Welcome to the Menendez Message!
Special Volume, FY2009 Budget - March 10, 2008
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In this issue:
Dear neighbors,
I wanted to bring to you this special edition of the Menendez Message on the debate in the Senate this week over our nation's budget. I truly believe that, though it's filled with a lot of numbers that may seem dull, the budget is actually more than just a balance sheet of revenues and expenditures: it is a balance sheet of priorities and values.
This year in particular, the budget debate represents a fight for the direction of our nation's economy. These are tough times for many in our state and around the country, and it is vitally important that our government invest in the American people with programs to keep us safe and healthy and to help stoke the economy.
I invite you to watch and read the speech about our nation's budget that I delivered on the Senate floor. And I hope to hear from you or to see you around New Jersey in the near future so that we can discuss the direction of our nation and how it impacts New Jersey.
Sincerely,
Robert Menendez
Video of Senator Menendez's floor speech on the FY09 Budget
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Budget Highlights
- Creates Half a Million Good-Paying Jobs
- Cuts Taxes for the Middle Class
- Moves us toward Energy Independence by Supporting Green Industries
- Investments in: Homeland Security, Health Care and Education
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Statement on the FY09 Budget
Madame President,
This week in the United States Senate, we are fighting for the economic future of America. This is the week we put together the federal government's budget.
The budget is more than just a balance sheet of revenues and expenditures: it is a balance sheet of priorities and values. The lines of numbers come together to form a bigger picture, laying out a vision of where we plan to lead the nation.
Every year when we make the budget, we look at where our country stands, how we can improve the lives of the American people, and what we can do to make sound investments that brighten the future of generations to come. It is a responsibility that we cannot afford to take lightly.
When we create a budget, we have to answer some fundamental questions: what are the most important problems we face as a nation, what are the challenges of middle-class working families and how do we meet those challenges together?
Several weeks ago, President Bush gave us his answer. His answer was: there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by giving away more tax breaks to the wealthy, giving away more subsidies to big oil companies, continuing the war in Iraq indefinitely and never admitting what it costs. The President is fighting to keep taxes low for the wealthy and wants to make it up by charging veterans more for their health care.
Apparently, that's the answer some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are giving as well. They agree with the President that the American people should just cover their eyes, pretend their problems don't exist, and then everything will magically work itself out.
A vote for the President's budget is a vote for the status quo. But Democrats see things quite differently. Here's what we see:
Our economy is weakening and tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs. The price we pay for health care is spiking through the roof while the value of our homes is falling through the floor.
Baby boomers worry about whether they're going to be able to retire with dignity, and seniors are worried that the strong base of Social Security could crumble right under them.
Our climate is in crisis, and our attachment to an umbilical chord of foreign oil means our entire way of life hangs by a liquid thread.
The government is going into debt to the tune of more than ten billion dollars per month to finance a war in Iraq that hasn't made any of us safer, while local police and fire departments are getting squeezed for funds, and crime in our neighborhoods is on the rise.
If you've worked in Newark all your life and you just lost your job, we hear you. If you're scared to walk through your neighborhood in Camden because there's violence on the streets, we hear you.
If your family might be in danger of losing your home in Trenton or Long Branch or North Arlington, if you're teaching at a school with a budget stretched as far as it can go in Hamilton, Plainfield or Asbury Park,
if your commute to work just keeps getting more frustrating in Cherry Hill, if every day you drive by a barren industrial site that's not being redeveloped in Penns Grove or Paulsboro, if it's a struggle to pay your college tuition in New Brunswick or pay your heating bill in Toms River or pay your health care costs in Edison, Democrats understand what people in New Jersey, and people all across America, are going through.
None of us can stand up here and pretend that one budget can be the magic bullet that makes all of these problems disappear. One year isn't enough time for that.
One year can't undo seven years of the Bush Administration's mismanagement that turned a record surplus into a soaring deficit, one year can't undo five years of a war in Iraq that has claimed thousands of American lives and incinerated more than half a trillion dollars that we could have used to make Americans' lives better.
In one budget, we can't fully fund all the programs that deserve our support or give all the tax relief we want to middle class working families. Not under this administration.
But this year, we can set the wheels in motion of the long and indispensable process of change. We can develop a plan to meet the challenges we face head-on, and we can start to move our country forward. And this is exactly what the Senate Democratic budget does.
Here's the vision that our budget puts forth for our nation: a nation that's more prosperous, with more affordable health care, on the path to energy independence, a nation of safer neighborhoods and better schools--a nation we can all be proud of.
Above all, our budget is designed to get our economy growing and moving again.
The Bush budget, supported by many of my Republican colleagues, creates jobs in China, while the Democratic budget creates good-paying jobs here in America.
The Democratic budget focuses on rebuilding our infrastructure, expanding incentives for green initiatives and industries, and investing in math, science, engineering and technology, so American businesses create and keep the best jobs here in America.
Our budget puts the family budget first. It provides middle class tax relief by extending marriage penalty relief, a child tax credit and a patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax that will protect millions of middle class families from paying higher taxes next year. It works to make college more affordable by extending a tuition tax credit, and it supports job training programs that will prepare the workforce for the 21st Century.
The budget moves us down the road to energy independence, and helps create a high-skilled workforce and green collar jobs. I'm proud to have pushed for funding for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants, a provision I authored in our last energy bill, to provide cities with support for projects that foster more efficient use of energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We all know that oil and natural gas prices are sky high, and sea levels are rising along with the temperature, so this program is a key part of our strategy to meet those challenges.
The Democratic budget recognizes that we can't think about national security without thinking about hometown security.
While our resources are being drained day after day on the streets of Baghdad and Mosul, we're struggling to protect high-risk targets on the streets of our own neighborhoods.
We know our police departments are just a phone call away during an emergency. Our brave men and women in law enforcement have dedicated themselves to serving and protecting our communities.
So it's unbelievable to me that the Bush Administration has reduced or eliminated nearly every major anti-crime program over the course of the last 7 years, especially since crime and violence have been on the rise in this country, according to the latest FBI reports.
How can we expect law enforcement to carry out their responsibilities and respond at a moment's notice when the federal government is backing out of its responsibilities to support law enforcement?
People in my home state of New Jersey remember on September 11th: it wasn't the federal government that provided the immediate response--it was local police, fire and emergency medical units from our hometowns.
Yet, in the years after September 11th, the administration has left our local communities to shoulder far too much of the financial burden. Our budget, however, will ensure that first responders across the nation will get the resources they need.
I was proud to work with Chairman Conrad to ensure that the homeland security grants our communities rely on most were protected in this budget.
The Democratic budget restores more than $2 billion in misguided cuts the President made to State Homeland Security Grants, Port Security, Interoperable Communications, and Rail and Transit Security.
Our budget will ensure that states facing threats from high-risk targets or densely-populated areas, communities that are near ports, chemical plants, or airports, and cities with mass transit or rail systems, will not be shortchanged.
By restoring more than $750 million in cuts to grants to firefighters, we will ensure that our fire departments can buy new equipment or ensure our fire stations are fully staffed.
Unlike the President, we will keep our commitment to fulfilling the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and we will keep our commitment to our first responders.
We more than double funding for the Byrne/JAG program that many local law enforcement officials consider the most successful crime prevention program in recent history.
I'm proud to have introduced an amendment that was passed unanimously in the Budget Committee setting aside a minimum of $520 million to fund it, and I'm going to ensure that we continue to support this vital program.
I also included language to help the FBI cut down its massive backlog in evaluating immigration applications for those that follow our rules to legally enter the country.
Cutting down this backlog is essential if the FBI is going to be able to quickly separate those who have come to pursue the American Dream from those who may have come to destroy it.
HEALTH CARE
Our budget puts a priority on making health care more affordable and more accessible to all Americans.
We worked to create a reserve fund to block President Bush's unilateral changes to Medicaid that would severely reduce federal health care funds to states for low-income families. The reserve fund would also protect New Jersey's FamilyCare program from the president's draconian cuts to children's health coverage scheduled for this summer.
This budget includes funding for the Patient Navigator program, which I worked hard to have passed into law. If patients are having trouble figuring out the complicated health care system, if they don't know how to get early screening or don't know about options for follow-up treatment, Patient Navigators make sure there's somebody there to help.
Our budget also keeps our commitment to our schools, teachers and students. I'm proud that our budget provides the largest increase for elementary and secondary education in six years. Instead of taking money away from our schools while asking them to do more, our budget will fund programs that provide enrichment and opportunity to our students.
We don't just say education is a priority--we put our money where our values are by providing $3 billion more than the President for No Child Left Behind and $8.8 billion more than the President for education and training overall.
We soundly reject the President's proposal to freeze education funding and eliminate 48 programs in the Department of Education, including education technology, mentoring, reading programs, and vocational education.
Instead of pretending that our young people aren't facing severe hardships when it comes to paying for college, our budget makes the needed investments in grants and scholarships for college, and allows for an increase the Pell Grant Maximum next year. That's the support our young people deserve, and under this budget, that's the support they're going to get.
I've often said, Madame President, that as someone who grew up poor in a tenement in Union City, New Jersey, the first in my family to go to college, that would never have happened but for the power of the federal government to provide me with the opportunities for grants and loans, and that power gave me the educational opportunities and foundation that allows me today to be the Junior Senator from New Jersey. That should be a birthright for every young person in our country willing to work hard and give something back to their nation. This budget is in line with that value.
OUR SHARED VALUES
Madame President,
Our debate over the budget is a debate over the direction of the economy, the fulfillment of our shared values, and the direction of our country.
The President and those who support him are offering the same old ideas that got us into this mess in the first place--ideas that have weakened the economy and hurt the middle class.
You know, if you ask for more of the same, it seems to me you get more of the same. And those who are happy with the economy we are in would be happy with the President's budget. But for those who are languishing, and that's the overwhelming majority of families in this country, under the President's economic policies--the reality is, they want to see change. And that change is represented in the Democratic budget.
Democrats have a fiscally-responsible plan to get our economy moving again and strengthen our national security. The budget we're putting forth will cut taxes for the middle class, create half a million new jobs here in America, and do all of this while working toward a balanced budget and paying down the debt.
It's a plan that puts forth a basic idea about what America should be: this should be a country where anyone willing to work hard can get an education and a job, a country where everyone has access to services that can keep them healthy, a country where a lifetime of hard work guarantees the right to retire with dignity, a country that knows its past and cares about its future.
Madame President, let's invest in that future, let's pass this budget, let's begin the hard work of making that vision a reality, and changing the economic circumstances for families in our country. That's what this debate this week is all about, that's what the Democratic budget is all about, that's why I'm proud to have voted for it in the Committee, I'm proud to stand on the floor to defend it, I'm proud to support Sen. Conrad in his efforts in this regard. And with that, Madame President, I yield the floor.
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