Bonnie Watson Coleman: “I appreciate the comments that have been offered by both of my colleagues here. I think that you can certainly…”

“I appreciate the comments that have been offered by both of my colleagues here. I think that you can certainly understand that a lot of work went into the creation, the development, and the evolution of this budget. We are happy to note that, over the years, some of those issues that were identified by the Progressive Caucus have now become part of the regular budget that is presented by the Democratic Caucus. I want to highlight a couple of other things, because I think we just talked about the need for housing. And we recognize that not only did we lose a lot of housing during the predatory lending crisis, a lot of that housing is still vacant, and we need to figure out a way to recapture that housing and use it for affordable housing purposes. Our budget proposes the extension of the use of vouchers for housing because we recognize how fundamental the need is to have safe and secure housing. We recognize that, over the last several years, millionaires, billionaires, and corporations have been getting tremendous tax breaks, that the very wealthy have received extremely generous credits. We want to see working people get credit for work, get tax advantages for the work that working people do, get additional child care credits so that they can provide the kind of safety and security and healthy environment for their families. Everybody has the desire to have a healthy family. Everybody has a desire to be able to participate in our society, to even pay taxes, Mr. Speaker.…”