Date: 2015-03-25
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Madam Chair. I want to start by joining the chairman of the committee in thanking all Members for a vigorous debate. and especially to thank the staff of the Budget Committee. As for the Republican budget itself. nothing has changed since we began the debate yesterday to make it any better. It is the wrong direction for America. Madam Chair. when we gather here today. there is good news and bad news and some very bad news. The good news is the economy has been picking up. More Americans are going back to work. Not everything is rosy. We have a long way to go. but the trends are in the right direction. The bad news is that Americans are working harder than ever. but a lot of them feel like they are running in place. and many are falling behind. This is not a new problem. It is a chronic problem. We have seen worker productivity in this country go up and up and up over the last several decades. but that additional hard work and productivity has not translated into higher wages for most working Americans. They have seen flat paychecks. If it is not going into higher wages for most workers. where is it going? It has gone disproportionately to the folks at the very. very top. They have been doing just great. but everybody else has been falling behind. Now. we had some good news after the election. The Speaker of this House and the Republican leader said they understood this issue. In fact. they both wrote that they were looking forward to helping struggling middle class Americans and were looking forward to dealing with wage stagnation. The very bad news for the country. Madam Chair. is. when you look at this Republican budget. it turns out they were just kidding because this Republican budget is very hard on hardworking Americans and on those looking to find a job. It says one message: work even harder. take home even less. It does absolutely nothing to increase the take home pay of workers or to increase their wages. It will increase the tax burden on millions of working families. Amazingly. it eliminates the college tax deduction. It increases the costs for working Americans by getting rid of the bump up in the child tax credit. It gets rid of the rate bump up in the "make work pay" earned income tax credit. For students. it makes college much more expensive. This Republican budget actually increases the costs of going to college. It increases the costs of student loans even as we hit over $1 trillion in student debt. It eliminates $90 billion worth of Pell grants. For seniors. they will immediately see higher prescription drug costs by reopening the doughnut hole. They will immediately see higher copays for preventative care. and seniors in nursing homes will see much worse care as they cut $900 billion from Medicaid. Now. while this budget squeezes working families and students and seniors. it paves the way for the RomneyRyan tax cut planto cut tax rates for the folks at the very topon the theory that somehow that is going to trickle down and boost the economy. It is a theory that crashed in the real world under President Bush when incomes for folks at the top went up but when everybody elses fell behind. While it makes life harder on working Americans right now. it also disinvests in the future of America. It dramatically cuts our investment in early education and K12. It dramatically cuts our investment in innovation and science and research. which has helped power our economy. It assumes that the transportation trust fund will begin to run dry in a month and a half and that construction jobs will come short in a few months. The one thing it doesnt cut is any of the special interest tax breaks for the purpose of reducing the deficitnot onenot for corporate jets. In fact. today. the Ways and Means Committee worked to provide a big tax break for 5.500 American families. and an average of 75 percent of them have $20 million estates. They didnt want to touch that for the purpose of reducing the deficit. so they dont cut a single tax break. Despite all of that disinvestment in America. here is the thing: the budget never balances. it doesnt come close. Look at the USA Today editorial. They are not a partisan paper. They said it is pure fantasy to claim that this balances. it doesnt balance. but it does disinvest in America. We can do a lot better. We can do a lot better than a budget that continues to rig the rules for the folks who have already made it and one that makes life harder for everybody else. Lets reject this Republican budget. and lets get started back to work for the American people. I yield back the balance of my time.