On the recordAugust 1, 2011
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we should never have gotten to the point where our troops in Afghanistan had to ask whether they were going to be paid. That's a scandal. And it's scandalous that our Republican colleagues would threaten for the first time in American history to torpedo America's creditworthiness and American jobs unless they succeeded in enacting a budget plan to end the Medicare guarantee, slash Medicaid, and slash critical investments in education and our future. That was the plan. They wanted to do that now, and they wanted to have this whole debate again 6 months from now. Why? Not to reduce the deficit. If the goal was to reduce the deficit, why refuse to end taxpayer subsidies for the oil companies? If reducing the deficit was the purpose, why refuse to end special breaks for corporate jets and the folks at the very high end of the income scale? That wasn't the plan. The plan was to use this moment to threaten the economy, to try and slash the social safety net and those critical investments in education and innovation in our future. And guess what: They failed. They failed to do that. They failed to end the Medicare guarantee. They failed to slash Medicaid. They failed to slash education. In this measure, we succeeded in protecting Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries. We succeeded in protecting seniors in nursing homes, individuals with disabilities and poor kids who depend on Medicaid for their health care.…
