Rep. Doggett: "The Republican Budget Offers a Path to Prosperity-- Unfortunately, it's China's Prosperity"

[Full text of Rep. Doggett's remarks as prepared for delivery follow below]
 

The Republican budget does offer a path to prosperity – unfortunately, it is China's prosperity.

For America, they offer a fast-track to mediocrity; a descent into economic insecurity; it's the wrong path to global competitiveness.

It's not that the level of our debt or the size of our tax breaks are unimportant—it's that when you have such a narrow focus that you talk about little else, you forget America's other competitive strengths: our workforce—the need to invest to ensure the strongest and best-educated workforce anywhere in the world; our infrastructure that allows American businesses to prosper across our country; and it's also about preserving a broad middle class so that more Americans share in the bounty of this country instead of going to some third world extreme where all the wealth is concentrated at the top of the ladder.

Today we have to choose.

Instead of eliminating $4 billion from early education and student financial assistance, so that students can achieve all of their God-given potential, why not ask General Electric to at least the same tax rate as its mail clerks pay?

Instead of eliminating $3 billion a year from our crumbling bridges and roads, why not ask those giant corporations that currently get a $3 billion annual deduction when they borrow money to build a factory overseas without recognizing any of the income from that factory to begin paying their fair share?

Instead of accepting this Republican nonsense that we have to have more tax breaks for the very wealthy in our country, why not use the same money to ensure a little dignity for our seniors in nursing homes across the country?

We need to stop exporting jobs, exporting manufacturing, exporting tax revenues overseas, and begin develop a more competitive workforce right here in America.

I will yield my time, but I will never yield to those Republicans who ask for no sacrifice from Wall Street and Big-Bank bonus recipients, but believe a balanced budget is found in the wallets of teachers, nurses and seniors.

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