From the office of U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski:
U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) issued a statement on Senate passage of a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government through April 8, 2011.
“Senate Democrats have initiated cuts,” Senator Mikulski said. “I am for cuts to programs that middle-class families don’t depend on for their survival. The biggest cut I want to make is to the unemployment rate.”
Senator Mikulski’s statement is full follows:
“I reluctantly support another short-term CR because I am absolutely against a government shutdown.
“But enough is enough. We are six months into the fiscal year and no closer to having a budget than the day we started. The American people want a budget that is frugal, on their side and that brings stability to their lives. Both parties must come together and agree to sensible budget cuts for the remainder of this year and then tackle the items that are responsible for adding to our deficit.
“We cannot continue a cycle of cutting $2 billion every two weeks. That’s no way to govern. Even though many of the cuts in the new CR are cuts that I agree with, short-term CRs are a government shutdown by proxy. I don’t want a government shutdown. I’m fighting to prevent it. But we cannot fund the government with two- to three-week payments. It is bad for federal workers, contractors, families and the economy.
“Senate Democrats have initiated cuts. First we cut $41 billion from the President’s budget request. Then we offered to cut another $10 billion, for a total of $51 billion in cuts. But our offer was rejected. Republicans want to cut $100 billion. We met them halfway. But that wasn’t good enough. Whether we cut $100 billion at once or several billion at a time in short term CRs, this is not a strategy to reduce the deficit and will hurt middle-class families.
“I am for cuts. The biggest cut I want to make is to the unemployment rate. Last week, I voted for Chairman Inouye’s package with $51 billion in cuts. And in my own CJS bill, I’ve agreed to cut agency overhead by 10 percent, and cut agency party funds by 25 percent. I’m for making cuts to programs that middle-class families don’t depend on for their survival. Let’s end lavish subsidies for oil and gas companies to save $5 billion each year before we cut Head Start and Child Care by $1 billion. Let’s stop the tax breaks for corporations that send jobs overseas to save $5 billion before we cut afterschool programs by $100 million. Let’s stop subsidizing big agribusiness to save another $5 billion before we cut Pell Grants for middle-class kids by more than $600. And let’s end the war, which costs $1.1 billion a week in Iraq and $2.5 billion a week in Afghanistan, and bring our troops home before we ask our military men and women and their families to sacrifice any more for our country.
“The uncertainty of these short-term CRs is bad for workers and contractors. One hundred and thirty thousand federal employees and thousands more contractors live and work in Maryland. These are some of the most dedicated, hardworking people in our nation. They make sure the food we eat is safe, find cures for the most devastating diseases, and make sure seniors get their checks every month. At Goddard Space Flight Center in Prince George’s County there are 9,100 employees—3,400 civil servants and 5,700 contractors leading the world in green-science initiatives. Of these 9,100 workers, 65 percent are scientists, engineers and technicians taking us into the next century with research on the Earth and its climate, and leading missions to learn about the sun, moon, Mercury and Saturn.
“Maryland’s federal employees win Nobel Prizes. Dr. Bill Phillips of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg shared the 1997 Physics Nobel Prize for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, making it possible for us to study atoms with unprecedented precision. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was one of his co-winners. Dr. Martin Rodbell of NIH shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of G-proteins and the principles of signal transduction in cellular communication. Dr. John C. Mather of NASA Goddard shared the 2006 Nobel in Physics for a discovery that has enabled precise measurements of the first moments of the universe.
“Whether they have won a Nobel Prize or provide the petri dishes or support services for this important work, these are hard-working federal employees and contractors who are duty and mission driven. “In Prince George’s County, I heard from a small business owner who does contract business with the government. Over the years she has grown her business with help from the Small Business Administration. Her company graduated from the SBA’s 8(a) business development program, which was created to help small and disadvantaged companies compete. By taking advantage of the resources offered like mentoring, business counseling, training, financial assistance and technical assistance she grew to a $43 million business based in Maryland with divisions in other states. She’s a success story. She asked me, “What should we do if the government shuts down?” She’s afraid that the gains she’s made could all be lost in a shutdown. At a time when we are seeing signs of economic recovery Congress should be nurturing this trend with predictable, stable funding for small business owners, not destroying it.
“Mr. President, I support federal employees and contractors. I support the mission of our government agencies and I support providing the money needed to carry out their mandates. But I don’t support a government shutdown.
“I support cuts. But cuts are not a strategy to reduce the deficit. Cuts are a tool, but they are not the only tool. We need a more thoughtful approach. We need a real strategy.
“I will vote for today’s CR, but we cannot continue to pass short-term spending bills. Both sides must come to agree on a long-term budget for remainder of fiscal year.”
lets start by cutting your pay 50%, then your benefits by 75% when you leave office. enact a balanced budget amendment, cut entire departments like HUD, homeland security. and by the way 50 billion isn’t much of a cut
Dear Bab’s,
I stood there in the audience and watched you babble on about protecting the poor steelworkers ( almost all laid off, pensions chopped and administered by the PBGC). You can’t protect anyone against market forces forever. You can stall the process and exaggerate the result.
Time to cut and save all of us from a nasty fate down the road. Stop listening to “There is no problem, Harry”.
Good idea but don’t stop there, cut all their salaries and benefits by 50%. If they were in the the private sector they would have been fired years ago or the company they worked for would have gone bankrupt. Babs is one of the ones that failed to pass a budget last year and put the Government in the position it is now.
Amen to that brother, she and rest of the congress are paid why too much along with all their benifits when they retire. lets start chop’n off some of there waste first. I’m sick of her aways, just another forever politician, thats needs to hit the road!!!
Well Darn, Barbara, what are your ideas for the Federal budget? Oh, that’s right, keep spending . . . What a waste.
Politicians of today make me HURL!! including her!
Spike Mikulski’s words to live by: “That’s no way to govern.”
If we were actually governed properly in the first place we wouldn’t be in the fix.
Nuff said.
the party of no has not contributed anything to pass the budget either and they are comptemplating defaulting on the debt. The party of “moral values” chooses to become inmoral to prove what point? The cuts they are proposing involve less than 20% of the total federal spending and assume that these cuts alone will balance the budget. The 60 or so billion in proposed cuts do not involve medicaid, medicare or millitary spending. How do you propose to cut and balance the budget from a party that all they approve is tax breaks for the rich and don’t mind cutting out the poor and disabled from getting heat and electric subsidies. The TEA party even proposes getting rid of the d dept of edcuation, EPA, HUD, SEC and loan modification programs now that their preferred lender buddies have been made whole such as Goldman Sachs, GM and Bank of America.
Hold on a second… shouldn’t the budget have been passed back in September when the DEMS held both the House and Senate AND the White House? They didn’t have the guts to make these cuts on their own, so they delayed and made the more fiscally conservative party do their dirty work…
AJL – Playing the party politics game like so many others? Any suggestion that either party is fiscally conservative is a joke. If you are supporting either of the bought and paid for sides, then I can’t take you seriously on fiscal responsibility.
For starters, why not have a 2 year budget cycle instead of going through this crap every year? Then, pass a law that does away with any pensions for elected officials and their staff. Next, require elected officials and their staff to receive the same health benefits as other civil servants, no special health plans.
Start raising the fees for big companies that use federal land for grazing….what is it, $2 per acre/year? Also, raise the fee for Special Occupational Taxes such as gun dealers and manufacturers, what do they pay, $200 year? Did mention anything about taxing oil companies and other industries that have been untouchables for years. What about raising the tax rate to 60% for anyone such as a banker/financier who receives a bonus > $100,000.
Dems and Repubs have no one to blame but themselves.
Why stop at bankers, how about baseball players and football players, many of them have multi-million dollar salaries.
The real problem is that there is nothing more permnent than a temporary program. Its hard as heck to end.
It now seems that the Democratic party has turned into the party of no. If politicians are serious about cutting the budget they should be in agreement. They can start by cutting welfare like they did in the 90’s under a Republic congress.
There are so many programs that get free money from the government that could be eliminated and would go a long way in balancing the budget.
you mean like all the tax breaks that actually add to the budget deficit? The republican party is a complete joke…the tea party is just out there.
@FRANKLY SPEAKING
Whether you agree or not a low personal and corporate tax rate environment rewards private sector investment and increases actual tax revenue.
Punitively high tax rates are a favorite ideological gem of liberals that perennially fail to economically deliver forcing investment outside of the US and to tax advantaged/sheltered investments.
Floyd The Barber
how is that low corporate tax rate working for the middle class? No jobs, no increases in income and the gap between the rich and middle class keeps getting wider each year. The mantra that only cutting taxes is the way to grow the economy is just bunk and woodo economics. Supply side economics can actually hurt the economy because trickle down economics doesn’t always trickle down to the masses. The republicans touted the super low corporate tax rates in Ireland and they are now members of the so called PIGS in Europe whom are bankrupt and threaten to take the European healthy economies down also. Remember, the economy has two sides supply and demand. The Clinton administratin managed to grow the economy and reduce deficits to the point that the fed actually issued reports that reducing debt loads too much would hurt economic growth also because a great portion of our economy depends on govt spending for such things as manufacturing and industry in millitary and infrastructure, so there are two sides to everything and a balance is actually needed to keep the economy healthy.
The republican party has shown that when they have the strings on the economic engine the only thing that grows is corporate profits and not jobs, income or middle class wealth. The TEA party movement may be a blessing in diguise as this extreme wing of the GOP lacks leaders that can see past tax cuts and tax breaks for the rich and unabated spending for millitary programs, unfunded wars and adding tax breaks for their corporate investors.
@FRANKLY SPEAKING
The US has the second highest corporate tax rate of 39.2 second only to Japan at 39.5 in the world.
It is amazing how lacking you are in economic and financial knowledge and happy to accept liberal/progressive inexactitudes.
You do realize that all those Wall Street publicly traded companies employ people and their stocks are what fund people’s pensions and 401Ks, 403Bs and IRAs.
Floyd The Barber
Floyd, it’s generally a bad idea to get your figures from the right wing blogosphere (I searched your numbers–oddly enough, EVERY link on the first page went to Tea Party and Koch brothers affiliated sites. Not a reputable economic news source in the bunch).
Check out the reality of the situation from an actual source for economic news (Forbes):
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html
It details the ways that numerous companies take advantage of the vast loopholes in the tax code to not only AVOID paying taxes altogether, but in some cases actually collect massive refunds.
the actually paid corporate tax rate is less than half of that once you account for write offs, tax breaks, capital gain exclussions and forward write offs for technological, research and past business losses. As an example, the new GM who just shed billions of $$$ in bankrupcty can now also write off the loss over the years until they are even. It is projected that GM won’t pay any actual corporate taxes in the next 10 years and to add insult to injury, they won’t have to pay back the billions given to them to keep them from being liquidated which amounts to over 50 billion. The amazing thing is that you seem to drink the republican kool aid and only see what you want to see. In fact, most small businesses with gross incomes uneder $150k are estimated to pay no income/corporate taxes as the tax breaks and write offs make their net income a loss. Big business is even a worse player….Did you know that Bank of America, JPMorgan and WellsFargo are able to write off losses from the banks that they adquired and that were also bailed out by the taxpayer which by the way was approved under Bush not Obama.
@Frankly Speaking
GM notwithstanding since it was wrong in so many ways, corporations can shield their profits by moving manufacturing and keeping profits off-shore or moving off-shoe entirely.
Regarding small businesses with gross incomes under $150k they are typically formed as an LLC or Sub-S Corp as opposed to C-Corp, neither of which ever pay corporate taxes since the members or shareholders pay ordinary income tax on the distributions.
Floyd The Barber
Exactly, the way to run a government is to set up our children to own 30-40 trillion in debt with a 5% or higher interest rate. When their tax revenue is around 3 trillion and they owe 1.5 to 2 trillion of that immediately in interest on our debt… that’s what we want. We need to spend 150%+ of revenue now, and force them to use most of their revenue to cover interest on our debt.
Why? To hell with the damn kids, that’s why. My plan is to be dead before the bill for the huge borrowing and spending I’m doing comes due.
Just ask a democrat; spend all you can now, screw the kids; they can’t vote.
Or, if you have a plan that doesn’t drop another 15 trillion in debt over the next `10-15 years… trot that out. Obama’s plan, Reid’s plan, and the current budget without cuts will dump that debt on the next generation… so you’ll need a plan different from any of those.
If you want to oppose cuts, fine. But be honest and admit you;’re working to screw over the children as hard as you can by stealing from them to spend money now.
Not me, I want the government to stop spending and fix this mess before my son and his kids have to pick up the tab. It looks like the only way out of this is to raise taxes or quit spending or both. Only those who benefit the most from tax and spend politicians argue against reduced spending.