David Price: “in relation to Chairman Nussle's last offering, let me just repeat once again: the defense numbers in the two budget…”

“in relation to Chairman Nussle's last offering, let me just repeat once again: the defense numbers in the two budget resolutions are equal. In other respects, however, the Republican budget gives us the worst of two worlds. It takes us over the cliff fiscally, and yet it underfunds key domestic priorities. You would like to think that if we are going into $400-plus billion worth of additional debt, at least we are getting adequate funding for our domestic needs. But we are getting neither fiscal responsibility nor an adequate addressing of our needs for investment. The premise of the Republican budget as submitted by the President and as presented by our Republican friends seems to be that this country is going broke because we are doing too much cancer research. We are going broke because we have too many after school programs. We are going broke because we are opening up too much affordable housing. It simply is not true. To scapegoat these sorts of domestic expenditures is deceptive and reprehensible. There are many reasons for the fiscal mess that we are in, starting with the President's tax cuts targeting the wealthiest Americans, defense and security spending above projected levels, a sluggish and sporadic economic recovery, and the expansion of health care entitlement costs. The one item not on the list is domestic discretionary spending, which is very close to projected levels.…”