Steny Hoyer: “Our plan will help Americans earn more, keep more, so they can do more. That has been the rhetoric. Let me suggest to my…”

“Our plan will help Americans earn more, keep more, so they can do more. That has been the rhetoric. Let me suggest to my friends that this rhetoric was copyrighted in 1981. It was called supply-side economics. It was copyrighted at a time when we had $945 billion in debt that confronted the American public. Twelve years later, when not a nickel was spent in America that Ronald Reagan and George Bush did not approve, not a nickel, we had an additional $4 trillion in debt. I suggest that the Republican budget is an easy budget to vote for. You get the candy without a promise of medicine later on. Politicians and people like to do that. Do it easy. It is tough to say we are going to constrain entitlements. I understand that. There has been some demagoguery, very frankly, on this side of the aisle where Social Security is being cut, although Medicare, we are slowing the growth, give me a break. How dumb do we think the American public is? Mr. Chairman, we need to have courage. We need to be honest. We need to trust the people. I am not going to vote for the President's budget because I think, like the Republican budget, it makes early promises and early ease for long-term greater pain. That is what we did in 1981. And we did it together. Let us together be honest with the American public. The coalition budget is not perfect. No budget will be perfect because it is a consensus. We work together.…”