Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to speak about our budget and how the choices we will make over the next few days will reflect our values and priorities.
As someone who has acted as a countywide elected official writing balanced budgets, I have long viewed them as not just a collection of numbers and programs but also really a statement about our basic values and a reflection of what we hold dear. We can say we believe in this or that, but at the end of the day, our budgets tell the true story. Over the last two years in this body, following the hard work and leadership of Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski, the previous chairs of Budget and Appropriations Committees, we have taken important strides to stabilize our government’s finances, invest in our middle class, and protect the most vulnerable among us.
After a few really hard years, our economy has begun to heal and grow again. We are now in the longest period of uninterrupted private sector job growth in our nation’s history – a period in which our businesses have created 12 million new jobs. Today, our national unemployment rate stands at 5.5 percent, and the deficit has fallen nearly two-thirds since the depths of the Great Recession. At a time when the economies around the world are slowing down, ours remains, relatively speaking, a global bright spot.
We need to continue on this path. We need to invest in this growth. And in my view, it is the wrong time to hit the brakes on our economy’s resurgence.
Unfortunately, the budget proposed by Senate Republicans misses the mark and would, I fear, reverse these gains. It denies our basic values by balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and middle class while cutting investments essential for our nation’s competitiveness and future.
It relies on some budget gimmicks to actually increase defense spending while making broad cuts elsewhere, and it uses overly rosy predictions about growth and our debt that have time and again proven false. It does all this while protecting tax breaks for the very wealthiest and corporations at the expense of working families.
It is my hope that we can reach a budget that is responsible, balanced, and fair, that takes stock of our needs today and what the future will demand of us. So I would like to take a few minutes and outline broadly what I think our budget priorities should be.
First, we need a budget that preserves our social safety net by building a circle of protection around the most vulnerable among us and protecting the promises we have made to our seniors. Part of the basic bargain we make in this country is that when one of our neighbors falls on truly hard times, their country offers a hand up. We need to ensure these basic protections to health care, food, and a home are there for those of our neighbors in deepest need. It is also part of that same bargain that after a lifetime of work, you will be able to retire with dignity and some security. As workers, we all pay in to Medicare and Social Security, and we need to ensure that as future generations of Americans grow up, raise their families, and contribute to our economy, the benefits they have spent their lives paying into will be there for them, just as they were for previous generations.
Yes, we should have a conversation about how to responsibly bring our long-term health care costs under control, but we can’t do it the way this budget does, by irresponsibly shifting costs to seniors and the poor.
For retired Delawareans, for instance, the Republican budget would reverse an important reform in the Affordable Care Act and would raise prescription drug costs by an average of $1,100 a year.
Second, just as we are there for each other when times are hard, we must rebound and grow together by making specific and thoughtful investments in our future. We need a budget that understands that without critical investments in infrastructure, research, and science, our economy will struggle to grow and support a strong middle class. We need a budget that invests in our middle class and gives working families a fair shot – an economy that is built on growth and opportunity. These investments in growth are the basic building blocks of our economy. They make up our economic backbone and help create an environment for our nation’s drive and dynamism to flourish.
Growth, however, requires infrastructure. We have a roughly $3.6 trillion infrastructure debt – investments in infrastructure that are due by 2020. Every year we put off investing in our roads, bridges, tunnels, and ports.
Every year we fall behind our competitors, and we make it harder for our businesses to grow and create jobs. Growth also requires investing in research and development. Our long-term competitiveness depends on our ability to innovate faster than our competitors. Although businesses already invest a huge amount in R&D, the federal government plays a critical role through our national labs, through the manufacturing extension partnership, and other grant programs that either directly invest in or incentivize the research that leads to innovation.
Finally, growth in our country requires ensuring that every child has access to a quality education. It requires making it easier for families to send their kids to college and easier for young people to manage the costs of their college through managing student loans after school, and it requires strengthening the real connection between the classroom and workplace so education can be a sturdier rung to a longer ladder of opportunity.
Throughout our history our middle class has thrived and our economy has been strong when we made these sorts of investments in our economy and middle class. We need a budget that continues those investments.
Finally, we need a budget that lowers our deficit responsibly, in a way that is fair and forward-looking – not on the backs of the middle class and poor and not done in a way that kills jobs and stifles growth. Over the last few years we have done a lot to get our deficit under control, using about three-quarters of spending cuts and about a quarter of increased revenue. We have also benefitted from a steadily growing economy which has lowered our deficit.
As we move forward, we need balanced deficit reduction that preserves our investments in our future and our promises to each other. That will mean raising some revenues by asking the wealthy and corporations to pay a bit more, just as it will mean making hard choices over the long run about the true causes of our deficits and debt.
But let’s be clear. We can do this while investing in our future and keeping our promises to our seniors, to our veterans, and to each other. The best way to lower our deficit is to grow our economy. So we need to invest in that growth. After all, an airplane needs an engine to take off, even in strong headwinds.
Over the coming days we will be voting on a wide series of amendments that will say a lot about our values and priorities. I would urge my colleagues to keep in mind that which has always powered our economy and will continue to into the future – an economy that gives families a fair shot and invests in the strength and opportunity of the middle class and those fighting to get into the middle class. That is how we build an economy. I hope we will dedicate ourselves to a budget that will help us do so, far into the future.