Harold Volkmer: “Members of the House, the cat is out of the bag. The radical Republican extremists are not in favor of reducing the…”

“Members of the House, the cat is out of the bag. The radical Republican extremists are not in favor of reducing the deficits. They do want a tax cut, a massive tax cut, for the wealthy. We saw it last night. Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues listened to the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], he never once in this closing argument for that budget, never once, mentioned the word ``deficit.'' In fact, under their budget, the reason he did not, under their budget next year the deficit goes up; the following year, the deficit goes up. It does not go down. They need to do that in order to give tax cuts for the wealthy. The spending cut for Medicare; where is that going to go? The spending cuts for food stamps; where is that going to go? Tax cuts for the wealthy, not to reduce the deficit, because the deficit is going to go up. Mr. Speaker, they are more interested in reducing taxes for wealthy than they are in reducing the deficits. I say let us reduce the deficits before we give any tax cuts for anybody. That is my position. Let us get a balanced budget first. Then we reduce the deficits.”