Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. POCAN. I rise today to join my Democratic colleagues on the House Budget Committee to staunchly oppose the budget proposal we have considered last week in committee.

Mr. Chairman, I was not in Congress last year when the budget was considered in the House, but it sure seems like my Republican colleagues want to make sure I didn't miss a thing since the proposal before us today represents little more than the same recycled, unrealistic policies that have been rejected by both the Congress and the American people.

This is a budget based on bad math and unrealistic assumptions. It keeps the savings and revenue from the Affordable Care Act, but it repeals its benefits to the people. It cuts taxes for the wealthiest without identifying how they'll pay for the trillions, and it takes almost a trillion dollars in unspecified cuts that will likely target programs for the needy and disadvantaged. With all those unrealistic assumptions, I am surprised there's not a provision that requires leprechauns to steal the pots of gold at the end of rainbows and then to count that as revenue. Mr. Chairman, that could have been a trillion dollars and you'd have a surplus now.

Mr. Chairman, while the math may be bogus, the budget will have real and serious effects on the people of Wisconsin. It keeps the sequester in place, which costs the people of Wisconsin 36,000 jobs; and across America, that's 2 million jobs. It will turn Medicare into a voucher program, forcing 850,000 Wisconsin seniors out of traditional Medicare, eventually, people like my mother. And it will raise taxes on middle class families by more than $3,000 while giving the richest a $245,000 tax break.

We need to balance the budget responsibly by getting people back to work. That's the best way to reduce our deficit. We need to create jobs. Economists of both stripes say we should do it and the CBO says we should do it. We need to get it done.

I urge my colleagues to reject the backward-looking plan from our friends on the other side of the aisle and, instead, embrace a forward-looking plan on job growth.

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