to you. And every American 65 and over had that policy. Here we are, 40-some years later, and what's taking place? Our Republican colleagues are determined to terminate, kill, stop, eliminate Medicare. They do it in a subtle way. But I want everyone to know that this year if the Republican budget goes forward, this will be the tombstone for Medicare: ``Medicare: 1965-2011. Created by Lyndon Baines Johnson, LBJ. Destroyed by the GOP.'' How do they do it? They do it by saying everyone that is 55 years old today will never get Medicare. It's over. And for those that are on Medicare, their lives will move on and eventually they'll be gone also. And Medicare dies with this budget. This is a central part of the American promise to every senior, and the Republicans are determined to terminate Medicare and put a tombstone dated this year, 2011. You'll get a voucher; but as my colleague from Los Angeles so eloquently said, that voucher will be worth very little when the time comes. And you'll be thrown to the insurance sharks. I understand insurance. I was the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years, and I know what the health insurance companies want to do. They want to make sure that they insure somebody who will never get sick. Preexisting conditions, raise the rates, change the benefits, increase the co-pays, end the deductibles, all of that. So the future population of seniors in just 10 years will be thrown to the wolves, and they'll be at the mercy of the health insurance companies. We cannot let that happen. This is a fight for the very nature of America. This is a fight not only to protect seniors but to protect those who want to become seniors. I want to know what American out there today does not want to live long enough to get to Medicare. They know that today because of the Democratic Congress they have an opportunity to get insurance with the Health Care Reform Act, but they know that the Republicans want to take that away, too. The very first piece of legislation that the new Republican Congress passed was the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act. This is step two, to dismantle. Now, I'm going to take another 30 seconds and then turn it back to my colleagues on the budget side. But here's what we must do. We must get to the root cause of the underlying inflation in health care. Terminating Medicare does not stop health care inflation. What could stop it are the kinds of reports and the kinds of suggestions that I made 5 years ago when I wrote this document called ``Priced Out.'' Forty-three separate things that we can do--specifically for California, but it's applicable for America--43 separate things that we can do to bring down the costs of medical care. It turns out that about a dozen of those were in the Affordable Health Care Act, very specific things to rein in the cost of medical care. Two examples. One: hospital infections. Not only deadly, but costly. Now every hospital in the United States is forced by the Affordable Health Care Act to pay attention to hospital infections. It's probable that one of our colleagues who was with us here in this House last year died as a result of a hospital infection just last week. This is serious stuff. It's in the Affordable Health Care Act. Hospitals would be penalized. Secondly, electronic medical records so that the mistakes are eliminated. Let me turn this back to you, Mr. Yarmuth and Mr. Tonko. You on the Budget Committee have served so well, so hard, fighting the initial battle to protect America's seniors and to protect this Nation's future. Thank you for the opportunity to join you.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. It also speaks to the fact that the Democrats are willing to put up shared sacrifice on both sides. I want to just wrap up with this, and every time I come to the floor I want to make it clear that we need to rebuild the American manufacturing base. Twenty years ago there were 20 million-plus Americans in manufacturing. Today there are 11 million. A lot of reasons for it. But these are the kinds of investments you were talking about, Mr. Ryan, that we need to make. We really need to make sure that our policies on trade are fair, that they don't harm our manufacturing industry. We've been talking about taxes here. We need to make those taxes encourage growth. A couple of examples on taxes: we put out a tax bill without any Republican support last year to end the tax breaks that corporations had to offshore jobs. And we gave corporations and businesses an immediate write-up of all capital gains. So we're serious about tax policy here to encourage manufacturing. Energy is a huge issue, and there will be a discussion on another day. Labor policies: let's understand that it was the labor unions that built the base, and you go down through the line--education, intellectual property, research, and, again, building the great infrastructure. These are things we can do. These are critical investments in our budget. We should be doing these things. I am going to yield to my friend from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter). You get the last word.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. Ryan. I will first yield to the gentleman from Colorado, and then we are going to wrap this thing up, and I want to wrap it up on one of our major themes, that's rebuilding the great American manufacturing sector.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Tombstone.

Mr. GARAMENDI. You have raised a couple of issues, and I would like to carry them a little further. You raised the tax issue, in the proposed budget, not the CR today that funded the government for another week but rather in the proposal for the next year and beyond. The Republicans propose to continue the Bush era tax cuts of 2001 for the super wealthy in America. Now that's about $700 billion added to the deficit. Not only that, that tax rate is 35 percent. They are proposing to lower that tax rate to 25 percent. So for the super wealthy in America, we are talking about millionaires, people whose annual income is $1 million and people whose annual income is $1 billion, to give them a lower tax rate. Are we talking shared sacrifice here? I think not. I want to turn to this chart which was handed to me by one of our colleagues who is actually on the President's deficit commission. She said the facts are pretty clear. Not pretty clear--they are crystal clear. She said between 1974 and 2009, there has been a shift in the wealth and the income of Americans. What has happened is that the rich have gotten really rich and everybody else has been treading water, not really going anywhere. So if you take a look at this, you'll see that over that 20-year period for those at the very bottom, they have seen their income go up by $200 a year. As you move on up, as you get to the top, those in the 80 percentile, they have seen better. They have about $100,000. But when you get to the one-tenth of 1 percent of the population, their average annual income has gone up by just under $6 million a year, a $5,978,870 annual increase for the top one-tenth of 1 percent. Another chart, I don't have it with me right now, would show that for these people, the top 1 percent, they now have 25 percent of all of the wealth of America. Go back, go back to 1974, they had 7 percent of the wealth in America; 1974, the top 1 percent had 7 percent. And 2009, the top 1 percent controlled 24 percent of all of the wealth in America. An enormous shift has taken place here. The middle class has been left behind, basically stagnant, basically treading water. Now, understanding that reality of America, the stagnation of the middle class, the struggle for not one family earner but two, wife and husband, out working, trying to keep the family together in the home with health care, the kids going off to school, that is the struggle of middle America. So what have the Republicans proposed? Their proposal will shift the tax burden away from the super rich to the middle class because they want to reduce the taxes on the super rich from 35 percent to 25 percent. And inevitably, that is going to raise the taxes for the middle class to make up the difference. We will not let that happen. I notice that my colleague from the great Midwest has joined us. Thank you very much. I suspect you may have something to say about this.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Two hours ago, the Republicans in this House passed, without Democratic support, a continuing resolution for a while, and there were cuts in those. For the most part, there was no debate here on the floor about specific cuts, but you raised these issues. I'm going to put some numbers to what you talked about. The Women, Infants, and Children program, the WIC program, is for pregnant mothers at risk during their pregnancy and then after their pregnancy so they have adequate nutrition and health care so they have a healthy baby. It saves us money. If that baby is not healthy, it is going to cost a lot of money. The Women, Infants, and Children program, the WIC program, there is a $200 million reduction in it. We like to fight crime; right? Well, $149 million out of the construction account so that there can be police stations and other facilities for the police across the Nation. You mentioned environmental issues. $192 million from the Department of Energy's environmental cleanup. What are they cleaning up? They are cleaning up the nuclear waste material from the previous Cold War nuclear programs. We know a lot all of a sudden about nuclear contamination. Oh, good, we are going to take $192 million out and just leave that nuclear waste out there to do what it is going to do, and it won't be good. And also, there is another. You mentioned the banking industry. We know that between 2001 and 2008 the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve just said they will regulate themselves; we don't need to police the banks. And so we wound up with the great crash. Well, we passed the Wall Street reform. We put in serious policing. We are going to police those characters. We are not going to let them get away with ``greed is good'' and rip off the public. We need policemen. But the Republicans don't believe in this, so they took a total of $590 million out of the financial services programs. These are the policemen that protect America's financial future. We got a call from CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two big California pension agencies, which came to Congress and said: Do not do this. Wall Street needs to be policed. Don't cut the police. I'm going to do a couple more. Let's see, how about clean water and drinking water, $700 million out of the clean water fund. This is for communities to build water systems so there is clean water. You go through this and you say: What are they thinking? Okay, your turn. Continue on.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, do you think this particular gravestone here doesn't have to happen?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I would love to see what that message is. I think we got some sense of it earlier in the day. And I suspect it speaks to the issue of the continuing resolution, and it is the effectuation of the promise he made earlier in the day that should the legislation that passed here about an hour-and-a-half ago, 2 hours ago, that is the continuing resolution, should it arrive on his desk, he will veto it. I haven't seen it, but I will bet that's what's in that envelope.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I am going to take this down because I know that the American public, whether they are seniors now or will be seniors in the future, understand the incredible importance of Medicare to the American society. Whether you are young or old, you know that Medicare has always been there since 1964 to provide medical services to those people 65 and over and some who are younger than 65 that have gone through terrible medical circumstances and unable to care for themselves. So we are going to take this tombstone, and we are going to bury it, along with Mr. Ryan's proposal to terminate Medicare as we know it. So let's be aware, American public, what's at stake here with the proposal that's coming down from the Republican caucus and from Mr. Ryan. I want to take up another subject and cover it briefly, or maybe not so briefly, and this has to do with the subject matter at hand, which is the deficit. We need to understand where the deficit came from. The deficit didn't just get created in the last couple of years. Certainly, the Great Recession had a lot to do with it, the stimulus package, made up of two parts, one part was the bank bailout, $700 million or more, almost all of that has now been repaid to the Treasury, so we don't have to worry about that being the a big part of the deficit. A little bit remains, but most of it has been repaid. The second part was the stimulus, some $750 million. That was borrowed money that is part of the deficit. But that also created, or it maintained, well over 2 million jobs here in the United States. Those people that stayed at work were continuing to be employed and to pay taxes. You can imagine what would have happened had the stimulus not been there; but, nonetheless, it is part of the deficit. But that doesn't account for all of the deficit. Let's go back to where Ronald Reagan was President. At the end of each year, the Congressional Budget Office takes a look at status of the budget of the United States and says here's what's happening today and here's the projection for the future. They do a 10-year projection. At the end of Ronald Reagan's term, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan, not Democrat, not Republican, looked at the budget, looked at the economy and said, well, the way things are, we can project for the next 10 years that the budget will have a deficit of $1.3 trillion. So Ronald Reagan left office with a deficit. He was followed by George H.W. Bush. And the same projection was made every year, and every year the deficit grew so that at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, before Bill Clinton took office, there was a projected additional deficit of about 3 trillion additional dollars. Bill Clinton came into office, changes were made, Balanced Budget Act went into effect, PAYGO which required laws to be paid for with new taxes or with cuts--no more deficit financing for new laws--came into effect; and at the end of the Clinton administration, the normal process took place at the end of that year. What will be the deficit going forward? Whoa. You mean, there is no deficit? Yes, the Congressional Budget Office estimated at the end of the Clinton period that there would be a $5 trillion surplus, literally paying off the entire debt of the United States. Policies were put in place during that Presidency, Democrat, Republican votes on both sides that would, in the 10 years, 2001 to 2010, terminate the American debt. However, in 2001, George W. Bush and the Republicans in control of the Congress and the Senate passed a massive tax cut that immediately turned that projected surplus into a projected deficit of well over a trillion dollars. The next year, the Afghan war was under way and the Iraq war was begun, two wars, the first time ever in America's history that a war was under way for which there was no way to pay for it except to borrow money. In previous wars, World War II, World War I, the Civil War, the government raised taxes to pay for the war; but not these two wars. This was entirely borrowed, all of the cost of it. And right now the Afghanistan war is costing $100 billion to $120 billion a year and we just voted today, not more than an hour and a half ago, for $157 billion for the Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq wars, $157 billion. Now, again, this is all on borrowed money. Despite efforts by the Democratic Caucus to raise money, raise taxes for those wars, taxes on the highest, wealthiest Americans, those votes failed. Now, the rest of the story is this. My friend, Mr. DeFazio, talked about the Medicare drug doughnut hole. The Medicare drug doughnut hole was added during the Bush administration, well over $600 million a year, again, not paid for but rather borrowed money. And then the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, that Great Recession added to the deficit because employment plummeted along with tax revenues, so that at the end of the George W. Bush administration, this Congressional Budget Office did what it had done every year in the past 50 years, did a projection, in the next 10 years, what will be the deficit. Guess what the number was? $11 trillion-plus dollars. And so during the 2001--2010 period, an enormous growth in the American deficit, Barack Obama came into office in January of 2009. And the day he took office, he had an annual budget deficit handed to him of over $1.3 trillion. The George W. Bush legacy was handed directly to Barack Obama the day he took office, over a trillion dollars. We have to work ourselves out of this hole. This is a deep, dangerous hole and we have got to work our way out of it. We have to do it with wisdom, we have to do it with intelligence, and we have to always keep in mind where we need to go. Two paths: one, bring the deficit down; and, two, provide those services that are desperately needed by Americans: Medicare, Medicaid, education, services that provide people the opportunity to get jobs. Those are fundamental investments that we must make, research and the like also included. Simultaneously, we must always achieve efficiency and effectiveness in every governmental program, wherever it happens to be. We know that the medical systems in the United States are inefficient, so the proposal put forth by our Republican colleagues to privatize, destroy Medicare, does nothing to deal with the inefficiencies of the medical system. There are three parts to the medical system: the collection of money, the payment of claims, and the provision of services. Medicare happens to be the most efficient delivery in the collection of money, the payment of claims and the delivery of services of any of the medical services and medical systems out there. The private insurance companies, however, are the least efficient, the least efficient created because of the numerous policies that they offer, confusion to the purchaser of the policy, whether it is an individual or business, and to the provider of services. Go into any hospital, and one of the biggest sections in the hospital is not the emergency room, not the operating room, not the intensive care unit. It is the administrative unit. Why? Because they have to deal with thousands of different policies, different deductibles, different copays and different policies from different companies. ``Is this going to be paid?'' ``Who is going to pay that?'' and so forth, creating the least efficient medical delivery system in the world. A full 40 percent of all of the medical costs are in administration. Keep in mind that Medicare, on the other hand, is the most efficient, spending no more than 3 percent in collecting the money and paying the bills. So the proposal that we have before us by the Republicans to terminate Medicare and hand it over to the insurance companies will create even additional costs and more inefficiency in the system, less effectiveness. That is not the way to go. We talked earlier about the dreaded doughnut hole for Medicare seniors. Why was it that the Republicans refused to allow the Federal Government to negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical companies? It is the most ineffective, inefficient and stupid thing in the world to spend tens and hundreds of billions of dollars a year on drugs and not be able to negotiate but simply to be a price taker, not a negotiator, not to use your purchasing power to negotiate. I don't understand--well, I do understand. I know exactly what it is. It has to do with the effective lobby and contributions of the pharmaceutical industry. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We can and we must go to the medical system and seek efficiencies, and it can be done. I have spent a lot of my time as insurance commissioner looking at how it can be done, and we will go into that at another time, but I will give you a couple of items along the way. A doctor goes into a hospital and scribbles on a piece of paper what he believes to be wrong with the person. He writes on a piece of paper in illegible handwriting what the pharmaceutical will be. Medical errors abound. We know that, in fact, infections occur in hospitals. We know that readmissions occur in hospitals. All of those things need not exist in America. We can significantly reduce the costs of medical services by instituting electronic medical records. That can be done, and, in fact, in the health care reform bill, the Affordable Care Act, it is done. Republicans want to repeal that. Somehow they think that that is going to reduce costs. I don't think so. Nonetheless, that is what they want to do. There are many other things that can be done. Infectious rate, readmissions, we need to be in front of illnesses. We need to have public health services. But yet in the CR, the continuing resolution that passed this House just this day not more than 2 hours ago, the clinics in America are reduced and people will be lined up in the emergency rooms. We know that is the most expensive place in this Nation to get medical care. Yet we get this kind of CR that comes through here, this continuing resolution to fund the government that reduces clinics all across this Nation. Well, I think I need a glass of water, and I notice that my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter) has arrived to join us in this moment. Thank you for coming here.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, we seriously question the morality of the proposal that's being put forward by the Republican caucus. You said something that I want to focus in on. The details are important. We talked about Medicare and the end of Medicare as we know it. And basically, as Mr. DeFazio was saying, it's a program in which Medicare becomes privatized. The money is turned over to the insurance companies; our future, our seniors' future turned over to the insurance companies and their whims. But you also raised a very, very important point. And that is all across this Nation there are millions of Americans who are in nursing homes who now depend upon the Medicaid program, Medicaid program for the payment to the nursing homes. In the budget program, there is the block granting of the Medicaid program, and therefore the likelihood that the payments to the nursing homes will be reduced or end and those people will not be able to get care in the nursing home.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I don't think so. It seems to me to be the path to poverty for seniors. And it goes way, way beyond that. Our colleague from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, has joined us. Ms. Lee, if you would care to comment. I know this is an issue you are deeply concerned about.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Of course.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I see. So we are shifting the costs to the seniors; right?

Mr. GARAMENDI. If the Republican proposal goes forward, seniors will wind up paying how much?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. DeFazio. I heard you toss out two numbers. One number was the amount of medical, the percentage of the costs of medical care that seniors now pay. Did you say 28 percent?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you. I want to turn our attention to the issues that are before us today and see if we can have a better understanding of what has taken place. We just heard a little bit about honoring our troops. Let's be very clear about this. The Democratic Caucus in this House, the President, and the Senate will always and have always honored our troops. We are in the midst of a very serious budget crisis for this year with very, very serious issues at stake, and the Republicans chose to attach to the funding bill numerous cuts that devastate important programs that affect the well-being of every man, woman, and child in this Nation and, indeed, around the world. Because of those cuts, as well as certain language that was added to the bill, we chose not to vote for the funding. The President has said, Stop the games. Stop playing around. Give us a straight up and down on funding the government without all of these add-ons and games that are being played by our Republican colleagues. The President has asked for a clean bill. We should give him a clean bill and carry on to fund the government and provide for our troops and our military families, and we will do that. Now let's understand what is at stake. Not only in the current year's budget, which is the next 7 months, but in the year beginning on October 12, the Republicans have put together a proposal that would devastate seniors and those who are unable to care for and to provide themselves with medical services--in other words, those dependent upon the Medicaid program. Very straightforward. The proposal that was put out by the Republican caucus 2 days ago would terminate and stop Medicare as we know it today. Medicare is a program in which every working American pays into it, and when they became 65, they expect to receive the Medicare health care benefits that are guaranteed or at least have been guaranteed for the last 40-some years. That's a uniform benefit package across this Nation. It is a very successful program. It's one that Americans literally live long enough to get into. And yet the Republican caucus is proposing to terminate it, to end the Medicare program. And instead, turn over the $400 billion a year that goes into the Medicare services, turn it over to the private health insurance companies--the biggest gift ever given to the private health insurance companies. I know those companies. I was the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years. And I spent most every day of those 8 years chasing after the health insurance companies, forcing them to pay claims and stopping them from discriminating against people who had preexisting conditions and developing programs and policies that were underfunded, underpaid, and underperformed. That cannot happen to our seniors, but that's what the Republicans want to do. And we need to stop it. And we will because the seniors of this Nation already sense what is at hand. They already know that the Republican budget proposed would devastate one of the two pillars of the social safety net that every senior in this Nation at one time or another depends upon. The second pillar--we've already seen the path that this is going to go on--in 2004, the Republican caucus, together with the Republican President, George W. Bush, proposed to privatize Social Security. Fortunately, the revolt that started in the Democratic caucus of this House and carried across the Nation stopped that from happening. We know what's coming down the train track here, and that is another effort to privatize Social Security, to take those hundreds of billions of dollars and turn them over to Wall Street so Wall Street can play additional financial games. It will not happen, Americans will not give up Social Security and Medicare to satisfy the whims of the Republican caucus that seems determined upon destroying effective government in this Nation. I'd like to call upon my colleague from the great State of Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). If you will join me in this conversation and we will see where it takes us.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Please.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Game's over. You can put that RIP back up.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I would be delighted to.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much for laying out the thematics as well as the past history. Our theme in the Democratic Caucus here in the House is one of making it in America--once again, going into Target, going down to the local automobile dealership, and finding products that are made in America. The great strength of America, historically for the last 150 years, has been its manufacturing strength, but we need to understand that, in the last decade, we have seen the hollowing out of the American manufacturing industry. In 1999, there were 17,383,000 Americans working in manufacturing. In the decade that followed, more than 6 million of those jobs were lost, and we saw the hollowing out of American manufacturing. That's the strength. It also happens to be the middle class. So our theme is ``make it in America.'' As you say, if America is going to make it, we must, once again, make it in America. Manufacturing matters. Let me put up here on the board why it matters to the American public. What has happened in the last decade has been a skewing of the economy, the great unshared prosperity of America. If we look at the bottom fifth of the population, these are the poor. They've seen a $200 annual increase in their well-being. For the next fifth, 20 to 40 percent, they've seen just under $10,000. As you go up, if you look at the top 10 percent, $300,000. If you look at the top 1 percent of Americans, what has happened with them? Their wealth has grown by over $5,978,870. So what has happened as a result of the policies of the Bush administration is a push to the wealthy and the clampdown of the working class in America. The middle class in America is losing the race to wealth. It is losing it to the top 1 percent. Let me put this another way. There are, perhaps, some people you might recognize at the bottom, the poorest fifth, the folks who work for Wal-Mart. Eleven percent of the wealth went to them. For the second poorest--these are the teachers--it's the same thing. There was very little growth in their income. As you get to the millionaires and billionaires, the Donald Trumps of the world, they have seen a 256 percent--a 256 percent-- increase in their wealth. At the bottom, an 11 percent. For the teachers, an 18, 20 percent. For manufacturing, maybe a 32 percent. Here is where the money is: It's with the super wealthy. They have seen a 256 percent. Take a close look, America. Take a close look at what was proposed yesterday by the Republican caucus: Yesterday, the Republican caucus proposed to take this skewing of wealth, the unshared prosperity, and push even more of it to the super wealthy of America. It is unconscionable, but that's what they've proposed to do, and they're going to do it with tax breaks for the wealthy, continuing on, indefinitely, increasing the deficit by $1 trillion--a $1 trillion increase--because they want even more wealth to go to the super wealthy. At the same time, they're cutting the benefits that the working men and women rely upon. What are those benefits? Well, how about employment opportunities? How about educational opportunities? All of those are cut, and they're taking money out of the economy so that 700,000 men and women will lose their jobs this year, in the next 9 months. That's the Republican agenda. For those who are not working, the seniors of America, the Republicans are proposing to end Medicare as we know it. It will be the privatization of Medicare, giving every senior in this Nation an $11,000 voucher so that they can then go and negotiate with the rapacious greed of the health insurance companies. If you want to live to be 65 and finally have a health insurance policy that you can count on, don't look to the Republicans, because they intend to terminate Medicare as we know it and turn over the well-being--the health and, indeed, the life of every senior--to the vagrancies, to the rapacious profit orientation of the health insurance industry. That's what's going to happen if the Republicans get their way. We'll do everything we can to stop it, and we will also do everything we can to build the American middle class.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, we intend tonight to talk about the deficit, solutions to the deficit, where it came from and what can be done about it in the context of creating jobs here in America. But before we get into that, we just heard a whole hour of talk that really is based upon a fallacious foundation, that is, it is just not correct. Last year in 2010, it was the Republican Senators that blocked every attempt to pass legislation by threatening a veto and denying the 60 votes that were necessary. So when it came time to do a budget, it was impossible to put a budget through the Senate because of the Republican blockade in the use of the filibuster. Similarly, when it came time to fund the government, to appropriate the money, the same thing happened. It was impossible to get the 60 votes out of the Senate because of the Republican blockade. So everything that we have heard over the last hour about the process that is now under way, the continuing resolutions, began with the blockade in the Senate by the Republicans as they continually threatened a filibuster. That's why we are where we are today. Now, with regard to the funding of the military, let's understand that the Democrats have always consistently voted to fund the military when it was a straight up-or-down vote. However, in the CR, the first CR that did have funding for the military, it also had extraordinary cuts that would destroy 700,000 jobs in the last 6 months of this fiscal year--March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October--700,000 jobs lost. The Democrats said no way, no way are we going to throw 700,000 employed Americans out of work, and we rejected that. Put a clean CR for the funding of the military on, and you'll have a 100 percent vote. But when you cobble together the kinds of foolish cuts, unwarranted cuts, 700,000 lost jobs, and then attach to it the military and expect support, you won't get it. The Democrats want this government funded, and we fought for more than a year and a half to get the government funded. We were blocked along the way. And now, as the Republicans put out these pieces of legislation, the continuing resolution, and attach to it totally unacceptable language and unacceptable cuts, to the American people, not to the Democrats, but to the American people, then we find this gridlock. What we want to do really is talk about jobs. Joining me tonight are two wonderful legislators. One is imported from Detroit, and another one from the manufacturing capital of the world. I want to start with an understanding of why we are where we are. I know my colleagues will help me on this. First of all, the Democrats have been about creating jobs, from the stimulus to today. The GOP majority has been in power for 14 weeks. Zero, no, nada, nothing to create jobs. Not one jobs bill. In fact, the only bill that they have put on that has anything to do with jobs is one that destroys 700,000 jobs. So keep this in mind, American public. Fourteen weeks of GOP leadership in the House and not one piece of legislation that would create a job putting Americans to work this year and next year. That's the fact. Now, another fact: Where did the deficit come from? In order to understand where we are, we need to know where we've been. Here is what the deficit is all about. Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the budget was not balanced. Ronald Reagan at the end of his term left for the American public a $1.4 trillion deficit in the years ahead. At the end of each year and, therefore, at the end of a President's term, the Congressional Budget Office makes an estimate of what is going to happen over the next 5 to 10 years. At the end of Ronald Reagan's term, they said there would be a $1.4 trillion deficit going forward. George Walker Bush followed Reagan; and at the end of his administration, the estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was that there would be a $3.3 trillion deficit going forward. That's the numbers provided by the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan group. Bill Clinton came to office, established the pay-for program, established the balanced budget program; and at the end of his administration, it was projected going forward that there would be a $5.6 trillion surplus, wiping out the American debt. That's what happened during the Clinton administration. So that in the years beyond the Clinton administration, had the same policies gone forward, the American debt would have been wiped out. However, another gentleman was elected, George W. Bush. In his first year in office, the Bush tax cuts went into effect, the Afghanistan war started, and the deficit began to grow once again. So that in his second year, the second Bush tax cuts were added and the Iraq war was started. Never before in America's history has a war been under way that was not paid for with tax increases. Instead, the Republicans and George W. Bush decided that they would start not one war, but two wars, and pay for it with borrowed money. The fourth piece was the unpaid-for Medicare drug benefit which didn't even require that the Federal Government force the insurance companies to compete for drugs. The result was at the end--oh, did I forget the Great Recession? I did. You add the Great Recession to it, so at the end of the George W. Bush administration, the projection from the Congressional Budget Office was that the deficit would grow by an additional $11.5 trillion. The George W. Bush Republican period created the Great Recession, two wars unpaid for, a major increase in the Medicare program, and the result, the Great Recession and the great deficit. This is what Obama faced the day he came into office, the greatest recession since the Great Depression and an $11.5 trillion deficit going forward. Those are the facts. That's where we started this. Now, what are we going to do about this problem? The President has put forth a budget that would, in 8 years, significantly reduce the deficit so that it wouldn't grow and allow us to pay the interest, not removing it, not paying it all off--neither do the Republican proposals--but it would put us in a position where it would not grow. It takes time to solve the huge deficit problem that George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Bush, Sr. put us into. We can do it. But we cannot do it unless we grow this economy. It's about growing the economy and creating jobs that we would now like to talk about. I am going to turn now to my colleague from Ohio, Betty Sutton, who has been working on the issue of putting Americans to work for a long, long time. Please share with us where you are now with this proposal that you are putting forward.