The Republican Budget

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. TITUS. Thank you, Congresswoman Maloney, for letting me join you tonight, and thank you for organizing this very important special hour to talk about the Republican budget and its unacceptable impact on women.

For the third year in a row, Chairman Ryan has proposed an uncompromising budget plan that is out of touch with my State of Nevada's priorities and the country's vision for the future.

Chairman Ryan has used a lot of gimmicks in his budget, but no amount of chicanery will hide what this budget really means for women.

Instead of laying out a fair and balanced plan, as you said, Congresswoman, Representative Ryan's budget undermines the health and economic security of the elderly and the disabled, most of whom are women, and disproportionately harms low-income women and families they struggle to support.

It also would repeal the Affordable Care Act. This landmark legislation that we passed increases access to critical women's health services such as prenatal and maternity care, and it finally ends the longstanding notion that being a woman is a preexisting condition.

The proposed budget also threatens a laundry list of vital programs that help women and children such as SNAP, WIC, Head Start, school lunches, TANF, and Pell Grants, just to name a few. These are programs that millions of women across the country and their families rely on everyday just to get by.

Instead of protecting such critical programs, Representative Ryan and the Republican Party would rather protect tax breaks for the wealthiest folks in our country, for oil companies and for those companies you mentioned that ship our jobs overseas.

The Federal budget is a blueprint for our Nation's future. It's a statement of our national priorities. It should reflect who we are, and it should provide a path forward that we can all be proud of.

My constituents in Las Vegas and our constituents around the country deserve better than this old rehashed Ryan budget which slashes programs for children, dismantles health care for women, eliminates the safety net for seniors and defunds education and needed research and development that we should be investing in as part of that three-legged stool.

Instead, we need to get to work on a balanced plan that protects women and families and makes those needed investments in our future.

Again, I thank you, Congresswoman Maloney, and our colleagues who have joined us tonight to talk about these important issues, and I urge you to give careful consideration to the Ryan budget with all those hidden little tricks and old hat policies.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source