American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Today's vote on H.R. 4438 and on five other Republican bills to come that would permanently extend other tax breaks without paying for them will increase the deficit by $310 billion and lead to Republican cuts to services like Medicare, health research, and school funding.

How much is $310 billion?

That is five times what we spend on services to our veterans. We have over 21 million Americans who have served in uniform who are veterans of this country.

That $310 billion is three times what the Federal Government invests in education, job training, and social services for an entire year. It is over 10 times what we spend annually on medical research to come up with the innovations and the lifesaving treatments that Americans rely upon.

We hear from our colleagues on the Republican side that they are fiscally responsible, that they are fiscal hawks, but they pass these severe budgets that would cut schools, that would cut medical research, that would cut Medicare funding for our seniors, that would cut Social Security, but they have to do it because we have to get rid of that deficit.

Here we have the fiscal pretenders.

In this bill, H.R. 4438, our Republican colleagues propose to blow the deficit wide open by adding $310 billion to that deficit by passing these unpaid-for tax breaks. Yet when it is time to make the tough choices, when it comes to providing the services that our middle class families want for their children to go to college, they can't do it. But there is a free pass for these corporate tax breaks.

What American citizen and taxpayer would trust this Republican math from our colleagues?

I urge colleagues to vote against this budget-busting legislation and turn our focus to building an economy that works for all Americans, not just a select few.

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