Press

The House Republican budget claims to balance the budget in 10 years but the math just doesn’t add up. How does a plan that gives a new tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, without identifying a single tax loophole to close achieve any meaningful deficit reduction? The answer, while unfair, is not at all unfamiliar to GOP budgets—their plan requires a major tax increase on middle class families of more than $2000. The Ryan budget cuts taxes for the wealthy even more than Mitt Romney’s 2012 proposal, which could not have been paid for without raising taxes on the middle class. Paul Ryan is fond of saying his budget is all about tough choices. Again, Republicans and Paul Ryan has chosen to slash taxes for the wealthiest Americans and place the entire burden of deficit reduction on programs benefiting the middle class, seniors, and vulnerable Americans.

The House Republican budget is more of the same failed policy that the American people decidedly rejected when they cast their ballots last November. Deficit reduction that asks nothing from the wealthiest Americans while slashing vital services like Medicare and Medicaid for the most vulnerable Americans is not what the country wants, and it will not help the economy continue to grow. The Ryan–Republican–Tea Party budget does not ask for a single dime of deficit reduction from closing tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations. We’ve tried this top down approach before, and it crashed our economy. Republicans ran on this approach last fall, and they lost overwhelmingly. Yet here they are—back at it—yet again.

The effects of the GOP-forced sequester cuts that took effect at midnight last night stand to hurt middle class families, seniors, children, and our men and women in uniform across the country. See below for how this reckless decision by congressional Republicans is playing nationwide.

Over the next few weeks middle class families will begin to feel the effects of this sequester. Seniors in need will not receive the food they count on, afterschool programs will be cut, thousands of teachers will be laid off, we’ll see reductions in treatment and support for mentally ill children, and Military families’ health care could be cut. The American people expect congressional Republicans to act and get something done consistent with what Americans want – as expressed in the polls and at the ballot box last November.

It wasn’t just about the famous water lunge. Senator Marco Rubio’s response to the State of the Union was most notable for how much it sounded like the very same failed policies that Republicans have been running on for years if not decades – the same failed set of ideas that Mitt Romney ran for president on just last year as the GOP’s standard-bearer.