The budget plan sent to Congress by the President once again proves to be entirely insufficient in meeting the needs of our nation, and those of my constituents in the third district of Florida. A budget is about priorities, and a budget request directs money into areas that the President and his advisors see as worthy of government resources, while cutting or deleting funding from areas perceived as less important. And this year’s budget request, similar to those in the past six years, is a budget plan which will not only continue to drive our nation into more debt, but excessively cut vital social programs (eliminations or sharp reduction in 141 government programs), while adding billions of more dollars into an unnecessary war in Iraq that over two thirds of Americans oppose. So once again, the administration is asking our seniors, our students, our children, the middle class, and the working poor, to make fiscal sacrifices, while those in the upper income brackets emerge unscathed.

This spending plan, which would make his first term tax cuts permanent, and cost our nation’s Treasury an estimated $1.6 trillion, would come at the expense of health care plans for our neediest citizens, specifically, a $280 billion cut in Medicare and Medicaid over ten years ($252 billion in Medicare cuts, $28 billion in Medicaid). Moreover, the budget does not contain enough funding to maintain coverage for the children enrolled in CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Just two weeks ago in the State of the Union address the President announced a poorly thought out plan which would increase taxes for those with employer sponsored health care plans, primarily the middle class. Today in his budget plan, he outright cuts healthcare funding to our nation’s working poor, our seniors, and our children.

The President’s budget rings with a call that is loud and clear: tax cuts for the rich, more of the same in Iraq, and drastic cuts in social services for the rest of America.