Providing For Consideration Of Senate Amendments To H.R. 3590, Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009, And Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 4872, Health Care And Education Reconciliation Act Of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I truly hope this massive bill is not passed by the House today. If it does become law, it will constitute a decisive step in the weakening of the United States. At precisely the time when we should be implementing necessary reforms to strengthen and save Medicare, for example, this legislation raids Medicare by more than $500 billion in order to pay for a new, massive entitlement.

At a time when it would still be possible to enact entitlement reforms to prevent a Greece-style fiscal catastrophe in the future, when genuinely painful economic medicine will be needed, we are creating a massive new entitlement.

We could have avoided the social convulsion and profound pain that prolonged fiscal irresponsibility inevitably brings to nations, but this President and this Congressional majority went with dogma instead.

And when the time comes for the United States to have to face economic reality, and painful traumatic reforms are implemented by a future President and a future Congress, the U.S. military posture, our standard of living, the American middle class as we know it, those interconnected realities which have been so wonderful in characterizing modern America and which this President and this Congressional majority apparently seem to take for granted, those realities will be but historical memories.

This legislation is dishonest. It is irresponsible. It should be defeated.

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