The President's Budget

Floor Speech

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Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Porter), my incredible colleague who co-chairs the Special Order within the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I do appreciate her continued leadership in fighting for families all across the country.

One of the things that we need to realize is this is a destructive and irrational budget by the current administration, and we want to wonder why.

This is a reflection--very much so--of the values within this administration. It is also showing that we are going to leave working- class folks and anyone who needs access to food, healthcare, housing, clean air, and relief from flooding behind.

And we wonder: Why did this come about? Well, like folks in my district would say: Let's go back and figure out who is part of the administration.

Right now, under the current Trump administration, a coal lobbyist runs the EPA; a pharmaceutical executive runs Health and Human Services; an oil lobbyist runs the Department of the Interior; another lobbyist runs DOD, the Department of Defense; a Verizon lawyer runs the Federal Communications Commission; a Goldman Sachs executive runs Treasury; a private equity kingpin runs Commerce; a billionaire Amway heiress runs the Department of Education.

So what you have here is a reflection of those values, those folks who are completely disconnected from the American people. These folks are millionaires--some may be even billionaires--who do not understand the day-to-day challenges that our folks are facing.

Madam Speaker, I represent the third poorest congressional district in the 13 District Strong, where we have, in some areas, chronic poverty, but also lack of access to food. We also face that we are frontline communities of what doing nothing looks like on climate change. We also house the worst ZIP Code in the State of Michigan-- 48217.

Madam Speaker, look at the budget itself. Just gloss over it. You are talking about $1.4 trillion in tax giveaways--$1.7 billion in cuts just in the Army Corps of Engineers, where two of my communities right now are literally facing flooding of homes that they need the Army Corps of Engineers to be able to address, from communities in Dearborn Heights and all along the east side of Detroit.

Madam Speaker, we have $920 billion in Medicaid cuts, healthcare to our most vulnerable, many of them, again, family members and those who have to take care of our children.

Madam Speaker, a 26 percent cut to the EPA. We, right now, in the city of Detroit and throughout Wayne County, we don't even meet sulfur dioxide standards, right now, under the Clean Air Act. We suffer every single day. In one of my ZIP Codes, we have three times higher asthma hospitalization among adults.

We need to push back on these cuts that, again, reflect on who is running this administration versus a reflection of the American people and their needs.

It directly eliminates affordable housing programs within HUD. Not only is the food assistance being cut, the $181 billion in food assistance, they are going and proceeding on to create a culture that says that working folks, working-class residents, our most vulnerable, seniors, the vulnerable communities--like our mothers and others who are taking care of their families--have to be left behind while we give cuts to the wealthy and to corporations.

And so it is really critically important the American people wake up and understand who is running our government right now, because, right now, our government is not about people. This budget is a reflection of those values that are going to be people versus profit, and this budget is very clear: Our people are not coming first. And, from a community, again, that is a frontline community that always gets left behind--if it is not around education funding, environmental funding to housing funding to food assistance, we are, again, the frontline communities of what doing nothing looks like.

Madam Speaker, this budget is wrong for our country. It is destructive, and it is something that we need to be able to push back together on in a bipartisan way.

I thank my colleague, again, for this opportunity to express and be a voice for many of my residents back home in 13 District Strong.

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