Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE. Thank you so much for that courtesy.

Mr. Chair, it is really my privilege to discuss the social safety net programs that are at the heart of the Congressional Black Caucus budget.

The CBC acknowledges the efforts on the part of the majority to address debt and deficits, but we cannot do it on the backs of the poor.

Much has been made of jobs being the answer. We agree with that, but there are the disabled, elderly, and children who comprise the poor who cannot and do not work.

The Republican budget proposes $759 billion in cuts to the nondefense discretionary budget below the already damaging sequester levels. That is in addition to the more than $4 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending, a lifeline to benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare.

The CBC budget offers Americans a choice. In stark contrast to the Republican budget, we invest in low-income families and students and provide security so that our impoverished, our infirm, and our elderly and children are treated with dignity and respect. It protects the social safety net.

It rejects the block granting of Medicaid and food stamps and voucherizing Medicare. It restores the TANF emergency contingency fund, rather than the $34 billion OCO slush fund. We do $2.5 billion rather than $34 billion for a slush fund.

It also restores our emergency unemployment insurance for all Americans. Millions of Americans have exhausted these benefits. And it invests in so many other vital programs, such as WIC, LIHEAP, public housing, homeless assistance, Section 8 and rural housing programs, Social Services Block Grant, Child Care and Development Block Grant.

I want to thank the chair and my CBC colleagues for working with me on this very worthy budget. Please vote ``yes'' on this alternative budget.

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Ms. MOORE. Let me thank the ranking member and my colleagues on the other side for the tremendous effort and work that they have put into this budget.

Mr. Chair, of course, I am opposed to the Republican Study Committee budget. This is the committee adopted budget on steroids. The Republican Study Committee, to kind of outdo their Republican counterparts, balances this budget in 6 years instead of 10, and it cuts it by $7.1 trillion in just 6 years.

I can tell you, while I am opposed to this budget, I have to commend the Republican Study Committee for putting it on the table here in a very transparent manner. Rather than raising the defense budget by $9 billion above the President's budget and putting all of those funds into the OCO account, at least they end the sequester and do it in a
transparent, budgetary way. I commend them for that, but I do urge my colleagues to reject this budget.

This budget raises taxes on the middle class. It divests in education for our students. It divests in infrastructure improvements for our roads, for our ports, for our bridges. There is much to be said for balancing a budget, but you not only can't do it on the backs of the poor, the elderly, the infirm, and children, but on the back of the economy.

I am also on the Financial Services Committee, and we have been warned that growing inequality is not only bad for morale in our country, but it will destroy our economy in the long run.

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