Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. I am honored to get a chance to comment. I am very grateful we have an honest dialogue back and forth on different options.
This is a unique moment for us as a Nation to be able to look at the direction of our country and at the way we are going to do budgeting, and I have great respect for those that will come and say let's look at other ideas, and I think that's how we should come to the table. Both the President, the Senate, and the House should be coming and saying, here are the options, here are the voices, because there are different voices in America that have different perspectives, and I think that's a good, healthy debate.
Now, there are several areas that we will disagree on with this budget. We do agree that we should be working on deficit reduction. We do agree that debt is a serious problem in our Nation and we need to be able to work it down. It's how to do that.
The budget that's being presented here, the amendment in the nature of a substitute, does tax heavily those that are wealthy, but it also has a burden that's on those most vulnerable as well. And let me give you an example of that: It increases the transportation tax, that gas tax.
It not only adds an excise tax on gas companies, energy companies, so that the tax goes up, but it also adds 25 cents per gallon to the actual gas tax, and then at this time removes any other tax subsidies that are being piled on to any energy company. All those together are going to add a significant amount per gallon at the pump, beginning with just the basic option that's there of adding 25 cents. In addition, their recommendation is 43.4 cents for the gas tax itself.
That is clearly a tax that's going to hit very hard on those that are most vulnerable in our society, the people that are driving to work, that are moms commuting back and forth. I think that's the wrong direction to go. That's such a large tax on a group of people that are vulnerable.
So we do want to deal with the nature of our great deficits and of our great debt, but I don't think we need to be able to add that additional tax burden on the people that are very vulnerable.
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