Cut, Cap, and Balance

Floor Speech

Now to perhaps a less happy subject, the so-called Cut, Cap, and Balance Plan.

Let me say we are going to be debating this in the House and in the Senate over the next week. Theater trumps serious solutions as the House Republicans plan a vote on their unrealistic Cut, Cap, and Balance proposal. It truly is theater trumping serious solutions when you put something on the floor that you know may not pass your own body in the House, certainly won't pass the Senate, and would be vetoed by the President, at a time when our Nation's credit is teetering on the edge. Let's stop playing games and solve this problem once and for all.

We on this side of the aisle call the plan Cut, Cap, and Kill Medicare for one good reason. Under this reckless plan, seniors could see their Medicare cuts go up by $2,500 beyond Ryan cuts, Social Security benefits could be slashed by $3,000 a year. It is the Ryan plan on steroids.

The Ryan plan has been seriously rejected in a bipartisan vote in this body. The American people dislike it intensely. And yet now we have done something that is even more extreme. If you thought it wasn't possible to be more extreme, look at the Cut, Cap, and Kill Medicare plan that some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are offering.

There are three things wrong with their plan. First, we have a serious debt problem. If the credit of the United States goes into default, we will pay the price for a decade. It will make our deficit worse, it will raise costs to the Federal Government because interest rates on Federal bonds will go up and stay up for a very long time. It will raise the cost to average homeowners because both mortgages and credit card rates will go up. It could very well send our economy back into a recession.

Let's roll up our sleeves, let's compromise, and let's meet in the middle and do something that will end our deficit problem, reduce our debt, and make sure we are able to pay the debts we have already incurred.

But, no, theater is the day. Ideologues do not see the world as it is. I read some of the statements by some of the freshman colleagues from the Republican side in the House. They just do not get it. Their view is that they are so right that all they have to do is put this on the floor and all of America and every other Senator and Congressman will go along. Ideologues do not see the world as it is, and that is why I have never been too fond of them, whether they have been on the far right or on the far left. Yet that is who is governing here.

If you read those statements in the papers this morning, that all they have to do is put this out there and everyone will see the righteousness of their cause, I have a word for them: Slashing Medicare and slashing Social Security is not the right thing to do, and I will never see things that way. Saying that millionaires should continue to get tax breaks while we are slashing Social Security and killing Medicare is something I will never go along with, nor will a single colleague on my side of the aisle.

It is not going to pass. It is theater and politics at its worst. It is ideologues governing--or trying to govern. They are not able to govern because they do not see the grays in the world; it is only black or white.

The plan has three strikes against it. No. 1, it will not solve the problem, and it is political theater. No. 2, it will kill Medicare as we know it. That is why we call it cut, cap, and kill Medicare. And, No. 3, it will not do a thing to help the middle class, while giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and corporate America. That is not the plan America wants. That is not the plan America needs. That is not the plan that will pass.

I understand many of us have to bow to an extreme base in the party. That happens around here a lot--but not when we are 2 weeks away from defaulting on our debt, not when we are 2 weeks away from potentially walking off a cliff and incurring injuries from which we will never recuperate.

I call on my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stop the theater, to stop throwing red meat to the far right base, and join us in solving the problems of America.

I yield the floor.

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