Chris Van Hollen: “Just to be very clear on what the Senate Democratic plan does and what the House Democratic plan does with respect to…”

“Just to be very clear on what the Senate Democratic plan does and what the House Democratic plan does with respect to revenue, again, we heard from Governor Romney and others last year that there are about $4 trillion in these distortions and preferences in the Tax Code that help very wealthy people. What we say is, we should get out some of that clutter, some of those preferences, and use some of that to help reduce the deficit. And we say at the same time when you do tax reform, don't touch middle-income taxpayers, and when we asked our Republican colleagues to give us that assurance in the form of an amendment in the Budget Committee, they all voted ``no.'' So, yes, we think that you can eliminate some of the tax breaks and preferences that Mr. McClintock just talked about, and you can use some of them to reduce the deficit. But the Republican budget won't use one dime of those to help reduce the deficit. I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington State who is both on the Budget Committee and on the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. McDermott. (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, you've got to ask yourself what we're doing here today. We're fearmongering again. We spent last week, we spent the last campaign, we spent the last number of years really presenting to Americans that we're in imminent doom, and gloom is coming to America.…”