Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. DUFFY. To be clear, we owe over $15 trillion in national debt. This year we're going to borrow $1.3 trillion and a couple of years before that. Every year we've borrowed $1 trillion.

And I hear my friends across the aisle talk about a balanced approach. I believe the American people want a balanced budget. I think we need to be clear on what the Democrat proposals are. If you look at what my friends across the aisle have proposed in regard to a budget, it never balances. There are deficits and debt as far as the eye can see.

The President's budget, there are debts and deficits as far as the eye can see. It never balances.

Then we look at the Democrat-controlled Senate. For 3 years they haven't passed a budget.

And so I think the American people want honesty. They want to make sure that the Democrats are honest with regard to how much debt we're going to pass off to our next generation.

They want us to be honest with regard to how much debt the Democrats want the Chinese to buy from America. I think they want us to be honest in regard to tax rates that, as of April 1, America is going to have the highest tax rate in the industrialized world. My Democrat friends across the aisle, they want to raise taxes even further. So when a business is looking at where it's going to invest, is it going to be in America or somewhere else? Or if you're looking at investing in America or somewhere else, they look at tax rates.

When we talk about shipping jobs overseas, it's these tax policies from my friends across the aisle that ship my jobs in Wisconsin overseas.

They talk about fairness and wanting to balance the budget on a fair playing field. Let's take a look at this chart. Today, the two top tax rates are 33 and 35 percent. If you want to get the deficit down to 3 percent of the economy, you have to raise those top tax rates to 72 and 77 percent. If you want to get it down to 2 percent of debt to the size of our economy, you have to raise the top tax rate to 86 and 91 percent.

The bottom line is, if you wanted to pay off the debt with the current spending agenda of the Democrats, you could never do it by taxing. You could take all of the wealth, all of the income of those top tax earners, and you would never balance the budget.

Americans want you to be honest in regard to the fallacy that you can tax your way out of these debts and deficits.

I think America wants you to be honest in regard to your plan for Medicare, the plan that says you want to take a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare and use it for some other group. Taking seniors' money that they have invested in that plan for a lifetime, take a half a trillion out and use it for another group of people; that's unconscionable.

But moreover, you want to set up a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats who are going to ration our seniors' care, a board that's going to systematically reduce reimbursements to doctors, hospitals, and clinics, and, in essence, will impact the access and quality of care, not of some future generations of seniors, but of today's seniors.

So when we talk about taking care of our seniors, let's have a plan that truly takes care of our seniors, which is the House plan.

I hear about a guaranteed benefit that the Democrats talk about for our seniors. There is no guaranteed benefit for our seniors. They're rationing it down to nothing.

I think it's important we talk about a bold plan, bold leadership that's going to resolve the problems that we face in this country; a plan that is going to put us on a path of sustainability, that will balance our budget, that will pay off our debt; a plan that implements pro-growth policies so our economy can expand.

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Mr. DUFFY. A plan that will put us on a pro-growth path, but also a plan that will preserve and protect Medicare and save it for future generations.

I would ask my friends across the aisle to stop pandering but to join us in bold leadership, and I would submit that their children and grandchildren, some not yet born, would applaud their bold leadership to save our country from this massive debt that will be their future if we don't act.

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