Disastrous Priorities of 2012 Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we have heard from two Members on each side of the aisle who, without respect of course to any partisan differences, raised their voices in sadness about the loss of two of our brave Americans in the defense of freedom. I join their sentiments.

Let me say this, Mr. Speaker. Those two Americans whose lives we have now lost showed extraordinary courage, extraordinary honesty in their willingness to serve. We in this body will now be called upon to show such courage and honesty as we address the extraordinary fiscal crisis that confronts us.

Today, President Obama is speaking on a plan to confront our Nation's unsustainable deficits. I believe it will stand in stark contrast to the budget that is going to be offered by Mr. Ryan, a budget of disastrous priorities, in my opinion, that concentrates its plan on middle and working class Americans in terms of its cuts, while creating yet another windfall for the wealthiest in our country, at a time when income inequality is at a height we haven't seen since the 1920s.

[Time: 10:20]

The Republican budget ends Medicare as we know it, transforming a system of guaranteed health care into a system that provides seniors with less coverage and greater expenses year after year after year. It dismantles Medicaid, putting seniors' nursing home care at very substantial risk, and, in fact, with an inability to pay, and cutting off care for disabled and poor Americans.

These entitlements must be addressed, but we must address them in a way that both keeps them sustainable and makes them available for generations to come. Somehow, however--after undermining the social compact of Medicare, after cutting care for the most vulnerable, after sending more than 30 million Americans back to the ranks of the uninsured--the Republican budget finds trillions of dollars to give as tax cuts to the wealthiest among us.

Republicans say we are too broke to afford the promise of Medicare, but we are flush enough to spend trillions in tax cuts for those of us who are the best off. In fact, the Republican budget spends so much on corporate subsidies and tax breaks for the wealthy and loses so many savings by repealing the cost controls in the Affordable Care Act that it fails to balance the budget for 10 years or even 20 years.

We have been down this so-called ``Path to Prosperity'' before. It leads to skyrocketing deficits because the supply-side dogma that lower taxes mean higher revenues has proven false over the last three decades. Read the facts. If Republican tax dogma made sense, then our debt would not have increased 200 percent under Ronald Reagan or 115 percent under the second President Bush, but it did. In fact, we've seen Republican promises of prosperity proven wrong time and time again over the 30 years that I have served here in Congress.

In 2007, now-Majority Leader Cantor said that the Bush tax cuts ``have spurred spectacular economic growth.'' That was in 2007. Let me remind all the Members of this body, it was in December of 2007 that we fell into the Great Recession, the deepest recession we've had since Herbert Hoover. The growth was spectacular only for the top 1 percent, but for the rest of America, the Bush economy produced what The Wall Street Journal called ``the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.'' That's what The Wall Street Journal said of the Bush economic program, which CANTOR said would be a job creator.

Throughout the Bush years, middle class incomes stayed stagnant and deficits soared. What did Republicans say about a budget that actually helped create unprecedented prosperity, the 1993 Clinton budget? Here's what now-Speaker Boehner said: ``How does this create any real new jobs? Who does this spending stimulate except maybe the liberal faculty at Harvard or Berkeley?'' Of course, contrary to the Speaker's assertion, the Clinton years saw the biggest production of jobs since I have been serving in Congress of 22.7 million new jobs--in the private sector, almost 21 million jobs as opposed to the private sector loss of jobs under President Bush, about 7,000 loss of jobs per month, versus 216,000 new jobs every month on average under Bill Clinton.

Those words represent the same flawed priorities we see in this new Republican budget: tax breaks for the wealthy, a failure to invest in the future, and a heavier burden on working families.

Our country deserves better, Mr. Speaker. Let's reform our entitlement programs with a scalpel, not an axe. Let's look for savings in every part of the budget, defense included. Let's close tax loopholes, but let's also use the Tax Code to reduce the deficit and ensure that all of us, even the most privileged, pay their fair share.

Republicans have taken us down this primrose path before, Mr. Speaker. It has demonstrably led to higher debt, stagnation for working Americans, and, most recently, an economic implosion. We must not choose that dead end again.

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