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

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. First. I want to point out again that our Republican colleagues cannot have it both ways. You cant claim youre going to balance in 10 years and claim that you got rid of all of the ObamaCare provisions. because if you look at this chart. youll see in the year 2023. 10 years from now. they claim a balance of about $7 billion. right there. And yet if you look at this blue section here and the red section. youve got the revenues from the Affordable Care Act. from ObamaCare. and the savings from Medicare that our colleagues campaigned against last fall. but they kept them right in their budget. Without those items. they dont come close to balance. In fact. theyre about $400 billion short. in the 10th year. from balance. We believe youve got to focus on getting the economy moving right now. Thats why we call in our budget for getting rid of and replacing the sequester now. so you achieve the same deficit reduction over a longer. more measured. targeted period of time and dont do damage to the economy. And we reduce the deficit in a steady way so that its way down below the growth in the economy by the 10year window. and we do it in a way that is balanced. meaning we ask for shared responsibility. So we do it through a combination of cuts. but also we do say. for folks at the very high end of the income ladder. we can get rid of some of those tax expenditures. tax expenditures that our Republican colleagues have talked about. but not simply to reduce the rates for highincome individuals. but to help reduce the deficit as part of a balanced approach. Now. if you look at the math on the Republicans tax reform plan. it drops the top rate for folks at the very top from 39 percent all the way to 25 percent. We know thats going to cost about $4 trillion. They say theyre going to make all that money up by taking tax expenditures away just from highincome people. The math doesnt work that way. Youre going to have to increase taxes on middleincome taxpayers. or youre not going to hit your deficit target. one or the other. So in the Budget Committee. we Democrats said. look. lets say to the Ways and Means Committee. when you do tax reform. dont raise taxes on middleincome taxpayers. And we had an amendmentIve got it right hereProtect the American Middle Class from Tax Increase. We said. if youre going to do tax reform. at least make the commitment that youre not going to increase taxes on middleincome families in order to finance tax breaks for the folks at the very top. Every one of our Republican colleagues on the committee voted "no" on that amendment. The committees got lots of policy instructions on other stuff. but a policy request statement about not increasing taxes on the middle class. they all voted "no." So we believe we have to reduce our deficits in a smart and vigorous but also balanced way. asking for shared responsibility going forward. not violating our commitments to seniors by reopening the doughnut hole. not by shredding Medicaid. which they cut by over $810 billion. and which would be onethird less in 2023 than it would otherwise be. And. by the way. Mr. Chairman. I just want to remind people that twothirds of Medicaid spending goes to seniors and individuals with disabilities. So its not a question of whether we reduce our longterm deficits. its how we do it. and we do it in a balanced way. If this was just a race to be the first to balance. then you should support not the chairmans budget. Support the Republican Study Group. that other budget. But if your priority is to grow jobs and the economy. then you should support the Democratic alternative budget. I reserve the balance of my time.