Pelosi: GOP’s ‘Road to Ruin’ Budget Will Take Us Back to ‘Trickle Down Economics’

“OK. And now this week the House GOP leadership presented their caucus with the latest budget proposal. We call it the ‘Road to Ruin’. It continues down the path that Speaker Ryan has taken us in his previous Ryan budgets. It devastates good paying jobs, lacking investment in education, the future of infrastructure in America, abandons seniors by ending the Medicare guarantee, and demands $6.5 trillion – $6.5 trillion – in cuts, the most extreme cuts ever proposed by Republicans on the Budget Committee.

And yet, it is not brutal enough for their Tea Party element. It is a freeze and cut. Oh, no, it is a cut and freeze. Cut domestic agenda and then freeze it for 10 years, stultifying growth in our country.

The goal of the Republican Conference is clear: to take us back to the radical trickle down economics that shattered our economy and hollowed out the wages of America’s working families. Democrats stand for a budget that is a statement of our values, that creates jobs, raises the paychecks of hard working families, invests in the future of our country, while reducing the deficit in a balanced and responsible way.

I don’t think we should leave here until we have some action. You know, the Republicans were famous, when we were in power, famous for saying no budget, no paycheck, and they made a big fanfare about that, and now they can’t get a budget. And we are saying at least we shouldn’t adjourn until we do and until we have a statement of – a supplemental that will support our initiatives on Zika, on Flint, and on opioids.

I don’t know if they have any idea how every day of delay in trying to control Zika by investments in research and the rest, what that means in terms of public health, what that means to women of childbearing age, that a bite of a mosquito can just completely destroy the brain of your child. In any case, we have work to do.”