Chris Van Hollen: “Again, the reason the Republican budget and this budget do things like end the Medicare guarantee, do things like cut…”

“Again, the reason the Republican budget and this budget do things like end the Medicare guarantee, do things like cut deeply into education for our kids' future, do things like cut Medicaid by over $800 billion over 10 years, is because they're not asking the very wealthy to share more responsibility in reducing the deficit. In fact, they double down on tax cuts. If you see from this chart from the Nonpartisan Tax Policy Institute, simply by locking in the portion of the Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, millionaires, on average--people making over a million dollars a years--will get $129,000. Then you heard talk about how they're going to drop the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. That would give people earning a million dollars over $265,000. On top of that, they say they're going to do that in a deficit- neutral manner. Well, to do that, you've got to make up $4.6 trillion in revenue loss. They're going to do it by getting rid of all those deductions. One of the biggest ones is the mortgage interest deduction that helps middle-income people. So the net result of what they're saying is more tax cuts for the folks at the very top financed by increasing the tax burden on middle- income Americans and financed by cutting important investments that help grow our economy. With that, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).”