Richard Gephardt: “I rise today in strong opposition to the Kasich substitute to the House budget resolution. I believe it would be a…”

“I rise today in strong opposition to the Kasich substitute to the House budget resolution. I believe it would be a painful step backward--at a time when we must keep moving forward. One year ago, in this very Chamber, when we passed President Clinton's first budget, we voted for fiscal responsibility--for fiscal sanity. We said we had to start making the tough choices--reining in the runaway spending and borrowing, the lop-sided policies that favored the rich over middle-class America--policies that had been a proud Republican legacy. We said it was time for the wealthiest handful of Americans to pay their fair share--instead of soaking up huge tax cuts while hard-working American families watched their paychecks grow smaller and smaller. We said it was time for basic fairness--fairness to the families that sent us here in the first place. Fairness to the families who know that, for all the Republican rhetoric about 'big government' and 'tax and spend,' Democrats have been fighting for them for decades. And for a dozen years of Reagan and Bush, it was clearly an uphill battle. Today, we can choose to continue down that path of fairness and fiscal responsibility. A path that has brought more new jobs, and higher economic growth, than in all the Bush years. A path that has brought a lower deficit, and lower interest rates--lower than we have seen in years.”