(Washington, DC) Congresswoman Brown made the following statement:
“I wholeheartedly oppose this horrible bill. That is not to say that our nation does not need to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, I voted 7 times to raise the debt ceiling during President Bush’s eight years in office; not because I supported his economic policies, but because I didn’t want to send our nation into default and bankruptcy!
Democrats and Republicans came together to raise the debt ceiling 18 times under President Reagan, four under Clinton, and two under President Obama. Yet this short term plan the Republicans have brought before us today to raise the debt limit jeopardizes pension funds, student loans, Social Security payments, and Medicare Medicaid benefits. Why? Because it requires at least $1.6 trillion in spending cuts enacted in several months for the needed second increase in the debt ceiling to occur. And since the first round of cuts hits discretionary programs hard, it is inevitable that virtually all of that $1.6 trillion would come from entitlement programs.
Just last December, the Republicans forced a vote on extending the Bush Tax Cuts for millionaires and billionaires, adding $70 billion to our nation’s deficit: And let’s remember that during the Clinton years, our budget had a surplus. Yet eight years of horribly reckless spending and excessive tax cuts for the rich under President Bush and the Republican leadership left America trillions of dollars in debt.
And what else has the Republican Party’s policies achieved? What I call Reverse Robin Hood: cutting programs and services for the working and middle class while maintaining tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires and the oil companies like EXXON Mobil, who just reported today that their second quarter profits rose 41%!
Indeed, the Republicans are pursuing an ideological agenda of deficit reduction exclusively through spending cuts without any revenue increases. And they are doing this to protect tax breaks for Big Oil, corporations that ship jobs overseas, and the wealthiest .5% of Americans, even though the big five oil companies earned nearly $1 trillion in profits during the last decade, and tax breaks for the economic elite has brought about an even greater disparity in income. For these reasons, this Republican bill needs to be rejected and sent back to the drawing board!”