CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. 1932, DEFICIT REDUCTION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - December 18, 2005)
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Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, at this hour of the night, I am not sure who in the world is listening to whom. Certainly, none of our constituents are awake. They have all fallen asleep, except those who are total insomniacs.
But I had the experience last week when I was home of going to the City Club in Seattle. And they have a yearly meeting where they talk about how the year has gone and what they expect for the next year. It is sort of looking forward to the next year and what is going to happen, and they pick out important citizens from our city to put on the panel. And the question was asked of the panel, what is the thing you worry about most in the future?
Now, one of the panelists was a guy who some of you may know, his name is William Gates, Sr. He is the father of Bill Gates. He runs the Gates Foundation. And his answer was this: I worry most that people do not realize how close we are to economic collapse in this country. The spending that is going on, and he went on to elaborate, in terms of the issues that we face today, with a bubble of real estate out there, with everybody buying houses on interest-only loans, on the huge credit card debt in this country, on people working full-time and not having any increase in their wages.
Now, you can look at certain figures and we have the battle here of the figures. And if you are sitting at home thinking what are people thinking about all those flying back and forth, because their experience is that their wages are not going up. Prices are still going up. Their cable TV is costing more than it did and their gas is costing more than it did. But their wages are not going up.
Now, they read that the GDP is going well and that more taxes are coming in. That is not affecting the basic people in this society. And this bill, this so-called reconciliation bill, I do not know whoever thought that that was a good term for it, because we are not reconciliating the people at the top and the people at the bottom. This is a bill directed at the people at the bottom. The people on the top are doing great.
There is nobody in this room who is going to suffer for one single minute in the next year. Not one single one of you will be cold or hungry or without the ability to go see a physician or receive a dental appointment when you need it, when you have got a toothache.
How many States are there in the United States that still have a dental program for the people on TANF? Practically none. And we stand out here and say that this is a great budget and you are going to cut, it is baloney. It is a sham and we ought to vote ``no'' on it.
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