Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman from Texas that 292 households in Texas will do nothing for the 4.4 million people who are living in poverty in Texas. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the gentleman from Wisconsin that 63 households will benefit in his State. There are 618,000 people living under the poverty level. That is $18,000 for a family of four. Now, one of the things about these kinds of debates is the political rhetoric gets a little overheated. If you die and you have this great big business, you have 5 years to pay that tax. You don't have to pay it the day that they bury the body of your grandfather or your mother, your father, whoever. You have 5 years to pay it or to decide on it, and 10 years deferred. So you have got 15 years before that tax has to be paid. It isn't like somebody shows up at the house when you are having the reception after the funeral and says, ``Here, give us the money, or we are taking your property.'' That is not what happens in this country. We have laid it out to give people time to figure out how to do it financially. Anybody who has that much money probably has enough money to actually hire a financial consultant, it would seem to me, Mr. Speaker. I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I hope you will remind the gentleman from Montana that he is talking about 19 families in Montana, when you have got 145,000 people who are living below the poverty line. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, would you tell us the time left on each side?

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, may I know the time that is remaining on both sides?

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, may I inquire if the gentleman from Texas is ready to close.

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

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. For the past hour, my Republican colleagues have stood up and tried to scare you. They have tried to turn the estate tax into a boogeyman that kills family farms and hurts family business. They have called the estate tax all kinds of bad names, like ``immoral,'' and they have tried to claim it is a calculated attack on the American Dream. They have also claimed that the estate tax disproportionately affects poor small businesses and startups. These wild and inaccurate claims could not be farther from the truth. Here are the facts that Republicans have forgotten to mention: The estate tax would only affect 5,400 estates out of an estimated 2.6 million this year. That means repealing the estate tax would amount to a tax break for the top 0.2 percent--the Hiltons, the Adelsons, the Kochs, those folks. According to the Tax Policy Center, only 20--I emphasize 20--small businesses and small farm estates nationwide owed an estate tax in 2013--20. Furthermore, those estates owed just 4 percent of their value in tax. Now, the real question here is this: America is a wonderful country. We all have a chance to make it. Some make it better than others. That is because luck and whatever hard work--and it isn't that everybody who doesn't have money isn't working hard. We are all working hard, but some have a little more luck than others. The fact is that, if you have had a little luck, don't you owe a little something back to the country? Here you have got people who have gotten $10 million that we have given them as an estate exemption, and then they owe 4 percent of the value on money that has never been taxed before. It is all on capital appreciation. Now, my Republican friends conveniently forget to mention how much this handout to the rich would cost--$280 billion. That is as though every American today was giving a $1 billion tax cut to the wealthy in this country. There are about 300-and-some-odd million of us. And if we all gave, there we would be. And we are doing this to a group that has no problems whatsoever. Their problem is how to keep their money. That is their only problem. So I want people to understand: this is a quarter of $1 trillion. And as the gentleman from Oregon pointed out, we have a tremendous problem in infrastructure in this country, but there is no money for that. We have a tremendous problem in investment in the National Institutes of Health. It used to be the National Institutes of Health funded 20 percent of the grant applications that were given to them. Today they are only funding 6 percent of the grant applications that are given to them. We are not investing either in the physical infrastructure or the human infrastructure of this country. What has made us strong, all of us immigrants who came here--about 99.99 percent of them, as immigrants, came here with nothing, and this country gave us an opportunity to be rich or to be successful. The only way it will work is if we pay something back into the process, not sitting there using money that you never have been taxed on. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this and to think about the 99.8 percent of Americans who will get no benefit whatsoever. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation to increase the safety of transporting crude oil by rail. Explosive growth in crude-by-rail transport in recent months has led to increased rail traffic and an unprecedented rise in rail accidents--sometimes with fatal results. This issue has affected communities across the nation and cemented the need to increase safety standards and accountability. Four derailments in the US and Canada in under a month earlier this year underscored the urgency of action to curb the risks of transporting volatile crude oil. The Crude-By-Rail Safety Act addresses a number of shortcomings in our approach to transporting volatile crude oil near and through many American towns and cities. It includes provisions to lower oil volatility, prohibits use of unsafe DOT-111 tank cars, strengthens tank car standards, improves oil spill response readiness, and increases fines for violating volatility standards and hazmat transport standards. It also requires disclosure of train movements through communities as well as the implementation of a confidential close-call reporting system to further increase the safety of transporting crude oil by rail. Last summer, a derailment in my district in Seattle exposed the vulnerabilities in our current standards, and how easily we risk exposing our communities to danger from oily spills or fiery explosions. We risk too much--our urban centers, our clean waterways, our natural environment, our robust transportation network, our pocketbooks--in sitting back and waiting for an accident to wreak havoc on our communities. We must continue to fight for stronger standards and accountability, and this bill offers a comprehensive approach toward tackling this urgent threat. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. Thank you.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today is, in a sense, an historic event. We are finally putting to rest a problem that has festered around here for as long as I have been here. Every year, as the deadline approached, providers faced draconian cuts, and Congress passed an eleventh hour patch that delayed the implementation of SGR. Doctors, patients, Congress--nobody--liked it. Nevertheless, 17 times, we have made temporary fixes. We have spent $174 billion in inadequate ways in dealing with the real problem that SGR was all about, which is cost control. This is a first step today. We can celebrate, but we have to go on because cost control is still a question, and we have replaced SGR with a system that we hope will make Medicare pay for value rather than for volume. That is not an issue that is for sure. We know that we are trying it. I thought of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who once said: I will try something. If it doesn't work, I will stop it and try something else. That is really where we are today, looking at the future of cost control in health care. The most important thing today, though, is that we have gotten back to regular order. The Republicans put this in 16 years ago. Some of us voted ``no'' because we knew it wouldn't work, but we had all of our 17 years. Now, we come together to fix it together, and we have to fix things together in this House. Compromise is the essence of what we have here. For my friends on the other side, just so you understand, I have already had a phone call from a group in Washington State who told me they are going to take me off the board if I vote for this. It isn't as though this is a nice thing for one side or the other side. It is a compromise, where some people get what they want and where some people don't get what they want. Some people think it is not enough, and some think it is too much. That is the essence of compromise, and that is how the Congress has to work. It is what is going to have to work with the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. It is going to have to work on transportation. It is going to have to work on a whole series of issues if we, as a Congress, are going to function on behalf of the American people. This is a great day. This ought to be a unanimous vote today. When you look at all of the things that are in it and at all of the things we have dealt with, it ought to be unanimous. My view is that, when you reach a compromise, that is the kind of thing you can expect because nobody in this House ever gets all he wants. Nobody has the right to say: it is my way or the highway. When we do that, we damage the American people. We have been damaging the healthcare system with these patches, spending all of that money, and not getting what we want. We hope this is the start of a better day for cost control in health care. Everyone should vote for this.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Chairman, the last speaker said there are two visions for this country, and there are. There is the Republican vision, that is, give more to the wealthy, and there is the Progressive vision of investing in the future so that all Americans can do well. The Republicans would want you to believe that millionaires and billionaires have the same tax problems as folks on the bottom of the scale, the hard-working Americans who are trying to make a living. But that is not the case. While the Republican budget gives tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, the CPC budget boosts and permanently extends the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, which makes stronger working families. The second thing the CPC budget does, and this is even more for the future, it takes on the issue of student debt, which is a crisis in this country. We have $1.3 trillion of debt wrapped around the necks of our children. Every student and parent knows that the cost of a college education is going up. Millions of students are stuck with loans at high interest rates of 10 percent or larger. Rather than a Republican budget that keeps students and families indentured to Wall Street banks and the Federal student loan program, our alternative allows students to refinance their loan. You can refinance your house. Why can't the millions of students in this country refinance their student loans to get a lower rate? It is because the Republicans are tied to the banks and won't let it happen. Now, if the Republicans had their way, students would continue to choose between paying the rent and paying their student loan debt. That is where kids are today. They are paying more to the banks on their loans than they pay for their rent. That is not the America I want. It is not the America anybody in this country really wants, except a very few people that the Republicans represent. I urge you to vote ``yes'' on the Progressive budget.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, a budget is a statement of values and priorities. You have heard people standing up here, talking about what their priorities are, that we don't want to load up our kids with debt, that we don't want to do all this kind of stuff; yet the budget that is put forward by my Republican colleagues is a shortsighted statement that has no view of the future. It gambles away the future of the next generation's in order to supply business and the ultrawealthy with near-term gains. What has made this country great is the strategic Federal investments in health care, roads, education, bridges, research--the types of investment that build the middle class and America. Now, the Republicans say their budget plan balances the budget in 9 years. What they don't tell you is that they do this at the expense of Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, Pell grants--everything in the social budget. What you learn from this budget is that, when they say they are balancing the budget, they mean we are cutting domestic programs. We are cutting anything that helps hard-working families in this country. It also fails to cut one single dime from the military, not one single dime. They actually want to give the military more than they asked for. Now, despite raising taxes, you would think they could at least cut a dime from the Defense Department. By now, people's eyes are kind of glazed over at home in thinking about this, but let me talk to one group of people, to anybody who has a student with student debt. It is the largest debt load we have in this country. We have made our kids indentured servants of banks and of the Federal Government. This budget contains $127 billion over the next 10 years that we will have extracted from students in interest on their loans to give cuts in taxes to the wealthy, to lower the rates, to make it better for the rich. If you know anything about student loans, those loans can't be renegotiated. You can renegotiate on your house, or you can renegotiate on anything else, but not on a student loan. When a student and his mother and father or her mother and father sign up for a loan and put their home in the deal and put their futures and their 401(k)'s and everything behind that kid's education, they are stuck with that loan rate. You have got people in this country who are paying 6, 8, 9 percent-- as high as 13--on loans, and they can't renegotiate them. Is that fair? Is that the future you want, to stick the kids in this country with those kinds of loans? In my view, this budget has no humanity and no view of the future for our kids. I urge Members to vote ``no.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the American Health Security Act of 2015, legislation to provide comprehensive health coverage to every American and recognize that health care is a human right. The Affordable Care Act was a dramatic step forward in improving the health security of the American people. This landmark law has expanded access to coverage, improved the solvency of our public programs, and made numerous reforms that have saved consumers billions of dollars. As we look for ways to build upon and strengthen the law, we must recognize that millions of Americans continue to fall through the cracks in the private health insurance market. The only way to truly ensure that access to quality health care is a right enjoyed by every American is through a single-payer system. The American Health Security Act builds upon the success of the Affordable Care Act by providing universal health coverage to all Americans. It creates a framework that allows states to administer their own universal health insurance systems, subject to rigorous federal standards. Benefits would be comprehensive, costs would be contained, and patients would have full choice of doctor and hospital. This universal model would put an end to the inequities that continue to plague our system and jeopardize the health security of American families.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall vote 106, on motion to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment related to H.R. 33 had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the 25th anniversary of Book-It Repertory Theatre (Book-It) in Seattle and to salute the company's commitment to bringing great literature to life on stage. Since its founding in 1990, Book-It has established itself as the nation's leader in narrative theatre, and over that time has transformed more than one hundred works of literature into a repertory of works of live theatre. Book-It's adaptation style has also been honed into a highly effective tool for teaching literature of all kinds, resulting in the current launch of its Literacy Initiative with Washington State schools. Twenty-five years after it began as an artists' collective, the company's mainstage works are seen by 20,000 theatre-goers annually, and its prolific Arts and Education programs serve as many as 62,000 students through performances, workshops, and residencies State-wide. Classic works by vaunted authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Maya Angelou, Michael Chabon, and many more have been adapted into Book-It plays alongside treasured writers who live in the great State of Washington including Ivan Doig, Garth Stein, Stephanie Kallos, Jim Lynch, Jess Walter, and David Guterson. And Book-It adaptations have gone on to productions in regional theatres across the U.S. The Arts and Education Programs, through alliances with school districts throughout the state, have helped to bring vital arts programming where it's needed, serving student audiences through performances of literature for youth, including bilingual plays for young people in areas with high immigrant populations, notably in Central Washington's food- and wine-growing regions. Book-It's commitment to literature and literacy fosters community through partnerships with Seattle and regional libraries, as well as King County's 4Culture, which connects Book-It artists with regional historical, cultural, and social service organizations to help tell their stories in meaningful ways. The performances resulting from these partnerships are often the only arts experience a group may have. Founding Co-Artistic Directors Jane Jones and Myra Platt were named among seven Unsung Heroes and Uncommon Genius by The Seattle Times for their contribution to life in Seattle; The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation awarded them a 20th Anniversary Founder's Grant; in 2010, Book-It was given a Mayor's Arts Award; and in 2012, the Governor's Arts Award. As we celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Book-It Repertory Theatre, I would like to convey my congratulations to Book-It on its steadfast commitment to delivering broad, high-quality live theatre experiences to its constituents in Seattle and throughout all of Washington.