Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I rise in opposition to this amendment.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Yesterday we debated the Republican budget plan. Today, we have a plan that's more of the same, except on steroids.
As we debated yesterday, the question is not whether we should reduce the deficit or whether we should reduce the debt. Of course we should. The question is how we do it. And we should do it in a way that doesn't damage the ongoing economic recovery, which this proposal does. We should do it in a way that is balanced, meaning we have shared responsibility. The Democratic alternative that we'll debate shortly has that balance.
We make difficult spending cuts but we also cut a lot of the loopholes and special breaks in the Tax Code because if you don't do any of that to reduce the deficit, it means you've got to reduce the deficit at the expense of everyone and everything else. And that, unfortunately, is what this budget does as well.
It ends the Medicare guarantee for seniors. It slashes Medicaid very deeply, cutting the program by more than a third by the year 2022, where two-thirds of the funding for that program goes to seniors in nursing homes and disabled individuals. It cuts deeply into education funding, both for prekindergarten/preschool as well as college. It cuts deeply into those important investments, including transportation, which we were debating earlier today. In fact, their transportation proposal would cut transportation spending next year by 46 percent, even though we have 17 percent unemployment in the construction industry.
So this budget, like the one yesterday, makes the wrong choices for America. We can reduce our deficits and debt. Let's just do it in a balanced way with shared responsibility.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gen tle lady from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Again, the reason the Republican budget and this budget do things like end the Medicare guarantee, do things like cut deeply into education for our kids' future, do things like cut Medicaid by over $800 billion over 10 years, is because they're not asking the very wealthy to share more responsibility in reducing the deficit. In fact, they double down on tax cuts.
If you see from this chart from the Nonpartisan Tax Policy Institute, simply by locking in the portion of the Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, millionaires, on average--people making over a million dollars a years--will get $129,000. Then you heard talk about how they're going to drop the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. That would give people earning a million dollars over $265,000.
On top of that, they say they're going to do that in a deficit-neutral manner. Well, to do that, you've got to make up $4.6 trillion in revenue loss. They're going to do it by getting rid of all those deductions. One of the biggest ones is the mortgage interest deduction that helps middle-income people.
So the net result of what they're saying is more tax cuts for the folks at the very top financed by increasing the tax burden on middle-income Americans and financed by cutting important investments that help grow our economy.
With that, I yield 1 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, we'll talk more later about the Democratic alternative and how we address the deficit in a serious and credible way without doing it in a manner that provides a windfall tax break to folks at the top at the expense of everybody else.
For now, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey, a member of the Budget Committee, Mr. Pascrell.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, one thing I hope we can all agree on is that we need to protect our children and grandchildren and future generations. The question is not whether we need to do that. Of course we do. The issue is how. I keep hearing my colleagues come forward and passionately talk about that, but they're absolutely unwilling to take the balanced approach that has been recommended by bipartisan groups. Everyone that's looked at this challenge says we've got to take a combination of tough spending cuts, but we also need some revenue from closing tax loopholes and asking folks at the very top to go back to what they were paying during the Clinton administration--by the way, the last time that we had a balanced budget.
And yet, despite all that talk, they don't want us to close one loophole. In fact, almost every Republican in this House has signed this pledge to Grover Norquist saying they won't cut one tax loophole for the purpose of deficit reduction; that they won't ask folks making $1 million to contribute any more to deficit reduction. In fact, they propose to give them another windfall tax cut.
That's the choice they make, and because of that choice, they cut our investment in education for our kids. They cut investments that will strengthen our economy, help build our infrastructure so we can outcompete and outbuild and outeducate the rest of the world. That's what we need to do for the future of our children.
I urge everybody to vote against this amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source