Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012: House of Representatives

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman.

That's your formula. It's a formula of the past. It's a formula for the nostalgic amongst the Republicans who wish we could go back to a time before Medicare and Medicaid and wind and solar and new energy technologies and their taking us on to a future.

Let me tell you something.

Fifty percent of the people who are in nursing homes in our country have Alzheimer's, and they are on Medicaid. That's how we pay for the bills. You people slash the budget for those people with Alzheimer's who are in nursing homes. That's 50 percent. That's grandma, ladies and gentlemen. You don't touch the wealthy. You don't touch the Defense Department. This budget is so cruel that, if you kicked it in the heart, you'd break your toe.

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman.

The Republicans are allowing nostalgia for a time before Medicare and Medicaid were ever on the books to replace the idealism that we need to have in order to deal with the real challenges of the future. But for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled, the past is just a memory and the future is their hard reality. And that's what this budget will be for those people, a hard reality.

It takes no courage for the Republicans to stand here on the House floor and to call for an evisceration of the Medicare budget, of the Medicaid budget and all the other programs for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled in our country that they opposed ever having been put on the books in the first place. If you kicked this budget in the heart, you'd break your toe. GOP used to stand for ``Grand Old Party.'' Now it stands for ``Get Old People.'' And that's what this budget is. It is a targeting of the poor, the sick and the elderly in our country.

Do they ask sacrifice from the defense budget? Do they ask for the defense budget to go down? No, it just keeps going up year after year. Do they ask for sacrifice from the wealthy? No, they say tax breaks for the wealthy year after year after year. Who do they target? They target Grandma. They don't even have the ability--the courage--to stand up and say to the oil companies, who at $100 a barrel are making $100 billion in profits a year, ``We're going to take away your tax breaks.'' No. Tax breaks for oil companies stay on the books.

What do they do? They say to the clean energy industry, We're cutting your tax breaks by 70 percent, but we're leaving the tax breaks for the oil industry on the books and we are slashing the programs for wind, for solar and for all those energy technologies that are now the future.

The Acting CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman.

That's your formula. It's a formula of the past. It's a formula for the nostalgic amongst the Republicans who wish we could go back to a time before Medicare and Medicaid and wind and solar and new energy technologies and their taking us on to a future.

Let me tell you something.

Fifty percent of the people who are in nursing homes in our country have Alzheimer's, and they are on Medicaid. That's how we pay for the bills. You people slash the budget for those people with Alzheimer's who are in nursing homes. That's 50 percent. That's grandma, ladies and gentlemen. You don't touch the wealthy. You don't touch the Defense Department. This budget is so cruel that, if you kicked it in the heart, you'd break your toe.

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