(Washington, DC) Congresswoman Corrine Brown made the following statement:
“Earlier this week, the Veterans Affairs Committee held a hearing, where Deputy Secretary Gould of the Department of Veterans Affairs stated that because of the drastic budget cuts the Republicans are advocating and the potential government shutdown, that veteran’s pension checks may not go out on time! Believe it or not, just as a budget shutdown may prevent our brave members of the military from being paid, the Republican Party wants to extend tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans! Just last December, the Republicans forced a vote on extending the Bush Tax Cuts for millionaires, adding $700 billion dollars to our deficit.
The Republican plans for the FY11 budget, as well as the new budget blueprint they released yesterday, is nothing more than reverse Robin Hood: taking from the poor and middle class to give huge tax breaks to the rich. It seems the Republican Party is exclusively concerned with decimating Medicare and block granting Medicaid, while simultaneously cutting billions of dollars for job training programs, environmental protection, disease control, programs to assist homeless veterans; transportation and infrastructure (including high speed rail and Amtrak), crime protection, education programs and dozens of other critical areas for our country.
If the Republican budget plans are enacted, the pain will fall on the shoulders on the working poor and middle class, while all the benefits will go to the richest 1%. To me, it is obvious that Republican lawmakers are simply indifferent to the suffering these cuts could bring to the vast majority of Americans.
The Bush years and prior Republican Congresses created huge holes in our budget that cannot be filled by just slashing discretionary domestic spending. In fact, the Bush tax cuts for the rich removed $2.5 trillion from the Treasury over the past 10 years alone. And when the Republicans insisted that Congress extend them last December, it took another $95 billion off the table for the next two years. They also negotiated for an estate tax extension, which directly benefits an elite group of Americans by allowing exemptions of up to $5 million for an individual and $10 million for a couple (while taxing them at a 35% rate), adding on another $25 billion dollars to our national debt!
And while the Republican Party refuses to ask millionaires and billionaires to make sacrifices, they instead sacrifice our nation’s veterans, students, senior citizens, children, and our teachers, and the poor.
Sadly, in the case of a shutdown, Americans will lose a number of critical services as Social Security applications go unprocessed, veterans lose access to health and financial services, and troops’ pay is put on hold. Health services, including disease surveillance, disease hotlines, and cleanup work at toxic waste sites, would pause. Passport applications would go unprocessed; national parks and museums would close; and taxpayers could potentially lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
With so much at stake, Congress must get back to work creating jobs, strengthening our nation and doing what we were elected to do: serve the American people, not destroy the services our government provides!”