As a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition in the House of Representatives, I believe Congress must work together to come up with a common sense budget that includes a plan to restore our country’s fiscal health, while meeting the important immediate needs of paying for homeland security and the war on terror.  

Unfortunately, this week the House did just the opposite, passing an irresponsible budget written by the Republican leadership.  Their budget raids almost every dollar of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and has no plan to get us out of deficits.  Their budget does not contain adequate funding for a meaningful prescription drug benefit that our seniors so desperately need, and it cuts funding in important areas like law enforcement, health care, and education, including funding needed to implement the bipartisan Leave No Child Behind education reform that President Bush signed into law last year.

It’s time for Republicans and Democrats to put partisanship aside and come up with a plan that puts us back on course to balance the budget, without doing so on the backs of our seniors who rely on Social Security and Medicare.  We have a duty to them and to all Americans to be responsible, and the budget passed this week simply fails to live up to that calling.