OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 25, 2025
Location: Washington, DC

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Ms. BALINT. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to the Republican budget.

Here is the deal: Republicans have the House, the Senate, and the White House. They could be passing legislation to actually make our lives better, to lower costs on groceries, on prescription drugs. They could be lowering the cost of housing. Instead they are attacking the very programs that working- and middle-class families rely on in this country. It is a betrayal.

All of us were sent here to work on behalf of the people back home. We were sent here to lower costs for people, to alleviate suffering. I know that my colleagues were as well. Therefore, I ask, why are they letting Trump do this? Why?

This Republican budget doesn't do anything to address the costs that working people are facing. They have proposed a budget that gives massive, massive tax cuts to the wealthiest and corporations in this country. How will they pay for it? They will pay for it by making deep cuts to Medicare, to the tune of $880 billion, and deep cuts to SNAP benefits. That is right, taking food away from families who need it.

They will be increasing the deficit. It is long past time for them to stop lecturing us about the debt when they know full well that their math is not mathing. They are adding to the deficit with this program, and they are literally giving the money away to the wealthiest who do not need it.

When I vote on this Republican budget, I will be thinking of all the working families back home in Vermont, people who sent me here to work on their behalf, not against them. I am thinking of families who worry that they won't have Head Start.

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Ms. BALINT. Mr. Chair, I am thinking of the small businesses in Vermont that have reached out to me to say that Trump's proposed tariff war with Canada is going to crush them. I am thinking about the 150,000 Vermonters who are dependent on Medicaid.

I urge my colleagues to reject this unfair budget.

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