Congressman Maffei Takes to the House Floor in Support of President Obama's Budget

Congressman Maffei Takes to the House Floor in Support of President Obama's Budget

Today Congressman Dan Maffei (NY-25) spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives in support of H.Con.Res. 85, the Fiscal Year 2010 budget. The House will vote on various budget resolutions today, and Congressman Maffei spoke in favor of the responsible budget resolution that uses honest accounting and makes critical investments in our future. His remarks, as submitted to the Congressional Record, are below:

"Madame Speaker, after eight years of failed policies under the last Administration, we have inherited a massive, unprecedented budget deficit projected to be well over $1 trillion before President Obama took office. While growing our economy is a major component of this budget, reducing the deficit is a top priority for everyone on both sides of the aisle. The budget before us today will cut the deficit by two-thirds by the end of 2013 with a combination of spending and cuts. I'd like to correct the excesses overnight, but like steering a sailboat, it takes some time to turn us around and still avoid capsizing.

"Some say that we should chop everything except defense in the interest of leaving less debt to our children. But the fiscal deficit is not the only one the policies of the past 8 years have left us. We have a huge education deficit, Madame Speaker, where children in urban and rural areas in my district don't have decent schools available to them. We have a health care deficit where people even with insurance cannot get the preventative care they need to avoid bigger problems. We have an infrastructure deficit, as demonstrated by leaky sewers and crumbling roads and bridges. If we reduce the deficit a little more - it would still be substantial thanks to the past policies - but leave our children with poor education, inadequate health care, and crumbling infrastructure. Are we really serving their best interests by doing this?

"We must invest in the economy to get rid of the structural deficit that we have inherited, just as someone might take a second mortgage to fix the structural integrity of their family home. We may have a somewhat bigger mortgage, but we will have a strong house to pass on to our kids. That's what the Obama budget does. Otherwise we will leave our children with a somewhat smaller mortgage but no house - no education, poor health, and third-world infrastructure. That's not why the people of the 25th district elected me. That's not why the people of the United States elected our 44th President. This budget - the President's budget - makes some of the tough decisions the people brought us here to make. We must support it and we must support the rule!"

Source