Date: 2013-03-19
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Lets start with taxes. What the Republican budget does is provide a windfall tax break for folks at the very top. People listening can do the math. Youre dropping the top tax rate from 39 percent to 25 percent right off the bat. Thats about a cut of onethird in the top rate for millionaires. Thats a huge loss of revenue. How do they make up that revenue? Well. if youre going to really make sure you dont increase the deficit. math tells you youre going to increase taxes on middleincome people to help pay for those tax breaks. which is exactly why we offered an amendment in committee saying. okay. Ways and Means Committee. when you do tax reform. dont raise taxes on middle income folks. They voted against that. There are lots of other provisions in the Republican budget that provide guidance to other committees. but they didnt want to provide them that guidance. So the point is that they provide tax breaks to the folks at the very top while leaving middleincome folks vulnerable. but on net. they do not close one tax loophole out of those four trillions to reduce the deficit. Do you know how we know that. Mr. Chairman? Because their revenue line is constant with the baseline. So Mr. PRICE is just dead wrong when he says they close tax loopholes to increase revenue for the purpose of reducing the deficit. Its not in there. Its just dead wrong. Now lets get the record straight about what the Republican budget does to different groups that Mr. PRICE referenced: Seniors. Here is what the AARP. the largest organization representing seniors. says about what the Republican plan will do: The chairmans proposal fails to address the high costs of health care and. instead. shifts costs on to seniors and future retirees. Removing the Medicare guarantee of affordable coverage seniors have contributed to through a lifetime of hard work is not the answer. Thats the AARP. The Medicaid cuts. There are $810 billion in cuts. Again. Ill remind people that twothirds of that goes to seniors and people with disabilities. Here is what the nonpartisan. independent Congressional Budget Office said would be the impact of those kinds of cuts: It means. because they blockgrant the program to States with a lot less money. States would need to increase their spending on these programs. make considerable cutbacks in them or both. Cutbacks might involve the reduced eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP thats childrens health the coverage of fewer services. lower payments to providers. or increased cost sharing by beneficiaries. all of which would reduce access to care. So whether its in Medicare or in Medicaid. we violate commitments to seniors in this budget. He talked about kids and education. Their budget would allow in July the doubling of the student loan interest rate from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. making college less affordable. Our budget makes sure there is not that doubling. Also. we had an earlier conversation with Ms. MOORE about the impact of people in poverty. Ill just give you one example: In the category of the budget that helps with the Women. Infants. and Children programthis is the program that helps pregnant women and women with very young children get nutrition assistancethey double the sequester cut. Then they tell us its not going to have any impactnot on that and not on doubling the sequester cut on the National Institutes of Health and the research they do. Somehow. magically. all that will be funded even though you double the sequester cutmore than double itin that category of the budget. So their budget. while providing these windfall tax breaks to the folks at the very top. and their budget. while slowing down economic growth in the economy right now. also means we undermine other important priorities in our country. I would now like to yield 2 minutes to a new. distinguished member of the Budget Committee. the gentleman from California .