Kendrick Meek: “there are many reasons why commonsense people would oppose this conference report. Just look at the $158 billion cut in…”

“there are many reasons why commonsense people would oppose this conference report. Just look at the $158 billion cut in Medicare and $72 billion cut in Medicaid, with all of the problems in that. I want to talk about the huge tax increase on almost 7 million hardworking American families who have chosen work over welfare. The original House bill contained a $20 billion tax hike and the original Senate bill contained a $17 billion tax hike. Do Members know what they did? They separated the two and cut them up, so now they come up an $18.5 billion tax increase. They told us in the Committee on the Budget during the markup that this is essentially the same tax increase as the one in last year's reconciliation bill. The President vetoed that. That is history. This chart shows the details. As I said before, who will be paying those taxes? Let me tell the Members who is going to pay those taxes: 2.7 million workers with incomes below $10,000 will pay a higher average tax; 1.8 million workers with incomes between $10,000 and $20,000 will pay a higher tax under this Republican budget. Almost half of these workers have children. The Republicans are doing a good thing when they put in this $500 per child tax credit, but they have taken it away. They gave back and they took away the rest of it. I am saying that this conference report should not be passed by this Congress.”