John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Oh, to the job creators. You must mean those wealthy folks.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Three votes in the first 6 months, now 6\1/2\ months of this new Congress, three votes by the Republicans that have put up three different measures that terminate Medicare as we know it.

Mr. GARAMENDI. And on the individuals. Let's move on beyond it. But this is something that I always put up when we talk about Medicare, and that is it was 1965. This is a tombstone, and it says: Medicare 1965-2011. Created by LBJ. Destroyed by the GOP. No doubt about it.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Before we leave the balanced budget amendment, the bill that was on the floor yesterday had two other pieces to it. One of them was to go after the budget of the United States and reduce it by $111 billion, beginning in October of this year. That has real impact. Part of that impact would be felt on Medicare. Let's just put some understanding into what Medicare is all about. Our colleague from Connecticut did this last night, but it really, I think, is well worth repeating, and so I am going to just read off some statistics, so please bear with me. In 1965, when Medicare was established, 44 percent of all seniors 65 and over did not have health insurance. Now, of those, 40 percent of the seniors lived in poverty. So you had heavy poverty and you had no insurance. The two are tied together. You get sick, you lost your money, you spent everything you had. The life expectancy at that period was 70 years. Now, what's happened in the intervening years since 1965? Now, 40 million seniors, nearly every senior in the United States, has health insurance. Not just a little health insurance, they have a comprehensive health insurance policy that covers most everything they need--doctors, hospitals, and drugs. The poverty rate for seniors has fallen from 40 percent to 10 percent. Why? Social Security and Medicare. Now, they lived to 70 in 1965. Today, seniors live to an average age of 78\1/2\ years. Why? Because they have medical care and they have Social Security providing them with the basics of life. Now, what happens if the Republican budget were to pass and Social Security were to end, not only for those who are 55 years of age now and want to have Social Security 10 years later in their lives when they become 65, but immediately for seniors, now, if the Republican bill passed, would become law that passed yesterday, and the previous one, the budget bill were to become law? $880 billion would be removed from Medicaid. Medicaid's a different program than Medicare. This is for impoverished people in America, almost all of whom are in nursing homes. $880 billion, over 10 years, removed from Medicaid. So those seniors, most of whom are women--and I would remind you that we heard from the Republican women here earlier promoting a program that would cut $880 billion out of Medicaid, 70 percent of which goes to nursing homes, the majority of whom in those nursing homes are women. This is not a women's program that they've put forward. And on the drug side, you were talking about this, Mr. Tonko. This is an immediate reduction, an immediate reduction in the drug benefits, so that 3.9 million seniors would wind up paying $2.2 billion more immediately if the Republican budget were to go into law because of the reduction in the Affordable Care Act that provided this benefit. These are just some of the things that the American public needs to understand when you get past the sound bites. We must balance the budget and, therefore, the balanced budget amendment. Well, wait. What is it? What does it really do? It terminates majority rule in America and institutes minority rule so the fundamental of American democracy is trashed; requires that the budget of the United States be ramped back, back, back to the 1965 percentage of GDP, before there was Medicare, which, inevitably and inextricably means that Medicare is over once that balanced budget amendment passes. Mr. Tonko, please continue.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Freedom ``from'' health care.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you so much for bringing our attention to the way in which the balanced budget amendment would fundamentally alter the very nature of our government. Earlier I talked about the majority vote versus the minority rule that is in this amendment. And now you bring to our attention the percentage that is in the amendment. Those percentages have real meaning beyond the issue of just a very, very important issue, the very nature of our government, and the reason why we have representative government, why we have the Senate, why we have a Congress. But there's something else to it and that is, the percentage that they have chosen would force the government expenditures to go back to the 1965 level where there was no Medicaid and no Medicare program in America. So, once again, there are different ways of assaulting and terminating Medicare. One was the direct way that was in the Republican budget that passed this House earlier in which they explicitly said that for all Americans who are not yet 55, there would be no Medicare. They would be given a voucher, and they would have to go buy insurance from the private insurance market, which all of us understand is a very difficult place to get a fair deal. The other way of doing it is in a constitutional amendment, as was proposed yesterday, that would make it impossible to fund Medicare and similarly impossible to fund things like natural disasters. Let's assume we were at 18 percent, which is the number they've chosen, of GDP and the Federal budget, and we have the great Mississippi flood or the great Missouri flood or the earthquake in California or the hurricane in Florida, billions of dollars. The Federal Government would have no ability under this amendment to step in. Let me turn to Mr. Tonko. I know you had some other things that you wanted to bring to our attention.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, once again you are on the right track here. Earlier before you came in I was discussing our Republican colleagues, Women's Day, and they were all talking about the great value in the balanced budget constitutional amendment. My colleague from Colorado, Jared Polis, came running over and said, They don't understand. They need to know what's in this. And I'd like you to explain. I started off with the majority, two-thirds vote. You're a constitutional specialist. What does all of this mean to America if they really understood and got past the sound bite? ``Balanced budget'' sounds good, but what does it actually mean?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to be joined by my colleagues today, and we are going to talk about the financial situation here in the United States and about the meaning of the various ideas and proposals that have been put forward. I want to compliment my colleagues on the Republican side for their tenacity in putting out their sound bites, but I think it's very, very important for the American people to understand in detail exactly what is being proposed here. Yesterday, we did have what was called the Cut, Cap, and Balance proposal. You might also call it the ``Cut, Slash, and Burn'' proposal because, once you get past the sound bites and get into the details of what has actually been proposed, you've got to stand back and go, Whoa. Wait a minute. Is that really what a balanced budget amendment is all about? We're going to go into that in a few moments to really understand exactly what this balanced budget amendment is and the effect that it will have on Americans, particularly on women in America; but before we go there, we need to step back a bit and understand how it is that we got into this situation with this deficit of $14 trillion. How did we get here? It's really important to understand that. Before you go off and try to solve the problem, you need to know what is the situation, what is the circumstance. This little chart here lays out where the deficit came from. Now, understand that, at the end of the Clinton administration in January 2001, the United States Government was running a surplus, a $300 billion-plus surplus. It had run that for the previous 2 years. So we had a surplus, and we were on the path during the decade 2001-2010 to literally pay off the entire American debt. It would be paid off. Now, whether that's a good idea or not, you can debate that, but that's what we were on. So the trajectory was, had we maintained the same policies, the same growth in our economy, we would have paid off the total debt. However, something happened. Now, what happened? What happened was a change in policies and two wars: the Iraq and the Afghanistan war following the 9/11 event in 2001 and then the Iraq war in 2003--neither war paid for. For the first time in American history, neither war was paid for--all borrowed money for the first time ever in America's history. Another thing happened along the way, and that is: in 2001, the first George W. Bush tax cut followed in 2003 by the second George W. Bush tax cut. Here is what they meant. Take a careful look at this. This is where the deficit started. We started here with the Bush-era tax cuts and then over the years so that in 2019--20 years--we have this extraordinary growth in the deficit caused by those tax cuts. Of course it assumes the tax cuts will continue on into 2019. The red area here are the wars. Again, not paid for. So the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. The other thing is this downturn in the economy. The downturn in the economy occurred in 2008. How did it happen? Why did we have that crash of the American economy? We had it because the Federal Government stepped back from regulating the financial institutions, allowing them to run wild, assuming that they would be smart enough to regulate themselves. That didn't happen. They were smart enough to be extraordinarily greedy. Wall Street went on a greed binge, and the result was the collapse of the financial industry. Needless to say, there are other players in this game. Many Americans, hundreds of thousands of Americans, joined in the game and took out mortgages and bought houses, but there was no way they could possibly afford them. It was the financial industry, the mortgage industry and the Wall Street bankers, and we wound up with the great collapse of 2008. To deal with that, the bailout of Wall Street occurred. Most of that has now been paid back. It worked. Did it work for the benefit of Americans? It stabilized the financial institutions, and it certainly worked for the benefit of Wall Street. That program occurred in the final months of the George W. Bush administration. Unfortunately, the American economy has not recovered despite the spending of some $700 billion in the stimulus program. It actually worked. It didn't work enough to get the economy moving forward, so we wound up with this huge deficit. Going forward, the deficit remains in place because the wars continue: $178 billion a year spent on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also continuing are the George W. Bush tax cuts. This is where the deficit is coming from. Thirdly, the economy has not recovered. That's where the deficit is. Now, what do you do about that? Do you put in place a constitutional amendment that has something really interesting? When the American public understands what is in that amendment, it's not just a balanced budget; there are real things in that amendment. Then that amendment, if ever put in place, will have extraordinary consequences for America--in my view, none of them positive. A sound bite is great: Balance the budget. Force the government to balance the budget just like we do at home. Hello, America. Do you really balance your budget every month? every year? I don't think so. We take out a mortgage to buy a house. That's borrowing money, folks. That's not balancing your daily budget. That's borrowing money, and now you've got to pay the mortgage, pay the interest. When you lose your job or when you're laid off or when you're cut back in hours, what do you do? You do your best to cut expenses, and then you probably are going to borrow more money--maybe the home equity loan, maybe the credit card--to get by. We all do that, all of us. It's not so easy to at the end of every year balance the budget. Forty-nine States? Yes, they have balanced budget amendments. I'm from California. Democrat Jerry Brown: facing a balanced budget amendment. Guess what? He borrows money. He doesn't balance the budget. Oh--and his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger--Republican, said he was going to ``blow up the boxes'' and balance the budget. It happened twice in the 7 years that he was Governor that he was able to balance the budget. Why did this happen? Why did it happen? America, ask the question: What is in the balanced budget amendment? I'll tell you what's in it: a requirement that a two-thirds vote be enacted for every expenditure and every tax increase--a two-thirds vote. This is a fundamental shift in the very nature of American democracy. We had a dozen wonderful Representatives of the Republican Party talk for an hour here, and not once did they mention that the American democracy will be forever changed. No longer majority rule. A fundamental tenet of American democracy, majority rule, pushed aside. And now should this ever become law, a minority rule, one-third of this House, one-third of this Senate dominating the will of 65 percent of every elected Representative and Senator. The end of the most fundamental tenet of American democracy, the end of majority rule. It also works in a very pernicious and bad way. You can cut taxes with a majority vote. It takes a two-thirds to raise taxes. So years and years ago, the oil industry had the opportunity in our democracy to receive a tax reduction. They got a tax reduction. And the oil industry went on with that tax reduction, called a subsidy, so that they can explore for oil and gas. For a hundred years they have had a tax break. Now, we can give them another tax break; but under the balanced budget amendment, it would take a two-thirds vote to take away the tax reduction, the tax break, the subsidy that they have received for a hundred years, a century, would take a two-thirds vote to do that because that would be considered to be a tax increase. So what does it mean to the oil industry? Well, here's their profits from last year. Let's see: Exxon, $10.7 billion; Oxy, $1.6 billion; Conoco, $2.1; Chevron, $6.2 billion; BP, of gulf fame, $7.2 billion, that's their profit. Part of that profit is your tax dollar. Part of that profit is the tax dollar of every American that has been given to the oil companies for more than a century so that they can go explore for oil. Is there an American that believes that the oil industry needs our tax dollars to continue to be viable? I don't think so. But if the constitutional amendment passes, becomes part of our Constitution, a majority of this House and the Senate could increase the subsidy, but it would take a two-thirds vote to get our money back. We need to understand the details of what a balanced budget amendment means. I've been joined by my wonderful friend and extraordinary Representative from the great State of New York representing the Hudson River Valley in the capital region. We had a discussion last night about a piece of this, and I've been waiting for you to arrive when we could talk about how the balanced budget amendment and the cuts in the legislation that was passed yesterday would affect women. We just had 20 women from the Republican Party here telling us that we ought to enact a balanced budget amendment. What does it mean for women who are 65 and over? Would you please join us and enter this conversation.

Mr. GARAMENDI. You've moved to a subject that we really want to get to, which is jobs, but this is my favorite.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Tonko, thank you so very much for bringing us together tonight to talk about Medicare and the Republican proposal to terminate Medicare and significantly reduce Medicaid programs for seniors in nursing homes. This is a pivotal moment in this Nation. It really speaks to our values. It speaks to who we are as Americans, who we care for, and what we are concerned about.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you. You read the chart better than I do.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Courtney just pointed back to me. I was going to pass it to him. We just talked about Big Oil, the subsidies to Big Oil that are being protected by our Republican colleagues, making sure that Big Oil gets their money. That's not the only thing. They are fiercely fighting, fighting fiercely to maintain the Bush- era tax cuts for the superwealthy. We're talking about millionaires. So what does it mean for millionaires to hang on to that tax cut that occurred in 2003, I believe? For millionaires, that tax cut is worth $200,000 a year if you have an income of $1 million. Now, there are folks out there that have incomes of a billion. So you can kind of expand that, add five zeroes. You get close to what it might be for a billionaire, and there are billionaires out there. What does it mean for seniors? It means it's going to cost them some $6,000 a year in what will be their Medicare costs in the future.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Before we go to this other issue--and we've got another 7 or 8 minutes here--another major program that is targeted by our Republican friends is Medicaid. Medicaid is a program for impoverished Americans. Seventy percent of Medicaid is for seniors and nursing homes. They want to take some $700 billion out of Medicaid. In California, that's called MediCal, but in each State they have their own program. But $700 billion goes directly to seniors that are in nursing homes. What will come of those people that are now in nursing homes when this program, Medicaid, is reduced as proposed in the budget that was passed today? But, having said that, let's turn to the other side of the coin. You want to make cuts, but do you want to cut Medicare? Do you want to cut Medicaid?--or do you want to cut the subsidies that exist in American business today? This is just one of hundreds of subsidies, tax breaks, given to American businesses that they don't need. Big Oil receives my tax money, your tax money, and the American taxpayers' money to the tune of--I don't know--$5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion a year. Yet look at their profits. Look at their profits here. This is just 1 year. You add up these profits over the last decade. Exxon last year, $10 billion; Conoco $2.1 billion; Chevron, $6 billion; BP, infamous BP, $7.2 billion. Yet they receive our tax subsidies. You take this and you apply it over the last decade, and it is just $950 billion of profit--$50 billion less than a trillion dollars of profit. And yet defending the oil companies are our Republican colleagues, saying no, no, no. You can't touch Big Oil. You can't take away their tax subsidies, but you can surely go after seniors and take $6,000 out of the pocket of every senior with this Medicare program.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Courtney, thank you for pointing out that very, very important fact that seems to have been totally overlooked in today's debate, at least by our Republican colleagues. There is another factor here, and that is that Medicare, like all medical services across the United States, whether you are in Kaiser or in Blue Cross, Anthem or Medicare--all of these programs are carried along on the inflationary wave in health care, which actually runs two or three times the general inflation of our economy. So health care is growing very, very rapidly overall. It turns out that the inflation rate in Medicare is about one half the inflation rate in the general health care system. Now, if Medicare is part of the health care system and takes care of the most expensive part of the population, how is it that Medicare is not inflating--the costs are not going up--as fast as the costs are in the private health insurance sector? The reason is, as I discussed before, Medicare is very efficient. It is a very, very efficient program: a universal benefit across the Nation, uniform; clear deductibles, clear co-pays; and in Medicare part B, cost sharing. All of that is there and it's understood. The private insurance has 1,000 different policies--chaos throughout the marketplace. Now, we've talked about this a little bit. We really need to have Americans understand that the Affordable Health Care Act had a whole series of very, very important legislative activities that will reduce the overall cost of health care. An example is electronic medical records, not written records by a doctor or a nurse--either legible or illegible, stacked in a great big stack of papers--and all of us have seen those. Electronic medical records. It's a very, very important way to reduce problems, to reduce misunderstandings, a back-and-forth with drugs and the like. Another very important factor is hospital infection rates. Hospitals have a very high infection rate, and don't get paid a second time for retreating the original illness when that person comes in. It has a very, very important impact on reducing the cost of medical services. There were many other things you talked about--the drug benefit. By the way, how is it that during the Bush period when the Medicare part D, the drug benefit, went into place that the pharmaceutical industry was so powerful that they denied American taxpayers the opportunity for the government to negotiate for the price of drugs? Mr. Tonko, you raised that point. To this day, we've not had our Republican colleagues come along and say, ``Oh, yeah. There's a good way to save money. We'll just negotiate for the drugs.'' It turns out, as to the military and the health care services provided by it, they can negotiate for drugs, but Medicare cannot. So it costs us, you said, $150 billion over 10 years. Is that the number you came up with?

Mr. GARAMENDI. I have this chart. We've used it before as we've discussed Medicare. It brings this whole thing right into focus. This is a tombstone. Medicare. 1966-2011. Created by LBJ. Destroyed by the GOP. It may be a little harsh, but this is really the reality of what is going on here. It's the end of Medicare as we know it. It's the end of the guaranteed benefit program, and it does turn everyone who is 55 years and younger over to the insurance industry. I spoke to this briefly before--and Mr. Courtney, thank you for reminding me that I was the insurance commissioner in California for 8 years. I fought tooth and nail with the insurance industry over health care and automobile and homeowner and other kinds of insurance. In the health care sector, the private health insurance companies are about profit. That's their goal. They are profit-making organizations. And to enhance their profits, they do a variety of things. Deny coverage. You've got a policy? Oh, but that was a preexisting condition, and therefore we're not going to cover it. Or, gee, that kind of treatment is not covered. There was a lot of talk about death panels. I'll tell you where the death panel is--and I saw this as insurance commissioner. I saw insurance companies denying treatment that led to the death of numerous individuals over those 8 years. The real death panels have been the private insurance companies. In Medicare, I know of no case where that has happened. Maybe it did, but I'm unaware of it, and I had the biggest State--California. Also, there is this kind of discrimination that takes place. Let me just put this additionally to it. The private health insurance company is grossly inefficient. It is inefficient. It has enormous additional costs that Medicare does not have. By comparison, Medicare is a very efficient operation. It takes about 2 percent to raise the money and another, maybe, 2 or 3 percent to pay the bills and, on the provider side, maybe another 10 percent to do the billing also. Maybe the total cost is somewhere at about 15 percent in administrative costs. The private insurance companies run somewhere near 30 percent in administrative costs when you consider profit, when you consider the advertising, sales commissions. And they have thousands of different policies covering this, but not covering that, this deductible, that deductible. And when it gets to the provider, the ultimate chaos. So the administrative cost in the private system is about twice what it is in Medicare. Medicare is a very efficient, very effective, universal program that raises the money in a very fair way. All of us pay for it, and all of us should be getting that benefit when we get to be 65--but not so in the private sector. Our Republican colleagues want to take all of this money and hand it over to the private insurance market and say, ``Okay. You guys take care of it.'' It's less efficient. It's certainly deadly in denying coverage and benefits. Just compared to Medicare, it's very inefficient.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Representative Tonko. Thank you for bringing this issue alive this evening and for giving us this time to discuss this. Many, many thoughts went through my mind today as this vote and the debate went along. As it was debated by our Republican colleagues, I just couldn't understand where they were coming from. What would motivate them to want to destroy Medicare? And Medicaid? Why would they do that? The thoughts just reeled through my mind, and I'm going, I guess maybe they had had a different experience than I did. I was a young boy in the 1950s, and there was no Medicare, and there was no Medicaid. My father was a rancher. We grew up in a ranching area up in the foothills of California, in the Mother Lode Gold Country. He took me one day to the county hospital. It was one of the most horrible moments I can remember as a child, because the wards, there was just a ward, maybe 20 or 30 very elderly men, and then on the other side elderly women, who were dying. Their medical care wasn't available to them. Sometime later, maybe another month after that, we were out chasing cattle that had gotten loose--I was just a young man--and one of our neighbors, we came upon the neighbor and asked where the cattle might be, and he said they were down that way. He had this huge growth on his mouth, and my dad asked about that, and he said, it's cancer. He had no insurance. He had no care. He was probably 70, 75, 80 years old. He died shortly thereafter. In 1965, this country did a remarkable, beautiful, wonderful thing. We gave to every senior in America medical care, doctor and hospital care, the opportunity to live longer, to have that cancer treated, to eliminate those wards in the county hospital where people simply were warehoused to die. And here today, for the third time since January of this year, the Republicans have put forth a proposal--and hopefully it will never become law--to terminate Medicare. Have no doubt about it, Mr. Tonko, they would terminate Medicare. As you said, they would turn it over to the private insurance companies, with a voucher, insufficient to pay for medical care insurance from an insurance company today. The discrimination that exists in insurance for people with preexisting conditions, and the paramount preexisting condition in America is age. If you're 55, 60, 65, you have a preexisting condition. It's called age. What will come of those people? What is this Nation all about? Who are we as Americans? Who are we as Americans that on this floor in a charade, in a falsehood, brought to America today, and twice previously, legislation that doesn't deal with the fundamental issues of the budget, the tax issues, the revenue side of it, real reform in the programs, whether it's Medicare or the military. Real reforms. No, no, no. Just cut, slash, burn, and take your seniors, toss them aside. This is not the America that I want to live in. This is the America of the 1950s when there was no Medicare and when seniors were in wards left to die, or in no care at all. Every American 65 years of age is guaranteed a comprehensive health care benefit. It's called Medicare. Whatever else we stand for, that's where the Democrats stand. We will fight this fight. We will not lose this fight. This is about the very heart and soul of this Nation. Mr. Tonko, thank you for these moments.

Mr. GARAMENDI. It was the bill they introduced.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, Americans want jobs. After 200 days of Republican power in this House, not one jobs bill. This cut, slash, and burn legislation will not work. We need an invest, grow, and build strategy. That's what Americans want from Congress. They want us to invest in education, invest in research, and invest in innovation so that America can remain a leader in the global economy. They want us to invest in infrastructure, build bridges, highways, clean energy and cut our dependence on foreign oil, because when we make it in America, that's when America will make it. Americans can make it. Cut, yes. What we ought to cut are the Republican giveaways to the Big Oil companies, to the Wall Street barons, to the hedge fund managers who enjoy massive tax breaks. That's where the cuts ought to be. They ought to be cut out. And what of this legislation that's before us? We ought to vote ``no.'' Cut what doesn't create jobs for middle class families, like Republican giveaways to big oil companies. And save what actually works, like innovation to jumpstart new industries and education to help middle class people get good jobs. I therefore rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. This bill is an extreme version of the Republican budget plan that would make permanent the dangerous budgetary and constitutional measures that would destroy Medicare and Medicaid, and reduce Social Security benefits for those who need them the most. The bill would also handicap the government's ability to respond to economic downturns and create jobs, and it fails to address some of the real drivers our debt--tax breaks for corporations and the rich and runaway Pentagon spending, including our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. This legislation is an affront to the very principles of this nation. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address said, ``If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.'' Unfortunately, it seems that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no regard for this fundamental American value, as the bill they have brought to the floor today attempts to balance the budget on the backs of those with less for the benefit of those with more. It attempts to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, by taking away their Medicare benefits. It attempts to balance the budget on the backs of the disabled, by taking away their Social Security benefits. It attempts to balance the budget on the backs of low-income Americans, by taking away their Medicaid. And who stands to gain from taking away Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits? Special interests and the rich. In addition to taking away Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, H.R. 2560 would also subvert the federal government's ability to respond to downturns in the economy or special needs including a possible national security crisis. During inevitable cyclical downturns, it will be necessary to raise the debt limit to stimulate growth by cutting taxes and providing unemployment benefits to help people get back on their feet if they're laid off, among several proven effective measures. Furthermore, in the event of a security threat, we have an obligation to act. This bill, including the proposed balanced budget constitutional amendment would make it nearly impossible to respond to any economic or security crisis. At the root of all of this is a system of misguided priorities. My Republican colleagues have determined that in order to balance the budget, we should prioritize cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, instead of addressing what got us into this current deficit--a porous, lopsided tax code designed to make the rich richer, and two unnecessary wars, one of which we continue to wage. This bill does nothing to end the tax breaks we currently provide for millionaires and billionaires, hedge fund managers and oil companies. Nor does it address runaway Pentagon spending. Based on CBO's most conservative estimates, the DOD alone is projected to spend nearly $300 billion on the Afghan and Iraqi wars from 2012 through 2015, and estimates by Harvard researchers which take into account long-term costs like caring for our veterans put the total cost of these wars in the trillions. Rather than ending tax breaks for corporations and millionaires and billionaires and bringing our troops home from Afghanistan, my friends on the other side of aisle want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits for those Americans who need them. I urge my colleagues to see this charade for what it is--an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of those with less for the benefit of those with more--and vote ``no'' on H.R. 2560.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, later this week, this House will take up the second iteration--the second coming, if you will--of the House Republican budget, a budget designed to destroy Medicare, basically to terminate it for anyone who's 55 years or younger, a plan designed to put Social Security on a track to privatization, a plan designed to take nearly $700 billion out of the Medicaid program, basically destroying those things that have held the fabric of America together. Have no illusions about what this is all about. It's not just a constitutional amendment; it's not just cut and cap. It is really about destroying Medicare, Medicaid, programs that are essential for seniors. If you want to make a cut in something, why don't you take a third of a trillion dollars out of the war in Afghanistan, which is what we're going to spend over the next 4 years? Now there's a good cut that we ought to make.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise with my colleagues Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congressman George Miller, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and Congressman Jerry McNerney to congratulate the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators & Allied Workers, Local 16, San Francisco Chapter, on its 100th anniversary celebration. On August 1, 1911, Local 16 was chartered as a member of the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators & Allied Workers International Union, AFL-CIO/CLC. For the past century, Local 16 has worked to ensure the health and safety of consumers and has reduced both carbon dioxide emissions and energy costs through advancements in insulation installation. Local 16 has played a key role in raising public and industry awareness of the health dangers associated with handling asbestos materials. Certified professionals of the Insulators and Allied Workers Unions continue to safely remove asbestos and replace it with more environmentally friendly insulation material. In the last decade, Local 16 has trained an average of 125 Hazardous Waste Handlers and Firestoppers annually. This leadership and dedication to public safety helps to provide Americans with healthier homes and working environments. With professional installations, Local 16 ensures that less energy is lost through insulation, saving Americans money and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that is generated. This commitment to consumers and to the planet has helped the Local 16 membership base expand across two states, representing over 1,000 active members, retirees, and families throughout California and Nevada. For these members, Local 16 strives for workplace equality and improved job opportunities, all while working to stimulate our regional and national economies. Mr. Speaker, we are truly honored to pay tribute to our friends in the International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators & Allied Workers, Local 16, in recognition of their 100th anniversary. We ask our colleagues to join with us in congratulating the San Francisco branch for its continued leadership and commitment to service, and we wish them success in all future endeavors.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was just kind of curious about which one of those EPA regulations that my colleague was talking about. Perhaps it's the one that would prevent the emission of mercury into the air, or arsenic into the water. Maybe they want to poison the air and the water. Maybe that's what they're looking at. Or the SEC regulation that would bring to heel Wall Street and all of its excesses which just about terminated the economies of the world. Maybe those are the regulations they don't want to see. In any case, what I would really like to talk about here is the negotiations that are under way to deal with the looming crisis of the debt. The President of the United States has said, okay, let's not kick the can down the road any further, let's deal with this issue, and has proposed a $4 trillion solution. No sooner did he make that proposal than our Republican colleagues said, oh, no, we can't do that because that will include finally creating in America a fair Tax Code, one in which the superwealthy are actually going to get to pay for their share of the burden. For example, the hedge fund managers who pay a 15 percent rate on their earnings, their ordinary income, while the rest of us get to pay the full freight, whatever that might be, 35 percent for those at the top brackets. But, no, no, we can't deal with that problem, so we can't have a $4 trillion solution. The President also says, We're not going to kick the can down the road. We want to extend the debt limit to at least 2013, to put this issue off. But the Republicans don't want to do that. They want to do a short term. I wonder what's going on here. Talking about cuts, the only cut that I've seen thus far defined by our Republican colleagues is to cut Medicare. In fact, not just cut it, terminate Medicare, to somehow take all of those Americans who are 55 years or younger, and say to them, no, when you become 65, you will not have Medicare. We'll give you a voucher and you can go out and take your best shot with the private insurance sector. Good luck. I was an insurance commissioner. I know what those private insurance companies will do. They'll deny you benefits, deny you coverage, and they will tell the doctor exactly what you might actually receive in terms of health care. It doesn't make much sense to me. I think we need to support the President in this matter. I think we need a balanced approach here, one in which the wealthy finally get to pay their fair share, in which the oil companies no longer receive our hard-earned tax dollars so that they can have their $4 billion subsidy. I think it's time, as we heard earlier from our colleagues, to end the wars. If we end the war in Afghanistan, we could over the next 4 or 5 years have a third of a trillion dollar reduction in our deficit. There are many things that can be done, but one thing we will not do is to attack Social Security. Social Security and Medicare are the foundation of support for all Americans. When they become old, 65 and older, they know that they have that benefit available to them. Medicare works. Medicare is actually far more efficient than any private health insurance system. It has provided seniors across this Nation with an opportunity to not be impoverished when they become 65, that their health care will be provided to them. It has allowed for the extension of their lives. It has reduced the poverty rate. Together with Social Security, these are two of the foundations that we have promised every American. When they become 65, they will not face poverty. They will have a foundation. Not enough to provide all that they might want but at least a foundation. And so as we go through this whole issue of whether we're going to raise the debt limit or not, let us be mindful that we will not do it on the backs of the seniors, and we will do it in a balanced way as the President has said. We will provide for a fair Tax Code in which the superwealthy pay their fair share, in which corporations are no longer able to evade taxes, in which the oil companies no longer will receive our hard-earned tax dollars so that they can have even greater profits, and let us be mindful that the oil industry itself over the last 10 years, the top five oil companies have had over a trillion dollars of profits. It's time to bring back those subsidies and to balance our budget. We can do these things.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. The point of order that I would have wished to speak to, I will yield back my time and take up the subject later.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I'm working towards that.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I think the point of order is out of order. In fact, the issue before us is of utmost importance to this Nation--and indeed to the world--as more and more light water reactors are built. The problem of spent fuel continues to mount and creates hazards. The United States did, in fact, figure out how to close the nuclear gap.