Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me start by thanking the chairman of the Budget Committee for the way he's conducted the proceedings in
the committee, and I look forward to a debate on the floor because as the chairman said, we have very deep differences. We do not have a difference on the question of whether or not we should reduce the deficits and the debt. Of course we do. We have a difference over how to do that.
In that regard, Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this Republican plan and in support of the Democratic alternative. The Republican budget on the floor of the House today is simply the sequel to last year's plan--more of the same. It abandons the economic recovery and ends the Medicare guarantee for individuals whose median income is under $21,000 while providing a whopping average tax break of almost $400,000 for people making over $1 million a year. These tax breaks for the very wealthy and the tax breaks for special interests come at the expense of middle-income taxpayers, at the expense of seniors, and at the expense of essential investments to keep America strong.
This Republican plan will weaken economic growth and, according to independent analysts, result in over 2 million jobs lost over the next 2 years. It rewards corporations that ship American jobs overseas while slashing investments in education, in scientific research and infrastructure that help America grow our economy right here at home. In short, it is a path to greater prosperity if you are already wealthy, while leaving seniors, working Americans, and future generations behind.
Mr. Chairman, we gather here at a very important time for our country. As a result of the extraordinary actions taken over the last 4 years and the tenacity of the American people and small businesses, America avoided a second Great Depression, and the economy is slowly recovering. Still, millions of Americans remain out of work through no fault of their own. We must push forward with the recovery, not fall back; and we certainly should not return to the failed economic policies that got America into this economic mess to begin with.
And yet that is exactly what this Republican budget does.
It is a recipe for national stagnation and decline. It retreats from our national goal of out-educating, out-building and out-competing the rest of the world. And it will weaken the economic recovery by slashing investments to important economic growth and expanding those tax breaks that reward corporations that ship American jobs overseas. Even when we have 17 percent unemployment in the construction industry, it cuts critical investments in our transportation systems, including a 46 percent cut in transportation starting next year.
As I mentioned earlier, nonpartisan analysts looked at this and concluded it would lose 2 million jobs over 2 years. So, rather than putting the economy into reverse, we need to move forward. We need to adopt the remainder of the President's jobs plan, a plan that's been sitting here in the House since September.
It's also clear that putting America back to work is the fastest and most effective way to reduce deficits in the short term. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that our weak economy and underemployment is the single major contributing factor to the deficit this year, accounting for over one-third of the projected 2012 deficit. So we need to come up with a credible plan.
The issue, as I said, is not whether but how. Every bipartisan group that has looked at ways to reduce the deficit in a credible way has recommended a balanced approach, meaning a combination of spending cuts and cuts to tax breaks for the wealthy, and the elimination of special interest corporate tax loopholes.
The Democratic alternative provides that balanced approach, while the Republican plan, unfortunately, fails that test. Instead, their plan would again rig the rules in favor of the very wealthy and special interests. That may not be a surprise, since virtually every House Republican has signed a pledge--a pledge--to Grover Norquist saying they will not close a single special interest tax loophole, not eliminate a single oil subsidy for the purpose of deficit reduction, not one penny.
I agree with the gentleman from Wisconsin that we face a real deficit and debt problem. Apparently, the problem is not big enough to ask folks at the very high end of the income scale to contribute one penny toward deficit reduction.
In addition to locking in those parts of the Bush tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the very wealthy, they now have a new round of tax cuts that will provide, on average, a $400,000 tax cut for people making over $1 million a year. That's according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
So, here's the key: because our Republican colleagues refuse to ask millionaires to contribute 1 cent to deficit reduction, they hit everyone and everything else.
Let's take a look at Medicare recipients. They immediately increase costs to seniors for Medicare preventive services and terminate a new service, the wellness programs, that were part of the Affordable Care Act. They immediately reduce support to seniors in the prescription drug plan by reopening the doughnut hole. That decision will cost seniors with high drug costs an average of $10,000 over the next 10 years.
Once again, this Republican budget does not reform Medicare; it deforms it. It proposes to end the Medicare guarantee, shifting rising costs onto seniors and disabled individuals. It gives you the equivalent of a voucher, but if your voucher amount is not sufficient to pay for the rising cost of health care, too bad. Too bad. It simply rations your health care and choice of doctor by income and leaves seniors to the whims of the insurance industry.
Despite claims that market competition is going to bring down those rising costs, the plan creates that artificial cap on the voucher support. Our Republican colleagues say they're using the part D prescription drug plan as a model, but that has no artificial cap. They say it's the same kind of plan offered to Members of Congress under the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, but that has no cap on support from their plans. So, unlike Members of Congress, seniors in Medicare will get vouchers with declining purchasing power relative to rising health care costs.
In fact, if you look at this chart, Mr. Chairman, you will see what the current Medicare plan would provide in terms of the amount of support provided by the plan to the individual on health care. That's the blue line. This is the green line, Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, the plan that Members of Congress are on. As you can see, the amount of the premium support keeps pace with rising health care costs. This red line is the Republican voucher plan that caps the amount an individual can receive and goes steadily downward, giving seniors on Medicare a worse deal than Members of Congress would give to themselves.
Now, Mr. Chairman, this budget also rips apart the safety net for seniors in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, as well as low-income kids and individuals with disabilities who rely on Medicaid. Remember, two-thirds of Medicaid funding goes to seniors in nursing homes and disabled individuals, yet that is one of the biggest areas of the Republican budget cuts. It takes a hatchet to Medicaid, slashing over $800 billion and cutting Medicaid by one-third by the year 2022. This is done under the Orwellian title in their plan of ``repairing'' the social safety net. That's like throwing an anchor to a drowning person.
Mr. Chairman, to govern is to choose, and that's what this debate is all about. The choices in this Republican budget are simply wrong for America. It is not bold to provide tax breaks to millionaires while ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors and sticking them with the bill for rising health care costs. It's not courageous to protect tax giveaways to Big Oil companies and other special interests while slashing investments in our kids' education, scientific research, and critical infrastructure. It is not visionary to reward corporations that ship American jobs overseas while terminating affordable health care for tens of millions of Americans. It is certainly not brave to cut support for seniors in nursing homes, individuals with disabilities, and poor kids. And it is not fair to raise taxes on middle-income Americans financed by another round of tax breaks for the very wealthy. Yet those are the choices made in this Republican budget.
Where is the shared responsibility?
Mr. Chairman, we can and we must do better. Let's reject this budget and adopt the Democratic alternative which provides a balanced approach to accomplishing the goal of reducing our deficits while at the same time strengthening our economy and doing it in a way that calls for shared responsibility.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, that was an interesting colloquy, especially given the fact that the Senate has passed a bipartisan transportation bill; again, a bill that has very broad support that, if we took it up today in the House, we could get it passed right now, and it would be good for the economy and good for the fact that we have 17 percent unemployment in the construction industry.
As I remarked earlier, the Republican budget that we're considering would actually cut transportation funding spending outlays by 46 percent next year. That is not good for the economy, and I hope this body will overturn that.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, a couple of points.
The bipartisan bill that came over from the Senate would provide funding fully paid for, offset for 18 months. So you could avoid the big 46 percent cut next year that's in the Republican budget and make sure folks out there who are looking for jobs in the construction industry could get to work.
Secondly, with respect to Medicare, you have two fundamentally different approaches. The approach we had in the Affordable Care Act was to say we need to modernize the Medicare system by changing incentives. So we reward and incentivize the quality of care, the value of care, not the volume of care which drove up costs.
What we do not do is offload the risk of those rising health care costs onto seniors.
Now the board, the IPAB the gentleman referred to, is specifically prohibited, and I have the language right here, from including any recommendations to ration health care, raise revenue or Medicare beneficiary premiums, whereas the Republican plan expressly works by offloading those risks and those costs onto seniors. A very different approach.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. The gentleman is absolutely right about the need to look out for future generations and the issue of the deficit. What I always find staggering is the refusal to close one single loophole--just one penny--for the purposes of reducing the deficit so that we can address that issue of the deficits in future generations.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz), who has been a great member of the Budget Committee.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, the difference between the President's plan and the Republican budget, the difference between the Democratic alternative and the Republican budget, is that we take a balanced approach. I think everybody understands that spending cuts have to be part of the solution. This Congress acted last summer, cut $1 trillion out of the budget. But the President and the Democratic alternative also understand what bipartisan groups all understand, which is that the only credible way to reduce our deficits is through a combination of spending cuts and cutting some of the tax breaks to special interests and asking millionaires to pay more.
I keep hearing our Republican colleagues come to the floor lamenting the large deficits and debt which we all agree we need to get under control and then refusing to cut one special interest loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit, asking a millionaire to contribute one more penny for the purpose of reducing the deficit.
Now with respect to the issue of Medicare, the reason it's not premium support is, it doesn't provide constant support to the senior on Medicare. Over time, seniors' purchasing power of this voucher will become less and less while the costs go up and up.
I would point out, again, that Members of Congress have for themselves a plan, this green line, where the purchasing power of their health plan stays constant, even as health prices increase. But this red line here is what they would do to seniors on Medicare.
Now I've heard it said a couple of times now that the President allows Medicare to go bankrupt. Mr. Chairman, here is a chart that the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, presented in the Budget Committee. The black line here is the trajectory that they claim for their plan in terms of cost containment. The blue line is what they acknowledge the President calls for.
As you can see, the tracks are very different. This red line is projected cost increase by the Congressional Budget Office. The difference between the approaches is that the Republican plan puts the risk of being wrong here on the senior, whereas the plan we put forward says we need to change the incentive structures, to change the incentives in a way so that providers provide more cost-efficient care rather than putting that risk on the senior. That is the fundamental difference. And AARP, the largest organization of seniors in the country, agrees with what I have just said. They say in their letter:
The premium support method described in the proposal, unlike private plan options that currently exist in Medicare, would likely ``price out'' traditional Medicare as a viable option, thus rendering the choice of traditional Medicare as a false promise.
They go on to say that the purchasing power of this voucher will not keep pace with health care costs. Let's not put that risk on seniors.
And with that, I yield 2 minutes to the gen tle lady from Florida (Ms. Castor) who has been just tenacious in making sure that we deal with these issues in a fair and balanced way.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, the gen tle lady who just spoke is correct that under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan that Members of Congress are on that there is a 72 percent for the premium. That's exactly what that steady green line is. And as health care costs go up, the gen tle lady will continue through the congressional plan to get a steady amount of support under the Federal health plan that Members of Congress have. Under the Republican budget plan, in fact, that support drops steadily and deeply, which is why it is not premium support.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon, a distinguished member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Blumenauer.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I think we should engage in tax reform, but I don't think we need to wait for tax reform to get rid of some of the subsidies to the Big Oil companies or to get rid of the subsidies for corporate jets. We can do that now as part of a balanced approach.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the newest member of the Budget Committee--we're pleased to have her on the committee--the gen tle lady from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield the gentlewoman another 15 seconds.
These programs will help prepare our future workers for their careers in the next-generation technologies.
There's a stark contrast between the Republicans' budget and what my Democratic colleagues and I are proposing. We're at a fork in the road, and I urge my colleagues to avoid the path to poverty by rejecting the Republican budget and coming together to support the balanced approach.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Chairman, the President's budget and the Democratic alternative also get rid of the sequester, but we replace that with $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction through a balanced way because we think it's more important to protect that defense spending than it is to protect a lot of the special interest loopholes.
Here's the statement from General Martin Dempsey, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And he says, with respect to what this budget will do:
It's a force that's prepared to secure global access and respond to global contingencies. It's a military that can win any conflict anywhere.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not talking about the Republican budget, talking about the President's budget.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velázquez), the distinguished ranking member of the Small Business Committee.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, there is no doubt that we have to reduce the deficit and debt for the good of all of our children and grandchildren. The debate today is about how we do it and whether we do it in a balanced way. I would point out the Congressional Budget Office has told us that $2 trillion of the debt over the last 10 years is attributed to the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
We keep hearing today about the need, which we all agree, to reduce the deficit, but we still have not heard a single one of our Republican colleagues say that we should reduce one tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit so we can deal with this in a balanced manner.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, the distinguished ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Markey.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I would point out again, just in response to my friend Mr. Flake, that this is the chart that was used by the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, showing the President's plan on Medicare and the Republican plan on Medicare, both of which have cost containment over the next coming decades. The difference is how you achieve that cost difference.
The difference is that the Republican plan offloads all the risks of what they project to be increasing health care costs on to seniors because, unlike the plan that Members of Congress have, which, as I explained, provides a constant 42 percent premium support share, the Republican plan has the contribution for Medicare rapidly declining relative to the costs of health care, which puts all that risk on seniors.
With that, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Democratic whip, my friend from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The debate we're having here is not whether to reduce the deficit and the debt. We have to do that. The issue is the choices we make in the process.
The President does have a budget; it does take a balanced approach. My colleagues say: Watch out. Well, watch out for the bipartisan Commissions, all of whom have recommended taking an approach that is balanced.
Yes, we have to deal with the spending part. We've cut a trillion dollars. There are additional cuts in these budgets, but we should also end the special-interest tax breaks, and we should ask folks at the very top to take a little bit more responsibility.
Here are the choices that are made in the Republican budget. Here is a very simple one. This is the continuation of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent, $261 billion. Meanwhile, they cut $810 billion from Medicaid. Again, two-thirds of Medicaid spending goes to seniors and individuals with disabilities.
That wasn't enough. They apparently are doubling down on tax breaks that benefit the folks at the very top. This is the amount of tax break millionaires will get from continuing the Bush tax cuts. They've added over $260,000 in additional average tax breaks for people making over a million dollars. They say they're going to make that up somehow. I'll tell you how they're going to make it up: by increasing the tax burden on middle-income Americans.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished assistant Democratic leader, who has been looking out for average working Americans his entire career, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I appreciate the comments of the member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Woodall from Georgia, but I don't think the choice the Republicans make in this budget is the right thing to do. I don't think the American people are going to think it's the right thing to do. I don't think the choice to provide another round of tax cuts for people making more than $1 million a year while ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors who have median income under $23,000 a year is the right choice; and I don't think it's the courageous choice.
Now, I heard Mr. Woodall say that it doesn't change one thing, not one thing in Medicare. That's just not true. This immediately reopens the prescription drug doughnut hole. The Republican plan takes some of the savings we achieved under the Affordable Care Act for Medicare, but instead of using it like we did to help strengthen the prescription drug plan, it reopens it. It does it immediately. That is an additional $10,000 over 10 years for seniors who have high prescription drug costs.
Do you know what else it does immediately? It immediately ends the preventive care services we provided under Medicare. Because we want to encourage seniors to get that early care, so we eliminated the copays. Now they've got to pay that too, immediately.
Now, the gentleman said the President doesn't have a plan on Medicare. I keep having to remind my colleagues that this chart was presented by the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan. And the black line is the Republican plan, and the blue line is the President's plan. The red line is projected health care costs. And the difference between the two plans is that the Republican plan puts all the risk of those rising health care costs on the seniors. And you can see that when you look at this chart. This is current Medicare. It provides constant support for the health care services received by seniors. That's the blue line.
Here's the green line. This is what Members of Congress and Federal employees get. They get a real premium support. As health care prices go up, their premium support stays constant. This red line, that's what happens when you cap the support for seniors, as the Republican plan did. That red line going straight down is the same as that red line going straight up.
The difference between the approaches is we say, Let's modernize Medicare to put greater focus and incentives on the value of care, not so much on the volume of care, which drives up cost. The Republican plan puts all those risks of rising health care costs on seniors.
With that, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Democratic leader, someone who has been fighting for jobs, for fairness, and for protecting the Medicare guarantee, Ms. Pelosi.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that the chairman of the Budget Committee has mentioned a number of times this PolitiFact. I want to read from what PolitiFact said with respect to this. He said that it's true that the term ``terminate'' Medicare, which some had used, was an overstatement. No doubt about it. Just like, apparently, a couple of years ago they've said--what I've heard from a lot of my colleagues that the Affordable Care Act was a ``government takeover of health care.'' I've heard that a lot from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That was the big PolitiFact so-called ``lie of the year'' a couple of years ago. So let's just be clear.
But this is the important part. It says: If Democrats had just slightly tweaked their statements, they would be accurate. They go on to point out that, for example, when people said the plan last year would privatize Medicare, that was true. And that President Obama was also more precise with his words saying that the Medicare proposal ``would voucherize the program and you potentially have senior citizens paying 10,000 or more.'' They didn't say that was false.
What we have said, what I have said very carefully all along is that it ends the Medicare guarantee. And I firmly believe it ends the Medicare guarantee for this reason, for this reason right here: this is the current Medicare plan support for seniors in terms of the percent that they have to pay, that blue line, steady support. Green line demonstrates steady support that Members of Congress get from the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. Red line is what happens when you put seniors into the private health care market but you don't allow their premium support to rise with the projected rise in health care costs. Red line, down. I think that does end the Medicare guarantee.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I keep hearing my Republican colleagues say that their plan will provide seniors with affordable premiums for their health care services. I just keep asking myself why it is that their plan gives seniors on Medicare a much worse deal and a lot less support than the plan Members of Congress have under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. That is a real premium support plan. That is a plan where the premium support keeps pace with rising health care costs.
So if you're talking about how to deal with Medicare, it seems to me that you should take the approach that we have taken, that the President has taken, where you modernize the system, you change the incentives to put focus on the value of care, on the quality of care rather than the quantity of care.
We're already starting up accountable care organizations. We're already starting up different methods of delivering care and different payment systems. That's a very different approach than putting the burden on seniors and putting the risk on seniors.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gen tle lady who represents the Nation's capital so well, Eleanor Holmes Norton.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, my colleague, the gentleman from Maryland, put up a chart with the red showing the rising costs of Medicare and said the President has no plan. Well, I wish the gentleman had looked at the chart of the chairman of the Budget Committee. We've seen it a couple of times today. It shows the black line being the House Republican trajectory, the blue line being the President's plan to contain costs. The difference again being that the Republican proposal puts all the risks of rising health care costs onto seniors, whereas the President's plan talks about changing the delivery system in a way to encourage the value of care, focus on the value of care, rather than the volume of care.
I would only point out that we keep hearing about the IPAB. The reality is that anything they would propose, number one, by law cannot ration care. But number two is subject to review and a vote by Members of Congress, the people in this body.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I would just urge my friend Mr. Price to again look at the chart presented by the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Ryan, which makes it clear that we have different paths, different approaches, with respect to containing costs. Yet, at the end of the day, the trajectories are the same.
I'll say again that if Republicans think the notion of the premium support plan--the voucher plan, whatever you want to call it--which doesn't rise with health care costs, is such a good deal for seniors, why are they giving themselves a different deal in the health care plan for Members of Congress?
I now yield 1 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield myself the remaining time.
The debate we've had this afternoon is not whether we should reduce the deficit, whether we should reduce the debt, but how we do it, the choices that we make in reaching that goal.
We support what has been described as a balanced approach, the same approach taken by every bipartisan group that has looked at this challenge. That approach says, yes, we need to make cuts. But we should also cut special interest tax loopholes for the purpose of reducing the deficit. We should also ask folks at the very high end of the income ladder to go back to the same tax rates they were paying during the Clinton administration.
Our colleagues reject that balanced approach. I have not heard one of our Republican colleagues say that they're prepared to take one penny from closing a tax loophole, one penny from getting rid of an oil subsidy for the purpose of deficit reduction. When you do that, when you say we're not going to ask the wealthiest to share a greater responsibility, you have to take your budget cuts out on everyone and everything else. That's why they slashed the transportation funding next year by 46 percent, kicking the economy when it's down. That's why they end the Medicare guarantee for seniors. That's why they reopen the prescription-drug doughnut hole. That's why their budget cuts Medicaid by a third, by the year 2022, in the name of repairing the social safety net. That's not repairing the social safety net. That's blowing a hole in protections for the most vulnerable Americans.
That is not a choice the American people want to make. The American people would choose a balanced approach. They would not choose another round of tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of seniors, at the expense of middle-income Americans, at the expense of important investments. They would reject that approach.
I urge my colleagues to reject that approach and adopt the balanced Democratic alternative.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the chairman.
I want to close where the gen tle lady began, which is on the economy and on jobs.
As this chart shows, when President Obama was sworn in, we were losing over 800,000 jobs a month. But because of actions taken by the President and the Congress and because of the tenacity of the American people and small businesses, we were able to stop the free fall and begin to climb out of that hole.
We are now at 24 consecutive months of positive private sector job growth. There were close to 4 million jobs created in that period. We need to sustain that recovery, not put the brakes on it.
The Republican proposal unfortunately puts the brakes on it. I'll give you just one example. Next year they would cut our investment in transportation in their budget by 46 percent when we have about 17 percent unemployment in the construction industry. That's putting the brakes on.
We hear from our colleagues that the only way to deal with the budget deficits is to cut, cut, cut. We propose a balanced approach. We do ask that we close some of those tax loopholes. We do ask that folks making a million dollars a year go back to paying the rates that they were in the Clinton administration.
Let's see what happened in the economy back then. What this shows is during the Clinton years, 20.8 million jobs were created. After President Bush took office, they lowered the tax rates. There was a net of 653,000 jobs lost. By the way, in 2001, just before the tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy, that was the last time we balanced the budget. We balanced the budget, and we had great job growth. That's why we propose a balanced approach.
The issue here is not whether we reduce the deficit, not whether we reduce the debt. It's how. Yes, we have to make spending cuts. I hear colleagues on the Republican side coming down here and saying you can't do this all on the revenue side. We get that. But you know what? If you do it without asking the folks at the very top to pay a penny, by closing loopholes and getting rid of tax breaks, what does it mean? It means everybody else pays the consequences.
Those decisions to support the wealthy and not ask for shared responsibility come at the expense of our seniors and you end the Medicare guarantee and slash Medicaid by $800 billion. It comes at the expense of middle-income taxpayers, because not only are you locking in the Bush tax cuts for the folks at the top, you're dropping the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. That's another over-$200,000 tax break to people making a million dollars a year.
You say you're going to pay for it. You know how it's going to happen? It's going to happen by increasing taxes on middle-income Americans. That's how you're going to finance it. I've not seen a proposal. Show me a piece of paper that says it won't be taken out on middle-income taxpayers.
Mr. Chairman, there's a better approach than the Republican approach. It's the balanced approach. It's the approach supported by bipartisan groups, and it's the approach that we will propose in our amendment.
I again thank the gen tle lady and thank the Chairman.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. And I'm opposed for a simple reason. This document filed by Mr. Mulvaney is not the President's budget. And it's being portrayed as a very misleading--it was a very misleading presentation of the President's budget.
This is the President's budget.
If you look at all the other budgets presented today, you'll find numbers and you'll find policy statements that describe the policies behind the budget. The thing Mr. Mulvaney filed--no policy. In fact, he just said the President's policy raises gas taxes, I believe? That's just a false statement.
The other issue is why you have a number for revenue in the President's budget. You mentioned that there was a revenue number. The President never pretended otherwise. The President's budget takes a balanced approach to deficit reduction. It makes cuts, and it raises revenue.
Let's talk about how he raises revenue. He raises revenue, in part, by getting rid of subsidies on the big oil companies. We think at a time of record profits, we don't need to have taxpayer subsidies for big oil companies. Our Republican colleagues, almost every one of them, have signed this pledge to Grover Norquist saying they won't get rid of one oil subsidy or one tax loophole for the purpose of deficit reduction. Well, the President thinks we need a balanced approach to deficit reduction.
Now, you wouldn't know from reading Mr. Mulvaney's document, what he puts in place as the President's budget, that that's how the President raises revenue. You wouldn't know from Mr. Mulvaney's document that the President also asks the very top 2 percent of taxpayers to go back to paying the same top rate they were during the Clinton administration, a time when the economy was booming, because the President thinks we need to take a balanced approach, again, a combination of revenues and spending cuts, because the President believes, and I agree, that if you do it the way the Republicans do it, without asking the folks at the very top to share some responsibility, it means you deal with the budget at the expense of everybody else, at the expense of seniors, at the expense of middle-income Americans, and at the expense of important investments in our economy like investments in transportation.
Their budget cuts transportation next year by 46 percent at a time when we have 17 percent unemployment in the construction industry. Their budget puts the brakes on the budding economic growth.
So, Mr. Chairman, let's end this charade. The gentleman said he wanted to get beyond politics. This is politics at its absolute worst, presenting something as the President's budget without the policy detail, without the explanation to the American people about what's in the President's budget. As a result, he presents a very misleading version of what the President has asked us to do.
In fact, the Democratic alternative that we will propose later adopts the general framework of the President's budget. We don't adopt every single proposal he makes in here, but we take the general framework. The difference is we have those policy statements, and we make it clear that we want to get rid of the subsidies for the big oil companies at a time they're making record profits. We make it clear that we want millionaires, people making a million dollars a year, to go back to paying what they were during the Clinton administration. We make that clear in our alternative.
So let's not play this political charade. We're going to have the Democratic alternative that, as I said, takes the framework of the President's proposal. Our Republican colleagues will have an opportunity to vote against that. But this is not the President's budget, and let's not pretend it is.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I guess we're going to spend the next I don't know how many minutes talking about something that's not the President's budget. It's an attempt to be misleading about what the President's budget does because it leaves out all the content, leaves out the substance.
You look at the Republican budget, they've got a lot of sections on policy. You look at the other alternatives that are being presented, they have alternatives and policy statements. This is a bunch of numbers without the explanation.
Now, do the Democrats, for example, think that the President invested enough in his budget in LIHEAP, the low-income energy program for low-income individuals. We actually have a majority in our caucus that thinks the President should have put a little more into that. But that's only the kind of detail you would know if you went through the President's budget, not this thing that Mr. Mulvaney claims is the President's budget, which it's just not. So just to be clear: This is not the President's budget, and therefore it obviously is a political gimmick.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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