On the recordMay 10, 2012
You won't ask one penny more for people making over $1 million a year to help reduce our deficit, not one penny. And the math is pretty simple after that; because you ask nothing of them, your budget whacks everyone else. That's why your budget ends the Medicare guarantee; that's why you cut $800 billion out of Medicaid; and that's why, in your sequester proposal here, you whack programs that help the most vulnerable, struggling families. Let's talk about what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said your proposal would do: 22 million households with children would see their food and nutrition support cut under the SNAP reductions; 300,000 kids will no longer get the school lunch program; 300,000 kids will lose their health coverage under the children's health insurance program. Those are the decisions you have to make because you don't want to ask the oil companies to give up their taxpayer subsidy. We say the American people would make a different choice. We have that different choice in the substitute amendment. That substitute amendment would prevent those cuts to the Defense Department. It would prevent cuts to NIH and biomedical research. But it would prevent those cuts without whacking seniors and children's health programs. It would do it in a balanced way. We say we don't need the direct payments to agricultural businesses. These are payments that go to ag businesses whether they're making money or not. The spigot is on.…
