Thank you, Chairman Camp, for scheduling today’s meeting to discharge our statutory responsibility to advise the Budget Committee of our committee priorities.
Although the letter we’re marking up today is about our budget policy over the next ten years, what we should be discussing is our budget policy over the next 10 days. We are just three days away from a sequester -- $85 billion in arbitrary, across-the-board cuts just in 2013. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the sequester will reduce economic growth by 30 percent, wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs and driving our unemployment rate back up to 8 percent. And still, my Republican colleagues refuse to even consider replacing the sequester with a balanced approach, one that includes revenue and spending cuts.
Instead, we are in session this week with just three bills on the floor, including one yesterday to rename the Dryden Flight Research Center. For the tens of millions of Americans who will be affected by the sequester, the Republican silence is anything but golden.
With respect to the Views and Estimates letter under consideration, I believe the letter provides some framework on the plans of the Majority. However, we have major disagreements about the most responsible approach to tax policy, access to health care, protecting earned benefits like Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment compensation and some issues relating to trade.
A number of vital issues are not addressed in the letter - most notably, a plan to prevent further self-inflicted wounds to our economy. As we learned in the 1990s, a growing economy is a powerful tool for both prosperity and deficit reduction. For these reasons, we will send a separate letter to the Budget Committee on our views and estimates for the fiscal year.
