Chris Van Hollen: “Again, I would remind my colleagues to do the basic math. Go back to the last time the budget of the United States was…”

“Again, I would remind my colleagues to do the basic math. Go back to the last time the budget of the United States was in surplus; it was during the Clinton administration. It followed on some very difficult decisions in the early 1990s. And what it included, as part of a balanced approach, was asking the folks at the very top to pay a little higher rate than they are today. And what the President has proposed is to ask those Americans, as part of a shared responsibility, to go back to paying those rates. And what our colleagues would plant in the Constitution of the United States is a supermajority requirement, two-thirds vote, to go back to the same tax rates that were in place during the Clinton administration, but a majority vote if you want to reduce the deficit by cutting benefits for Medicare beneficiaries--whose average income, by the way, median income is under $22,000 a year. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin). (Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)”