Charles W. Stenholm: “Unfortunately this budget is not about the past. It is about the future. Any way we want to explain it, the centerpiece…”

“Unfortunately this budget is not about the past. It is about the future. Any way we want to explain it, the centerpiece of this budget resolution today is a massive tax cut at the expense of debt reduction, Social Security, agriculture and defense. The numbers do not lie. It is gratifying to hear my friends on the other side adopting the Blue Dog rhetoric about the importance of paying off the debt. I only wished their resolution carried through on what they say. Once they take away all the double counting in this resolution, it would leave only $12 billion of the non-Social Security surplus, approximately 8 percent, for debt reduction over the next 5 years. That is $73 billion less than the Blue Dog budget and $430 billion less debt reduction over the next 10 years, and that is a fact. No rhetoric is going to change that. I wish they paid more attention to what the tax cut does in 2010 to 2014 when the Social Security system is going to need this money. This budget and this tax cut, if it is implemented, which fortunately I do not believe it will be, will wreck the Social Security program beginning in 2014, and that is irresponsible. Also, the budget provides money for another short-term agricultural relief package, which we all appreciate; but why did we not take the opportunity, as the Blue Dog budget suggested, of having a 5-year, fix-the-policy, look-at-the-baseline problem? Why are we doing a 1-year fix again?”