Congressional Progressive Caucus Unveils the Back to Work Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to repeat and enhance our calls made by our colleagues today to talk about the budget introduced by the House Republicans.

We have a number of members of the Progressive Caucus who will be addressing various components of the budget. I will start out with one of the freshman Members from the great State of California (Mr. Takano).

I yield to the gentleman from California.

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Mr. POCAN. I would like to thank the gentleman from California. As a member of the Budget Committee that marked up the bill yesterday, we had spent the entire day considering the budget proposal that was introduced by our Republican colleagues. From the beginning, it was clear that the budget represented little more than recycled policies that have already been rejected by the American people and unrealistic proposals that will never occur.

We had an opportunity in committee to focus on areas where Democrats and Republicans could come together to grow our economy and responsibly reduce our deficit. Instead, we were given a budget that is based on math gimmicks and absurd assumptions, assumptions like trying to keep the savings from the Affordable Care Act while repealing its benefits. Well, that has about as much credibility as if we had said in the budget we should hire leprechauns to grab pots of gold at the end of rainbows and count that as revenue. It is simply not realistic.

As a small business owner and as a former cochair of the Wisconsin joint committee on finance, I've worked on budgets for years and years. We used to spend 8 hours a day, 3 days a week for 4 months making sure that each and every detail meant something in a budget because a budget is a statement of our values, where do we stand as a country, or, in that case, as the State of Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, we didn't take the time to make those tough choices with the budget that was presented to us. Instead, we were given a budget that balances the budget on the backs of seniors and working class families. It's not a tough choice. It's a reckless and irresponsible choice.

Our budget should reflect our values, and the GOP budget does not reflect Wisconsin's values. And I don't believe it reflects the values of middle class families across the country.

Mr. Speaker, the type of choices that we were given from the Republicans in presenting their budget included things from keeping the sequester in place that you heard earlier have had terrible effects across the country and will continue to in the coming months of this current budget, like turning Medicare into a voucher system, a system that breaks the promise to the American people that we've had about Medicare for so long.

It includes trillions in undisclosed spending cuts with absolutely no information on where they'll come from other than eventually they're going to come from the middle class through losing some of the current proposals that we have in place in the law. Ultimately, all these will harm our economic growth and stunt the positive gains we've made in the economy just as recently as last month.

In fact, the Economic Policy Institute has found that the GOP Ryan budget released yesterday would result in 2 million fewer jobs next year alone. It would decrease our gross domestic product by 1.7 percent and stall our Nation's economic recovery.

What the budget does, and we can tell this in my State of Wisconsin and across the country, is, one, it keeps the sequester in place. And we've already been told that could cost 750,000 jobs nationwide, including 36,000 in my State of Wisconsin. The budget would turn the Medicare program into a voucher program, forcing 873,753 Wisconsin seniors out of the traditional Medicare plan when the conversion happens and breaking the promise that kept the link to increasing costs and having increasing funds that go with it. Finally, it would increase tax breaks for the very wealthy and big businesses but cost middle class families $2,000 annually in new taxes.

We must remember the biggest threat to our long-term economic security at this time is not the deficit; it's our economy. It's about jobs. It's the 12 million people that are unemployed in this country. We need to be making investments in American workers, in American ingenuity, in education, research and development, and infrastructure, and that's what will get the people of America back to work.

We have a budget that does just that, and I'm proud to support the Congressional Progressive Caucus' Back to Work Budget. The Back to Work Budget invests in America's future because the best way to reduce our long-term deficit is to put America back to work, get people back working and get people into jobs.

Just last week, the Congressional Budget Office released a report finding that half of the deficit in 2013 and three-quarters of the deficit in 2014 will be due to economic weakness. That means people being unemployed or underemployed and paying less in revenue rather than structural budget policies like defense spending, entitlement spending, or overall tax policy.

So the very problem we're facing is that people aren't working and aren't able to pay taxes and guide the economy like we need to. If they're doing that, we would make up three-quarters of the deficit in the next budget year alone.

Plain and simple, we need to get the American people back to work, and the Back to Work Budget does that by targeting a goal of 5 percent unemployment through investments in infrastructure, education, hiring back laid-off teachers, aid to States, rehiring police, firefighters, and other public employees, investing in a public works jobs program, and giving tax credits to companies that create jobs in America instead of the tax breaks that are still under the Republican budget that help companies that send jobs overseas.

So I'm hopeful that as this budget process moves forward, we can turn our attention back to job growth as our budget does and not backwards to the rejected policies of the past.

I would like to share a few stories that I've collected from my district from constituents who have written us about the budget, about the sequester that continues in the Republican budget, as well as the budget proposals in front of us. Let me read one from a reverend in Beloit, Wisconsin. Beloit, Wisconsin, is in Rock County, and the chairman of the Budget Committee, Representative Ryan, and I split Rock County right down the middle. So these are people that we both talk to on a regular basis.

This is a reverend in Beloit who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. This is what he writes:

This morning, I was reading more about the cuts coming on March 1. One of the areas that could be cut is cancer research, to the tune of $250 million. This is frightening to me. I'm married with two girls, ages 8 and 4. Three years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare form of nonsmoker's lung cancer. I went through chemo and radiation, and we thought we got it all. Last year, we discovered the cancer was back and in my bones. So I started a new pill. Within 2 months, all of the spots are gone, and I'm in remission. It is because of the funding for cancer research that I am alive today and my girls have their father. I have been told that the cancer will eventually build an immunity to my pill, so there are a number of other medications in trial now. If the funding is cut, my next miracle pill may not be there. I heard that these cuts could set back cancer research 5 years. Please, do what you can to make sure these cuts don't happen and people like me can beat back this nasty disease.

That's just from one constituent in my district from a county that just happens to be shared by the person who authored the budget that keeps these sequester cuts and these cuts to research in place.

Let me read one more, and then I'm going to introduce one of my colleagues, the cochair of the Progressive Caucus.

This is from a mother in Evansville, Wisconsin, also in Rock County, the county that I share with the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan. This was received back at the end of February:

My son-in-law will be laid off next week due to the sequester. This is extremely difficult for his family.

My daughter works for the State and has not had a raise in years, and pays more for her health insurance and retirement since all the State's woes are blamed on State employees and teachers. Her cut in pay is deep.

Our family will not be buying a house or a car, going out to dinner or purchasing anything from any local entrepreneur due to these issues. Does this help the economy? Nope. It's time to fix this so that the little people are not being harmed the most.

Now I'd like to yield some time to my colleague from Minneapolis, the cochair of the Progressive Caucus and one of the authors of our budget plan for the Progressive Caucus, Representative Keith Ellison.

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Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Representative Ellison.

When you talked about the 2 million jobs that we'll lose in 2014 alone and the loss of the gross domestic product, there is no question that these are the challenges we're facing with the budget before us.

What we didn't mention is that the only folks who are really going to benefit are the most wealthy. Under the plan that's been released by the Republicans, they're changing the tax rates and lowering it for those who make the most money; and the trillions that it's going to cost to make up for that is going to have to come from somewhere, but it's not outlined in the budget.

What does that mean they're going to have to go after? They're going to have to go after the very tax breaks that the middle class rely on. That means your mortgage interest tax deduction could be on the chopping line under the Republican version of the budget. The largest investment that the middle class ever make in their lifetime is their home, and the fact that we help incentivize that investment so that people live in strong neighborhoods and safe communities could be on the chopping line. The very fact that you could take away the employer's ability to deduct some of their health care costs could be on the chopping line. The child tax credit, for people who have children who have an opportunity to get back to work but need to have their children cared for, helps 25 million people across the country, including military families, that could be on the chopping line.

What they're silent about in the Republican budget is that they keep the deduction for corporate jets and they keep the subsidy to oil companies and they keep a number of deductions that do not benefit the middle class.

It's not just the jobs, Mr. Speaker, that are costs in the version of the budget, the 2 million jobs next year alone on top of the jobs we are losing through the sequester that we are facing right now, but it's this inequity in the tax system that is once again going to benefit the most wealthy at the expense of the many.

Another thing that I think is worthwhile mentioning as we are talking about middle class families is what is going to happen to Medicare.

My mother is 84 years old. In fact, she lives in the district in Wisconsin of the chairman of the committee. She is one of those countless seniors that cut pills in half because they couldn't afford to be able to afford medication at the time when she was trying to get by at 84 with a limited income.

It's those sorts of things, if we change that into a voucher program and we don't keep up that Medicare promise that people will have money to keep up with health care costs, that go away. Seniors will pay thousands more in the future because of the change by breaking that Medicare promise. That's not even talking about the Medicaid changes, Mr. Speaker.

There are so many changes that will cost middle class families that we need to make sure we have a more sound version, and that more sound version that the Progressive Caucus puts forward is the Back to Work Budget.

The Back to Work Budget will invest right now on getting people back into the marketplace and able to have a living and able to work and be able to pay taxes. When you have more people paying taxes, as we have already shown, three-quarters of the deficit in the next year will be due to unemployment and underemployment. By getting people back to work, that is the single best way to address the deficit.

With that, I'd like to yield a little time back to my colleague from Minneapolis, Mr. Ellison.

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Mr. POCAN. Thank you to the gentleman from Florida. Thank you for so eloquently talking about the problems of austerity and this budget that is the path to austerity, to continued austerity in this country.

One of the statistics I think that's really worth mentioning, and this is from the Congressional Budget Office, is that from 1979 to 2007, the top 1 percent of income earners grew 278 percent, or about $973,000 per household. In contrast, the middle 20 percent grew 25 percent, and the poorest 20 percent grew 16 percent.

So the very things that we just heard the gentleman from Florida talking about are very real; and that's why the Democrats on the committee, when we had a chance to try to amend the Republican path to austerity, instead we put out a budget amendment that said we would cap no family making $250,000 or less, covering the vast, vast majority of Americans, would be held harmless under the proposals presented by the Republican budget.

They would not go along with that amendment because they had to protect the tax breaks for corporate jets, and they had to protect the tax breaks for oil companies, and they had to protect the other tax breaks that they had.

Now, we brought up that during the Clinton administration the top tax rate was at 39 percent, but the economy added 20 million jobs. So at 39 percent top tax rate, we added 20 million jobs.

During the Bush administration, we reduced that top rate down to 35 percent, and yet we lost a half a million jobs. So the argument that somehow having a lower top tax rate is going to create jobs is simply a myth. We saw that when the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest were passed and we saw no economic recovery. And then when they were reauthorized, we still saw no economic recovery.

But where we did see an economic recovery was when we had the stimulus and recovery dollars that came through. And in my State of Wisconsin, I was on the Committee on Finance during that time. We had to authorize every single dollar that came through in recovery dollars in my State. And when we put forward the programs that went and built the roads and rebuilt the bridges and built schools, did repairs to schools, we had a report by the road building industry and the vertical construction industry, not exactly your most progressive organizations, that said that 54,000 jobs were saved or created in the State of Wisconsin because of those recovery dollars.

And at the Federal level, in the Budget Committee, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Dr. Elmendorf, I asked him point blank, were there jobs created by the recovery, because the same day the President gave the State of the Union, the Speaker of this House said that no jobs were created from the past recovery. And yet we were told by Dr. Elmendorf, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that up to 3.3 million jobs were saved or created.

So, again, part of what the Democrats talked about is how could we help provide some additional recovery dollars in the Back to Work Budget, which would specifically invest in those infrastructure projects into our schools, into our police and fire services. So that's a little bit about what we talked about down there.

But one last thing I would like to bring up and talk about that happens in the Republican version of the budget that does not happen in our version, the Back to Work Budget, the Progressive Caucus Budget, is the effect on Medicare.

Right now, half the people who receive Medicare make $22,000 a year, and yet their health care costs are three times that of the average person. So some of our folks who are the most low-income seniors, who've been relying on the promise that they've paid into their entire lives for Medicare, are now having three times the costs of the average person, are going to see this new voucher program that, down the road, will eventually make them pay more and more immediately, but down the road, not keep up with inflation and cause people to make those tough choices in a lose-lose proposition, receive less health care or pay more for it when you can least afford to.

That's not fair. That promise that we've had as a Nation through Medicare, it's simply not fair to voucherize that program.

And then when you take the $800 billion in cuts to the Medicaid budget, again, that largely goes to seniors in our States, you are going to see the access and the ability for senior citizens, especially people of modest and middle incomes, diminish because of this budget.

Now, we agree that the real culprit out there is rising health care costs. We have to, in a bipartisan way, address those. But you don't address them by balancing the budget on the backs of the people who can least afford it, and that's the middle class and the seniors of America.

So when you look at this budget from the Republicans in totality, and you look at the cuts to Medicare and the cuts to Medicaid, the protection of tax breaks for the most wealthy, for the special interests, for companies that outsource jobs overseas, the lack of any investment in infrastructure or education, or research and development, when you listen to the stories that I've talked about from people from my district, from the very same county that Chairman Ryan and I share, who talk about devastating impacts of these cuts, we have a budget that is misplaced and will affect real people in the middle class.

I would just like to talk about one final part of the budget that really makes it really hard to, on top of all these cuts, think that a lot of serious thought went into it, and that's the fact that the Republican version of the budget repeals the Affordable Care Act, all of the benefits to the public, the millions of people who will gain access to health care, but it still takes the revenues brought in by the program. And we were told that when we asked questions in committee.

So, on one hand, to take away the program and say you're going to get rid of it, and on the other hand, to still take the revenues that are brought in by the program makes the budget not a very credible budget. And as I've said in committee, and I'll say again, if you're going to take those sort of false assumptions and put a budget together, you might as well say that we're going to hire leprechauns to take the pots of gold at the end of rainbows and count that as revenue, because it's about as realistic.

In the end, the Progressive Caucus is very proud of our Back to Work Budget. We are going to invest in infrastructure, we're going to invest in public workers, we're going to make sure that we're getting our fair share of resources that we need so that government can function to take care of the middle class and the people who need it the most. It will create 7 million American jobs, reduce unemployment to 5 percent, and yet still reduce our deficit by $4.4 trillion.

It will strengthen Medicare and Medicaid and provide high-quality, low-cost medical coverage to millions of Americans. That's what the people of the country voted for in November. That's the budget we should be putting forward in this country, and that's the budget the Progressive Caucus puts out today.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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