Rob Portman: “I want to commend my friends, the blue dogs on this side of the aisle, for bringing forth this budget today. I think it…”

“I want to commend my friends, the blue dogs on this side of the aisle, for bringing forth this budget today. I think it is a great improvement over the budget we are going to see next, which is the President's budget. I think the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo] is going to bring it to the floor. I say that because the President's budget does not even balance over the 6-year period based on CBO numbers, unless you add some late year gimmicks the last 2 years on some contingencies. So I commend them for having a product that does get to balance. I have a few problems with it as I look at it. No. 1, in the entitlement area, which is where most of our spending increases are now, they do not get at the real problems, in my view, in Medicaid. I think there could be an unfunded mandate in Medicaid because there is a lack of flexibility, as compared with the Republican approach. With regard to Medicare, you cannot tell how long the part A trust fund remains solvent based on this approach. It looks like we have a shift from the part A trust fund to the taxpayer-paid part B trust fund. Finally, and this is the fundamental point, it has higher taxes and higher spending than the Republican plan which gets to balance in the same time period.”