Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, the Senate is going to spend much of this week debating the contours and the details of the Federal budget. Our colleagues are going to offer a variety of amendments, and we will undoubtedly cast a lot of votes. Those watching are going to hear speeches that are peppered with numbers and statistics. So I would like to start out the debate by setting aside, to the extent we can, this flood of numbers and statistics, and focus on what this means to working families in my home State of Oregon and across the country.

My view is the great economic challenge of our time is expanding opportunity for these families. It is about strengthening the middle class and adding sturdier rungs to America's economic ladder so everybody has the chance to climb upward.

Seven years after a crippling economic collapse, we have seen our unemployment rate go down, home foreclosures have gone down, gas prices have gone down. We are finally starting to see wages beginning to grow, and manufacturing is picking up steam. The American economy is now performing better than at any recent time in memory.

But the fact is there are still millions of Americans who feel stuck. They listen to all of the positive economic news that ricochets across the news media and wonder when things are actually going to get better for them and their families. I hear it firsthand in every townhall meeting I hold in our State, including several this month. These are young parents who are overwhelmed by the cost of childcare. There are students practically in shock over the sticker price of a college education. We have workers who are nearing retirement age, confirmed by the Finance Committee, who have hardly been able to save at all.

What the Senate budget is all about is not just facts and figures but about the hopes and aspirations of those people I have described who want things to change. In my view, the budget the Congress sets should take on those middle-class challenges directly. It ought to help working-class families and give more Americans a chance to get ahead in life.

This week, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are putting forward a different kind of budget--a budget that would poke some new holes in the safety net and, in my view, would worsen inequality. We would see millions of Americans face cuts in programs that are a lifeline for them. I have to ask, How will cutting a Pell grant and education tax credits help a disadvantaged student in La Grande, OR, who wants to work hard, play by the rules, and get ahead? How is cutting food stamps going to help a single mother in Ashland who is walking on an economic tightrope every month? How is it going to help her keep food on the table? How will slashing Medicaid help a struggling family in Roseburg, OR, stay healthy and out of the emergency room? And, finally, how would repealing the Affordable Care Act help a cancer survivor in Corvallis who has finally been able to get health insurance for the first time in years?

So my bottom line is pretty direct: Our middle class declines with every rung that is pulled from the ladder of opportunity. So what we all ought to say is the budget is about trying to help Americans climb upward with a budget that is designed to give all Americans the opportunity to get ahead.

To me, we start by investing in America's infrastructure. We simply cannot have big league economic growth with a little league infrastructure. The roads and highways in Oregon and across our country are now pocked by ruts and potholes, making it harder to do business and harder to travel. Dozens of people have been killed or injured in bridge collapses. Without adequate roads, bridges, and transit, drivers spend far too much time sitting in traffic choking on exhaust.

This also has taken a big toll on America's ability to compete internationally. We have to have big league infrastructure to draw jobs and investment to our country, and that depends on the quality of our roads and ports and airports and railways. We know investing in infrastructure creates thousands of jobs in America right away and supports millions more over the long term.

In my view, effective, targeted investments in infrastructure ought to be a no-brainer on both sides of the aisle.

Second, the Congress ought to strengthen programs that assist rural communities and brighten their economic futures. For example, homes in Oregon and across the West are being threatened by fires that are growing bigger and hotter and more damaging each year.

Chairman Enzi's budget took several steps in the right direction to improve the way governments budget for fires, but with a growing threat, more resources are needed to fight and prevent fires. Having just visited Medford, OR, they told me it was going to be the driest in 25 years, and we take out a map and California just looks dry, dry, dry. Passing the bipartisan legislation that Senator Crapo and I have authored is urgent.

I also feel funding for agricultural research is another vital tool for giving rural communities a chance to get ahead. Each dollar that goes into agricultural research will be far outstripped by the value created in crops and croplands.

I was told just recently by wheat farmers in Eastern Oregon that investing in agricultural research is going to give them and people all through Eastern Oregon a better chance to get ahead and be more successful with their farms.

I want to make mention of the important low-income and middle-class tax challenge. We ought to make the tax cuts for middle-class and low-income Americans permanent. There is a very big tax looming in 2018, unless the Congress moves to prevent it. Millions of families in Oregon and across the Nation depend on the expansion of the earned-income tax credit, the child tax credit, and the American opportunity tax credit. These are all set to expire, and the longer families sit in the dark wondering what their tax obligations will be, the harder it is for these families--already struggling to get ahead--for them to predict how to budget. In my view, it would be legislative malpractice to leave these low-income and middle-class tax cuts teetering on a cliff while others are permanently enshrined into the law. Furthermore, taking that uncertainty off the table is going to make comprehensive tax reform easier to accomplish.

My colleagues and I on the Finance Committee are working hard to bring our broken Tax Code into the 21st century. I have worked for more than a decade, first with our former colleague Senator Gregg and most recently with our current colleague Senator Coats, to produce the first bipartisan Federal income tax reform plan in more than a quarter century. So I know it is possible to make the Tax Code simpler and fairer. It ought to give everybody the chance to climb the economic ladder, and making the critical low-income and middle-class tax cuts permanent is a big step in that direction.

Next, I think the question of college affordability and doing more to help students get to graduation day ought to be a focus of this budget. The skyrocketing price of tuition keeps far too many young people from enrolling in college, and it keeps too many others from completing it. In effect, the price of college can reinforce inequality. Millions of students are buried up to their eyeballs in debt before they ever put on that cap and gown.

It is time to come at this challenge from every angle. For one, it is important to make student debt more manageable so graduates don't spend decades weighed down by loan payments. It is absolutely essential to help students take on less debt from the start. That will get more students in the door to challenge and free graduates from a lifetime of debt. That is why, in my view, cutting the Pell grant is the wrong way to go, and the Byzantine web of tax incentives for higher education needs to be cleaned up as well. It should not take dozens of calculations and hours of time for students to navigate the Byzantine tax rules. It should be simpler and easier so more students see a more meaningful benefit. Some student loan debt may be unavoidable, but leaving students with less debt is possible.

My next concern with respect to the budget is making sure needless cuts are made in essential health care programs. The cuts to Medicaid, in my view, that have been proposed by the other side are a guaranteed formula to make life harder for struggling families.

Just contemplate--and having been to Iowa, I know of the many seniors in Iowa--seniors who rely on Medicaid to cover the cost of nursing home care. That is, to a great extent, what the Medicaid budget is all about. Medicaid for those frail seniors--whether it is Oregon or Vermont or Iowa, Medicaid is what keeps a lot of those frail seniors from falling into absolute destitution. In another era, impoverished seniors might have been thrown into almshouses or poor farms. Today, Medicaid is a lifeline for tens of millions. But the budget proposal we have seen from the other side, in my view, would inflict substantial cuts on Medicaid, endanger our future. I don't believe that is the right course for frail seniors who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care.

The last point I would make deals with the effects of repealing the Affordable Care Act. If we repeal the Affordable Care Act, make no mistake about it, America goes back to the days when health care is for the healthy and the wealthy because no longer will we have protections for people with preexisting conditions. It is fine if you are healthy and it is fine if you are wealthy, but that is not most Americans. There are plenty of ways to improve the Affordable Care Act in a bipartisan fashion. That is not what the budget from the other side does. I hope we will not go back to the days in America when health care is for the healthy and wealthy, which is the bottom-line consequence of full repeal.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I will be very brief. I thank my colleagues for their courtesy.

This amendment is about more than bumpy roads, popped tires, and broken axles. It is about jobs and economic growth in every nook and cranny in our country, and the key to that growth is infrastructure. Attracting investment depends on the condition of our infrastructure. Suffice it to say that our competitors in a tough global marketplace are increasing their investments in infrastructure. It is time to adopt this amendment and for us to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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