Expressing Sense of House Regarding Federal Budget

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate, as always, the opportunity to exchange views with my good friend from Wisconsin, the chair of the Budget Committee, with whom I've been pleased to work with on some items. Occasionally, rarely, we're opposed, but this is one of those areas where I do have some concerns.

When I hear my friend talk about empty rhetoric and broken promises, I am reminded of what the Republican agenda has been to this point in this Congress--debt, doubt, and decline. Debt, doubt, and decline. Well, I think that that's a pretty good assessment of what had been offered up by my good friends when they had an opportunity this last year to present their vision.

Now they attempt to lay this off somehow on the Senate. And we all have had our frustrations with the other body. But the fact is, the problem that we face in terms of being able to work regular order, is that there has been a decision by the minority leader in the other body.

The senior Senator from Kentucky, the Republican leader, has been very clear. His number one priority is not putting Americans back to work. It's not dealing with the challenges we face at home and abroad. It is to make sure that President Obama is not reelected. And when you start from that premise and radiate out, we have seen the Senate, which has never been, shall we say, nimble, has slowed to a crawl. We have seen an unprecedented effort to make even the most modest and mundane efforts over there require a supermajority.

It's unprecedented. It is sad. The American people deserve better. But it is Republican obstruction that has twisted the rules of the Senate to make it nonfunctional.

Debt, doubt, and decline. The Republican budget, notwithstanding all the pyrotechnics and the effort to spread doubt about whether or not the United States would honor its commitment, paying the national debt for debt that is already incurred, which occupied too much time this summer, an absolutely manufactured crisis, the Republican budget authored by my good friend from Wisconsin, itself, would have required increasing the debt ceiling.

And when you talk about decline, my Republican friends have failed to move forward with meaningful job creation. We've had, languishing, a reauthorization for the Surface Transportation Act, which we've had to extend eight times. And, in fact, the Republican budget actions to this date are cutting back on investment in water, in transportation, things that would put Americans to work all across America.

And as for bureaucratic rationing of health care, I'm surprised my good friend can say that with a straight face because, remember, his budget takes the half trillion dollars and accepts it. He doesn't unwind it. He doesn't change it. He accepts it. They count on it because they know that, in fact, there are opportunities for us to strengthen Medicare without ending the guarantee that two generations of senior citizens have relied upon to be able to have the Medicare payments when they need them.

We have the opportunity to refine and reform Medicare, to provide better service for our seniors and eliminate unnecessary expenditures. There was a time when those agenda items, not the rhetoric, not vouchering this and slashing that, but what was required to move forward to actually reform Medicare, that has been bipartisan. It's been agreed to. It's being practiced by health care systems in Wisconsin, in Oregon. We know what to do. We have the opportunity to do it. Unfortunately, the Republican approach to this point has been to assume that it's too expensive, that we can't do it. It's too expensive for the Federal Government, so we're going to transfer the risk to the next generation of senior citizens but taking advantage of the savings under the Affordable Care Act.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we're going through an exercise today that is largely beside the point. What we should be doing is dealing with pieces of legislation that would have bipartisan support, moving forward, accelerating health care reform, rebuilding and renewing America, taking things like the work that I've done with my good friend from Wisconsin in terms of reforming the agricultural system that wastes too much money on the wrong people, doing the wrong things. We could be moving forward on a constructive agenda that the Occupy Wall Street people and the Tea Party folks could actually get behind.

Unfortunately, today, this H. Res. 516 is another sidetrack that gets us away from doing what we should do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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