John Joseph Moakley: “Mr. Speaker, I was hoping that my Republican colleagues would have learned their lesson. I was hoping that after the…”

“Mr. Speaker, I was hoping that my Republican colleagues would have learned their lesson. I was hoping that after the resounding "no" they got in response to their last budget that cut Medicare to pay for tax breaks for the very rich, my Republican colleagues would have quit while there were behind. But, as today's budget bill shows, they have not. Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues have not learned that the American people want something a whole lot better than the horrible budget they gave us last year. My Republican colleagues have not learned that the American people do not want their Medicare cut under any circumstances particularly to pay for tax breaks for the very rich. But it looks like they're at it again. This year's budget is the same old collection of bad ideas that Speaker Gingrich came up with last year and it's still awful. Mr. Speaker, a year may have passed but the American people still don't want Medicare cut by $168 billion to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy; they still don't want $72 billion cut from Medicaid; and they certainly don't want their children's direct student loans cut, and their Pell grants and their work study frozen. These ideas were bad last year and they're even worse this year.”