Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Before I start my formal presentation, let me say the gentleman from Arizona is correct. We do need to take responsibility on both sides of the aisle. Very frankly, I will tell my friend we had an opportunity to take responsibility when the Bowles-Simpson Commission voted. There was a vote in the Senate. It was divided somewhat, but mostly they voted for it in the Senate. We had one of our people from the House vote for it, a Democrat. None of your representatives voted for Bowles-Simpson, I guess, because it wasn't perfect. That was a missed opportunity--it was a doggone shame--because that would have made 14 votes, and we would have had that on the floor in the Senate and in the House. I think this is a missed opportunity because I don't think this is a real document.

Now, frankly, I also think that we had a deal. We had a deal as to what the discretionary number was going to be, or as we call it in the jargon of the House, the 302(a) allocation, which the gentleman as a member of the Appropriations Committee knows about. We had a higher number and you had a lower number, and we made a deal in between. We haven't kept that deal. We haven't kept that deal because you couldn't get the votes in your committee, in the Budget Committee, for that deal.

So here we are, Madam Speaker. The chairman of the Budget Committee has spoken of a choice between two futures. He is correct in framing it this way. The budget he proposes would end Medicare's guarantee, cut taxes for the wealthiest, and place our economic recovery at risk.

Robert Greenstein, head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, described the Republican budget this way, and I quote:

It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times.

Now, that is not a budget on which we proceed where you have a Senate that is chaired by the Democratic Party, majority leader, and a Democratic President. You're not going to get consensus on that kind of a budget.

So this is essentially a statement of purpose and vision by one party, not a document that anybody thinks is going to pass. However, that is a future we simply cannot afford.

In fact, the Republican proposal is not a realistic budget at all, I would suggest to you. Nobody believes in its premises that we, as a Nation, are suddenly going to decide to savage our domestic programs and leave the most vulnerable out in the cold. That's not America. That's not the values that we share as a country.

This disastrous budget ends the Medicare guarantee, increasing costs for seniors. It cuts Medicaid by a third. That's the most vulnerable in America, the poor in America.

My faith doesn't teach me that's the kind of policy I am going to support. I don't think anybody's faith teaches that. We want to take care of those who need the most help.

It will jeopardize access to affordable health and nursing home care for seniors, the disabled, and low-income families who depend upon it.

Furthermore, it repeals the critical patient protection and cost containment policies of the Affordable Care Act. That will cost us dollars.

Their budget slashes funding for programs that help the vulnerable, enable our children to afford college, and provide health coverage to those with long-term disabilities; and it puts millions of jobs and our economic recovery at risk as a result of drastic spending cuts.

At the same time, the budget extends the Bush tax cuts, including $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, and cuts an additional $4.6 trillion in taxes on top of that. In fact, you can get tax cuts up to $10 trillion with the Bush extension and the reduction from 35 to 25.

And, oh, yes, we're going to eliminate preference items. We won't tell you what those preference items are. We don't know when we'll eliminate them, but we're going to eliminate them.

I happen to agree we need to look at preference items. I agree with Mr. Ryan on that proposition. I'm just not very confident that, given what happened in Bowles-Simpson, that anybody has the courage to do so.

It does all that without saying how it will be paid for; but presumably, as I said, by eliminating the deductions that middle class families rely on to send their kids to college and afford their homes.

Let me say this: I have said in the past and I will say it again today, we must have a big, bold, balanced deal. That will affect entitlements, it will affect revenues, and it will affect expenditures.

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Mr. HOYER. I will tell my friend of my deep disappointment, because I think the chairman of the Budget Committee certainly is one of the individuals in America who could be a part of the solution but is not being part of the solution, is proposing something that is clearly unacceptable to this side of the aisle, to the President. We need to come together and come to an agreement.

Democrats have proposed a different future: one where we invest in a strong
economy and ask everyone to contribute their fair share; a future where the Medicare guarantee is preserved and seniors' health security is protected; a future where students who work hard, take responsibility for themselves, and get accepted to college won't have to worry about whether they can afford to go; a future where we help businesses create millions of jobs here at home that won't be shipped overseas; a future, ladies and gentlemen, where the deficit is reduced in a balanced way--that's the key, we all know it's the key--with everyone pitching in.

Any of the Democratic alternatives, in my opinion, will be better than this Republican budget. And I don't agree with everything in each one of those budgets, clearly.

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Mr. HOYER. We have a choice today, tonight, tomorrow of two futures, and that choice couldn't be clearer.

Ladies and gentlemen of this House, I urge you to stand together in defeating this budget and passing one that will bring our middle class and working families not a grim future but a bright future.

And in conclusion, let me say this:

Whatever happens to this budget, any of these budgets on the floor, is not going to be the final word. It perhaps will not even be the beginning word. We need to solve this issue, and we need to do it not by pointing fingers at one another, not by pretending that it's going to be simple, not by pretending that we're going to be able to make happy all of our supporters. We won't be. The hole we've dug is way too deep. The decisions we will make are way too tough. And the only way we will make them is to join hands and look the American public in the eye and say, We have to have a balanced deal. We have to do all that is necessary to put this Nation on a fiscally sustainable path for the chairman's children, for the ranking member's children, for my children, my grandchildren, and, yes, my two great-grandchildren.

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