Frank Pallone

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Environment, nutrition programs, et cetera. The problem is that when that resolution ran out last Friday, the Republican leadership refused to bring up another continuing resolution. They have not done so Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Now we are into the fifth day, if you will, without a continuing resolution, which means that the Government continues to be shut down. They have refused so far to meet the agreement, if you will, of the previous continuing resolution.

Mr. PALLONE. We had one on VA.

Mr. PALLONE. They voted for one just with the VA but they refused to bring up a larger continuing resolution that would prevent the rest of the Government from being shut down. Basically, what they are doing is playing politics, because they know that veterans' benefits will not go out tomorrow. So they agreed to let that go by, but they refused to worry about the other benefits, the other programs, whether it be education or some of the other social programs or agencies, whatever is necessary for various agencies.

Mr. PALLONE. I think you are absolutely right. This is the first time, and I think it is outrageous, that people have articulated that they are going to close the Government down because they cannot get their way on legislation.

Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. I appreciate the gentlewoman from Florida bringing that to our attention. I think that much of that has been lost, unfortunately, during the debate. The bottom line is that after the first shutdown, both the President and the Congress got together and passed what we call a continuing resolution which allowed the Government to operate for few weeks while the parties involved worked out their differences over the budget. The resolution that was passed not only called for the Government to continue to operate, it also called for a balanced budget in 7 years, and it recognized certain priorities that had to be protected as part of that budget, such as Medicare, Medicaid, education.

Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. I think the point is that we had agreed, with the previous continuing resolution, that while we worked out our differences on the budget, the Government would continue to operate. And it set forth an agreement that we would have a 7-year balanced budget, assuming that certain priorities were maintained, such as Medicare and Medicaid and some of the other programs that you mentioned. The problem now is that the Republicans let that continuing resolution run out and have refused to bring up another one, and as a consequence, the Government shutdown is in a sense the hostage that is being held by the Republican leadership because they cannot get their way, if you will, on the budget.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of the rule. I wanted to really point out that this legislation did come out of our Subcommittee on Energy and Power on a bipartisan basis. I do support it as the ranking member. Obviously, this is an open rule, as has been mentioned, and there is no reason why Members cannot bring up any substantive amendment that they would like. Obviously, some of the amendments will be brought up. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to mention, as I think has been brought out, that this is the 10th compact to receive congressional approval. Basically, the compact system envisions that low-level radioactive waste policy is developed with the strong support of the National Governors' Association, and under the law the task of selecting the disposal sites is the States' responsibilities. So, the subcommittee, in reporting out the bill, was cognizant of the fact that the States involved in the compact do support it. Traditionally, Congress' responsibility is to simply act quickly on the compacts' request by the respective States and if all is in order, to approve it promptly. Mr. Speaker, I do not really relish getting involved in a Texas battle here. I guess I learned a long time ago not to do that, and I think I am about to be. One of the Texas Members already suggested to me that perhaps they could bring up an amendment moving the site to New Jersey. I hope that does not happen.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, as the gentleman knows, I did not support any amendments like that in the subcommittee and I would not support it on the floor. Again, because my understanding is that this has been looked into and that those on the State level that looked into it took that into consideration. That is not to in any way to prejudice the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant], obviously, from bringing that up and arguing it. But my position is that the States and the legislatures that looked at this looked into those problems and, therefore, made that decision to support it.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would just say that I see no reason why that should not be brought up on the floor and discussed, but again I would say that these issues were brought up in the subcommittee and our opinion was that they were decided on the State level and that we should respect that.

Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to use my time tonight to point out what I consider to be a real tragedy in what has happened here today in the House of Representatives. This morning when we began the session, I was particularly upset because the gentleman from Texas, who is part of the Republican leadership, got up and made a point of the fact that it was incumbent, if you will, on the Republican majority to shut down the Government until they were able to get agreement on the budget. I strongly disagree with the message that was sent in that regard. As the day went on, we saw speaker after speaker on the Republican side get up and say basically the same thing, which is that if the Republicans cannot get their way on the budget, if the President and I guess the Democrats in the House do not agree on the policy of the budget that the Republicans have put forth, then we should simply shut down the Government and it should not continue to operate until that agreement is reached. That is totally the opposite of what I believe we should be doing here and what I believe the obligation of the majority is. The majority that was elected in this House of Representatives in November of 1994, like any majority, has the obligation to govern. The obligation to govern means that the Government continues to operate while you work out your differences with the minority or with the President about what the budget should be. Speaker Gingrich actually articulated a few weeks ago exactly what the position is that the Republicans represented today. He said, ``I don't care what the price is, I don't care if we have no executive offices and no bonds for 30 days, not at this time.'' It is totally irresponsible in my opinion to hold the Government hostage, in essence, and say that unless we get our way on this budget, unless our priorities are met, we are going to keep this Government shut down. That is exactly what we have in front of us. This evening there was a continuing resolution passed, a continuing resolution, which is what allows the Government to continue to operate, only on one aspect of the government shutdown and that was with regard to veterans' benefits. But it should be pointed out, as it was today by many of the Democrats, that the price of the Government shutdown is not only millions of dollars that are lost because Federal employees will get paid for doing nothing, and also the fact that the Government has to keep certain essential services going, but also that many Americans who have paid taxes all along simply do not have the benefit of Government services that for many of them are very important or are very necessary. We only dealt with one aspect of that this evening, and that was with veterans' benefits. Thankfully the Republican majority was willing to bring up the provision that would allow veterans' benefits to be paid starting tomorrow. But for whatever political reasons they saw fit to do that so as not to offend the veterans, the same should be done for every other Government agency and every other Government program. They should be allowed to continue to operate. Just as an example, we have as of day 5 of this shutdown, this second shutdown now, almost 2 million people who have been turned away from National Park Service facilities. Four hundred thousand people have been turned away from the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo just here in Washington. Sixty thousand students and parents applying for Pell grants or student loans have not had their applications processed and may not be able to pay for college. Over 780 small businesses have not received SBA guaranteed financing totaling over $120 million in loans. And about 720 calls made to the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency's hot line for drinking water contamination outbreaks, have gone unanswered. I could go on. There is a long list of the various Government services that are not functioning now with the shutdown. Again, I would say, what is the reason for this? What possible reason is there to hold the government hostage and to not allow the taxpayers who have paid for these services to receive them and thus be inconvenienced? We could talk about passport offices, we could talk about many other things that are not being accomplished here. The problem is that the President and the Democrats in Congress together have a very different sense of a priority for a balanced budget than the Republican majority, and what I have maintained all along is, if there are those differences, and there are, we should continue to operate the government while we work out the differences, and do not misunderstand that the Republican majority, because they control the Congress, they are the only ones that can bring up a continuing resolution and send it to the President so that government can continue to operate. So, if anyone suggests to you that somehow the President is shutting the government down, it is simply not true. The legislative responsibility for passing the continuing resolution exists with the Congress and with the majority party that governs the Congress. Today it was my understanding actually that the leadership in the Republican Party, both Speaker Gingrich and the House, as well as the Senate leadership in the Senate, were willing to go along with a continuing resolution to reopen the government, and the President articulated and said that that was the case, and they, both of the gentlemen who lead the House and the Senate, indicated to the President that they were willing to go along with that. But our understanding is that when Speaker Gingrich went back to the Republican Caucus, he was told mostly by the less senior members, the freshmen and some others perhaps, that that was unacceptable, that the government should not continue to operate until the budget is signed by the President. I think that those on our side who have characterized many of the new members of the Republican Party as extremists because of their position on the budget realize now that those extremist elements, if you will, within the Republican Members of Congress are now controlling the show and that even the Speaker, who has the responsibility, if you will, to represent the majority party, does not have the ability any more to control those extremist elements within the Republican Party, the less senior members who want to hold the government hostage because they cannot get their way on the budget. Now in the time that I have left I would like to talk about these priorities that the President has set forward and that he insists must be maintained in the context of a 7-year balanced budget before he would sign the bill, before he would sign a budget bill, and I want to stress that these are important priorities, these are priorities that effect every American in some way. One of the most important, of course, is Medicare. The problem is that the Republican budget would take so much money out of Medicare that Medicare as we know it essentially would not be able to continue to operate. And for those who doubt that that is the case I will go back to a statement that Speaker Gingrich made awhile ago on Medicare where he said, ``We don't do not get rid of it in round one because we don't think that's politically smart, and we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition period, be we believe it is going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it.'' He said that; it was quoted in the Washington Post on October 26 of this year. This is the problem. So much money is cut out of the Medicare program under the Republican budget, and the way that the Medicare program is transformed essentially so that those who now have a choice of doctors are essentially pushed into managed care or HMOs where they do not have a choice any more, the changes to the Medicare program are going to be so radical, if you will, and the money is going to be so much less in terms of what is needed to operate a quality Medicare program that Medicare will essentially wither on the vine and eventually cease to exist. That is the major reason why the President and the Democrats in the Congress are so concerned not to go along with this Republican budget. And, secondly, there is also the Medicaid program which is the health care program for low income individuals, mainly again seniors, the disabled, children, and, in many cases, pregnant women. The Medicaid Program under the Republican budget, $163 billion is cut out of it essentially making it so that it cannot cover all the people that are now eligible for Medicaid, and then it is block granted or sent to the State, that money that is essentially cut back is block granted and sent to the States, and the States have to decide whether or not those who are now covered by Medicaid will continue to be covered. And so Medicaid, like Medicare, essentially withers on the vine, it does not have adequate funds, it is block granted, it is no longer guaranteed, and many of the people who now receive it will probably end up with no health insurance because many of the States, with the less money that is involved, will not be able to cover the seniors, the disabled, the children, the pregnant women who are now covered by Medicaid. Now in the context of this, one of the most egregious, if you will, problems that the President sees and that the Democrats in Congress see, and one of the reasons why they are most unwilling to go along with this Republican budget plan, is because the money that is being taken away from these two health care programs is primarily going to tax breaks for wealthy Americans and wealthy corporations, and one of the main criteria or one of the main concerns that we have is that the Republicans have so far been unwilling to, if you will, eliminate or take back most of these tax breaks in order to finance Medicare and Medicaid. It would be fairly easy for the Republican leadership to say, ``OK, we won't provide these tax breaks to wealthy Americans, we won't provide these tax breaks to wealthy corporations, and we'll use that money that we were going to use for those tax breaks and put it back into Medicare and Medicaid in order to keep those programs viable.'' But so far there has been no willingness on the part of the Republican leadership to go in that direction, which is one of the reasons why the President can simply not support the Republican budget the way it has been laid out. Now I have one more chart here that I wanted to, and I only have another 5 minutes, and the gentleman can use his time, so let me just finish this, and if I have a few minutes left, I will yield, but I just wanted to show this chart that gives you some indication of the exploding costs of the Republican tax breaks. The tax breaks are not only the wrong way to go because they are financing tax breaks for mostly wealthy people in order to cut Medicare and Medicaid, but they also do exactly the opposite, if you will, of what the Republicans say they want to do with this budget. They say they want to balance the budget, they want to eliminate the Federal deficit, and that is certainly a noble goal that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as the President, want to accomplish. But how in the world do you manage to balance the budget if you provide more tax breaks for wealthy Americans, or for anybody for that matter, and, as you can see, the cost of the tax breaks in the 7 years that the Republican budget sets forth beginning from 1996 into 2002, you can see what that means in terms of the overall budget. It makes it much more difficult to balance the budget, and many of us maintain that by the time the year 2000, or 2001, or 2002 comes around, the effect of giving out so many tax breaks will mean that ultimately the budget is not balanced. So you can really see, I think it should be clear, why this battle that exists, if you will, between the Democrats and the Republicans, between the President and the Republican majority in Congress is so important for the future of the country. In order to truly balance the budget over 7 years, in order to protect Medicare and Medicaid, in order to protect some of the other priorities that the President wants to maintain such as education, direct student loan programs, environmental protection to make sure that our air and water quality does not deteriorate, all these things are crucial, and it is not just a question of people getting together and saying, you know, we can go along with what the Republicans have proposed because, if the President does and if the Democrats do, there are going to be some major negative impacts on the lives of the average American whether it be their health care, their education, or the quality of their life. This is important; this is not something that should be trivialized. But I would stress again, and I think in closing, if I could, that the most important thing is that the Government should not be held hostage to the differences between the two parties or between the President and the Republican leadership over the budget. The Government should continue to remain open. A commitment was made when we passed the last continuing resolution a few weeks ago that we were all going to let the Government continue to operate while we negotiated and while we worked out a 7-year balanced budget that would protect the priorities such as Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment, and I was really outraged, and I really do not know where we are supposed to go the next few days when so many in the Republican Party in Congress now insist that the Government should remain shut down and that unless the President simply signs on the dotted line what the Republicans want in the budget, that we are going to continue to have this impasse. This impasse is having a terrible effect on our country. Many of you saw that the stock market once again plunged today. It is going to have a major impact on the economy during the Christmas holiday and beyond, and I think that it is really tragic that so many of my colleagues on the Republican side got up today during the various times of the debate and said that they were insistent on closing the Government down in order to accomplish their goal. If I have some time left, I would be glad to yield for a question.

Mr. PALLONE. My understanding, and I think that it was brought home to you very clearly today with the coalition--you know the coalition, a group of more conservative Democrats who want to bring up their budget--that one of the things that they have in their budget is that they say we will use the 7 years that the Republicans have asked for, we will eliminate all the tax breaks, all the tax cuts, and we will take a lot of that money and put it back into Medicare and Medicaid in order to preserve those programs. I think that it is not possible to accomplish the goal. It would be very difficult to accomplish the goal of protecting Medicare and Medicaid if you reduced your time frame to less than 7 and made it 6 or 5. I would like to see the money from the tax break used to be put back into Medicare and Medicaid and keep the suggested 7-year time limit.

Mr. PALLONE. I will say this first of all. I do not agree with the gentleman that the majority of the tax breaks go to middle-income people. I think that I can show, and I do not have the chart here, but I can read some documents to you that show the majority of the money actually goes to wealthy Americans, but I would say to you, just respond to your question, if I could, and I forgot what your question is.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. You mean the stimulation of the economy. No, I believe that it is more important to balance the budget than to rely on a theory that says with these tax breaks that will go to most wealthy Americans that we can stimulate the economy. I think the economy would be better served by balancing the budget and not using and not providing the tax breaks.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, there goes the Republican leadership again, saying they want to keep the Government shut down because they do not get their way, and that is the problem here. The Republican majority has an obligation to keep this Government going. They are the only ones that can bring up a continuing resolution. They refuse to do so, because they do not get their way. The President has stood strong, and he has said, ``I will negotiate, I will sit down with you, but I will not negotiate away Medicare, I will not negotiate away Medicaid, the environment, and education.'' He is being fair. He is being strong. But this Republican leadership, and there you heard it said very clearly, they want to keep the Government shut down and they want to hold this Government hostage. That is not what the majority party is supposed to do. They are supposed to govern. They are supposed to care about the Government and all the Government agencies and all the things that people need in order to continue functioning in this country. It is not fair. They are the problem.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to follow up on what my colleague from the other side, from Wisconsin, said before. He talked about differences over the budget and the numbers over the budget, but the problem is that while we are arguing over these budget differences, whether it is the numbers or the priorities, the Government should remain open. It is the Republicans, it is Speaker Gingrich who wants to shut the Government down because he cannot get his way in terms of what he thinks the budget should be all about. That is not fair. That is the reason the Government was shut down 2 weeks ago, because Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leadership did not get their own way. Now, everyone knows that the majority in this House and in the Senate is the only body or the only group that can bring up a continuing resolution to keep up. The Speaker, last Friday, the Speaker yesterday, and so far I have heard nothing today about bringing up a continuing resolution so that this Government can continue to operate. That is what is causing the crisis. That is what is making everyone around the country so aggravated. That is the reason, I believe also, why we had the problem with the stock market yesterday, because while we are discussing and negotiating this budget, the Government should not be shut down. The Republicans should not make this into a crisis situation by shutting down the Government. Now, Mr. Speaker, we have major differences over the priorities here. We have differences over the numbers, we have differences over the priorities. The Democrats have been saying all along that Medicare must be preserved, Medicaid must be preserved, that the Republicans are giving huge tax breaks primarily to wealthy Americans and to corporations and that money for those tax breaks should be put back into the budget so that Medicare and Medicaid, the environment and education programs remain solvent. That is what I think the goal should be. The President has been articulating all weekend the fact that he cannot accept the Republican priorities because he feels very strongly, and he is right, that Medicare, Medicaid, the environment and education must be preserved. So far the Republican leadership has not come up with anything, not put anything on the table that would preserve those priorities, and, in the meantime, they tell us all we are going to shut the Government down because we do not get our own way.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I am a little weighted down today, as you can see, but I just wanted to point out that, and this is following up on what the gentlewoman from Maryland just said, that the reason that the Federal Government is shut down today is because the Republican majority has not brought up a continuing resolution to let the Government continue to operate. On Friday they did not bring one up. Yesterday they did not bring one up. Today again I have heard no talk of bringing it up. I think it is simply not fair to keep the Government shut down while we will discuss the budget. We should simply negotiate the budget. We have our differences, and they can be brought out and they can be negotiated. But in the interim, the Republican majority has an obligation to bring a continuing resolution to the floor and let the Government continue to operate, and I know that Frank also believes in that and so does Rose Marie.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I have heard my Republican colleagues get up time after time today and criticize their budget bill that is before us today. My answer is very simple: Why are they bringing the bill up? They are in the majority. If they think the bill is a bad bill, why are they debating it and why did they bring it to the floor? I think the Republican majority has forgotten it is their responsibility to govern. They should be bringing up a continuing resolution so the Government is not shut down. Friday passed, Monday passed, and now it Tuesday. No CR was brought up. The Government is shut down. They should bring up an appropriations bill so the Government would not be shut down and we can get on with the business of governing. No appropriations bill comes up. They made a commitment a few weeks ago with the CR they were going to protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, protect the environment. Once again we see no movement whatsoever on the budget to try to protect these important programs that the American people want protected and that have been a success. I do not understand the whole philosophy of what they are doing today. They are simply wasting our time. They know that this is a bill that will not pass. They are not even going to give it a single vote, I do not think, and yet they continue to debate it. It is not fair.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I have a hard time laughing at what is going on, because there are two things lacking in this resolution. Two weeks ago, we passed a concurrent resolution that essentially kept the Government going and indicated that we would have a 7-year balanced budget based on CBO estimates, and also said that we would protect and preserve Medicare, Medicaid, the environment, and education. Mr. Speaker, we only have the 7-year balanced budget in this resolution. We do not have the continuing resolution because the Government is shut down and we do not have the prioritization to protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. I will support this resolution because I do support the 7-year balanced budget, but I do think it is wrong not to include the continuing resolution to keep the Government open. It is certainly wrong for the Republicans to not come forward with a plan that protects Medicare and Medicaid, puts money back into those programs, and eliminates the tax breaks for the wealthy in order to finance adequate funding for Medicaid and Medicare.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro], and I certainly want to follow up on some of the comments that she made. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what the gentlewoman from Connecticut said, particularly when she started out in the beginning and she read from the concurrent resolution that was adopted a few weeks ago, just before Thanksgiving, that set forth the basis for the negotiations over the budget. That is the continuing resolution which, of course, expired Friday. I wanted to, again in following up on what she said, I wanted to make a couple of points: First of all, I think everyone has to understand that there were three parts, at least three parts, to that continuing resolution that everyone agreed on. One was that while we negotiated the budget between the White House and the Congress, between the Democrats and the Republicans, that the Government was not going to shut down, that the Government was going to continue to operate, and on Friday, when the Republican leadership walked out of a meeting with the President, whereupon they were continuing to negotiate the budget, and when the Republicans leadership in this Congress refused to bring up a continuing resolution Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or even today during a normal business day so that the Government continues to operate, they broke the commitment that was made a few weeks ago that the Government would continue to operate while we worked out our differences over the budget, and I think it is particularly tragic that we went through another business day today with close to 300,000 Federal employees going home. Remember these people are going to be paid, they are not working, and the Government and the people that are serviced by the agencies that are closed down lose out. And I made the point over and over on the floor of this House that we need to put our ideological differences aside and let the Government continue to operate while we negotiate this budget. Now, as my colleagues know, I do not even know if it was mentioned today during the short debate we had on this joint resolution that the gentlewoman mentioned, but you have to understand that Social Security offices are closed, that the national parks, the national recreation areas, the national monuments are closed not only in Washington, DC, but throughout the country. People who depend on Government agencies for certain services which their tax dollars are being used for cannot obtain those services. It makes absolutely no sense for any of that to occur while we continue to argue over and negotiate the budget. That was No. 1. The other part of the resolution that the gentlewoman mentioned was the fact that the priorities, the priorities whether they are Medicaid, Medicare, the environment, education, and the other things that were mentioned in that continuing resolution, this agreement that was reached a couple weeks ago, they have been completely ignored by the Republican leadership. In fact, in the joint resolution that was brought up today, which most of us voted on, including myself, that resolution made no reference to the Government shutdown or the need to continue the operation of Government, no reference to the priorities such as Medicare and Medicaid, and simply said that negotiations should continue based on the most recent technical and economic assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office. Well, we already understood that we already agreed that we were going to operate with a 7-year budget essentially based on CBO numbers. We did not need to argue or debate that today. Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the Republican leadership has refused to come up with a resolution to let the Government continue to operate so that everybody goes home and gets paid anyway, and they refuse to talk about the Medicare and Medicaid and the other priorities, so, you know, this agreement that was reached, as the gentlewoman from Connecticut said a couple weeks ago, this agreement has--the other part of the bargain here, to keep the Government open and to deal with the priorities such as Medicare and Medicaid are basically out the window. I think that is very unfortunate because I think that the President--it is abundantly clear that the President has used the time over the last 2 weeks to set forth a budget wherein he preserved those priorities, and basically on Friday, when the Republicans walked out of the negotiations session, he came back and said, ``Look, I can't make the level of cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that the Republicans are asking me to make and still preserve the programs,'' and they made a commitment, the Republicans, that they would provide adequate funding for Medicaid, insure Medicare solvency, and work for sufficient funding for the environment and other priorities. They have broken that commitment, and I just wanted to talk about one aspect of this, and then I am going to yield to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi]. Earlier today the President--earlier this evening I should say--the President vetoed the VA, HUD and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act which includes the Environmental Protection Agency, and most of the programs that protect the environment and most of the funding for the programs that protect the environment, particularly the EPA, and the President again articulated his priorities. He noted in his veto message that the bill includes a 22-percent cut in requested funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, including a 25-percent cut in enforcement that would cripple EPA efforts to enforce laws against polluters. Particularly objectionable are the bill's 25-percent cut in Superfund, which would continue to expose hundreds of thousands of citizens to dangerous chemicals and would hamper efforts to train workers in hazardous waste cleanup. Now my Republican colleagues, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the chairman of the subcommittee that brought this bill up, when they got on the floor, they responded to the President's veto by saying, well, the President has not come up with a 7-year balanced budget; where is the balanced budget? Again, neglecting the priorities. Here is one of the major concerns that the President has. Why is it that the EPA, and the environmental protection programs in general, take the biggest cuts of any Federal agency or any Federal programs and basically their whole enforcement program is crippled? Well, the reason is very simple, and that is because the Republican priorities are neglecting the environment in the same way that they are neglecting Medicaid and they are neglecting Medicare. They have basically hoisted up the notion that we have to have a 7-year balanced budget, and it does not matter how it is balanced, it does not matter where the priorities are. Well, I should say maybe even go further and say that the priorities, as they have always have been in this whole budget negotiation, give the tax breaks to the wealthy, give the tax breaks to the corporations, and take the money away from Medicare, Medicaid, as well as the environment. The President today, as he has for the last 2 or 3 weeks, indicated what his priorities are. He indicated his priorities on the environment today very clearly in his veto message, and I think that the main thing that we have to do over the next few weeks, as these budget negotiations continue, is hold the Republican leadership's feet to the fire and say, ``Look, we're all in agreement with a balanced budget, we will even go along with your 7-year plan and your CBO numbers, but we've got to protect our priorities,'' and I have not seen any effort at all over the last few weeks on the part of the Republican leadership to protect those priorities that we have articulated and that were very well articulated in the agreement a couple weeks ago.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that this House just passed a Republican-sponsored motion that allows us to go into recess for 3 days with the pending shutdown of the Government once again. I fully expected this morning, maybe naively, that I would be here to vote for a continuing resolution that would let the Government continue to operate while we worked out our differences over the budget, but that is not happening. The President said that he was willing to go ahead with what we call a clean continuing resolution. On the Senate side they said that they would agree to it. But here in the House, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] and the Republicans say that they will not, and I do not think it is fair. There is tremendous cost involved to this Government if we shut down again this coming Monday or any days following that, and the President has put forward a compromise budget that allows for a balanced budget over 7 years. It maintains the priorities, protects Medicare, protects Medicaid, protects the environment and education. The Republicans have not done that. They made an agreement on the previous CR that they would try to come up with a compromise that protected Medicare and Medicaid and the other goals, and so far they have not. I think it is incumbent on them to do so.

Mr. PALLONE

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I see that the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie] is here joining us, and I would like to yield to him at this point.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from Hawaii, and I totally agree. I just want to say one thing before I introduce our next participant here. Even though that Roll Call article talks about how more money theoretically is going into Medicare, what we are really talking about here is the amount and the level of growth. When I say that something like 18 percent of the people who are now eligible for Medicaid are not likely to be eligible in 7 years, that is because the amount of money that the Republicans are putting into the plan will be 18 percent less than what it would be under current law. If you translate that into the number of people who would be ineligible for Medicaid, as the gentlewoman from Connecticut said, in nursing home care, the children, the disabled, whatever, that is what we are talking about. It may be that in actual dollar terms there is more money, but in real terms, it is an 18 percent cut, and 18 percent less people are going to be eligible.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things the gentleman is pointing out and that the gentleman from Ohio stressed is that, if anything, our support for the Medicaid Program and our concern about the low-income people who are impacted by the Medicaid Program is not an issue of class warfare, but just the opposite. What you are pointing out is that everyone suffers because of these Medicaid, becauses Medicaid cuts, and when you eliminate the Federal guarantee of Medicaid, because what happens if more people pursuant to these Republican proposals go on welfare, the cost to the government at every level grows, and you are not going to even be able to balance the budget if you start to get more and more people on the welfare roles. Similarly, so many hospitals, not only in rural and urban areas but even in suburban areas, and most of my district is suburban, every one of the hospitals that I have is heavily Medicaid-Medicare dependent, and if they have to cut back, they lay people off, some of them close, and it impacts everyone. They cut back on services and quality of care and everyone's health care suffers. I see the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] is here, who has done so much to raise the attention of the Congress to these issues. I yield to her.