Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2016--Conference Report--Continued

Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, a budget is about building for the future. A budget is about what it takes for our families, our businesses, and our economy to grow and prosper.

The basics are pretty simple: Our kids need access to a good, affordable education. Our workers need good wages and good benefits. Our businesses and our workers need transit--roads and bridges that are safe enough, strong enough, and fast enough to get us to work and keep goods and services moving. Our workers need good jobs here in America, jobs built on 21st-century innovation and technology. And everyone needs to know that we are in this together, that we won't kick people to the ground, that we will help those who need it most, including seniors, children, and families struggling to make ends meet. That is how we build a strong future.

The Republicans have a different vision of how to build a future. The Republican budget plan will make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful while leaving our kids, our college students, our seniors, our workers, and our families to fall further and further behind.

The people of Massachusetts didn't send me here to do what I can to help the richest of the rich; they sent me here to work for them. So I want to talk about what this Republican budget will mean to the people of our State.

Assuming it is applied proportionately, the Republican budget can cut mandatory transportation funding by 40 percent over the next decade. That will be significantly fewer dollars to repair and improve our highways and to help keep our buses and trains moving in Massachusetts. So if you already think we have a crumbling infrastructure, if you are already worried about old buses and whether the T can struggle through another winter, remember that the Republicans want to slash the support for transportation by 40 percent. With these cuts, our crumbling infrastructure will crumble even faster.

These cuts will also cost jobs. Economists estimate Select Some Optionsthat this Republican budget could mean 56,000 fewer jobs in Massachusetts alone.

This budget also takes aim at our kids. Over the next decade, it could eliminate Head Start services for 400,000 children across this country, cutting the program by more than $4 billion. Little kids are under attack, and so are big kids. The Republican budget could also make college more expensive for the 131,000 Massachusetts students who receive Pell grants. And cutting the student loan interest rate? Forget it. The Republican budget keeps sucking billions of dollars in profits off student loans.

The Republican budget puts Massachusetts residents' health at risk, especially the health of our seniors. Today, the Affordable Care Act saves seniors billions of dollars in prescription drugs. The days when seniors had to choose between filling a prescription and paying the rent were over, but under the Republican budget, almost 80,000 seniors in Massachusetts could each pay an average of $920 more per year for prescription drugs.

It gets worse. About 900,000 seniors in Massachusetts could lose free preventive Medicare health services and about 26,000 Massachusetts nursing home residents who rely on Medicaid could face cuts to their care and an uncertain future.

What about medical research and the technologies of the future, the kind of work we are proud to do in Massachusetts? For over 10 years, Congress has decimated medical research funding, reducing the buying power of the National Institutes of Health by nearly 25 percent and choking off support for projects that could lead to the next major breakthrough against cancer, heart disease, ALS, diabetes, or autism.

With people living longer and longer and more and more families desperate for a breakthrough on Alzheimer's, what is the Republican budget solution? Cut the NIH budget. Cut medical research. In fact, compared with the President's budget, the Republican budget could mean 1,400 fewer NIH grants a year.

The Republican budget also cuts $600 billion from income security programs, such as nutrition assistance, potentially jeopardizing food stamps for thousands of Massachusetts families who depend on this program to put food on the table. And just to turn the knife a little deeper for families in Massachusetts, the Republican budget could cut funding for heating assistance--funding that helps 183,000 Massachusetts families stay warm in the winter.

We know whom this budget would hurt--millions of middle-class families in Massachusetts and all over this country who are busting their tails to try to make ends meet. It will hurt people who work hard and play by the rules but who are seeing opportunity slip away. Why? Why inflict so much damage on hard-working American people, on students and seniors, on kids and construction workers? Why cut back the support for researchers trying to cure Alzheimer's or college kids trying to get an education? Why? One answer. Once again, the Republicans want to give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans--and they expect everyone else to pay for it. The Republicans have planned $269 billion in tax cuts that could go to just a few thousand of the richest families. That is not just irresponsible, it is just plain wrong.

A budget is about values. The Republicans' values are on display here. This budget is about making sure that a tilted playing field tilts even further, and everyone else gets left further and further behind. Those aren't American values. We believe and we have always believed in opportunity. We believe that everyone should have a fighting chance to build a better life for themselves and their children.

Mr. President, we weren't sent here just to help the rich get richer. It is time for the Senate to stand up for the values that build a strong middle class, and we can start by voting down this terrible Republican budget.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

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