‘This budget represents a tax hike four times greater than the previous record, and Republicans cannot support it.’



Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell highlighted the problems with the Democrats’ proposed tax-and-spend budget on the Senate floor Tuesday. The following are his remarks (as prepared).



“Republicans got their first look at the Democrats’ budget last week. We’ve been poring over the details for the last few days. And at this point, I can safely say this: If anyone’s searching for a political document that reflects the triumph of rhetoric over reality, look no further.



“For years, Republicans have politely stood by and listened as Democrats lectured us about ‘The Rich’ — the richest one percent is the favorite phrase — while casting themselves as the party of the working class.



“We’ve heard a parade of Democratic candidates and newly-elected members tell us we favor the country club set, the CEOs. Many would like to paint us into a modern-day Thomas Nast cartoon, chomping cigars and taking care of businessmen at the working man’s expense.



“It’s a caricature that’s always been wrong. And that it’s persisted so long is a nuisance. But Americans usually know better. They look at their paychecks, they ask themselves that simple question: ‘Am I better off now than I was four years ago?’



“And the answer for most Americans is clear. Republican economic policies have lifted tens of millions of working families into the middle-class over the last two decades and sparked a general wave of prosperity that few of us could have ever imagined. Americans know it. And so do our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.



“Which is why the budget they’ve proposed is so disturbing.



“Rhetorically, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been careful to embrace an appealing script: keep taxes low, reform entitlements, control spending. But rhetoric always meets reality in the budget. And this time the collision between the two is straight out of the movie 300.



“Let’s start with the rhetoric.



“Just a few months ago, in November, the Senior Senator from Delaware was asked whether Democrats planned to raise taxes. Here’s what he said: ‘Well, the answer is that they will not do that — they won’t raise taxes on working and middle class [Americans].’



“That was the Senior Senator from Delaware, on November 5th.



“His Democratic colleagues stuck to the same script. In early November, voters in Missouri asked the now-junior Senator from that state whether Republicans were right to say that she and other Democrats would raise taxes if they took back the majority.



“‘There’s nothing to that allegation,’ she said. ‘We’re going to cut taxes for the middle class.’



“And then there was the now-junior Senator from Virginia, who recently laid out the case against Republican economic policies in a Jacksonian-tinged response to the President’s State of the Union Address.



“Talking to the Roanoke Times on November 6th, he too denied that Democrats would raise taxes on the middle class. He said he would not, and I quote, ‘raise taxes for wage-earning people.’ He’d put more burdens on corporations instead, he said.



“Well, someone on the Budget Committee isn’t conferring with the new members: because the budget the Democrats handed down last week not only contradicts the stated intentions of these new Senators…Its passage would represent the greatest tax hike in U.S. history — by far. Four times greater, in fact, than any previous tax hike.



“The last time we saw a tax hike even remotely this big was in the Democratic-controlled Congress of 1993. And we know what happened the following year: voter anger over those hikes put Republicans in charge of both chambers for the first time since 1954.



“President Clinton himself would lay those electoral losses square at the feet of the ’93 tax hike.



“Speaking later on to a group of donors, he said, ‘I’ll tell you the whole story about that tax hike. Probably there are people in this room who are still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much too.’



“Well, if President Clinton thought that tax hike was too much, he’d choke on this one. The tax hike the new majority party sent down last week is four times bigger than one that he said was too big for Americans — and, ultimately, him — to stomach.



“So how can the Democrats possibly think the American people will stomach this one?



“Do they think Americans are ready to see all the economic gains of the last five years washed away by a budget that reinstates every tax we’ve lowered or repealed over that period?



“If this budget passes, those cuts are gone. Extinct. Dead.



“And their reimposition would cost working men and women and retirees dearly — nearly $1 trillion over the next five years, by our count.



“Everyone will take a hit:



“Despite the Democratic refrain that the tax cuts we enacted in ’01, ’03, and ’05 favor the richest one percent, the truth is, the wealthiest Americans continue to pay the lion’s share of taxes.



“Under the Democrat budget, they’d see their share increase even more—disincentivizing the kind of corporate and individual investment that’s driven the economic boom of the last several years.



“But the wealthiest taxpayers can absorb a hit. They’re not the ones this budget hurts the most. That’s what’s most astonishing about this budget: working families will take it on the chin.



“How? Let me count the ways.



“Under the Democrats’ budget:



“45 million working families with two children will see their taxes increase by nearly $3,000 annually.



“The child tax credit is cut in half—to $500, piling one more worry onto the shoulders of parents, not to mention parents-to-be. We should be encouraging and supporting young, growing families in this country, not penalizing them.



“Newlyweds are robbed a measure of their happiness, with the budget cutting the standard deduction for married couples by $1,700.



“Far from shifting the burden onto the wealthy, the Democrats’ budget would drive up the taxes of an average family of four by more than 130%--more than doubling their taxes.



“Single parent households would take a hit too.



“By letting the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire in 2010, single-parent families would see their taxes rise by nearly 70%.



“Senior citizens get hit big.



“Again: Despite Democratic grumbling that only the richest 1% of Americans benefit from the tax cuts we passed in ‘01 and ‘03, seniors were a major beneficiary of the capital gains and dividend tax relief. More than half of all seniors today claim income from dividends, and one third claim income from capital gains.



“That’s right, this proposed hike will hit more than half of all seniors:



“The expansion of the market over the last two decades hasn’t just benefited the few. It’s helped millions of hard-working Americans retire earlier than they could have dreamed of a generation earlier. Democrats see the wealth that more than 15 million American seniors accumulated over that period, and they want a piece of it.



“In a sort of perverse politics of inclusion, business owners and executives, middle-class families of four, struggling single-parent households, and millions of seniors—every one gets slammed by this budget.



“Call it fair but cruel.



“This budget represents a tax hike four times greater than the previous record, and Republicans cannot support it. We said at the beginning of the session we would not support tax hikes. We certainly will not support what amounts to the biggest one in American history.



“Worse still, the Democrats don’t even plan to put their $916 billion in new revenue to good use. They don’t take back working Americans’ tax relief to pay down the debt or lower the deficit—they want it so they can continue to raise spending to unprecedented levels.



“Let’s take a look at some of the numbers:



This budget increases annual spending on federal programs over the President’s 2008-2012 requests by nearly $150 billion.

It spends more than $1 trillion of the Social Security surplus

Increases gross debt by more than $2 trillion between 2008-2011

Increases the deficit by $440 billion

“And it completely ignores the urgent need to address entitlement reform—this, despite the fact that the new Democratic Chairman of the Budget Committee stated flat out on national television just two weeks ago, and I quote, that ‘We need to reform the entitlement programs.’



“Add it all up and you’ve got the classic stereotype of the Party of Tax and Spend. Only, this time, it’s on a level the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It’s hyperbole, really.



“Republicans made a pledge to fight tax increases, and to rein in spending. And we intend to stick by it. With this budget, the Democrats have guaranteed quite a fight.”



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