Chris Van Hollen: “Yesterday we debated the Republican budget plan. Today, we have a plan that's more of the same, except on steroids. As…”

“Yesterday we debated the Republican budget plan. Today, we have a plan that's more of the same, except on steroids. As we debated yesterday, the question is not whether we should reduce the deficit or whether we should reduce the debt. Of course we should. The question is how we do it. And we should do it in a way that doesn't damage the ongoing economic recovery, which this proposal does. We should do it in a way that is balanced, meaning we have shared responsibility. The Democratic alternative that we'll debate shortly has that balance. We make difficult spending cuts but we also cut a lot of the loopholes and special breaks in the Tax Code because if you don't do any of that to reduce the deficit, it means you've got to reduce the deficit at the expense of everyone and everything else. And that, unfortunately, is what this budget does as well. It ends the Medicare guarantee for seniors. It slashes Medicaid very deeply, cutting the program by more than a third by the year 2022, where two-thirds of the funding for that program goes to seniors in nursing homes and disabled individuals. It cuts deeply into education funding, both for prekindergarten/preschool as well as college. It cuts deeply into those important investments, including transportation, which we were debating earlier today.…”