John Yarmuth

The President, for example, determined to use significant priorities--or funding to build a wall in Mexico, while leaving these military families unprotected right here at home.

I would respectfully disagree. There have been over 50 consecutive National Defense Authorization Acts signed into law.

We are fighting this in Kentucky because our governor is trying to impose work requirements and, actually, also premiums under a Section 115 waiver.

When you compare these small funding increases to the large cuts they are paired with, it is not hard to see them for what they are: token investments designed to get a good headline.

It is so important for us to have encouragement to work so that people see us not just as a disabled person, a person with a mental disorder or an addict, but as somebody who can contribute to them, who can be a coworker, a colleague, and…

Given the severity of the funding cuts and the extreme nature of the policy changes, this seems much more like an irresponsible way of offsetting our Republican colleagues' deficit-financed tax cuts for millionaires and big corporations…

I think that maybe makes the case for not having work requirements because what it indicates to me is that people basically do want to work, and if they can, they will.

But when you eliminate the ACA's Medicaid expansion, you have limited the amount of local control that those states have.

We need an up or down vote on your budget as you proposed it, 100 percent the way it is to see whether they want to go along with these cuts to education, to health care, to Medicare, and not doing enough about prescription drugs.

You cannot gut the EPA by more than 30 percent without knowing it will make our air less safe and our water less clean.

I hope that the leadership on the other side will find time to present a bill to the floor of the House of Representatives where the entire Congress can vote on a budget.

You cannot cut Medicaid by a similar amount without knowing it will result in families losing health care coverage.

You cannot cut student loans by more than $200 billion without knowing it will make it harder, if not impossible, for young people to go to college.

I described the President's first budget as a betrayal, harsh words for a harsh budget that abandoned working Americans and families.

This third budget proposal offers more of the same. It is a recipe for American decline.

This is a great step backwards, as are your cuts in student financial assistance. I hope you will reconsider those.

I want to remind my colleagues on the other side that when CBO scored the Affordable Care Act just before its enactment, they estimated the legislation would reduce federal deficits by $124 billion over the 2010 to 2019 period.

Projected Medicare spending is almost one-quarter less than it was before the ACA, in part due to the significant cost containment measures and delivery system reforms in the law.

It does not work that way. This is a gimmick, and it deserves the swift bipartisan dismissal with which it has been met.

You cannot cut nutrition assistance by more than $220 billion without knowing it will leave families without food to put on the table.

None of it adds up or makes sense, which explains some of the more creative aspects of the President's budget.

So, in Kentucky where nearly a half million of 4.4 million residents now receive their health care through the Medicaid expansion would be in serious jeopardy of losing their care, correct?

These cuts in the Trump budget are not a tightening of the belt or a trimming of the fat or even a serious attempt at reining in spending. They are extreme to a level that is malicious, a level that is intended to do harm.

We need a bolder infrastructure program, and just like on prescription drugs, we need this Administration to lead.

This proposal would have us do the unthinkable: a 9 percent cut, not 5 percent as the White House claims, in non-defense discretionary funds.