Date: 2015-04-14
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself the balance of my time. First of all. the Republican budget doesnt balance. You cant claim the revenues from the Affordable Care Act at the same time you claim to repeal the Affordable Care Act. You cant claim balance and then 2 days later bring to the floor of the House a bill that provides tax breaks to American estates over $10 million that is not accounted for in the budget that you claim balanced. So it doesnt balance. It actually does increase the tax burden on working families. How? Again. it gets rid of the increase in the child tax credit. it gets rid of the bumpup in the earned income tax credit. it eliminates the Affordable Care Act tax credits. and it eliminates the higher education deduction that helps families afford to send their kids to college. So. in fact. it is increasing the tax burden on working families. Who is it not increasing the tax burden on? Folks at the very. very top. The chairman of the committee talks about economic growth. We need economic growth. History has taught us that economic growth comes when you have a country where the hard work of Americans and increased worker productivity is translated into higher pay and benefits so they can go out and spend money on goods and services. and the economy and everybody can move forward together. What we have got in this budget is the same oldsame old. This is trickledown economics all over again. This is based on the theory that has been disproven in the real world. that you grow the economy by cutting tax rates for millionaires. We tried that in the early 2000s. What happened? Surprise. surprise. The incomes of folks at the very top went up. Incomes of everybody else. flat. What else went up? Deficits went up. The chairman says the Republican budget is a budget for all Americans. Two days from today they are going to bring to the floor a bill that gets rid of the estate tax for estates over $10 million. 0.15 percent. about 5.500 American families. As I said earlier. you can put more people on a cruise ship. That is who the Republican budget looks after. Now. look. The Democratic budget. it takes the opposite approach. It actually provides tax relief for working families. Yes. we do close some tax breaks for special interests to help reduce our longterm deficit. We also call for increasing the minimum wage for millions of Americans who are working hard every day. yet at the end of the year. the amount they earn still puts them below the Federal poverty level. That is not right. We also call for equal pay for equal work. Today is Equal Pay Day. Today represents the number of days since the end of last year. the number of days more that women have to work to achieve the same pay as men in the workplace. That is not right. and the Democratic budget addresses that issue. We also say it is not right that corporations should be able to cut their employee pay or cut their workforce and still get a tax deduction for CEO and executive bonuses over $1 million. Right? Pay your CEOs whatever bonus you want. pay your executives whatever bonus you want. but for goodness sake. why should they get a tax deduction for those bonuses if they are not increasing the pay of their own workers? That is not right. That is what the Democratic budget says: we should get rid of that inequity and actually use the Tax Code not to incentivize corporate jets. but actually to incentivize greater pay for more workers. And this motion to instruct also says. for goodness sake. lets do what the Senate agreed to do. Lets do what the Senate agreed to do. Lets call for an earned paid sick leave provision so that families dont have to say that. in order to take care of a sick loved one at home. they have to forgo the paycheck that allows them to pay their rent and the mortgage and put food on the table. And yes. we do not believe that you should turn Medicare into a voucher plan. We have put forward proposals for reform to move toward a system that rewards value over volume. By the way. Mr. Speaker. despite passing on the risks of higher health care costs to seniors through that plan. there is not a shred of evidence that that plan in this particular budget will actually do anything in the end to help Medicare other than to shift that burden onto seniors. So the Republican budget is the wrong way to go for the country. It is a budget based on a failed ideology that somehow we are going to grow our economy through trickledown economics. topdown. trickledown. That failed our economy. Lets have an economy based on broadly shared prosperity. Lets reject the Republican budget. accept the motion to instruct. and ultimately adopt the Democratic alternative. I yield back the balance of my time.