Chris Van Hollen: “I would remind my colleagues that two-thirds of Medicaid funding goes to seniors in nursing homes and to care for…”

“I would remind my colleagues that two-thirds of Medicaid funding goes to seniors in nursing homes and to care for disabled individuals, and another 20 percent goes to kids from low- income families. They would whack that in their budgets, in the Republican budget, by $800 billion. At the same time, if you'd just take the portion of the tax cut in the Republican budget that extends the Bush tax cuts for the folks at the very top, that's $961 billion, but they don't want to ask those Americans to go back to paying the same rates that they were paying during the Clinton administration--the same rates. The economy was booming and 20 million jobs were created--but no, they want to give the folks at the very high end a tax break and cut Medicaid by $810 billion. Those are the choices that are made in the Republican budget, and that's what this vote on this rule is all about: whether we should allow this body to go forward and implement that budget. It's wrong for the country. It's displaced priorities.”