Chris Van Hollen: “I yield myself such time as I may consume. At the outset, I just want to say to my friend, the chairman of the Budget…”

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. At the outset, I just want to say to my friend, the chairman of the Budget Committee, I have great respect for him. And I hope he won't take it the wrong way, but I'm glad to have you back, and look forward to actually working with you next year. I actually hoped that we'd be able to work in a bipartisan way, starting right now. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case, and we are engaged here in the House on this floor today in what has become a ridiculous political stunt which will actually take us much closer as a country to going over the fiscal cliff. We're wasting valuable time. The Speaker should be engaged with the President of the United States in negotiations rather than having walked away from those negotiations with the President. That walking away is becoming a bad habit. The President put on the table a balanced budget plan that calls for shared responsibility. It calls for $1.2 trillion in additional revenues from high-income earners over the next 10 years, and $1.2 trillion in additional cuts, if you include the interest savings over the next 10 years. And by the way, Mr. Speaker, that $1.2 trillion in cuts comes on top of the over $1 trillion in cuts that have already been agreed to this year. And to our colleague, the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, when he says that the President hasn't lifted a finger to remove the sequester on defense, that's just not true. It's just not true.…”