On the recordMarch 20, 2013
Today we are offering a budget with commonsense solutions that first focuses on the issue that's most pressing for the country and the American people today: kicking our economy into higher gear and putting more Americans back to work. We know from the Congressional Budget Office--the professionals--that one-half of this year's deficit is due to the fact that millions of Americans are still looking for work and that three-quarters of next year's deficit is because we're not at full employment. Our budget goes to the heart of the issue. It attacks the jobs deficit because we know we can't get the budget deficit under control until people are back to work and we take a balanced approach to long- term deficit reduction where we ask for shared responsibility. We do ask people at the very high end of the income ladder to give up some of the tax preferences and tax breaks they have in order to help reduce the deficit. It's very different than the Republican budget that doesn't close one tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit. Theirs only lowers tax rates for folks at the very top by increasing the tax burden on middle-income Americans. We don't do that. We make sure that people can get back to work by replacing the sequester, which we know will result in 750,000 fewer Americans working at the end of this year.…
