[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 25, 2010)]
[House]
[Page H3748]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      LET'S GET OUR FACTS STRAIGHT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I was going to talk about 
energy, but listening to my friend from Florida, I am compelled to 
respond.
  First of all, the Democratic Party is called the Democratic Party, 
not the Democrat Party. We are democratic, and we give the same respect 
to our Republican fellows. I would hope that we would show more respect 
on the floor in properly referring to the Democratic Party by its 
proper name.
  But maybe much more important, let's get our facts straight. When 
President Clinton left office in 2000, he left this country with a 
surplus, with three back-to-back budget surpluses, and surpluses as far 
as the eye could see, under Democratic economic management, a booming 
economy that created more jobs than any other administration in 
history, and economic and budget surpluses that actually had created 
some concern on Wall Street that we were going to fully pay down the 
national debt over the next 10 or 12 years and put in jeopardy the 
treasury market and the bond market. There were actually stories 
wringing their hands about that.
  In 8 brief years, the Bush administration and their allies in this 
Congress took care of that. They took record surpluses and turned them 
into record deficits. Three things alone added $6 trillion to the 
national debt: unpaid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; an unpaid new 
entitlement program, the Medicare part D drug prescription benefit; 
and, of course, the unpaid Bush tax cuts that we were told by 
Republican friends on that side of the aisle would lead to 
unprecedented prosperity, enormous economic activity. It would unleash 
innovation, creativity and job creation in America.
  You know what? It led to the most anemic job growth, barely positive, 
in any Presidency. As a matter of fact, this year alone, the economic 
policies of this Democratic President will create more jobs than were 
created in the entirety of the 8 years of the Bush administration and 
their allies here in the Congress.
  They led to unprecedented debt accumulation in the United States. 
They took a record surplus and turned it into a record deficit. That's 
their record.
  The idea that they have clean hands, and they can come back to us, 
the American public, and tell us how we ought to manage our fiscal 
house, when they're the ones that put the fiscal house in disorder, 
they're the ones who ran this economy into a ditch, the worst economic 
meltdown in 80 years, the worst economic meltdown on Wall Street, the 
worst job performance in generations, an economy that was absolutely in 
a tailspin and close to the precipice of depression. That's their 
record. And to come to the floor and lecture us on how we ought to 
manage the fiscal house is a bit much.
  The idea that somehow it's unprecedented that we haven't adopted a 
budget resolution--really? Because in the 12 years the Republicans were 
in charge of this Congress, for 4 of them they failed to pass a budget 
resolution, and somehow the Republic did not come to an end.
  So lecturing us about whether or not we're going to have a budget 
resolution this year, let's get at what's really important: Are we 
going to get our arms around this economy?
  Well, on our record, in 15 brief months, this economy is now growing 
again. Jobs are being created again. I've sat and listened to my 
friends on the other side frequently say, Where are the jobs? Well, 
we've actually created a lot of jobs now in the private sector, and 
we're going to create a lot more, it's estimated, in the balance of the 
year, a lot more than they did in the 8 years in which they were in 
charge.
  We inherited a mess, a fiscal mess and an economic mess, and we've 
had the untidy task of having to clean it up. But we're doing it, and 
we're showing results. And what we don't need is lectures on the floor 
about how to do it the way they did it in the 8 years in which they 
were in charge.

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