Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. If I could ask a question?

Mr. McDERMOTT. I think that is the whole thing that we have not seriously looked at for the last 7 years. We have been spending, spending, spending. We've had budget after budget, supplemental budgets. They come in and say we need another $30 billion. We need another $70 billion. We're going to use $50 billion for reconstruction. We're going to use this. But no oversight. They've been putting that money out there, but nobody has been actually looking. And that's why you get control towers, as I said, built out in the desert for $14 million and nobody says to themselves, gee, what's that about? Who did that? Well, it was a contractor. You know, I don't know if it was KBR or which one of the contractors, but we let a contract to somebody to build a very sophisticated control tower. And we talk about the ``bridge to nowhere'' in our infrastructure. We complain if somebody puts a piece in the budget for a bridge somewhere. We put military things out like that and we don't even ask a question.

Mr. McDERMOTT. If you spend a dollar in a school educating a kid who then does better in the world and gets a job and makes money and pays taxes and contributes to the society, you've created something. When you build a nuclear weapon and put it on a shelf somewhere, you have developed nothing. It just sits there. Or you build a tank or you build a Humvee.

Mr. McDERMOTT. A guy from Minnesota should know it.

Mr. McDERMOTT. One of the interesting things, I am standing here listening to this, and, I don't know, as people are sitting at home listening to this and wondering about all this, this is a sacred cow that we are never supposed to look at. That is why we don't discuss the defense budget, because people are afraid if you talk about it and talk about reducing it at all, you are not a patriot. That is the accusation that is made immediately. But what happens in the Defense Department is they say, well, you know, we would like to build a submarine, so this year we will put $1 million into the budget and sign a contract to build a submarine in the next 2 years. So the next budget comes along and here is a contract already signed, and the next $10 billion goes into the budget, and the next year it is ten more. And that kind of sort of sneaking it in under the door without people actually seeing what is being committed to, that is how this missile defense stuff and all that is done, incrementally. Nobody ever sees the long-term cost of what we are doing and what it is going to mean in terms of what isn't available for the things that this society needs. The minute anybody raises it and says, why are we doing this, somebody says, well, you don't care about the safety of this country. That couldn't be further from the truth for any one of the four of us. But in fact people will say it and they will think that somehow if you cut one dime out of the defense budget, the whole country suddenly is going to be cowering in the corner and the world is going to be threatening us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mr. McDERMOTT. You have to ask yourself why do we keep building more and more and more? And, in fact, there's a curious thing about Iraq. Having been over there, it reminds me, we have 150,000 soldiers over there and we also have 150,000 contractors. Now, if a soldier is paid $50,000 and a contractor is paid $100,000, why isn't it more sensible to hire another soldier than to hire a contractor for twice the money? And that's going on all over Iraq, in fact, all over the world. We are contracting things out that ought to be done by our own soldiers and would be done in a much more reasonable and cost-efficient way. So if you look at this budget, there are a million places where you can find places to save money if you care about that.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, tonight, the President will address an expectant country in a joint session of Congress, and will give the American people a report on the progress that he has made and intends to make in the near future. The key word here is ``progress.'' In barely a month, President Obama has shown us that he can walk the talk. The stimulus package the President signed into law will take America down a road that we did not see in the last administration. It is one that governs from the center, focused on the average American-- the average person who gets up in the morning, gets to work at 8 o'clock, works until 5 o'clock and goes home and takes care of his family, maybe coaches baseball, maybe is a single mother who goes home, picks her kids up at daycare and goes home and takes care of them for the evening, but it is focused on the average American. Now, in the last 8 years, these people have either been left behind or have been thrown overboard by the last administration in its rush to open America's purse, wallet, whatever you want--bank vaults--to their friends. The economic disaster that President Obama is facing and will talk about to the American people today and tonight was really there, waiting on the desk when he got to the Oval Office. He didn't bring it with him. He didn't have very much to do with creating it. He was only in the Senate a short time. It was presented to him by the last administration, and he has now, in just 1 month, given us a recovery plan that helps the American people. Above all, I believe the President strikes a very delicate balance and walks a very fine, thin tightrope between economic recovery and economic disaster. How do you deal with it as it's going downhill? How do you arrest it? It's like being in the mountains. In western Washington, we have mountains. People are up, climbing mountains, and one of the first things you have to learn to do when climbing mountains where there is snow is learn how to do an arrest. You're sliding down a glacier. What do you do to stop yourself from falling? The first thing you've got to learn to do is put that ice ax in and hold. Now, the President is working on that sort of problem. We are sliding down--and have been since September--very abruptly, and he has got to bring this slide to a halt and then start the climb and get us back up on our feet and start back on the climb. There are those who say we ought to throw the banking institutions overboard because of their unrestrained practices. Maybe we're going to have to nationalize banks. One doesn't know exactly what is going to be necessary, but the President has begun to show that he is willing to make the tough decisions that have to be done. There are some who say the average American does not benefit. I've had calls. I've had people come up to me and say, ``I pay my bills. I do everything right. I didn't go out and borrow a lot of money, and it looks to me like the only people who are getting any benefit out of this are people who made wild, crazy decisions, like bankers. Why am I not getting something?'' But people do count in this administration--finally. The UI benefits will help those who have lost their jobs. There is a payroll deduction that goes into the average person's pocket, and there is going to be, finally, some oversight in governing on behalf of the American people, overall, returning America to the American people. It took 96 months to destroy our economy. Remember where Mr. Bush came in. There was a burgeoning surplus. We argued in 2000 about whether we would pay down the national debt too fast. That's where we were. He had a plan. He didn't tell us what his plan was, but it was not only to not pay down the debt but to build it up dramatically in the period that followed. This President who has now come into office has said we're going to stop that, and we're going to change what's going on. A New York Times editorial today reminds us that the other side of this body remains intent on working against American workers. The Governor of Mississippi and the Governor of Louisiana say, ``We don't want that unemployment money for our part-time workers.'' There is clearly some rethinking that has got to be done on behalf of this body in terms of what is going on in this country. Part-time workers are entitled to the unemployment insurance they paid in. The American people want a solution, and if the Republicans choose to ignore that, the American people have made it clear already that they can return to the voting booth and enforce their will. [From the New York Times, Feb. 24, 2009] What Part of `Stimulus' Don't They Get? Imagine yourself jobless and struggling to feed your family while the governor of your state threatens to reject tens of millions of dollars in federal aid earmarked for the unemployed. That is precisely what is happening in poverty- ridden states like Louisiana and Mississippi where Republican governors are threatening to turn away federal aid rather than expand access to unemployment insurance programs in ways that many other states did a long time ago. What makes these bad decisions worse is that they are little more than political posturing by rising Republican stars, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. This behavior reinforces the disturbing conclusion that the Republican Party seems more interested in ideological warfare than in working on policies that get the country back on track. Fortunately, as President Obama prepares for his first address to Congress on Tuesday evening, voters of both parties have noticed. About three-quarters of those polled in a recent New York Times/CBS News survey--including more than 60 percent of Republicans--said Mr. Obama has been trying to work with Republicans. And 63 percent said Republicans in Congress opposed the stimulus package primarily for political reasons, not because they thought it would be bad for the economy. It should be sobering news for Republicans that about 8 in 10 said the party should be working in a bipartisan way. The Republican Party's attacks on the unemployment insurance portion of the stimulus package are a perfect example. States that accept the stimulus money aimed at the unemployed are required to abide by new federal rules that extend unemployment protections to low-income workers and others who were often shorted or shut out of compensation. This law did not just materialize out of nowhere. It codified positive changes that have already taken place in at least half the states. To qualify for the first one-third of federal aid, the states need to fix arcane eligibility requirements that exclude far too many low-income workers. To qualify for the rest of the aid, states have to choose from a menu of options that include extending benefits to part-time workers or those who leave their jobs for urgent family reasons, like domestic violence or gravely ill children. Data from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group, show that 19 states qualify for some of the federal financing and that a dozen others would become eligible by making one or two policy changes. Unemployed workers are worst off in the Deep South, where relatively few people are eligible to receive payments. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas stand out. The governors are blowing smoke when they suggest that the federal unemployment aid would lead directly to new state taxes. No one knows what the economic climate will be when the federal aid has been used up several years from now. But by dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state unemployment funds, which puts money into the hands of people who spend it immediately on food and shelter, the stimulus could help the states through the recession and into a time when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely. But even if new taxes are required at some point, the new federal standards would protect more unemployed workers than ever before and bring states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas into the 21st century. Governors like Mr. Jindal should be worrying about how to end this recession while helping constituents feed and house their families--not about finding ways to revive tired election-year arguments about big spending versus small government.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this is not the first time America has faced an economic crisis, but it may be the first time that one entire political party will sit on the sidelines with their arms crossed, their fists clenched, and their rhetoric numb to the suffering being experienced by millions of Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. The American people are waiting and watching, and we will be judged not by the volume of the rhetoric but by the boldness of our actions. And we have plan, and it's rooted in one fundamental tenet: America once again belongs to Americans. And this Congress and this President will respond to the needs of the people with programs and promises that can and will get America moving again. Another 600,000 Americans lost their jobs in January. Overall, 4 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last year, the last year of the Bush administration. This legislation extends unemployment benefits to keep people with their heads above water while they look for a job, and this legislation provides incentives for States to modernize their unemployment system to meet the demands of the American people in the 21st century. FDR included unemployment insurance in the New Deal 70 years ago, at a time when women typically stayed at home to raise a family and part- time jobs didn't exist. We are offering a new deal for a new century. This legislation will help working moms and dads. It will help States make the adjustments that one would like them to make to better respond to their people. This legislation adds $100 a month to the UI benefit, but before some on the other side jump up and shout ``moral hazard,'' know this. The average UI benefit check does not even reach the poverty level. We offer a helping hand while you offer rhetoric. For instance, every dollar we provide in UI provides $1.64 in economic impact. I urge you to vote for H.R. 1.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, there is a saying that what goes around comes around. And the Republicans have adopted this as their mantra for their response to the American economic problem. Republican President Herbert Hoover presided over the Great Depression and stood by while millions of Americans stood in soup lines and unemployment lines. It produced Hoovervilles across the land, a kind of how-to guide on what not to do during an economic crisis. Today, Republicans are replaying the same old movie, responding in the same old way. And they offer America the same old outcome. Hooverville is the model community of the Republican plan to solve America's economic crisis. You won't need a mortgage in a Republican Hooverville because the town is already bankrupt. You don't need a stimulus package to revive the economy in a Hooverville because it is a Republican-planned community, and they have planned for soup lines and unemployment lines. And you won't see light at the end of the tunnel in Hooverville, because they drove the economy into the ditch over the last 8 long years. And they offer an economic plan to drive it deeper. What goes around comes around. And Hooverville is right around the corner. Republicans offer America an economic blueprint called ``Hooverville.'' It didn't work the last time, and it won't work this time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I'm honored to join my friend and colleague, Representative John Lewis, himself a legendary civil rights leader, in strongly supporting H. Res. 134 and in carrying a message of hope to an upcoming trip to India. There is so much that we can learn from the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's principle of ``satyagraha,'' nonviolent resistance, inspired change for the better throughout the world and particularly in the United States. As Dr. King said in a radio address in India in 1959 on this trip, ``the spirit of Gandhi is so much stronger today than some people believe.'' That statement is even truer today. These two people changed their countries and the world for the better. And the world today would benefit from a new Dr. King or a new Gandhi. They taught us that violence begets violence. As Gandhi once said, ``An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'' No one doubts that there are serious problems in the world today, violence in the Middle East and many other places, the AIDS pandemic and extreme poverty where 1 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. Missiles will not solve these crises. But people can, people of good will with courage and character, people like Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. We need them now more than ever. And this resolution and this upcoming trip by the Congress to India will honor their contributions to mankind and rekindle their spirit to seek peace by living in peace. I urge my colleagues to support H. Res 134.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Pennsylvania (Mrs. Dahlkemper).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Perriello).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I listened to fiscal conservatives rail against this bill, and I think about an article I read in this morning's Washington Post. Over in Arlington, which is just across the river, they have a clinic where people go who don't have health insurance and hope that their number is drawn from a lottery so that they can get to see a doctor. Our health care system is in serious problems, from the seniors all the way down to the young people in this country. Now, this bill says to the States, here's some additional money for you to expand coverage to your youngsters. Through no fault of their own, they're born into a home where there is no way to pay for health care. And we are giving the States, in this time of economic collapse brought on by the fiscal conservatives in this body, who said that we could spend and spend and spend, and never have to meet the day of reckoning, the people who are now going to suffer from that will be women and children. Children have nobody to speak for them but us. And for us to put that money out there and give them the opportunity to have health care is humane in the very strongest sense of that word. How anybody could vote against this, I have no idea, after you've wasted a trillion dollars on a war in Iraq, and have the real estate industry totally out of control, and then you say to the children, you can't see a doctor. What kind of body is this if we don't take care of children? I yield the remaining 3 minutes of my time to Mr. Waxman.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an extra 30 seconds.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the SCHIP reauthorization legislation and want to thank the Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, for her leadership in bringing this bill to the floor. H.R. 2 clearly says that change has arrived for our country and our children. Instead of the veto pen that was used last year by the outgoing President to deny health care to children, our new President will sign this legislation and, in so doing, will write a new chapter in America's commitment to our children and our future. H.R. 2 is a real down payment on our efforts to ensure universal access to affordable health care for all Americans. It builds on successful models that have expanded access to millions of children nationwide. Health care should be a right, not a privilege for the rich in America. This legislation affirms the commitment of a new Congress to serve all the people, not merely those who have the means to pay any price for health care while the Nation pays a steep price by not covering its children. H.R. 2 represents an additional 4 million children that will have access to health care, and it will provide access to preventive health care, and this alone means America will raise healthier children who grow to become healthier and more productive adults. The American people have spoken. They want a more compassionate response to our Nation's problems. Today, we are voting with our heads and our hearts to do just that. This is not about ideology or party. It is about providing health care to children. H.R. 2 represents real change. I am proud of my own State that took the lead before SCHIP was put in place in 1994. Three years before the enactment of SCHIP, Washington State expanded coverage to children up to 200 percent of the Federal poverty line. That was a huge commitment, and clearly, my State took the lead. As a result, we have fewer children uninsured, we have a healthier population, and more integrated primary care. It's a commitment that worked for us in our State, and it recognizes that what worked for Washington State will work across the country. Thirty million dollars was the commitment we made. H.R. 2 rewards States like Washington who knew early on that providing quality affordable health care to children was a sound, humane investment, but also, it expands a successful program to cover more uninsured children and working families. The present economic difficulties in this country are going to make this program even more important than they've ever been in the past. This bill provides greater flexibility and will allow States to meet the needs of low-income working families. I'm grateful also that this legislation includes important access for legal immigrant children who are currently denied coverage, children who are born in the United States and are U.S. legal citizens. In Washington State, we have provided coverage for these children, but the State is doing this alone without the full partnership of the Federal Government. H.R. 2 corrects this error and will allow Washington State to maintain coverage for more than 3,000 children. Madam Speaker, we need to do the right thing. Providing universal coverage for children is an objective that we should all support. This legislation takes us one step closer to meeting this goal. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. You know, I have got to admit, it brought a tear to my eye when he talked in his speech about the fact that when your kids look at you, they expect you to be able to take care of them. And if you haven't got health insurance, then you're caught between a kid that has got a problem and, Can I fill the prescription? Or, If I go and get a big hospital bill with my kid, how am I going to deal with that? It is a terrible feeling. I remember once when my daughter was in the hospital and she was in the ICU, and you are sitting there wondering if your child is going to make it or not. It is a scary kind of thing as a parent. And to see the President talk about it and say we are going to fix this was really very exciting. And I think that, although I was here in 1993 when we tried it with Mrs. Clinton and at that time business was opposed to us and the medical profession was opposed to us and some labor unions were opposed, and it was really tough going. Things have changed today. Business wants to have a change, the medical professions want to have a change, and labor unions. And I think it is not going to come quickly and easily, because the status quo is always hard to change in a country. But I bring this article, and I am going to put it in the Record, because I want people to read it and realize that it is absolutely possible for us to make a major change, not just tinkering around the edges, but to really make a change that will make it possible to take away from all of us any fear that we are ever going to be economically destroyed, as Mr. Johnson says, or that we are going to be not able to be taken care of when we are sick, just on a human basis.

Mr. McDERMOTT. You are going to hear people say it is too much, it is too big, we can't do it. But all you have to do is look back at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1932, when he came into office, with 25 percent unemployment in this country, and he sat down with his people and he said, ``We have got to have Social Security because old people don't have any money to live on when they get old. We don't have any money for poor people, so we are going to have a welfare program. We don't have any money for workers when they lose their jobs, so we are going to have unemployment insurance. And we don't have any money for kids that get dropped off in orphanages because their parents can't take care of them, so we are going to put together a foster care program.'' That was all done in 1935, in the Social Security Act of 1935. It was a huge step forward. And we have a progressive message for this country that we can do that again. Even in the midst of our darkest hours with all the banks and foreclosures and all this stuff, if we think small, we are going to do small; but if we do and we think big, we can actually get some major steps forward. And I think the American people are ready to listen to this. I think that they have listened to the fiscal conservatives say, ``We are going to be a fiscal conservative; we are going to waste $1 trillion on a war, and we are going to run the banks into the ditch and we are going to bail them out,'' people are tired of hearing that. I fly home on the planes, and the flight attendants say to me, ``My tax money is going to bail out those guys. I want my tax money to go for things that will help me and my family and all the Americans.'' And I think that the progressive message, its time is now. So I really commend you guys for coming down here and doing this. I have to run off, but I will come back another night and work with you.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Sure.

Mr. McDERMOTT. You go back and you look at history; and I was reading something just today in the Smithsonian magazine. Do you realize that the land grant colleges, the universities in this country were started in the middle of the civil war by Abraham Lincoln? I mean, the country is in chaos, people are dying everywhere. All this is going on, and he said, ``We have to think about the future. We are going to start land grant universities. We are going to give them.'' And every State has one. I am sure Georgia has one, I am sure Minnesota has one. We have got one. Washington State University was created, the idea was created in the middle of the war. The National Science Foundation was created by Abraham Lincoln in the middle of the war. In these times of the deepest darkest stuff, you have to make long- term investments and think about where we are going in the future. And this bill is filled with it in terms of the health care and in terms of the alternative energy things. Those are changes that are not going to be on the table next Wednesday; they are going to be affecting us in 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years, but our kids are going to be better off and our country will be better off because we got back up on the road and started thinking long term.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Sure.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Absolutely. It's ridiculous that we are the only industrialized country who have never figured out how to do this. And I am going to enter into the Record an article from the New Yorker Magazine by Atul Gawande, who is a doctor and a medical writer, about the process by which we are going to get to a plan. Let me just lay it out for you. I think people out there ought to be thinking about it. Every country in the industrialized world has a different plan. None of the plans are the same. Germany started in 1883. The Prime Minister at that point was worried about the social disruption and said, Let's give them some health care benefits. So they got started on this process, and it's been going since 1883, through two world wars, the German system. The German system is different than ours would be. The French system, the British system, the Canadian system. The Canadian system started in British Colombia in Saskatchewan, one of the central provinces of the country. Different circumstances. In British Colombia, the doctors said we can't take care of these old people in the hospitals. We have got to start a health insurance plan. So they started the BC health program. Saskatchewan, they had a socialist government in that province at that point. They started the system, and it gradually spread all across Canada, and finally at the end they put together an umbrella that sort of tied it all together. Now, Great Britain started in a different way. Great Britain started in the middle of the Second World War. They realized they had to have healthy people. So the government built hospitals, the government hired the doctors. It was all government everything. And that is their system. Every system comes in a different way. Now, the United States in 2009 is not going to have Canada, it's not going to have Great Britain, it's not going to have France, it's not going to have anybody else. It's going to have an American system designed by this Congress, with the leadership of President Obama, that deals with the problems as they are today in this country.