I am trying really hard to get back in the swing of going forward, and it's hard but I got this in my email today. I can't think because this is a letter most in this area will gobble up. Do any have info on the house budget? I know the Obama budget is not good.
Please advise
This is really going to hurt our effort going forward with democratic ideas. I am really wanting some one to point out the spin and lies. I have been out of the loop for about a week and this letter appears to be a gotcha and cherrypicked. I need some of you more savy to pick it apart so I can respond intelligently. I do want to respond
FROM CONGRESSMAN RICH NUGENT
April 27, 2013
Dear Amanda,
In case you missed it, the House, Senate, and White House budget proposals are now all on the table for your consideration. Below is an op-ed that I submitted recently to a local paper giving my take on the situation. As always, I am interested to hear where you stand.
This year, for the first time in nearly a century, the President of the United States broke the law and left Congress to pass budget resolutions without having first seen his official request. Now, more than two months after the legal deadline, the President has finally put together a federal budget proposal.
At this point, we can compare apples to apples and I wanted to take this opportunity to fill you in on the main differences between the President's budget proposal and the House Republican proposal.
First and foremost, the House proposal would balance the budget in ten years. The President's budget would never balance.
Second, the House proposal prevents Medicare's main trust fund from going bust in eleven years without changing a single benefit for anybody 55 and up. Furthermore, the House plan preserves the existing structure of Medicare as an option for anybody 54 and under. The Presidents plan, on the other hand, would cut Medicare by $370 billion and those cuts would affect current retirees.
There is a similar distinction on Social Security. The House proposal would again make no changes to Social Security for anybody 55 and up. The President's proposal, conversely, would cut $130 billion from current seniors' COLAs. The House proposal would not ask military families to pay more out-of-pocket for healthcare. The President's proposal calls for increased co-pays and fees for TRICARE, which means billions more in out-of-pocket costs for military families.
Finally, the House proposal would eliminate the tens of thousands of pages worth of loopholes and special deductions in the tax code and replace them with dramatically lower rates for hard working Americans. The President's budget proposes an additional $800 billion in new taxes, on top of the tax increases in his healthcare law and on top of the rate increases he got on the wealthy at the end of last year.
In short, the House proposal balances the budget by prioritizing spending, reforming the tax code, and holding seniors and military families harmless. The President's budget never balances, despite raising taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars and cutting hundreds of billions more from benefits for seniors and the military. The reason his budget never balances is simple. He wants to take the savings from these benefit cuts and tax increases and spend the money elsewhere - on new stimulus spending and more new programs.
I have stated repeatedly, in testimony before the Budget Committee and elsewhere that I could not justify and could not support cutting retirement benefits for people 55 and up. Furthermore, any changes to Medicare or Social Security should only be pursued as a means to make those programs healthier and sustainable. Washington should not ask seniors who have paid for these benefits to make do with less so that the President can spend that money on pet projects elsewhere.
I have also said that I believe balancing the budget is necessary and achievable. I am proud of the fact that the budget team in the House rolled up their sleeves and managed to find a way to balance the budget in a reasonable amount of time and without doing it on the backs of taxpayers, seniors, and veterans.
It goes without saying that the President and the House are worlds apart in terms of priorities, but like most Americans, I am hopeful that cooler heads will prevail and something meaningful can get done to put this country back on a sustainable path. In any case, I wanted to follow up to let you know where things stand. If you have any questions or opinions you would like to share, please don't hesitate to reach out. All of my contact information is available at http://nugent.house.gov. If you're interested, you can sign up to receive regular weekly updates right there on the homepage. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Richard Nugent
Member of Congress
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