*Republican's 2012 Budget
Last night, voters in Western New York sent a clear message that the Republican plan to end Medicare as we know it is the wrong choice. But today, Senate Republicans chose to ignore that message and instead voted for the Republican budget that does not balance and puts insurance company bureaucrats in charge of seniors’ health care – a move that will more than double seniors’ health care costs.
This week, Senate Republicans vote on the Republican budget that makes the wrong choices for how to address our nation’s deficits: it ends Medicare as we know it, raises costs for seniors, and gives tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.
If the United States fails to pay the bills it has incurred, it ‘would be a financial disaster not only for our country, but for the world economy.’ Those are the words of Speaker Boehner in January...
Now that the U.S. has reached the debt limit today, it is past time for Republicans to get serious and work with Democrats to ensure our nation pays its bills while laying out a path to reduce the deficit. The longer we wait to take responsible action, the more damaging it is to our economy. I agree with Speaker Boehner’s statement yesterday that an agreement doesn’t ‘have to wait until the eleventh hour.’ Businesses – and the global economy – need certainty that the U.S. will continue to pay its bills. By choosing to hold the economy hostage by risking a default on our nation’s debt, Republicans are endangering our economic recovery. I hope now that we’ve reached the debt limit, and the Treasury has been forced to employ extraordinary measures, Republicans stop putting the economy at risk and work with us to meet our obligations and set forward a serious, balanced approached to deficit reduction.
Today’s Trustees Reports show that the Social Security and Medicare programs have the resources to meet their obligations well into the next decade, but have taken a hit due to economic conditions. The programs will be solvent into the next decade, due in part to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, which strengthened Medicare by taking significant steps to constrain cost growth through innovative delivery system and payment reforms that will increase efficiency, improve quality, and generate long-term savings for both beneficiaries and the government. According to the Trustees, Medicare’s financial outlook was substantially improved by this critical law.
After four months, its clear Republicans don’t share the American people’s priorities by failing to focus on jobs and making the wrong choices on the deficit.
While this marks the seventh straight quarter of economic growth, it is clear that more must be done to spur the economy and create jobs. To both keep the economy growing and speed up that growth, we cannot do anything that subjects the economy to unnecessary uncertainty. Yet Republicans continue to hold the economy hostage to their partisan and divisive agenda by threatening to default on our nations’ debts – despite the fact that much of the debt that’s been run up was as a result of their policies. I hope today’s news will prompt Republicans to stop putting our economy at risk. I also hope it will remind Republicans that we need to take action on job creation. It’s disappointing that after four months in the majority Republicans have failed to bring a single jobs bill to the Floor, despite their promises that it was their top priority.
But there's a paradox to Boehner's success. The speaker hasn't achieved these goals solely because of the 87 GOP freshmen elected last fall. He's pulled it off because in each case, he got help from the Democrats.
House Democrats launched a surprise procedural offensive on a budget plan Friday in an effort to put conservative Republicans on the spot – and fell just nine votes of succeeding.
House Democrats engaged in a little guerrilla warfare on the floor Friday, forcing Republicans to switch their votes at the last minute to avoid passing the Republican Study Committee’s budget.