Date: 2012-09-13
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Madam Chair. lets just flash back to a year ago when we were working on the Budget Control Act. and its. I think. worth reminding everybody what the Speaker of the House. Mr. BOEHNER. said at that time: I got 98 percent of what I wanted. Im pretty happy. Thats what the Speaker of the House said about the Budget Control Act. We now find ourselves here trying to find a way to prevent these acrosstheboard meatax cuts from taking place in the defense budget and the nondefense budget. There is agreement that that would be a stupid way to deal with our deficit. so theres no dispute there. The issue is: What do we do to replace the sequester. to achieve deficit reduction. but do it in a reasonable and credible way? Thats where the rub is. What Democrats have said is we need to do it in the way that bipartisan groups have proposed that we do it. through a combination of additional cuts in a targeted way. not in a meatax. acrosstheboard way. But. yes. we also have to ask the very wealthiest Americans to contribute more to reducing the deficit. because the math is pretty simple. If you dont ask very wealthy people to contribute one more penny to reducing the deficit. then you have to hit everybody else much harder. You have to hit seniors on Medicare harder. You have to reduce dramatically our investment in our kids education. You have to cut investments in infrastructure. our roads and bridges. Those are the consequences of not taking a balanced approach. So we say. when it comes to the sequester. we should avoid all the terrible things our colleagues have said and which we agree with. Lets take a balanced approach to do doing it. You know what? The President submitted a plan to do just that. more than a year ago. Its not that he doesnt have a plan. its our Republican colleagues dont like the plan. Why? Because he says we dont need to provide these big taxpayer giveaways to the Big Oil companies anymore. We dont need to cut dramatically into things like Medicaid and Medicare when we should be asking seniors to pay a little bit more. Lets ask them to pay what they were paying when President Clinton was President. Thats the last time we balanced our budget. The question is: How do we do it? The President submitted a proposal. As I said earlier. I took a proposal yesterday to the Rules Committee that would have done this in a balanced approach. Our colleagues say they want an open. democratic process. We havent had a vote on that. Instead. were going to have a vote on something that actually. even if it passes the House and the Senate and is signed by the President. doesnt do anything to eliminate the sequester. doesnt do a thing. It just says that the President has to come up with a plan. But they tell him what it has to do. They say it cannot be balanced. It cannot include any revenue. It has to be across the board in cuts. Now lets talk a minute about taxes. The President has called upon this Congress to immediately enact tax relief to 98 percent of the American people. lets do it now before they expire at the end of this year. and our Republican colleagues say. No. no. Nobody gets tax relief unless very wealthy people get a bonus tax break. because everybody on the Presidents proposal gets tax relief on the first $250.000 of their income. Our Republican colleagues say. No. unless people like Mitt Romney get an extra tax break. nobody gets tax relief. You know what? The Presidents proposal provides tax relief to 97 percent of all passthrough businesses. The Republican colleagues say. No. unless youre going to give businesses like Bain Capital a bonus tax break. we cant ask them to contribute one more penny to reducing the deficit. Lets talk about jobs. It was really interesting to hear our Republican colleagues talk today about the fact that. if you allow these budget cuts to take place. it will have devastating impacts on the jobs in this country. You know what? A year ago this month. the President submitted a proposal to this Congress. a jobs initiative. It called for investing more in our infrastructure. in our roads and in our bridges. to help put more persons back to work. We have 14 percent unemployment in the construction industry. So here are our Republican colleagues saying. Well. we cant allow any of these cuts to take place because people who were building tanks will lose their jobs. And we agree. spending that money on defense has consequences. But how is it that spending money on roads and bridges and infrastructure doesnt also put people back to work? Thats what the President proposed a year ago. Not a single vote on the Presidents jobs bill. There were 37 votes to repeal ObamaCare. but not one vote on the Presidents jobs bill. So. Madam Speaker. whether its acting on the jobs bill. which has been sitting here for more than a year. or acting on the Presidents proposal to immediately extend tax relief to 97 percent of the American people. or whether its taking a responsible balanced approach to replacing the sequester. lets do what bipartisan groups have recommended and take that balanced way to build our economy and reduce our deficit. I yield back the balance of my time.