Peter Welch: “These are credibility questions, but there's also an economic policy question. There are two assumptions in this budget.…”

“These are credibility questions, but there's also an economic policy question. There are two assumptions in this budget. One is that austerity will lead to prosperity, that getting the debt down by any means possible and any cuts possible will get us to the Promised Land; it's the pot of gold at the end of the Tea Party rainbow. There is no evidence for that whatsoever. The second is a faith-based conviction that if you give tax cuts to wealthy people that will trickle down to the rest of us. No experience has shown that that can be successful. We should be cleaning up the Tax Code. We should be fighting waste, fraud, and abuse. Whether it's in the Pentagon or in the health care system, we should be doing that together. This budget does not give us that chance.”