Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, yesterday, we debated the Republican budget proposal as it came to the floor. We saw that even as Americans are working even harder every day, their budget would squeeze them more. It would squeeze middle class families and those working to join the middle class. It would squeeze students trying to get an affordable college education. It would squeeze seniors by immediately increasing the cost of prescription drugs, immediately increasing the cost of copays for preventive health services.

This budget on the floor today squeezes those families even harder, even as both budgets provide another round of windfall tax cuts to the folks at the very top by cutting the top tax rate by over a third as they green light the Romney-Ryan plan.

This particular budget actually will slow down economic growth over the next couple of years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Those are the nonpartisan professionals that analyze these budgets. They looked at the Republican budget and said: You know, it will slow down growth in the next couple of years.

This particular version of the Republican budget will do so even more. Why would we want to slow down economic growth just as the trends are picking up? Look, we have got a long way to go to get everybody back to work, but we are on the right path, on the right trajectory. Why would we want to put on the brakes, as the Republican budget does, as well as the RSC budget, in the coming years?

While the Republican budget we had on the floor just the other day has no answer, no immediate answer to the pending shortfall in the transportation trust fund, this particular budget unreservedly just divests the Federal Government of responsibility for most highways and transit projects that are currently supported by the Federal budget.

I will say in closing that there is one redeeming quality to this budget, which is that this budget does not play games with the overseas contingency accounts, like the Republican budget brought to the floor by the chairman does. This does not use the so-called ``overseas contingency account'' as a slush fund. This budget funds defense in the same straightforward way that the President of the United States' budget does.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

As I said in my comments earlier, this budget suffers from all of the problems that the earlier Republican budget suffered from, but it does have one redeeming quality, which is that it does not use the overseas contingency account as a slush fund. It actually funds defense in a straightforward manner.

In listening to the advocates of this budget, I thought maybe their accounting had been more sound on other fronts, but as I look at it--I look at the Republican budget and how much revenue it raises over 10 years, and I look at the Republican study group's budget, which has the identical amount of revenue over 10 years--what that means is that we see the same budget quackery in claiming to balance because that revenue includes revenue from the Affordable Care Act, almost $1 trillion worth.

It includes the savings from the Affordable Care Act, which both Republican budgets claim to repeal.

You know what it doesn't include? It does not include the costs of all the tax bills that are coming out of the Committee on Ways and Means, including one being marked up today which would entirely get rid of the estate tax, meaning that it will benefit 5,500 people in this country at the cost of $269 billion a year. Seventy-five percent of this tax break is going to go to the inheritors of estates valued at more than $20 million. You add that to this budget, and it is even more out of balance.

But it does point to the underlying theme in all the Republican budgets, which is let's give another tax break to the very wealthiest in this country; right? Let's cut the top rate for millionaires while we squeeze middle class families and those working their way into the middle class. They are going to increase the tax burden on them.

The chairman of the committee, I think he went to Emory University. I think they have got about 5,500 students, maybe a little bit more undergraduate. This would provide almost $269 billion to a population of 5,500 households in the country--the folks at the very top--while they are cutting our investment in our kids' education dramatically, while they are cutting our investment in innovation and research that has helped power our economy, while they are devolving most of our transportation system away from the Federal Government, even though our Federal transportation system has helped power our economy and make us competitive in this very competitive world.

So from the budget gimmicks that apparently are the same in both budgets to the fact that both budgets say to folks at the very top: You know what? We are going to give you another tax break while we squeeze everybody else in America; right?

They increase the costs of student loans. You have got over a trillion dollars in student debt. Why would we be increasing the cost of student loans? They are going to start charging students interest while they are in college.

They are going to require seniors on Medicare to immediately pay more for prescription drugs by reopening the doughnut hole.

So hard-working families, students trying to go to college, seniors who are trying to have a secure retirement, they all get hit on the same day that they provide a huge tax break to 5,500 people. That says it all about what both these Republican budgets do. They disinvest in our future; they squeeze hard-working families, students, and seniors, while saying to the folks who are already at the top of the ladder: We are going to give you just one more break. And go ahead and pull up that ladder of opportunity behind you; it doesn't matter. We are going to leave everybody else behind.

That is not what America stands for. I thought this was the land of opportunity. But while they cut our investment in education, they don't cut a single tax break for the purpose of reducing the deficit, and then they go and claim a balance that is phony.

Mr. Chairman, I ask everyone to reject both these Republican budgets. They are wrong for the country.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am putting forward the Democratic alternative budget on behalf of my colleagues. It is based on a very different view of how our economy in this country has grown historically and how it should grow in the future.

As we have heard from our Republican colleagues, their theory of the economy is top down, trickle down. They want to cut the top tax rates for folks at the very top, the millionaires, on the hope that the benefits will trickle down and lift everybody up. We tried that under President Bush. It lifted up folks who were already at the top of the ladder. Everybody else was running in place or falling behind.

We believe that you accelerate economic growth through more opportunity and more shared prosperity, not from the top down, but by making sure that hard-working Americans can earn a little bit more and go out and spend it at the shopping center and in any way they want to support their families and have a good standard of living.

So while the Republican budget helps folks at the very top with additional tax rate cuts and squeezes working families, our budget provides more relief to those working families. How? We adopt, for example, the President's proposed expanded child and dependent care tax credit. So if you are a working family and you want to make sure your child has a safe and secure environment with quality care, like every family would who is working, we provide a much bigger tax credit so that you can ensure that quality and safer environment for your child. Or if you have a loved one at home, an elderly loved one at home, but you are working, we want to make sure that you have a tax credit so that the costs you pay for that care don't come out of your paycheck at the end.

The Democratic budget is in stark contrast to the Republican budget, which actually increases the costs on working families. They get rid of the college tax deduction; they get rid of the step-up on the child tax credit; they get rid of the step-up on the Making Work Pay earned income tax credit; and of course they wipe out the Affordable Care tax credits that help millions of Americans have affordable health care. So their budget is squeezing folks in the middle and working toward the middle.

They raise the interest rates on college students. We provide additional resources to help make college more affordable, and we adopt the President's plan for income-based student loan repayments.

They will immediately increase the cost for prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare and increase the copays for preventive care, for people who have worked hard for a secure environment. We don't do that in our budget.

So this is a budget that supports working families in America and invests in our future, not one that squeezes those families harder and disinvests in America.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me and us working together to salute Dr. Elmendorf, who, by all accounts, has done a terrific job at the Congressional Budget Office. He has led that office with great professionalism, and I think he has continued to uphold the integrity of CBO. I think we have all benefited from his wisdom over the years.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let's just dispel with a myth from the start, which is that the Republican budget balances.

As we have heard, only if you believe in budget quackery does it do this. Even a newspaper like USA Today, which has no partisan bent to it, blew the whistle on all the accounting gimmicks in the Republican budget.

Now, let me just say a word about revenues and taxes. The Democratic budget doesn't call for any increase in any tax rate on anybody, unlike the Republican budget that refuses to close one special interest tax break to reduce the deficit, which they say is the primary objective. Rather than close one special interest tax break to reduce the deficit, they don't touch a single one--not for corporate jets, not for hedge fund managers.

I want everybody to look at this chart. This is from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. What they say is that each year there are outlays. We spend $1.4 trillion on tax breaks in the United States--more than on Social Security in any year, more than on Medicaid and Medicare combined.

Well, if I give you, Mr. Speaker, a thousand dollars from the government, I can also deliver that same benefit by telling you that of the taxes you owe me, pay me a thousand dollars less. Maybe you have got a great powerful lobbyist who is getting you a special break, so that when the normal person has to pay regular tax rates, you get a special deduction.

Now, some of the deductions are for good causes, but many are not. And where do most of those tax breaks go--or should I say a disproportionate amount of those tax benefits, often put there by powerful lobbyists? Again, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that 17 percent of the benefits of those tax breaks, special deductions, 17 percent go to the top 1 percent of income earners.

So it is true. The Democratic budget does want to close some of those special interest tax breaks that go to folks at the very top rather than cut our kids' education, rather than slash our investment innovation.

And lo and behold, we saw the most recent example of the Republican plan to provide more tax breaks to the folks at the very top end of the income scale just today in the Ways and Means Committee.

Right now you don't have any estate tax obligation as a couple if your estate is lower than $10 million. If your estate is lower than $10 million per couple, your estate is exempt. But we do have a tax rate on the amount over $10 million because I thought in this country we do not believe that people should get ahead just by the wealth they inherited from others, but through their hard work and labor.

So we proposed to change the Tax Code in a way that rewards work rather than in a way that just rewards inherited wealth of $10 million, an estate that is going to help just 5,000 families.

That is why the Democratic budget rewards hard-working families rather than other tax rates for folks at the top.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

As we have heard throughout the debate, there is a fundamental difference in how the United States grows our economy. I think if you look, historically, the reason we have grown the economy over time is because, for a long period, especially in the postwar period, as Americans worked harder, they were able to translate that harder work into higher incomes.

We are supporting a tax system that rewards hard work. Our colleagues continue to stand by a tax system that actually gives better treatment to what is called unearned income, compared to earned income. In other words, if you earn income simply through making money off of money, you actually get a lower rate than money earned from hard work, like most Americans do every day.

When you look at the fact that 17 percent of the tax breaks in the country go to people in the top 1 percent, it is the Tax Code itself that is currently rigged in favor of powerful special interests.

Why should it be rigged against working people and in favor of people who can afford to hire powerful lobbyists to get tax breaks for themselves that benefit nobody else? That doesn't make any sense.

Today, just today, in the Ways and Means Committee, as I said, the committee that deals with taxes, our Republican colleagues are saying that they want to get rid entirely of the estate tax. Right now, if you are a couple, $10 million of your estate is exempt. You don't pay a penny; but, yes, we do ask people who have accumulated lots of wealth to contribute a little bit to the country that helped them develop such a great lifestyle.

I thought we were a country where we wanted to reward people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps through hard work; yet we have a Republican budget that says we are going to provide 5,500 families with this huge tax break today.

At the same time, we are cutting our investment in education, an investment that we know helps millions and millions of American families earn a better living over time; but, no, let's cut that. Let's increase the cost of student loans. Let's give 5,500 families a huge tax break.

Teddy Roosevelt would be turning in his grave at this Republican budget. He would support the Democratic budget that lifts up everybody, makes sure everybody gets a fair shake.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Let me just, again, underscore a couple of key points here. We saw, during the early years of the 2000s, what an economy based on the trickle-down theory looks like, right?

Under President Bush, the theory was, okay, we are just going to cut tax rates for millionaires, thinking that the benefits were going to lift up everybody in the economy. What happened in the real world to that economic theory? It crashed and burned.

The reality was that people at the top did very well. God bless them; they did great, but everybody else, they were running in place. Paychecks flatlined, wages stagnant, and this has been a chronic problem for some period of time; then we went off the cliff.

When President Obama was sworn in, we were losing 800,000 jobs every month. Now, we are coming out of that. Millions of people have gone back to work. We have got a long way to go, but we are coming out.

The Republican budget, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, will slow down economic growth in the next couple of years. Why would we want to do that?

Again, their theory is let's accelerate economic growth by trying, again, what failed before. Look, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

They want to cut top tax rates for folks at the top again. They want to eliminate the estate tax that will benefit 5,500 households, run up $269 billion on the deficit. That is what they want to do.

The Democratic budget does something very different. We want to empower hard-working American families. We want to change the incentives in the Tax Code to incentivize higher pay.

For example, we say that corporations should not be able to deduct CEO and executive bonuses over $1 million unless they are giving their workers a pay increase, right? Pay your CEOs whatever you want, but you don't get a taxpayer subsidy for those deductions if you are laying off workers or you are cutting their wages.

Corporations deducted about $70 billion in CEO bonuses over a 3-year period, from 2007 to 2010. We say: Why should the taxpayers be doing that for corporations that are cutting pay for their employees?

Our Republican colleagues continue to embrace a tax code that is rigged in favor of folks who have powerful lobbyists here to get special interest deductions. That is why the top 1 percent get 17 percent of the value of all those tax breaks.

Let's have a tax system that incentivizes higher pay. Let's invest in our kids' future, not slash our investment in education and innovation. Let's invest in the future of America. That is what the Democratic budget does.

I urge adoption of the Democratic alternative.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, let me start with something, I think, Members who are listening to this debate should know already, which is that the Republican budget does not balance, not by a long shot.

It assumes the revenue from the Affordable Care Act even though they claim to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't account for the costs of additional tax cuts that are coming through this House as we speak, and, if the revenue from that were lost, their budget would be even further out of balance.

In fact, just today, in the Ways and Means Committee, they are increasing the deficit by over $250 billion over 10 years by giving a huge tax cut to 5,500 families in getting rid of the estate tax.

Now, everyone should understand that the estate tax only applies to couples with estates worth over $10 million. They are saying that people with estates worth $10 million, who have done really well, shouldn't contribute anything toward investments in our country, even toward deficit reduction. That increases the deficit right away and puts their budget even more out of balance, so this doesn't come close to balancing.

While it is actually cutting special interest tax breaks for folks at the very high end of the income scale, it actually disinvests in the rest of the country. They dramatically cut the portion of our budget that we use to invest in our kids' futures, in early education, in kindergarten through grade 12.

They make it harder for students to afford college. They say they are going to start charging students interest while they are still in college, even though we have record student debt of over $1 trillion in this country.

They make it harder on seniors right away. Seniors will pay more for prescription drugs, seniors on Medicare; seniors will pay more in copays for preventive care. If they really got rid of the Affordable Care entirely, seniors would also be paying higher part B premiums. That is what they say they want to do, get rid of it entirely.

The Democratic budget which we put forward presents an alternative. We were disappointed that this body voted against that and decided, instead, to support a budget that squeezes hard-working families and is hard on everyone in America except for those who are already at the very top.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me just emphasize a couple of specifics in the Republican budget that is before us.

We haven't talked a lot about seniors in nursing homes. You know, two-thirds of Medicaid goes to help seniors and disabled individuals in nursing homes, and yet the Republican budget cuts $900 billion from Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office says one of two things will happen: either States will increase taxes back home or seniors will get less care.

The Republican budget provides less for our veterans this year than the President's budget, less by $1.9 billion, $19 billion less for the Veterans Administration over the next 10 years compared to the President's budget.

At the same time, their budget plays games with defense spending. That is why we have so-called Price 1 and Price 2. Neither Price is right here. They both play games with our defense spending by using our defense overseas contingency account as a slush fund, something the Republican-led Committee on the Budget said last year they would not do. In fact, they said it was a backdoor loophole that undermines the integrity of the budget process.

This is the committee report. This is the Republican-drafted committee report when Mr. Ryan was chairman of the committee 1 year ago. Tear it up. Just as they said what they are doing would violate the integrity of the budget process, it does. That is exactly what it does. It plays games with our defense spending.

The President's budget, the Democratic budget, did this in a straightforward way. We said, look, Joint Chiefs of Staff, our military leadership says that they need a certain amount for funding our defense needs in our base budget and a certain amount for overseas contingencies. The President's budget and Democratic budget funded that. Republican budgets, all of them, all of the ones here, play games with that.

Mr. Chairman, I hope as we consider this Republican budget that plays games with defense spending, which disinvests in America and in our future, and which squeezes hard-working Americans every day even harder, working families, seniors, students--the only people it says, ``Don't worry. You don't have to do more to help this country move forward'' are folks at the very top. They get a tax rate cut, and they don't cut a single special interest tax break. That is the wrong way for America.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, it is bad enough that the Republican budget uses games and gimmicks that would make Enron accountants blush with respect to their basic budget. It is not just me who says that. People, independent observers from all over the country have said that. USA Today is not a partisan newspaper. Here is what they said about the Republican budget quackery: But ``pretend'' is the operative word because the Republicans supposed path to balance is fanciful at best. That is USA Today.

Now, why do they say that? They say that because Republicans claim in the ninth and tenth years of their budget that they have this balance, but their budget depends on revenue from the Affordable Care Act. That is the ObamaCare that they say they are repealing. It depends on savings from the Affordable Care Act. It assumes that the costs of the tax cuts that this body is enacting by the day--for corporations and very wealthy individuals, mostly--aren't happening; right? That is a whole different universe. In fact, as we heard today, they just passed, worked on a bill in the Committee on Ways and Means, they are marking it up, $280 billion more to the deficit for the benefit of 5,500 American families, 75 percent of whom have $20 million-plus estates.

So their budget accounting is all wrong. In my view, their priorities and values are all wrong, too. But that same phony accounting that they are using for their big budget, now they are doing it to the defense budget as well. They are pretending that we need more in the overseas contingency account than the military leadership says it needs. In fact, they have been here testifying, saying that that is the wrong way to go. And yes, last year, as I read earlier, Republicans said the same thing in the Committee on the Budget report. They said that doing what Republicans are doing in this amendment is a backdoor loophole that undermines the integrity of the budget process. I didn't write that. Former chairman of the Committee on the Budget Paul Ryan wrote that. So we have got budget quackery in the main part of the budget, and now we have got games with defense spending. That is just the beginning of the story because, despite all that quackery and not balancing, what they do is hit hard at working families in America.

We have had this debate now over the last 2 days. The good news with the economy is things are getting better; more people are getting back to work. We have got a long way to go, but trends are good; yet people are working harder than ever and feel like they are running in place, and some falling behind, and this Republican budget just makes it harder on them. In fact, it eliminates the college tax deduction, gets rid of the bump-up in the child tax credit, and gets rid of all the Affordable Care tax credits that help people afford health care. In fact, the irony is they keep the parts of the Affordable Care Act that raise revenue and get rid of the parts of the Affordable Care Act that help people afford health insurance. What a deal.

So it is an unfortunate day for the country, Mr. Chairman, and I think Members, when they look at this, will recognize that the Republican budget takes us in the wrong direction.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We have heard that, despite all these claims, the Republican budget doesn't balance. I just read from USA Today. They don't have a stake in this battle. They said it is ``fanciful at best.''

And it is interesting that if that is the number one priority of our Republican colleagues, why is it they don't cut one single special interest tax break to help reduce the deficit? Not one.

There are $1.4 trillion a year in what the Congressional Budget Office classifies as tax expenditures. These are tax breaks. That is $1.4 trillion a year. That is more than we spend on Social Security every year. It is more than we spend on Medicare and Medicaid combined every year. They don't cut a single one of those. Maybe it is because 17 percent of those tax breaks go to the top 1 percent of income earners. And this is in a budget where their whole economic theory is based on the idea we are going to cut tax rates for the folks at the very top.

The Ways and Means Committee just added over $280 billion to the deficit--or is in the process of doing it--to help 5,500 American families. So they don't cut a single tax break. In fact, they are giving bigger ones to families with estates over $10 million, 75 percent of whom have estates over $20 million. But they cut education. They don't fund the Veterans Administration at the level the President does this year. It is $1.9 billion less--$19 billion less than the President for the Veterans Administration over 10 years.

And how about the folks that are working hard every day in our veterans hospitals, those nurses, Federal employees? How about the Border Control Agents? How about the FBI? How about the folks in the intelligence community who helped track down Obama bin Laden? How about all of them?

You know what the big thank you to them is? They cut Federal employee pay by 5 percent. They don't want to do that in a straightforward manner either. Here is how they do it. They are going to require all those Federal employees to put about 5 percent more into their pension without increasing the pension by a penny. That is what they do.

Thank you. Thank you to the folks who are taking care of veterans in those hospitals. Thank you to folks in the foreign service who are putting their lives at risk. A lot of those people in the foreign service have given their lives overseas for this country.

The big thank you from the Republican budget is not just no COLA. It is cut by 5 1/2 percent, effectively, in a budget that doesn't cut a single tax break, where 17 percent of those tax breaks go to the folks at the very top, where a lot of those tax breaks are in this Tax Code because someone had a powerful lobbyist who got them a special break that is not available for other Americans.

This budget is wrong for America, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman just recognized, this is a huge departure from the way this House of Representatives has dealt with our military spending in the past. In fact, it is a departure that the Republican-controlled Budget Committee said violated the integrity of the process.

The Budget Committee specifically said it would oppose increases above the levels the administration and our military commanders say are needed to carry out operations. That is what the Budget Committee said last year--Republicans. This year, forget it. Just have some amnesia. Let's play games with our defense spending.

Mr. Chairman, I want to go back to an issue that has come up a couple of times during this debate regarding economic growth.

As I said, the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the Republican budget will actually slow down economic growth in the next couple of years. Just after we are regaining momentum, they are going to slow it down.

The Congressional Budget Office said something else that is interesting. It says, as you look ahead over the next 10 years, the biggest single factor with respect to growth rates that don't keep up with the past averages are demographic changes; the fact that baby boomers are going to be retiring, and they are not going to be in the workforce. You just have to look at the CBO report from this budget year.

So, you would think that one way to deal with that would be to pass immigration reform.

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that that will help spur economic growth. It will also help add to the solvency of Social Security because you will have more workers today supporting the baby boomers who are retiring over the next couple of years.

If you really want a progrowth budget, you would support the Democratic approach that provides help to struggling families working every day, invest in our future by investing in our kids' education, and pass comprehensive immigration reform.

There was a bipartisan bill that passed the Senate last year. Over here in the House, what happened to it? It is not that there was a vote on it and it went down. We never even had a vote here in this body on comprehensive immigration reform, one of the things that the budget pros and the economists say could help spur our economy in the years ahead, something that is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, as well as folks in the labor community.

No, Republicans didn't want to do that. They didn't even allow a vote on that bill here in the House of Representatives. That would have been a progrowth effort, too.

Mr. Chairman, instead of those progrowth efforts, efforts that will help shore up Social Security, all we get is the same old-same old, another budget that refuses to cut a single special interest tax break to help reduce the deficit, provides more tax breaks for folks at the top, and is based on a failed theory of top-down/trickle-down economics. We can do a lot better.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chairman, to the Republican leader, let me just say I think there is a lot of confusion on the Republican side. This is the first time since I have been on the Budget Committee that we have had two official Republican budgets on the floor of the House. That is a little bit of confusion here.

I am really pleased to be joined by

super-reinforcements, a gentlewoman who understands that we power our economy by making sure we have an economy that works for all people, not just folks at the very top; that economic growth is based on an economy where hard work translates into higher incomes for everybody; and that we have a tax system that rewards work, not one riddled with tax breaks where 17 percent of those tax breaks goes to the top 1 percent.

That is a tax code written by lobbyists. We want a tax code that is fair to the American people and the American worker.

Mr. Chairman, I am very proud to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, as Leader Pelosi just said, this really comes down to what vision you have for what has helped power our economy.

The Republican theory of the case is that our economy is powered by providing tax rate cuts to people at the very high end of the income scale and somehow the benefits of that will trickle down and lift everybody up. The problem with that theory is it already crashed in the real world. Right in the early 2000s, that is what President Bush did. Incomes for folks at the top went up even more, but everybody else was running aground, running in place, or falling behind.

That is why we presented a budget based on an economy that accelerates because more Americans are able to make bigger paychecks through harder work, and that is why we proposed to change the Tax Code from one that is currently skewed and tilted in favor of unearned income and simply making money off of money and against people who make money off of hard work.

Why is the Tax Code skewed that way today? Probably because a lot of people who could afford to pay a lot of wealthy lobbyists made it that way.

Yet the Republican budget doesn't close a single tax break for the purposes of reducing the deficit--not corporate jets, not the tax provisions that perversely encourage American companies to move jobs and capital overseas. We proposed to close those tax loopholes and bring those jobs and that capital back here to the United States to help power our economy, not the economies of our global economic competitors.

So I hope that this Congress will reject a view of the economy that is based on the idea that everyone can only do well when the folks at the top get a tax cut as opposed to an economy where we are all in it together.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chair, I want to start by joining the chairman of the committee in thanking all Members for a vigorous debate, and especially to thank the staff of the Budget Committee.

As for the Republican budget itself, nothing has changed since we began the debate yesterday to make it any better. It is the wrong direction for America.

Madam Chair, when we gather here today, there is good news and bad news and some very bad news.

The good news is the economy has been picking up. More Americans are going back to work. Not everything is rosy. We have a long way to go, but the trends are in the right direction.

The bad news is that Americans are working harder than ever, but a lot of them feel like they are running in place, and many are falling behind.

This is not a new problem. It is a chronic problem. We have seen worker productivity in this country go up and up and up over the last several decades, but that additional hard work and productivity has not translated into higher wages for most working Americans. They have seen flat paychecks.

If it is not going into higher wages for most workers, where is it going? It has gone disproportionately to the folks at the very, very top. They have been doing just great, but everybody else has been falling behind.

Now, we had some good news after the election. The Speaker of this House and the Republican leader said they understood this issue. In fact, they both wrote that they were looking forward to helping struggling middle class Americans and were looking forward to dealing with wage stagnation.

The very bad news for the country, Madam Chair, is, when you look at this Republican budget, it turns out they were just kidding because this Republican budget is very hard on hard-working Americans and on those looking to find a job. It says one message: work even harder; take home even less.

It does absolutely nothing to increase the take home pay of workers or to increase their wages. It will increase the tax burden on millions of working families. Amazingly, it eliminates the college tax deduction. It increases the costs for working Americans by getting rid of the bump up in the child tax credit. It gets rid of the rate bump up in the ``make work pay'' earned income tax credit.

For students, it makes college much more expensive. This Republican budget actually increases the costs of going to college. It increases the costs of student loans even as we hit over $1 trillion in student debt. It eliminates $90 billion worth of Pell grants.

For seniors, they will immediately see higher prescription drug costs by reopening the doughnut hole. They will immediately see higher copays for preventative care, and seniors in nursing homes will see much worse care as they cut $900 billion from Medicaid.

Now, while this budget squeezes working families and students and seniors, it paves the way for the Romney-Ryan tax cut plan--to cut tax rates for the folks at the very top--on the theory that somehow that is going to trickle down and boost the economy. It is a theory that crashed in the real world under President Bush when incomes for folks at the top went up but when everybody else's fell behind.

While it makes life harder on working Americans right now, it also disinvests in the future of America. It dramatically cuts our investment in early education and K-12. It dramatically cuts our investment in innovation and science and research, which has helped power our economy. It assumes that the transportation trust fund will begin to run dry in a month and a half and that construction jobs will come short in a few months.

The one thing it doesn't cut is any of the special interest tax breaks for the purpose of reducing the deficit--not one--not for corporate jets. In fact, today, the Ways and Means Committee worked to provide a big tax break for 5,500 American families, and an average of 75 percent of them have $20 million estates. They didn't want to touch that for the purpose of reducing the deficit, so they don't cut a single tax break.

Despite all of that disinvestment in America, here is the thing: the budget never balances; it doesn't come close.

Look at the USA Today editorial. They are not a partisan paper. They said it is pure fantasy to claim that this balances; it doesn't balance, but it does disinvest in America.

We can do a lot better. We can do a lot better than a budget that continues to rig the rules for the folks who have already made it and one that makes life harder for everybody else. Let's reject this Republican budget, and let's get started back to work for the American people.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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