[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5277-5278]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             MISPLACED PRIORITIES IN CONTINUING RESOLUTION

  (Mr. MORAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, what we've elected to do is to balance 
priorities, and the most important are the priorities within the budget 
process.
  The Republican budget proposal introduced today is a collection of 
misplaced priorities because it cuts hundreds of thousands of jobs, it 
weakens our economy, and it punishes poor people. That's not what we 
are about.
  Today, the wealthiest Americans in this country have 40 percent of 
our Nation's wealth and are making more than a quarter of our national 
income. But this budget will cut their top tax rate by 15 percent. In 
other words, if you're making a million dollars, you're going to get a 
tax break of up to $150,000. If you're making a billion dollars a year, 
which more than two dozen

[[Page 5278]]

of the hedge fund managers in this country do make, you will get a $150 
million tax break per year. That's not what we should be about.
  Let's look at the misplaced priorities in the continuing resolution 
in front of us. The amount saved by cutting education, health care, 
environmental regulation, child care, cancer, and Alzheimer's research 
and all of the other cuts in domestic, nondefense, discretionary 
spending, is equal to the cost of continuing the Bush tax cuts to the 
wealthiest Americans. Those are not the priorities of America; that 
shouldn't be the priority of this Congress. We can do better. We must 
do better.

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