Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Chairman, I rise today, first, to thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for the job he has done and the staff of that committee.

As the chairman stated, this budget actually deals with the issues that are important to our country. The President has put together and has put forward a budget, but as the chairman stated, it is a budget that assumes that the law is not the law. He assumes that you can just throw money on top of the law and that it is going to stay there by some miracle of nature when the reality is that we know, as the chairman stated, that that is fake, because if we were to mark up to those numbers, the sequester would kick in and just eliminate those funds outright.

This budget deals with reality. This budget deals with the fact that, if we don't deal with and if we don't reform what is causing, frankly, the debt, the deficits--which is mandatory spending--it will consume 100 percent of the budget in a generation.

This budget also demands from Congress tax reform, tax reform that we all know would increase the economy, that would create more jobs, that would make it easier for Americans to open businesses--small, medium, and large--to create jobs here in this country.

I want to thank the chairman because it also recognizes the fact that, no, al Qaeda is not on the run; that, no, we have not defeated terrorism; and that the world is not as safe as any of us would like it to be. This recognizes that we have to give our military what it needs to do its job.

Yes, the President adds money to the base, but I repeat--and the chairman mentioned this--that that is fake because, unless you change the law, which this budget cannot do, that money automatically goes away.

The one thing that we can do that is in the hands of this bill, of this budget that is in front of us, is to do precisely what the chairman has put forward.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not--it is responsible. It helps create jobs, and it will grow the economy. It will stop this out-of-control spending; and, yes, it will deal with making sure that our military has the tools that it needs to fight the enemies of freedom and the enemies of America. It does it in a realistic fashion, not in this dream world that the President's budget seems to be living in.

I encourage my colleagues to support this effort from our chairman of the Budget Committee. Again, I thank the chairman for his effort.

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