Mike Thompson: “As we heard the gentleman from Texas say, the Blue Dog budget is not just a responsible budget, it is an honest budget.…”

“As we heard the gentleman from Texas say, the Blue Dog budget is not just a responsible budget, it is an honest budget. It matches the President's overall spending levels, it extends tax relief for our middle-class families, and most important, it pays for that tax relief. The Blue Dog budget includes the strongest budget enforcement mechanisms of any budget being debated here today. It extends the pay-as-you-go rules to both the spending side and the revenue side. To be clear, neither the Republican budget nor their alternative being offered by the Republican Study Committee does that. Republicans rejected the PAYGO amendment in the Committee on the Budget on a strict party-line vote. They rejected the amendment in the Committee on Rules on a strict party-line vote, and they have refused to put the PAYGO provisions in their budget. We expect our constituents to pay their bills, and I do not know why some folks here in Congress think we should be exempt from that standard. Our constituents did not send us here to play games with their tax dollars and play games with the budget. They sent us here to balance the budget. Vote for the Blue Dog budget. It is strong on enforcement and responsible on spending and revenue.”