Merkley: The President's Budget is Another Bad Deal for Oregonians

SALEM—Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, released the following statement today in response to the President’s budget, which proposes drastic cuts to popular programs in favor of permanent tax cuts for top wage earners:

“President Bush has really outdone himself this time. Over the course of his presidency, he has nearly doubled the national debt to $9 trillion. Apparently he doesn’t think he’s gone far enough because he just keeps adding to it with budgets like this one. This budget will add another $1 trillion to our national debt.

“What the President has done here is cut every program he could think of that helps America’s working families get ahead. He cuts $178 billion from Medicare. He cuts rural health care grants by 87 percent. He takes home heating assistance money out of the hands of America’s elderly and most vulnerable citizens.

“The President’s budget even takes police off the streets and cuts funding for first responders and for state homeland security plans. That makes every single American less safe. And he does it all to extend permanent tax breaks to Americans making more than $450,000 per year. That is completely unacceptable.

“The President owes the American people a budget proposal that will help us climb out of that $9 trillion hole he and politicians like Gordon Smith have dug over the last seven years. George Bush and Gordon Smith owe us honesty and fiscal responsibility. They have failed terribly for seven years, and the President failed to do that again today.

“Cutting off seniors, law enforcement and laid-off workers cuts at the very heart of the values I learned during my childhood in rural Oregon. My dad worked hard every day at the mill just to put food on the table. But at that time, the government wasn’t trying to stack the deck against him.

“Hard working families need a federal government that works for them, not for a few well-connected special interests”

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Posted February 4, 2008
Press, Spotlight