Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We are looking forward to the debate on the budget over the next couple of days. Chairman Ryan mentioned that the critics of this budget call it draconian. I would just point out to the gentleman that the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee just referred to the budget that is before this House as draconian.

Now, the chairman and I do agree on one thing, which is that these budgets that we bring before this Congress reflect our different visions of America. They reflect the choices that we make. They show what we care about, and they show what we care less about. They are fundamentally different blueprints for the future of this country.

The President has presented a budget that will boost job growth, sharpen Americans' competitive edge, and expand opportunity in the United States of America. Now, we have before us the congressional Republican budget, and of all of the Republican budgets that we have seen on the floor of this House since 2010, this one is the worst for America.

Many will argue, Mr. Chairman, that we should not be taking this budget seriously because, after all, we have a short-term bipartisan agreement and that the Senate would never pass this budget, but I urge the country to take it seriously because what it tells America is what our Republican colleagues would do to the country if they had the power to do it.

If they could impose their will, this is the budget that they would impose, so we need to look hard at the consequences. What does it mean for America? What choices does the budget before us make for our country?

At its core, it rigs the rules of the game for very wealthy and very powerful special interests at the expense of everybody else in the country and at the expense of other priorities in the country.

For example, if you are a multimillionaire, under this budget, you will have your top tax rate cut by one-third, all the way from 39 percent, where it is today, down to 25 percent. That is an average tax break for millionaires of $200,000. That is great for people who are well off.

What does this budget do to the rest of this country? It guts vital investments in our children's future, it squeezes the middle class, and it violates important commitments to our seniors.

Now, let's step back because the chairman mentioned the economic benefits of this budget. The reality is that our economic competitors around the world will eat our lunch if we pass this Republican budget. It provides for perverse tax incentives that ship American jobs overseas while shortchanging investments in jobs right here at home.

As we will see over the next couple of days, it guts important investments that historically have helped power our economy, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells us that, in the next couple of years, this is going to slow down economic growth, that it is going to slow down job growth. One estimate puts the job loss at 3 million jobs.

At a time when we need to be modernizing our national infrastructure--the backbone of our economy--this budget slashes the transportation budget by $52 billion in this year alone, stopping new projects, throwing construction workers off the job.

It will condemn the United States to a potholed road of economic decline, and it refuses to include one thing that the Congressional Budget Office says will help boost our economy right now, which is to pass bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform.

Mr. Chairman, as this budget provides these windfall tax breaks for the folks at the very top, let's see what it does to others in our country.

We all depend on our kids getting a good education. It is good for families. It is good for the country. The saddest part about this budget is that it casts a dark shadow over the American Dream, and it violates the fundamental promise that every hardworking American should have a fair shot at success.

At a time when we should be investing more in education in the United States, all told, if you look at early education--K-12--and college education, this budget cuts it by $370 billion below current services. That has devastating impacts on everything from Head Start to Early Head Start to K-12 to college.

Let me just mention one of the things it does to college student loans. It starts charging college students' interest while they are still in college, before they have gotten out and gotten a job. That saves $40 billion in this budget--actually, a little more than that--in the same budget that provides huge tax breaks to the wealthiest in this country.

So much for wanting to address the lack of upward mobility in America; rung by rung, this budget knocks out the steps of that ladder of opportunity. If you are to the manor born, you are going to be just fine under this budget, but for everybody else, tough luck and worse.

Let's look at seniors as our next example. Those on Medicare will immediately pay more if they have high prescription drug costs, right? The chairman mentioned that the Democratic budget cut Medicare and turned it into something else.

The reality is that the savings that were achieved in Medicare by ending some of the overpayments in the Democratic budget were recycled to strengthen key parts of Medicare, including to close what has been called the prescription drug doughnut hole.

The Republican budget here reopens the prescription drug doughnut hole. If you are a senior with high prescription drug costs, it is $1,200 more per year, on average, as a result of this budget.

Seniors who have been able to get preventative health services without having to put down copayments will no longer get those screenings, and now, they will be at risk of not getting the treatment and care when they need it.

On top of all of that, it ends the Medicare guarantee by creating a voucher program. For seniors who decide to stay in the traditional Medicare program, they will see their premiums hiked by 50 percent when that goes into effect. They can stay, but they will have to pay big time to stay. That is not the Medicare guarantee.

Middle class families--I mentioned that this budget cuts the top tax rate for millionaires from 39 percent to 25 percent. That is a 30 percent tax cut, but it says it is going to do that in a deficit-neutral manner, so it is simple math, Mr. Chairman.

If you are going to do that, you are going to squeeze middle class taxpayers. In fact, this budget pretends that Chairman Camp and the exercise he went through in the Ways and Means Committee--the fact-based exercise--never happened because what Chairman Camp found was that you couldn't bring that top rate down to 25 percent without squeezing middle-income taxpayers.

That is why he had a top rate of 35 percent in his plan, and yet this says let's go to a 25 percent top rate. That means $2,000 more in taxes for a family with kids to finance the tax breaks for the folks at the very top.

This budget reserves, perhaps, its cruelest blow for those who are seeking to climb out of poverty into the middle class, to have an opportunity to participate in the American Dream.

In the last election, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, said he really didn't care about the 47 percent. This Republican budget sets out to prove that statement. If you look at this budget, it is an assault on Americans who are struggling to climb out of the middle class.

We had a big debate in this Congress about food nutrition programs. The Republican plan called for $40 billion in cuts. It ended up being $8 billion. In this budget, it is $137 billion.

Millions of more kids will go hungry as a result of cutting that safety net, and that is why faith-based groups that have looked at these Republican budgets over the last 3 years have said that they don't meet the tests of a society that cares for the least of these.

I want to close by asking a question because our Republican colleagues say the goal has to be 10 years to hit this political target. It is interesting because the Republican budget 3 years ago didn't balance until around 2040, but now, we have this sort of political target that they have to hit.

If it is so important to hit that, why do they ask everything of our kids and of our seniors and of struggling families and of nothing from very powerful special interests?

This budget does not close one special interest tax break for the purpose of reducing the deficit, not one--not a special interest tax break for hedge fund owners, not a special tax break for big oil companies. We have a race to hit their political timetable here, but we are not going to ask those special interest groups to pay one dime to help reduce the deficit.

Here is the really strange thing: after all is said and done, this Republican budget does not balance in 10 years if, at the same time, the Republicans claim to be repealing the Affordable Care Act. It just doesn't add up. The math isn't there.

What this Republican budget does is this: it gets rid of all of the benefits in the Affordable Care Act. It gets rid of the tax credits that help Americans purchase affordable care. It gets rid of the provision that says you can stay on your parents' insurance policy until you are 26.

It gets rid of the provisions that say you cannot be denied coverage because you have a preexisting condition. It gets rid of all of the benefits.

Guess what it keeps? It keeps all of the tax revenue from the Affordable Care Act.

You don't have to take my word for it. This is The Heritage Foundation. This isn't some liberal group.

Here is what they say:

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of this budget is that it keeps the tax increases associated with ObamaCare.

It is what they said about last year's budget. This year is exactly the same. This budget also keeps all of the savings from Medicare. It doesn't recycle any of those savings to strengthen it as the Democratic budget does, but it keeps them.

If you actually look at this chart, you will see that, in 2024, when the Republican budget claims to balance, without the revenues and the savings from Medicare, it doesn't come close to balancing.

So our Republican colleagues have got to choose. Either you claim to have a balanced budget and you recognize that you support all of the revenues and savings in the Affordable Care Act or not, but you can't have it both ways. The sad thing is, after hitting everybody but the very wealthy in this budget, they still can't achieve what they claim is their goal.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just point out that I think it is useful to look at this through the perspective of history, because the last time we had balanced budgets in this country was at the end of the Clinton administration, and shortly after that, when President Bush came into office, we saw back-to-back tax cuts.

The theory at that time was if you dropped the top tax rate on high-income individuals, it will trickle down to everybody else and power-charge the economy. The only problem is that didn't work. It did not work at all. The trickle-down theory of economics did not work. We didn't get that boost of economic growth. What we did get was huge, huge deficits as far as the eye could see.

And so the problem with this budget is that it is a U-turn back to that philosophy--the idea that we are going to provide these tax cuts and it will create a big boost of economic activity. But reality has shown that it doesn't work that way. We should be building our economy from the middle out and from the bottom up. The top-down approach doesn't work.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), a distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee.

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I think, for the people who may be watching this, and for our colleagues, the question is, how do we achieve the priorities that we hope we all want to achieve, which is jobs growing faster, the economy growing faster, and deal with the long term deficit and debt in a responsible manner?

The glaring problem with the congressional Republican budget is that they don't call for any shared responsibility. They don't ask the most powerful special interests to contribute one dime by closing a single tax break, not one. And because they shelter the most powerful and the most wealthy, everybody else has to take a hit in their budget.

As a result, the entire country takes a hit because those are investments in our kids' education, in basic science and research that are important to help power our entire economy.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), a terrific new member of the Budget Committee.

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just point out that we hear a lot about the global aggregate numbers, but the distribution of those cuts is important.

If you look at the portion of the budget that we have, historically, used to invest in education, to invest in innovation, to invest in places like the National Institutes of Health, that portion of the budget is cut by 24 percent relative to the bipartisan Ryan-Murray agreement. And it is cut from there.

So the part of the budget that does a lot of damage that we are focused on in terms of future investments, really does mean that we are going to be less competitive as a country. It will dull our competitive edge. And I will tell you, our economic competitors will be cheering.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, I am glad the chairman of the committee recognized that there are about $1 trillion worth of tax expenditures. What does that mean?

That means tax preferences in the Tax Code. $1 trillion a year, he said. That is right.

And yet, the Republican budget doesn't close one penny of those tax expenditures to help reduce our deficit, not one. It says we have to reserve all those tax loophole closures to cut the top rate for millionaires by one-third, from 39 percent to 25 percent. That is what they want to do with all the tax expenditures.

Because they refuse to get rid of one of those tax expenditures for the purposes of deficit reduction, their budget does hit all these students.

What is honest is to tell students who are going to college right now that this budget is going to charge them over $40 billion more in interest because now they are going to have to pay interest while they are still in college, even though it doesn't close one of those tax expenditures for very wealthy people to help meet the targets and reduce the deficit, not one.

So, as we look at the priorities in this budget, we have to ask ourselves, why is it that this Republican budget doesn't call for any shared responsibility?

Why is it that it does provide tax breaks to folks at the very top at the expense of the rest of the country?

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I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, let me just point out to the gentleman that the President's budget has two things in it. First of all, it actually calls for a fund to increase defense spending for readiness in fiscal year 2015, which is not included in the Republican budget.

Number two, in the outyears, the President also grows our defense spending; and as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense have testified, those investments will make sure that the United States is second to none.

In fact, the next 10 countries after that, together, spend much less on defense than the United States, and we will continue to have that additional robust defense spending to make sure that we are strong, but we also need to make sure that our economy is strong to support that kind of budget, and if you have got the important investments that have helped make the economy grow over time, you will not get that.

Now, I will just respond to the gentleman's comments on revenue. Anytime the economy is growing, if you have a certain tax rate, you are going to get more absolute dollars of revenue in, but I mentioned that the last time we had actually had a balanced budget in this country was in the year 1998 through 2001.

If you look at the amount of revenue that was coming in during that period as a percent of the economy, you will find that revenue was 19.2 percent in 1998, 19.2 percent in 1999, 19.9 percent in 2000, and so on, way ahead of the amount of revenue as a percentage of the economy that this Republican budget calls for in year 10, even though, between now and then, we will have millions more Americans on Medicare and Social Security.

So, again, they just can't bring themselves to close one of these special interest tax breaks, not one for the purpose of reducing the deficit and contributing to our economic well-being.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, I would just note that it is this Republican budget here in the House of Representatives that divides America. And when we point out that this is a budget that protects tax breaks for the very wealthy at the expense of everybody else, our colleagues say, oh, no, no, that is dividing America. But what we are explaining is the Republican budget, and that is, unfortunately, what it does.

The chairman originally said that only in Washington is an increase really a cut. I would just point out that in the President's defense budget, it goes from $521 billion in fiscal year 2015 to $646 billion 10 years from now--hardly a cut, in fact, quite an expansion going forward.

I am now pleased to yield 1 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro), a distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee who has focused a lot on defense.

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Mr. Chairman, the gentleman referred to tough decisions. Well, it is true that the House Republican budget is really tough on our kids' education. It cuts deeply into early education, Early Head Start, and Head Start. It cuts very deeply into K-12. That includes Title I and special education for kids with disabilities. As we have talked about, it charges college students higher interest rates.

And it is true that the Republican budget is tough on seniors on Medicare, because if they have high prescription drug costs, the Republican budget reopens the doughnut hole so they will face $1,200 more per year on prescription drugs.

So it is tough on kids' education, and it is tough on seniors.

I will tell you who it is not tough on. It is not tough on powerful special interests, people who are spending millions of dollars right now on TV advertising trying to influence people's votes. It is not tough on them at all. As I said, this budget calls for cutting the top tax rate by, fully, 30 percent.

Now, during the Budget Committee debate, the Democrats said, okay, the only way you can do this mathematically, if you are cutting the top rate by 30 percent, from 39 percent to 25 percent, is if you do it in a deficit neutral way, then you are going to be increasing taxes on middle class taxpayers and families to finance those tax cuts. And so we said to our Republican colleagues, if that is not what you intend to do, let's at least pass an amendment telling the Ways and Means Committee that one of our principles is at least maintaining the current progressivity of the Tax Code so we don't increase taxes on middle class families or lower-income families to finance the tax breaks for the folks at the top, called the Protect the American Middle Class from a Tax Increase amendment.

Republicans said no to that.

They have got all sorts of other instructions to the Ways and Means Committee in their budget, like reducing the top rate by a third for millionaires; but when it came to instructing the Ways and Means Committee not to increase the tax burden on middle class Americans, they said no to that.

So, yes, this Republican budget is tough on the middle class. It is tough on seniors, and it is tough on our kid's education; but for folks at the very top, they just don't ask for any shared sacrifice. We are just pointing that out. It is a fact in their budget.

The chairman talked about all those tax expenditures, $1 trillion a year worth. Not one of those tax expenditures are closed for the purpose of reducing the deficit.

Now, I yield 2 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), a Member of Congress who has worked hard throughout his entire career to try and make sure that our country grows and that every American has opportunity, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We all believe in a growing economy, and we all believe in greater prosperity. The issue is how do we make sure we have that prosperity as a country.

We have two very important strains in the American character. One strain is the entrepreneurial strain, the self-reliance strain, and that has helped generate great prosperity in this country.

It has helped unleash huge amounts of potential; yet we have also learned as a country that there are some things we can do better by working together than if we are just hundreds of millions of people who are separately operating on their own, with things like investing in our national infrastructure, with things like investing in a world-class college system, with things like working and investing in medical research, so that we are the world's leader in those areas.

Those are what have made us a world economic power and that have allowed us to support our military.

The problem with the Republican budget is that it ignores that part of the American character. We keep hearing from our colleagues about all of those tax expenditures that are out there, but I just have to go back, Mr. Chairman, to point out that they don't close one of those tax loopholes for the purpose of helping to reduce the deficit.

Because they make that decision--because they decide to say: we are not going to touch those very powerful special interests and the very wealthy--their

budget mathematically has to come after other people in the country, after the middle class, after seniors, after our kids' education, after our infrastructure. That is what this is all about.

Our budget and the President's budget dramatically reduce the deficit. They reduce the debt as a function of a share of the economy in the outyears going down. The Republican budget didn't balance until 2040 just a few years ago.

So the issue is whether you are going to be driven by the ideological target or whether your fundamental focus will be jobs and opportunity. That is what ours does.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) control the balance of the time.

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