Kendrick Meek: “last Thursday the Committee on the Budget met and deliberated for quite some time, and as we deliberated I made some…”

“last Thursday the Committee on the Budget met and deliberated for quite some time, and as we deliberated I made some assumptions about what I saw going on there. It appeared that the bottom line of that budget resolution was that the Republicans had changed the budget to some extent but there was still the same theme with some variations; the same theme of being able to work very hard to be sure that we would balance the budget in 7 years. That was done with their budget, but as they did it, it appeared that the same people who were negatively affected in the first budget were still the same in this one. They assume tax cuts of at least $176 billion, which include a cut in the tax rate on capital gains. Part of these tax cuts is paid for by cuts in the rate of growth of spending for such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare. It goes back to my original assumption, Mr. Chairman, that the same people that were negatively impacted in the first budget resolution, well, here we are again impacting them negatively again. But another part of the tax cut for the wealthy is paid for by raising taxes on working Americans.”