Chris Van Hollen: “Just to respond to the last point of the chairman of the Budget Committee with respect to the appropriations process, as…”

“Just to respond to the last point of the chairman of the Budget Committee with respect to the appropriations process, as I indicated earlier, this bill specifically exempts those pieces of legislation even if they meet the threshold with respect to the other legislation in here. Again, it is, perhaps, not surprising. I think the American public knows that we have a short-term budget agreement, the Murray-Ryan agreement, but if you look at the budget that Republicans in Congress are proposing, it calls for a 24 percent cut to the current services in the recent bipartisan legislation over a 10-year period. Let's just take one category of investments--in our kids. That means about an $18 billion cut in early education. It means about an $80 billion cut in K-12 education. It means about a $205 billion cut in current policy higher education. It calls for charging college students higher interest rates for the period of time when they are in college. That raises about $40 billion at a time when that same budget doesn't ask for anything from the highest-income individuals and doesn't raise one penny to reduce the deficit from closing special interest tax breaks. So it is no surprise to me that they would want to exclude the economic impacts of those investments that they are dramatically cutting.…”