Rob Portman: “I rise today to say I am looking forward to voting on the budget later today. This budget is a good document because it…”

“I rise today to say I am looking forward to voting on the budget later today. This budget is a good document because it does what we know works to get the deficit under control. First, it restrains spending, extremely important. Second, it allows the economy to continue to grow, as my friend from Montana just talked about, by not raising taxes on the American people. Significantly, the budget also provides for the prescription drug benefit this Congress passed late last year. After spending 5 years talking about it, a lot of rhetoric, a real political football, we finally on a bipartisan basis provided prescription drug benefits in a meaningful way. What numbers will we be relying on in the budget? We will rely on the Congressional Budget Office, as under the rules of the House we are required to do. There has been a lot of discussion about what numbers we should use. Of course we are going to use the Congressional Budget Office as we must. There are other estimates out there. Some may be right, some may be wrong; but this Congress is doing the right thing by providing a prescription drug benefit and providing under the rules of the House for the right estimate of those costs.”