[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1471-1472]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Mr. Speaker, next week President Obama will send 
his budget to Congress, and news coming from the White House will not 
be good. But the rumors of a budget war from the Republican leadership 
promises to make a bad situation much, much worse.
  From what we are hearing, all of us can expect the same Republican 
policies which took an over-$5 trillion surplus that Democrats and 
President Clinton sacrificed to create and turned it into the dream-
crushing deficit that we are faced with today.
  They have made cutting spending sound like a good thing, but it is 
not when you look at where the cuts will come from. They will not come 
from the tax cuts for the wealthy and not from the wars we need to end, 
but they will come from programs that communities and families need now 
more than ever. This is Bush deja vu all over again. And every 
economist that I have read says that with this economy in such a 
fragile state, with the country only at the beginning of recovery, and 
with far too many of our fellow Americans hurting, this is not the time 
to cut spending.
  It is not that I am against making prudent cuts to reduce the 
deficit, but the cuts I am hearing about so far will hurt those the 
President said should not be hurt: the most vulnerable, children, the 
poor, the majority of whom are racial and ethnic minorities, and our 
disabled and elderly.
  We in the Congressional Black Caucus have placed ourselves in the 
breach on behalf of those who would otherwise remain nameless because 
no one is willing to name them. They are Native Americans, Alaskan 
Natives, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian and Pacific 
Island Americans, and the poor and rural Americans of every race and 
ethnicity.
  As we do every year, we will develop a budget that treats all 
Americans fairly, does not leave anyone behind, but gives a helping 
hand to those who need it, and also reduces the deficit.
  We agree with President Obama that his budget must put the country on 
a firm path to winning the future, and we know that winning the future 
means creating opportunity for everyone who lives in this country. But 
the CBC is further committed to making sure that everyone means 
everyone, to making sure that those who have been most hurt by this 
recession and those

[[Page 1472]]

who have long been marginalized even in the good times have the special 
help they need to be a part of creating that future and benefiting from 
it.
  I cannot believe that there could be one Member of Congress who does 
not support our country being number one, who does not want to win the 
future. But we can't win the future without ensuring that every child 
has access to a quality education and that those schools which have 
lagged behind because they lack resources and adequate and well-trained 
staff are helped to meet the standards that are required to do that. 
And we cannot win the future if we turn back all of the newly gained 
benefits and savings in the Affordable Care Act. We will never win the 
future if we allow the Republicans to pass a budget that causes us to 
lose those provisions which enable minorities, rural residents, and the 
poor to achieve better health, to be more productive, and to have a 
better quality of life. These health equity provisions will begin to 
end the inequality and injustice in health care that Dr. King called 
shocking and inhumane.
  And we cannot win the future if we don't do all that we can to make 
sure we address the mortgage crisis and help families keep the homes 
they need to raise their families in. We cannot win the future without 
jobs and more jobs. And I'm talking about good jobs.
  So we know that there will have to be limits of spending, but we want 
to make sure that it starts at the most effective time and that the 
sacrifice is fairly spread, that those who have sacrificed over the 
last decade while corporations and the rich made off like bandits will 
not be the ones that continue to bear the brunt of the cuts and 
continue to suffer while Big Business and the wealthy continue to amass 
more wealth at their expense. That is an affront to the principles of 
fairness and equity that this country was founded on.
  And so we want a realistic budget, not one that the Republicans are 
preparing that will cause us to lose more jobs, send more people into 
dire poverty, that will deny education and health care to those who 
need it most, that will continue the loss of homes, that will weaken 
programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security which so many 
depend on, and one that will decrease the deficit and continue to drive 
this country into decline, continuing what the Republican policies over 
the last decade have done.
  That is not what we want. That is not what the country needs. That is 
not the kind of budget that will win the future.
  And so we in this Congressional Black Caucus are willing to roll up 
our sleeves, put on our thinking caps and work with our President and 
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to pass a different, a 
better budget, one that will create jobs, that will give people the 
tools to lift them and their families out of poverty and keep them in 
their homes, one that will create an educational system that will put 
all of our children first, and a health care system that ensures 
quality health care to all Americans, a budget that will provide the 
retirement security our seniors deserve and keep our country 
competitive and strong and number one in the world, a budget that will 
win the future. We know it can be done because we have shown how it can 
be done every year with the CBC budget.
  Working together, I know we can create a budget worthy of this 
country, one that lives up to our ideals, one based not on political 
ideology, but one that responds to the needs of our country and the 
needs of the people who are waiting and depending on us.

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