Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, a budget is a statement of values and priorities.

You have heard people standing up here, talking about what their priorities are, that we don't want to load up our kids with debt, that we don't want to do all this kind of stuff; yet the budget that is put forward by my Republican colleagues is a shortsighted statement that has no view of the future.

It gambles away the future of the next generation's in order to supply business and the ultrawealthy with near-term gains. What has made this country great is the strategic Federal investments in health care, roads, education, bridges, research--the types of investment that build the middle class and America.

Now, the Republicans say their budget plan balances the budget in 9 years. What they don't tell you is that they do this at the expense of Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, Pell grants--everything in the social budget.

What you learn from this budget is that, when they say they are balancing the budget, they mean we are cutting domestic programs. We are cutting anything that helps hard-working families in this country.

It also fails to cut one single dime from the military, not one single dime. They actually want to give the military more than they asked for. Now, despite raising taxes, you would think they could at least cut a dime from the Defense Department.

By now, people's eyes are kind of glazed over at home in thinking about this, but let me talk to one group of people, to anybody who has a student with student debt. It is the largest debt load we have in this country. We have made our kids indentured servants of banks and of the Federal Government.

This budget contains $127 billion over the next 10 years that we will have extracted from students in interest on their loans to give cuts in taxes to the wealthy, to lower the rates, to make it better for the rich.

If you know anything about student loans, those loans can't be renegotiated. You can renegotiate on your house, or you can renegotiate on anything else, but not on a student loan. When a student and his mother and father or her mother and father sign up for a loan and put their home in the deal and put their futures and their 401(k)'s and
everything behind that kid's education, they are stuck with that loan rate.

You have got people in this country who are paying 6, 8, 9 percent--as high as 13--on loans, and they can't renegotiate them. Is that fair? Is that the future you want, to stick the kids in this country with those kinds of loans?

In my view, this budget has no humanity and no view of the future for our kids.

I urge Members to vote ``no.''

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