Thirtysomehting Caucus
THIRTYSOMETHING CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - March 16, 2005)
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. My colleague from Florida is always so eloquent, and one of the things that has struck me from the time I have been privileged to serve in the Congress, for about 10 weeks now, is that we really stand on the shoulders of giants in this Chamber and there are precious few that fall into that category and that deserve that accolade. And Congressman Lehman was most definitely one of them.
I am privileged to represent a good portion of his district. I can only hope, as I am sure the gentleman can because he also represents a portion of his former district, that both he and I and our colleagues from South Florida can even begin to fill his shoes. Certainly it is our responsibility to carry on his legacy, and I know that is what we will strive to do every day on this floor, and I look forward to the hour that will be devoted to his life.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. That is right, Madam Speaker. And if the gentleman will continue to yield, the one thing I want to add is that for those who did not know Congressman Lehman, his name was far more widely known because there are far too numerous to mention car dealerships across Florida and, quite honestly, Congressman Lehman was a leader in transportation for good reason, because there are thousands and thousands of drivers who began their driving careers thanks to Mr. Lehman and his family. And he has been not just a pillar of the community but a giant when it comes to transportation, and I think that should not be lost on this body.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely, Madam Speaker. And I think it has to be said that the gentleman has been an incredible leader in co-chairing with our colleague from Ohio this 30-something Working Group. We are really here to talk to our generation, to talk to the American people in our generation about the policy decisions that are made here in Washington and how it affects them.
I think the gentleman is right. I think we have a number of well-intentioned colleagues on the other side. But, unfortunately, this train is being driven by the right. It is being driven by the right wing of the Republican Congress. They are driving the train here, and the moderate voice is just completely snuffed out. Absolutely snuffed out.
And I think we should spend a little bit of time talking about how the Bush administration's budget affects education because a lot has been said and the President has touted this Pell grant increase as being so fantastic and how he has really made a commitment to expanding access to higher education. When we sift through the facts and the reality as to how he gets to that $100 increase in Pell grants, it is really astonishing that they would claim it is an increase.
Essentially, when he was campaigning in 2000, the President pledged to make college more affordable and accessible by increasing the maximum Pell grant for college freshmen to $5,100.
He broke his promise once again. Once again, he says one thing and does another. They talk about numbers over here, and they are much higher or much lower, the opposite of what they promise, again and again.
Since 2001, just to give the facts, the cost of attending a four year public college has increased by more than $2,300. And what was President Bush's response? To increase the maximum Pell Grant by $10 to $4,150 in 2006. But that would only pay for 4 percent of the college cost increases since 2001.
The way he finances this Pell Grant increase is by cutting, essentially decimating, many, many other student aid programs. We have a chart here that I will move over and try to walk you through.
Essentially the Bush budget completely eliminates the Perkins loan program, a $66 million cut. If that proposal is enacted, more than 670,000 borrowers in 2006 alone would lose out on loan forgiveness if they choose to serve this country by becoming teachers, law enforcement officers or serve in the military. It totally eliminates that program.
The Bush budget forces millions of low and middle income students to pay thousands more for their college loans, because they eliminate the current low fixed consolidation benefits. According to the nonpartisan, their numbers, Congressional Research Service, this change will force the typical student borrower to pay about $5,500 more in college loans.
The President also, in order to give you a measly $100 increase in your Pell Grants, he also completely eliminates the funds for Gear Up, for Upward Bound and for the Talent Search programs. These programs ensure that high risk students succeed in high school and move on to college. If the President has his way, nearly 1.3 million students, 70 percent of whom are minorities, will lose the support they need to make it to college.
This is how we are improving access to higher education in the Bush budget. It is just astonishing.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. If the gentleman will yield on the debt, I want to just follow up with what you are saying about debt. If we can come on over to this chart, this talks about how the debt actually impacts families. Because debt, when you talk about trillions, one thing I noticed about this job that we have that our constituents so graciously gave us, is that when you start talking about billions and trillions of dollars, people's eyes start to glaze over. I have learned the difference between a billion and a trillion, and it is a lot of money. And what this debt means is a lot of money to the average family of four.
Going up the scale here with the ever-increasing debt that the Bush budgets have put on us, we are now going to reach, in 2004, the Bush budget raises the debt tax, which is basically what the debt costs every family of four in America, right now it is costing every family in America almost $4,400.
You go up the scale with the Bush budget proposal, and we are not even talking about Social Security, we are talking about what we have got right here, right now, not even talking about privatizing Social Security. By 2015, each family of four would have $10,500 that they essentially would responsibility for in terms of a debt tax and how much the debt was going to cost them.
That is where we have gone in this country. We are just going to keep adding and adding and weighing people down. What happens with our generation, on the front page of the South Florida Sun Sentinel the other day, I was flying up here, and the front page talked about ``Generation Debt.''
Our generation is Generation Debt, because we are not the generation of savers. Our parents and our grandparents were the generation of savers, but we are not. So we are already shouldering a tremendous amount, way more than we should, in personal debt. On top of that, the President heaps this on top of us also, and it is just wrong.
If you are going to talk about what we are doing here, you have to talk about jobs and technology and how that is going to affect our generation.
The number one issue for young people right now, for our generation, is finding a job. We supposedly have this fantastic reemergence of the economy, but job creation is still totally flat.
The current unemployment rate for individuals 16 to 19 is 17 percent. And, more and more, those young people need a job. We are not just talking about a paper route anymore, we are talking about kids who are 16 to 19 years old who need to earn a salary to help pay the family's bills. If they do not have a job, then their family is falling down flat. And the President's budget contains absolutely no job growth stimulation proposals, it squanders $1.6 trillion on tax breaks to people who do not need them.
Job training: We have no proposals for job training. In fact, the President cuts job training in his budget. He consolidates it into a single block grant, and then cuts the funding for these programs, for job training programs, by $146 million.
He eliminates the Advanced Technology Program, and I am trying to speed along also, which funds research and emerging technologies.
His budget slashes by nearly 60 percent the funds from the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, which is a program that helps small manufacturers with new technologies.
And lastly, our generation cares about the Internet. There are so many opportunities in expanding access to high speed Internet. This President has proposed to slash broadband assistance guaranteed loans by $190 million, and he has called for the total elimination of broadband telecommunications grants.
Are they thinking about our folks? They are clearly not. They have no interest in what is going to happen to the generation coming behind the one that already has theirs.
That is what we have got to do. We have got to make sure we can refocus the attention that is paid to our generation because no one is thinking about us.
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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. In the last several weeks I have tried to talk about the impact on women that the Bush administration's policies have had. For example, there are 20 million women in this country without health insurance and millions more who can barely afford to pay their premiums; but this budget does nothing to hold down health care costs. It slashes Medicaid by a total of $45 billion over the next 10 years. That is a devastating cut on women and children because women account for over 70 percent of adult Medicaid beneficiaries.
In terms of violence against women, the President's budget cuts the Violence Against Women Act programs by $19 million; child care, the budget freezes funding for the Maternal and Child Health block grant and eliminates the Universal Newborn Screening Program.
Now, I have a 19-month-old. You have young children. I have passed legislation in Florida that ensured that we expanded screening for genetic anomalies and problems in newborns, and this Bush budget reverses all of that progress.
If we do not make sure we screen newborns for hearing problems, then we will have learning disabilities that are directly related to hearing abnormalities and without any excuse. But we have got to make sure that we think about children and families when prioritizing and that is what we could do. And the proof is in the pudding that we do not.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Does the gentlewoman have something else to talk about?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I also wanted to talk a little bit about health care because one of the most important issues that we have in this country is the skyrocketing cost of health care.
We have 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance. That means when they are sick, they cannot go to the doctor and they have to let their health care problems spiral out of control until they have to go to the emergency room to get the problem solved. And young Americans, our generation, are the most likely group to be insured. We think we are invincible. We think we are not going to have to worry about having health insurance and going to the doctor, so we go without. But more often we also cannot afford it.
Thirty percent of young adults age 18 to 24 have no health insurance at all. Compare that with 18 percent of adults who are 35 to 44 and only 1 percent of seniors. So the health care crisis disproportionately affects our generation, and there is nothing in the Bush budget to improve that. Where is this President's leadership on expanding access to health care?
When I go down the street, when I go to the supermarket at home, when I go to street festivals, people stop me in the street. I have heard the gentleman talk about people stopping him in the street and talking about issues that are important to them. The thing that they stop me on the most often is education and health care.
They say, if my baby girl or my baby boy is sick, I have no health insurance and I cannot get them shots. If they have a cold, I cannot bring them to the doctor. I have to wait until the problem is bad enough to bring them to the emergency room, and no mother or father should have to suffer through something like that.
This President needs to exercise some leadership in this budget on how to solve this problem and he has not. It is an abdication of leadership.
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