Charles Rangel: “I agree with the Speaker that this is a serious problem that we face. The President of the United States agrees, and God…”

“I agree with the Speaker that this is a serious problem that we face. The President of the United States agrees, and God knows if the majority wanted to take care of this and not want a political issue that was going to be vetoed, they would have reached out to the Democrats, they would have reached out to the President, they would have had hearings, and we would have targeted the relief. Why did they pile on so many tax cuts that were totally unrelated to the marriage penalty? Why did they make certain that the President was going to veto this because they completely ignored the budget process? They have so violated their own budget rules that in order for this issue to come to the floor, they have to waive the regular rules, just to bring it on the floor. They have no budget to deal with Social Security, no budget to deal with Medicare, no budget to deal with the national debt; but they intend to take this $1.8 trillion tax cut and feed it to the House piece by piece. It would seem to me that it is not too late for us to decide what issues are important enough for us to work together on. The President said he will veto this because there is no provisions made for anything that deals with the budget.”