House GOP Leader: “The fact is that if you look at this budget, it spends too much, it taxes too much and it puts too much debt on the backs of our kids and grandkids”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today delivered remarks on the House floor opposing Democrats’ budget proposal that spends, taxes and borrows too much, while urging members to support passage of House Republicans’ better budget solution that curbs spending, creates jobs, cuts taxes, and controls the debt.  The full transcript of Boehner’s remarks follow:

“Let me thank my colleague from Wisconsin for yielding.  Madam speaker and my colleagues, I think all of us know that our economy is in big trouble.  American families are struggling, small businesses are struggling, and unemployment is increasing. 

“And one of the hallmarks of being an American is that each generation was proud of the fact that they were leaving for the next generation a better country with more opportunities better than what they had.  A lot of Americans today don’t believe that that will happen. But we can go back to the ‘greatest generation,’ and the ‘greatest generation’ during World War II were called the ‘greatest generation’ because those men and women stood up and fought more America and did what they had to do so that their kids and grandkids could pursue the American dream.  They made the tough choice to get involved, to go to war, to do what they had to do, and as we look at this budget that we have in front of us, there are no tough choices. 

“The Democrat plan to increase spending, to increase taxes and increase the debt makes no difficult choices.  Why?  Because when you just keep spending money, you don’t have to make decisions.  You just keep spending money.  The fact is that if you look at this budget, it spends too much, it taxes too much and it puts too much debt on the backs of our kids and grandkids. 

“If you look at the chart next to me, you can see this red line.  And this red line indicates the amount of spending that we see in the plan offered by our Democrat colleagues.  The green line, as an example, will -- is suspending represented in the Republican alternative that does in fact spend less.  But it’s not just spending.  When you look at the taxes in this bill, it will increase taxes several trillion dollars. That’s with a T. 

“Now, the majority wants to say, well, no that’s not what the budget says.  That’s why I’ve described their budget as the Bernie Madoff budget because they tinkered and hid all of the really serious proposals that they all have in mind to do.  You know, they’ve talked about their cap-and-trade, their national energy tax, but you can’t see it in here and so let’s just call it what it is – the Bernie Madoff budget. 

“Because if you look at the other documents, they want to do cap-and-trade, which is a national energy tax, $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.  They want to let all the tax cuts that were passed early in this decade, they want to allow them it all to expire.  And even have other ideas to even bring back the Death Tax, a tax that is on top of taxes that were paid when you earned the money, capital gains taxes paid along the way, and if you saved money and you did the responsible thing, when you die, we’re going to come in and take half of it.  Now, this is un-American. 

“And so we’ve got too much spending, way too many ideas about raising taxes, and then we get to the really tough part of this budget.  We get to the debt.  You know we actually do have to borrow money.  The Chinese, frankly, have been our biggest loaners here over the last decade.  We’ve accumulated some $5.8 trillion worth of debt over the last 223 years and 43 Presidents.  This budget doubles the national debt in five years.  It triples the national debt in 10 years, and one only has to look at this chart.  The blue line is the debt we’ve accumulated.  The red line being the amount of debt accumulated over the course of this budget and into the future.  The green line represents the Republican alternative, which I think is a much, much safer bet and frankly, reduces the debt that our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay.  

“So if you look at a budget it’s always called an outline, a road map.  Well I have a description of what this budget is – it’s called a road map to disaster.   As I said earlier this year we’re going to be the party of better solutions.  We clearly are not in agreement with the Democrat budget.  Paul Ryan, my colleague from Wisconsin and the members of the budget committee on our side of the aisle have put together a better solution that has less spending, that has less taxes and has much less debt on the backs of our kids and grandkids.

“As I said before, previous generations have made tough decisions.  Tough decisions to ensure their kids and grandkids will have a brighter future.  The budget presented by the majority doesn’t make those decisions.  There’s no question our budget does require us to make tough decisions.  We actually deal with the issue of entitlements, which is important for us to deal with because there’s no way to balance the budget and begin to reduce the debt unless you begin to look at these entitlement programs where our generations made promises to ourselves that our kids and grandkids can’t afford.

“We need to do it in a responsible way we need to do it in a bipartisan way to preserve these programs to help the people who depend upon them, but also to make them affordable for our kids and grandkids who get to pay the bill.  And so we do make tough decisions, and that’s the real point of why the American people send us here. They send us here to make the decisions on behalf of our country, on behalf of their kids and grandkids, and we can’t just run away from those decisions represented by the Democrat budget.  We have to make them, and when we don’t make those decisions, those tough decisions, it’s our kids and grandkids who will pay the price.  Higher taxes, bigger government and most importantly, less opportunities for them.

“You know one thing that’s been great about America is we allow the American people to keep more of what they earn in our budget, small businesses to keep more of what they earn.  They’re the engine of economic growth. They’re the engine of opportunities in America.   Most of you have traveled around the world and you know, there’s no country like ours, none anywhere in the world.  Why?  Because in America, you can grow up and be anything you want to be, you can do anything you want to do, and the reason for that is we have a system that allows the American people to keep more of their money, to make decisions for themselves and their own family. We have opportunities, opportunities you don’t see any place in the world.  The budget presented by the majority will stamp out those opportunities because the economic growth that we’ll have as a result of this budget will slow dramatically and when you slow economic growth, you slow job creation in America and you slow down the opportunities available to our kids and grandkids to grow up and be anything that they want to be.   

“I would suggest to my colleagues, it’s time to say no to the irresponsible spending plan, taxing plan, and borrowing plan presented by the majority, and to support the Republican alternative which requires us to make the tough decisions the American people sent us here to make.  I yield back.”