Roland Gutierrez: “we are hearing the word ``balance'' a lot today. We applaud ourselves as we balance the budget. It is an important…”

“we are hearing the word ``balance'' a lot today. We applaud ourselves as we balance the budget. It is an important accomplishment, a difficult accomplishment to balance our budget. But I am afraid our Nation is losing its balance in a lot of other areas, like keeping our promises to our veterans who are facing cuts in this budget, like protecting our seniors who face an uncertain future because of this budget, like acknowledging the contribution of immigrants who are still targets for blame and discrimination in this budget, and like the simple idea of tax fairness that the wealthiest in our Nation should contribute a little more to our Treasury. Our budget might be balanced, at least until the tax cuts explode again in the future. But we are creating a lot of new deficits. Deficits of keeping our promises. Deficits of fairness. Deficits of equity. Deficits of caring. These are the deficits I cannot support today, and that is why I will cast my vote against this budget.”