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Today Congressman David Scott (D-GA) delivered the following remarks denouncing President Bush’s proposed budget package:

Thank you very much, Mr. Ross. It is always a pleasure to be on the floor with you.

There is so much we need to cover. Sometimes, you wonder where to really begin. But I think today we need to begin with what the President brought over here in his budget. I have had a chance to look at it, to go through it, and I am just astounded. I truly am astounded at the recklessness of the President's budget, at the irresponsibleness of the President's budget.

Here we are at a time when this country is crying out for very serious attention in health care, especially health care for those at the lower income end and the middle class, and what do we get in the President's budget but a tax increase for the middle class in health care. What we get in this budget is a slash to Medicare and to Medicaid.

I want to go through it just very quickly so the American people and our colleagues who might not have had a chance to really get into this budget can see how surprisingly irresponsible this budget is.

The President's budget that he just sent to us slashes Medicare and Medicaid by about $300 billion, at a time when Medicare and Medicaid are in greatest need, to slash those programs by $300 billion over the next 10 years, with legislative and regulatory Medicaid cuts totaling about $50 billion and Medicare cuts totaling $252 billion.

And rather than using these monies to reverse the growing number of uninsured Americans, and, indeed, listen to this startling statistic, since President Bush took office in the last 6 years, we have added an additional 6.8 million uninsured Americans. This is not a time to cut the basic government safety net program for insuring Americans when we are having more. This is why I say it is reckless. This is why I say it is irresponsible. And these monies are being offset, in his mind, by tax cuts to millionaires. It is totally out of sync.

The Medicare cuts include premium increases for millions of beneficiaries totaling $10 million over the next 10 years. And at the same time the budget slashes Medicare funding, it protects special interests. Here is how: It leaves untouched massive overpayments by Medicare to HMOs under the GOP 2003 Medicare Modernization Act. And many of the Federal Medicaid cuts will simply increase State costs or lead to further restrictions in Medicaid benefits. Thus, instead of assisting State efforts to reduce the number of uninsured, the Bush budget will impede those efforts.

But in the area of health care, and I mentioned at the outset that there would be in here this hidden tax increase for the middle class. Here is where we find it. Under the President's budget, employee health benefits would, for the first time, be treated as income and would be subject to income and payroll taxes, just like wages. This is new, for the first time.

Listen carefully. At the same time, the President would create a tax deduction for health insurance of $15,000 for families and $7,500 for individuals. This proposal would fail to reduce the number of uninsured, and it would also mean a tax increase for millions of middle-class families who have employer-sponsored health insurance worth more than $15,000. You have to really look at the fine print.

And also, because the new deduction would reduce taxable income, people's future Social Security benefits would be reduced as well; and, as many health experts have pointed out, the President's proposal would undermine employer-provided health insurance and would push people into the individual health insurance market, a market where insurers are able to refuse coverage to workers based on their health.

As Karen Davis, who is head of the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, pointed out about the President's proposal, it is not solving the uninsured problem and it is not solving the cost problem, so it is not really advancing what we need to have happen.

Here at the most basic need, where government and people need the help, soaring high health care costs, this budget not only fails but, to add insult to injury, adds a tax increase to the middle class in the process.

On the issue of China and our lending, we are now in debt to China well over $350 billion. Now just to show you why this debt in the hands of foreign governments is such a threat to our national security, just this example. China is now engaged with Iran in building a, supposedly building, a gas pipeline from China to Iran. The United States, in its efforts to tighten certain screws, economic and political, on Iran, in addition to the saber rattling we are doing, has begun to ask China if they would desist from that relationship. To this point, China has stonewalled; and in large measure it is because we don't have the leverage. If you owe me $360 billion, that weakens my position.

The other area, in terms of our national security, is the situation in Iran as we are dealing with it, because that is in the news now. There are all kinds of questions and issues now of whether or not we are going to attack Iran, which is why we have got to hurry up and get our resolution passed and make sure that the President understands what article I, section 8 of our Constitution gives the Congress the extreme role, the exclusive role in determining the funding and the declaration of war in that regard.

But the whole reason why this whole funding operation puts us in a weakening position from our lending and our debt with our foreign countries is this: Iran has to depend upon a tremendous amount of lending from other countries to support them. It puts our Treasury Department, our Secretary of Treasury, our Secretary of State, and I plan to ask Ms. Condoleezza Rice tomorrow, we will have an opportunity to meet with her, this specific question. The fact that we need our partners, who we are working with, to stop lending to Iran, if we tighten that financial economic screw, that is how you avoid this unfortunate military clash that might be pending.

But the point I wanted to make is, as long as we are so overly dependent and have this indebtedness in the hands of the foreign governments, we lose the leverage we need to secure our Nation and to secure a better peace in the world.