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Concurrent Resolution of the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

Date: March 28, 2012
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Senior Citizens Entitlements and the Safety Net Health Insurance Higher Education Government Budget and Spending

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Chair, this Republican budget is a political document. It's the House Republicans' platform for November.

The GOP platform puts our economy and millions of jobs at risk. They gut protections for seniors and families in need. They abandon local communities at a time when Washington should be a partner for opportunity and economic growth. The Republican platform cuts student loans and grants for higher education by $166 billion. The Republican budget forces seniors to pay out of pocket an average of $600 additional every year for medications they need because the GOP reopens and throws seniors back into the Medicare part D doughnut hole.

This budget drives Americans into an enormous GOP pothole, gutting Federal transportation investments by 25 percent, abandoning communities and businesses that need improved infrastructure to remain competitive.

This Republican budget cuts regular folks and then protects and showers benefits on the wealthiest and most privileged millionaires and billionaires.

The Republican platform should really be called Millionaires' Manifesto, because it will borrow billions of dollars from Communist China to guarantee every millionaire a tax cut worth nearly $400,000, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And all that is added to our national debt.

The Republican budget gives oil companies $21 billion in taxpayer subsidies, while they are gouging Americans who are working hard when they fill up their tank at the gas pump and the oil companies continue to make record profits.

The GOP budget sounds extreme. Well, it's only because it reflects the core values of the Tea Party House Republicans: protect the rich, cut off the poor, and walk away from the middle class.

Democrats have a budget that prioritizes deficit reduction and invests in the middle class. Democrats strengthen our American competitiveness by investing in education, basic research, modern infrastructure and green energy: investments that will create jobs. I urge support for the Democratic proposal.

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