    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 36 (Monday, February 24, 2025)]
    [House]
    [Pages H734-H735]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                     REPUBLICAN BUDGET BETRAYS MIDDLE CLASS

      The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
    Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) for 5 minutes.
      Mr. COURTNEY. 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 have brought up just a bunch of moldy old leftovers from
    the last Congress. We have 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
    2 weeks, on March 14, the Speaker is much more focused on other things
    than trying to again avoid a catastrophe like that.
      It appears that this week we actually are going to take up the budget
    reconciliation bill that again has been worked out down at the Mar-a-
    Lago hotel over the last 2 months or so, where a conga line of
    billionaires have been observed walking through, meeting with
    leadership of the Republican Conference, laying out their priorities,
    not the American people's priorities, in terms of what they want to see
    in that reconciliation bill.
      This week, we are going to take up, apparently, according to the
    Speaker's Office, an actual vote on that.
      Why is that being given priority over a government shutdown? The real
    reason that is being given priority is that the tax cuts that were
    passed in 2017, particularly on personal rates, are going to be
    expiring in 2025. For the people who benefited the most, the top 1
    percent of this country in terms of their economic position, for them,
    that is their number one priority.
      A week ago Friday, in 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 was done by the Peterson Institute for International
    Economics, a nonpartisan think tank, which shows again where the
    benefit of that bill is going to go. The top 1 percent in income--in
    the State of Connecticut from where I am from, that is people whose
    income is about $1.2 million a year--they are going to get a $70,000
    tax cut. For somebody who is in the lowest quintile, which is income up
    to $14,000 a year, you can see on this chart they are going to get
    about $130. For a middle-income person who makes roughly about $114,000
    a year, they are going get about a grand in terms of their tax
    payments.

      Now, if we actually had 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 could work out an arrangement, but not with a
    price tag of which the top 1 percent are going to continue to rake in
    tax cuts that were, again, shoved into the bill in 2017, lowering the
    top marginal rate from 39 percent to 36 percent. Again, that was just a
    complete and total windfall for people who don't need that type of tax
    relief.
      Let's look again at 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 percent is
    $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
      There were some other additions that they put into the budget, which
    are going to add to the deficit. To pay for it, they included a whole
    bunch of cuts. The big one is to cut the Medicaid program, a program
    which provides healthcare for 70 million Americans, such as 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.
      Again, this bill talks about cutting $880 billion, about 20 percent
    of the cost of the program, indiscriminately with no precision in terms
    of who it is affecting. It has work requirements. Are people in their
    nineties in nursing homes really going to do that? Give me a break.
      There are some other cuts to higher education to help pay for this.
      The bottom line is, at the end of the day, we are 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 we
    are already running today.
      This bill is fiscally irresponsible and outrageously unfair in terms
    of who benefits from it. It is extremely harmful to middle-class and
    working families of this country whose essential need for educational
    services and healthcare are going to be cut. 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

    [[Page H735]]

    House about where their priorities are because that is what budgets are
    about. They are an expression of people's moral values and their
    priorities in terms of 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 who don't need to
    basically have the rug pulled out from under them with a measure like
    this.

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