Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010 -- (House of Representatives - April 02, 2009)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

The CHAIR. The gentleman from Florida is recognized for 20 minutes.

Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. I'd like to yield myself 1 minute.

First and foremost, I want to thank the CBC for putting together a budget. It's a difficult task. We know how much work it takes. So we thank them for their efforts. I want to thank them for proposing a substitute budget that really highlights the dramatic differences between the two sides--the priority differences.

If you loved the tax increases and the spending binge and the soaring deficits and the unprecedented debt that the underlying budget brings you, you will fall in love with this budget as well. This is the Democratic budget on steroids--even more spending, even more tax increases, and even more deficits.

As economic conditions continue to deteriorate for 2009, this budget immediately increases taxes for small businesses and for individuals that are set to expire in 2011.

Just like the Democrat's budget, this substitute increases taxes by $1.5 trillion, with a T--make sure we don't get confused here--over the next 10 years. Just like the Democrat's budget, this substitute budget increases spending by $18.3 trillion, with a T, over just the next 5 years. And just like the Democrat's budget, this substitution also increases the national debt to $17 trillion by 2014. Again, unprecedented levels of spending of taxes.

I urge a defeat of this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. I'd like to yield myself 30 seconds. I just want to mention that the relationship the gentleman mentioned with Germany and France--how ironic that those two countries are now lecturing the United States because the United States is spending too much. I never thought I'd live to see that happen.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Chairwoman, I would like to yield myself 1 minute.

Again, I just want to emphasize that we keep hearing criticism of the previous administration for spending too much. And yet this bill makes that spending look like child's play. It makes that debt look like child's play. It makes that deficit look like child's play. And so you cannot on one side, like this bill does, criticize a previous administration for spending too much, for putting us in too much debt, and then do much more of the same, much more to an unprecedented level like this country has never seen, never seen such large tax increases, never seen such large debt, has never seen such large deficits as this bill would put on the American people. Again, facts are stubborn things.

With that, I reserve.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Chairwoman, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for his hard work. I want to just throw some facts out there. This budget spends too much, it taxes too much and it borrows way too much.

The debt held by the public under this budget will double in 5 1/2 years--double in 5 1/2 years. It triples in a little over 10 years. The kind of red ink that this budget proposes for our children and our grandchildren is more under this presidency than under the presidencies between George Washington and George W. Bush combined.

Again, it increases taxes on all the American people. On January 1, 2011, the income tax rates go up. That is a tax increase. On January 1, 2011, as Mr. Ryan said, the capital gains rates go up. And as he repeated, that is also a tax increase. On January 1, 2011, the dividends tax rate goes up. That is a huge tax increase. On January 1, 2010, the AMT will go up to 26 million Americans who are now not paying it. This imposes a national energy tax, a new tax, a tax increase when you turn on the lights, when you pump your gas, if you use gas to cook, if you use it for industry, on all energy consumption in this country. That is what we are facing. This puts our country on the road to insolvency.

So I commend the gentleman from Virginia and his colleagues for putting together this amendment. But this is not where this country needs to go. Let's not forget who pays the bills, our children and our grandchildren. Let's not do this to them. Let's leave them a brighter future, a stronger America.

For those reasons, because this does not do that, because this burdens them like never before, I respectfully request a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source