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Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

Date: March 29, 2012
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Senior Citizens Transportation Unemployed and Low-Income Entitlements and the Safety Net Taxes Government Budget and Spending Education

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Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my friend from Maryland.

Mr. Chairman, a recent analysis of American tax returns showed that in 2010, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States earned $288 billion more than they had in 2009--$288 billion more, the top 1 percent. In fact, that was 93 percent of all the additional income earned in the entire United States from year to year, 2009 to 2010.

Now, apparently, my friends on the Republican side were outraged that 7 percent of the additional income could slip away to the other 99 percent of American families because they came up with a budget that tried to rectify that immediately. I call it the ``Republican 1 percent budget.'' It's a gift basket for billionaires and millionaires. It contains a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts, which have created an income gap in this country on par with Cameroon and Rwanda.

But the ``Republican 1 percent budget'' doesn't stop there. It gives an additional tax break of $150,000 a year for everyone making more than $1 million a year. And it does that by dismantling Medicare, slashing education funding, transportation, and things like the SNAP program which help so many needy families in this country.

Mr. Chairman, income inequality has become the central tenet of Republican ideology. The budget we will probably vote on later makes their commitment to widening the income gap abundantly clear. That's why I call the Republican budget, in addition to the ``1 percent budget,'' this is the ``all for 1 budget.'' It's a budget that's all for the 1 percent.

By contrast, the Democratic budget, the resolution we are offering now, is really the ``one for all budget,'' one budget that provides benefits for all Americans. It makes the critical investments that we need to make sure all Americans have equal opportunity and equal tools to realize the American Dream, and it makes sure that all contribute to the deficit reduction that we all are committed to. Everybody plays a part; everybody does their share.

I support the Democratic budget and urge my colleagues to do likewise.

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