Announcement by the Acting Chairman
ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE ACTING CHAIRMAN -- (House of Representatives - April 06, 2006)
Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Chairman, this has been one of those periodic weeks where a lot of people in the country turn on the television and they look at this institution and they wonder if we live in another world.
They see us, or at least one of us, going down the hallway giving high-fives the day after announcing the end of a career in disgrace, they hear us obsessing on all kinds of things that do not matter to the American people, and then they hear this budget debate. And they hear the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle), for whom I have a great deal of respect, announce that under his budget everyone in America is a winner.
They must wonder if we live in the same world because I wonder if the 13.5 million American families on Medicaid who have to pay more money under last year's budget, and more money under this year's budget to go to the doctor, really think they are winners.
I wonder if the veterans who have served our country who are looking at cuts in years 2 through 5 under Mr. Nussle's budget think they are winners.
I wonder if the Guard and Reservists who still will not get a fully funded TRICARE program think they are winners.
I wonder if the 45 million uninsured that Mr. Moran talked about think they are winners.
I wonder if the 13.5 million children living in poverty think they are winners.
The reality is under this budget proposed by the chairman's mark, some people win under this budget: people who have already been winning and who have been winning for a very long time. People who need a little bit of generosity and have counted on a little bit of help from this city are not winners at all.
I remember the first year I stood in this Chamber as a relatively new Member when the President of the United States stood in the well and gave his State of the Union. The one thing I remember this President saying is this President and this Congress will not leave for other generations and for other Congresses, I wonder as the President stood here it occurred to him that all these problems that plague this country involving the old, the sick, the poor and the young, did he mean for us to leave those problems for another Congress and another generation, because the budget of Mr. Nussle does that. It leaves all of these problems unaddressed by the richest country in the world, and I think it makes this budget so fundamentally wrong.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend from South Carolina, and I would say to Mr. Nussle, you could have had 35 or 40 of us on this side of the aisle if you had done one thing, if you had combined some of these cuts with some retreat on these tax cuts, not getting rid of them all together, not getting rid of them in their whole, but simply pulling some of them back for the wealthiest Americans. You could have had 35 or 40 of us. You left it on the table, and it is one of the last things you could have done in your chairmanship.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov/