Rep. Courtney Slams House GOP Budget that Favors Ultra-Wealthy

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Full Transcript:

“Mr. Speaker, we are now in the eighth week of the 119th Congress, which has distinguished itself with incredibly low productivity and low effort. So far, we've just brought up a bunch of moldy old leftovers from the last Congress. We've been averaging roughly about two votes a day since the Congress was sworn in on January 3, despite the fact that we have a government shutdown looming in about two weeks on March 14, the speakers much more focused on other things than trying to avoid a catastrophe like that.  

“But it appears that this week, we actually are going to take up the bucket budget reconciliation bill that, has been worked out over down in Mar Lago hotel over the last two months or so, where a conga line of billionaires again have been sort of walking through, meeting with the leadership of the Republican caucus, laying out their priorities-- not the American people's priorities-- in terms of what they want to see in that reconciliation bill, and this week we are going to take up, apparently, according to the Speaker's office, an actual vote on that.  

“So why is that being given priority over a government shutdown? Well, the real reason is, is that the tax cuts, which were passed in 2017 particularly on personal rates, are going to be expiring in 2025 and for the people who benefited the most the top 1% of this country in terms of their economic position, for them, that is their number one priority. A week ago on Friday, the budget committee on a party line vote, the Republicans produced their bill, their budget reconciliation bill, which extends those tax cuts, despite the fact that it worsens our budget deficit and leaves middle class and lower income Americans in the dust.  

“This chart, which was done by the Peterson Institute, which is a nonpartisan Think Tank, shows where the benefit of that bill is going to go the top 1% which is income in the state of Connecticut, where I'm from, that's people whose income is about $1.2 million a year. They're going to get a $70,000 tax cut. For somebody in the lowest quintile, which is income up to $14,000 a year: you can see on this chart, they're going to get about $130 for a middle-income person of roughly about $114,000 a year, they're going to get about a grand in terms of their tax payments.  

“Now, if we actually have a mature, reasonable process in this chamber where Democrats would also be consulted in terms of putting together a plan to make sure that lower income and middle income individuals’ taxes don't go up, we can work out an arrangement, but not at not with a price tag of which the top 1%

are going to continue to rake in tax cuts, which were shoved into the bill in 2017 lowering the top marginal rate from 39% to 36% which was a just a complete total windfall for people who don't need that type of tax relief.  

“So, let's look at again, what else the budget committee did with this chart, which shows how they are going to pay for extending those tax cuts. The cost of extending those tax cuts for the top 1% is $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years. The there are some other additions that they put into the budget which are going to add to the deficit and to pay for it, they included a whole bunch of cuts. The big one is to cut the Medicaid program, a program which provides health care for 70 million Americans, people in nursing homes, almost half the live births in this country are covered by Medicaid. Young, working class individuals, because of the ACA expansion, are covered by Medicaid.  

“This bill talks about cutting $880 billion about 20% of the cost of the program, indiscriminately, with no precision in terms of who it's affecting, work requirements, which, people in their 90s and nursing homes. They're going to really do that give me a break, and again, some other cuts to higher education to help pay for this. But the bottom line is, at the end of the day, we're still going to be adding to the deficit.

“The deficit hawks in the Republican Party are adding to the deficit with this measure on top of the deficits that were already running today. So it's fiscally irresponsible, it's outrageously unfair in terms of who benefits from it, and it is extremely harmful to middle class and working families of this country whose essential need for educational services and health care are going to be cut and they will take the hit in terms of advancing this priority. This is an important vote for the people of this country to be watching.  

“This is a gut check for every member in this house about where your priorities are, because that's what budgets are about. They're an expression of people's moral values and their priorities in terms of who needs, who should get help in our country, this measure will not help the people who need it, who are still struggling with the high cost of living and don't need to have the rug pulled out from under with the measure like this.

I yield back the balance of my time.”

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