Congressional Budget for the United States Government for the Fiscal Year 2006

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (Senate - March 16, 2005)

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Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise in support of amendment No. 149 by Senators AKAKA and MURRAY and to praise them for their years of work on veterans issues.

This is a needed amendment because the budget resolution, as written, will break our promises to America's veterans.

The budget resolution closely tracks an administration request that will do little to meet growing costs and will force the VA to continue to ration care.

I am angry that thousands of veterans are being turned away from the VA. This represents a fundamental breach of trust with our fighting men and women. Since January 2003 when the VA announced suspension of enrollment of new Priority 8 veterans, 192,000 veterans across the country and 2,000 Colorado veterans have sought VA care and been turned away. The administration's new budget hopes to kick 1.1 million more so-called low-priority veterans out of the system next year with draconian cuts in service and increased fees.

The administration's budget also would kick thousands of veterans out of nursing homes. It would limit the VA's per diem reimbursement to State VA nursing homes to priority ones, twos, and threes. These heartless cuts could kick 80 percent of State nursing home residents out onto the street. Last week, I met with the administrator of a State nursing home in Walsenburg, CO. She told me that these cuts would force her to kick out 93 of her 100 residents. State administrators tell me that these cuts could force the entire system to go under. These are our most vulnerable veterans, who often have no place else to go.

Another problem is waiting periods. Administrative backlogs at the VA have been reduced, but there are still 321,000 veterans waiting for disability and pension claims to be processed. At the VA clinic in Grand Junction, there is a 400-person waiting list. That is a 4 to 5-month wait. Just last week I asked Secretary Nicholson to explain to me why numerous Coloradans are waiting months to get their GI bill benefits, forcing them to miss tuition deadlines. This budget agreement will do little to cut these administrative backlogs.

Senator Akaka's amendment would go a long way to restoring needed funding and I urge my colleagues to support it.

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Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise in support of the classic pay-go amendment and commend my colleagues, especially Senator Feingold for his leadership on this issue.

We took the first step in opening one of the country's most pristine areas for potential development. I would have preferred to have given my daughters Melinda and Andrea that choice to make in the future.

Let me put it plainly. I do not want to let my daughters down again. When we pass budgets with enormous deficits, that is the same as taxing our children and our grandchildren. They will be taxed to pay for our spending. They will be taxed to pay for our unwillingness to say that enough is enough.

Our kids and grandkids don't get to vote for the Senators and Congressmen who are imposing these future taxes on them. That is taxation without representation, and that is something the leaders of our War for Independence had some thought about.

It is wrong and it is un-American to impose taxes on our children and our grandchildren to pay for the spending spree of the Federal Government. It is long past time to restore to Congress the same commonsense budgetary approach that every family in America has to live by. That approach is simple. If you can't pay for it, don't spend it.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise tonight at this late date to talk about forgotten America, the rural parts of our United States, and to address the issues of education and health care in rural America.

Let me say I want to extend my appreciation and thanks to Senator Conrad and Senator Collins for their work on these issues in the past. I look forward to having their support as we move forward with these amendments.

My amendment will increase funding for the Rural Education Achievement Program, a program that came about through bipartisan efforts that recognize that our rural schools need our help. REAP provides supplemental funding for rural school districts which face significant challenges.

Let me just say that as we look at the issue of education in rural communities and we look at the issue of health care in rural communities, we have to understand that there is a part of the United States of America that has been forgotten, frankly, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Across the country, some 3,000 counties continue to wither on the vine, where the people who live in those counties, who are mostly agriculturally dependent, do not have the infrastructure or the capacity to address the real needs that are affecting them every day. Those include the issues of education and the issues of health care.

I come from what is one of the poorest counties in America, the County of Conejos. That county has been the poorest county in the United States for a number of different years, so I know firsthand the kinds of challenges that are faced by communities like those communities in Conejos County. Across rural America, no matter where you go, no matter what State you are in, you are going to find these kinds of counties.

The two areas we address here with the amendment are education and health care. First of all, with respect to rural education, a few facts about our rural school districts. Our school districts in rural America account for about one-half of the school districts in our Nation. Rural school districts tend to be the poorest in the Nation. They average less than 40 percent of the per pupil spending in our urban school districts. Rural school districts have less access to technology, computers, and the Internet than their urban counterparts and, thus, are at risk of being left behind in our global economy.

Rural school districts tend to have higher dropout rates than their urban counterparts. Rural schoolteachers tend to make an average of 15 percent less than urban schoolteachers. Despite decreased pay, rural schoolteachers teach more subjects than their urban counterparts, and rural school districts face significant problems with teacher retention and face serious problems in meeting the Federal Government's definition of ``highly qualified'' under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Those of us who have traveled throughout this country, who have been in many of these rural school districts, know that educational opportunity being brought about for the students in rural schools is very different from that in urban schools. We know that in rural schools they do not have the teachers or the kinds of facilities--the computer technology, the swimming pools, the other parts of the physical facilities--that you find in the wealthier urban settings. So this amendment is a simple statement about the investment needed to help us have the kind of educational opportunity for the children of America who live in the rural parts of our country that have become the forgotten America.

My amendment also addresses the issue of rural health care, restoring funding for the Rural Health Outreach Program, and increases funding for the State Offices of Rural Health Program. These are two programs that are helping us address the health care issues that are faced in rural America. These programs enable the communities to partner with universities, with private practitioners, with hospitals and medical providers to make sure we address rural health care in the way that it is lacking in rural communities.

Let me say a word about the circumstance relating to rural health care. In Colorado, in many of my counties, there is only one nurse practitioner for the entire county. On the western part of our State, in Grand Junction, CO, veterans wait up to 5 months in order to see a doctor.

In Colorado, 756,000 of our citizens are uninsured, and a good majority of them live in rural areas. When they get sick, they either cannot afford to see a doctor or there is a shortage of physicians for them to see. Rural Coloradians tend to have more health care problems so that the lack of health care is life threatening.

We know health care access in our rural communities is in crisis. A few facts bear this out. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance at all, but 10.2 million of those 45 million Americans live in rural America; 10.2 million of those 45 million Americans live in rural America.

Americans living in rural communities face some of the greatest challenges in obtaining and keeping health insurance.

There are many communities across my State--and I am sure across America--where families in rural communities simply cannot get health insurance, and when they get health insurance they have to pay anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 a month just to keep that health insurance.

Rural residents are more likely to be covered by Medicaid than their urban counterparts. Residents in rural communities have less access to medical services because there is such a critical shortage of doctors in rural communities across our country.

My amendment will restore some of that funding so that our communities in forgotten America can continue to develop innovative programs to increase access to healthcare.

Let me conclude by saying this is a simple step to help us put the spotlight on the problems that are faced by rural America today. This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is an issue where Democrats and Republicans should stand up and say that we value education in our rural communities and in our rural schools, that we understand the major problems of healthcare that are faced in our rural communities, and that we will stand up to make sure that we are addressing those issues of healthcare in rural America.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Conrad be added as a cosponsor.

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