On the recordMarch 9, 2011
the badly misguided budget cuts contained in the legislation the House has sent to us threaten to strangle our fragile economic recovery before it can truly begin. The House bill would weaken the social safety net that helps keep our communities together; it would end education opportunities that give Americans a chance to succeed; it would weaken investments in science and new technologies that we need to make our Nation competitive globally; and it would make our Nation less secure. Our colleagues in the House have diagnosed a patient with heart disease--and prescribed amputation. Their proposed cure would do little to heal the disease of budget deficits, and in the meantime, do a lot of damage to the patient. They propose to solve our budget woes by slashing nondefense discretionary spending--which makes up a mere 15 percent or so of the Federal budget. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office told us just this week that if we eliminated all nondefense discretionary spending--every last dime of it--we would still run budget deficits by 2016. We cannot solve the budget problem this way, no matter how hard our Republican friends try to convince Americans that we can.
