Press Releases

Rep. Rick Larsen (WA-02) released the following statement after House Republicans unveiled their Rules Package for the 112th Congress. This package establishes the rules that the U.S. House of Representatives will operate under for the 112th Congress. The Republican plan abolishes the “pay-as-you-go” principle, contains a special provision that allows Republicans to repeal the health care bill and ignore the trillion dollar increase in the deficit that will result, and exempts tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans from any budget enforcement restraint.  

“Day one of the 112th Congress and House Republicans are already violating their campaign promises and the needs of the American people. The set of rules they introduced today will explode our debt and deficit, kill our economic recovery and make the House of Representatives less transparent.

“Like a lemming, the set of budget rules contained in this package will push us further off the deficit cliff.  It breaks the promise so many of us made to reduce the deficit and control the debt by refusing to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and forces future generations to foot the bill.  Over the cliff like a lemming; but I suppose there is nothing like a little lemming to go with tea.

“Instead of transparency, this set of rules confers "King for a Day" status to one Member of the House of Representatives-allowing him to set the entire budget for the federal government without any public input.

“The last time this country allowed that was never. Only before we were a country did a king set our budget. And now Republicans are set to give this authority again to one person, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, a person I admire as a Member of Congress-as a King, not so much.

"And, in the next few days, the new House majority wants to repeal help for seniors on prescription drugs and take away consumer protections from families battling insurance problems.  This effort will add $143 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.

“This is all happening while we should be focusing on the economic recovery that is underway thanks to the tough decisions that the last Congress made.  We need to redirect our focus to the economy and stop exploding the deficits and debt.”