BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MERKLEY. The American middle class is hurting. Workers are unemployed. Families are losing their homes. Parents are worried, for good reason, that their children will not have the same opportunity they had.
American people have sent us to do a simple agenda of creating jobs. They want a plan that will put our economy back on track and build a foundation for our working families to succeed.
The Republicans have produced a plan, a plan that is in consideration before us today. But is it a plan that responds to the pleas of the American people to create jobs and to help those Americans who are out of work and to put this economy back on track? The short answer is, unfortunately, it is not.
Perhaps it is a plan to invest in education. But then we look at the details and realize it savages the investment in education. Here we are as the first generation of American adults whose children are getting less education than we got, primarily because the cost of tuition is outpacing the average wages that working families earn. That is unacceptable.
Perhaps the Republican budget decides to invest in infrastructure. I just came back from China with the majority leader and a delegation of 10 Senators and here is what we learned. China is investing 10 to 12 percent of its GDP in infrastructure. Europe is investing 5 percent. America is investing 2 percent. We are barely able to repair the infrastructure we have let alone add additional infrastructure for our economy to thrive in the future. But the Republican plan does not invest in infrastructure.
Perhaps it invests in energy, recognizing that we are sending $1 billion a day overseas, that oil and our addiction to oil is half of our trade deficit, that both for national security and for strength of our economy and for a sustainable environment, we need to change this.
But, no, the Republican budget sustains our addiction to oil and withdraws our investment in American--red, white, and blue American-made energy.
Perhaps the Republican budget has paid attention to our Secretary of Defense who has listed $175 billion in programs that are not enhancing our national security and therefore should be cut. But, no, the Republican budget paid no attention to that, and, in fact, increased and overrode the vision laid out by the Secretary of Defense.
So at a time when our middle class is struggling to get back to their feet, the Republicans did not address education or infrastructure or energy or defense but instead chose to do two things: end Medicare as we know it and give bonus breaks to the best off in our society--take away from seniors across America and give to those who earn more than $1 million a year and a whole lot more to those who earn more than $10 million a year.
That is the Republican plan. In the Medicare side, there are two components. The first is to reopen the doughnut hole. That is the hole into which seniors fall when, after they have some assistance with the first drugs they need, they get no assistance until they reach a catastrophic level. It is in that hole that seniors have been devastated--had their finances devastated. We fixed it. Republicans want to unfix it and throw seniors back into the abyss.
Then, instead of guaranteeing Medicare coverage for a fixed set of benefits for every senior--as Medicare does now--the Republican plan gives seniors a coupon and says: Good luck. Go buy your insurance. If the insurance goes up, too bad.
In fact, seniors would pay $6,359 more a year. In my working-class community, that is real money. That is money senior families do not have. That is money families do not have because they are wrestling just to pay their basic expenses through Social Security.
It is not the folks with golden parachutes who have multimillion dollar endowments from their previous work at the top of the economic pyramid. Most do not realize that $6,000 will devastate the family budgets of our seniors across this country.
Indeed, under the Republican plan, whereas seniors contribute 25 percent of their health care costs today, they would, by 2030, pay 68 percent, more than two-thirds--more than two-thirds. That is devastating.
Indeed, this voucher plan from our colleagues across the aisle puts an insurance company bureaucrat in the middle of our medical decisions, telling seniors what they get to have and what they do not get to have. The bottom line is that if something is good for your health, the insurance company does not want to pay for it, does not want to put it in the policy, that is too bad.
One of Oregon's larger insurers is planning a 24-percent increase in the cost of health care next year--premiums up by 24 percent. Seniors' coupons, under the Republican plan, are perhaps 2 percent. So that does not work.
Colleagues, our citizens have sent us to create jobs, not to destroy the lives of our seniors and hand the funds over to the best off in our society. Let's come back to planet Earth, recognize we are here to fight for an economy that raises working families and let's defeat this budget tonight.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT