[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 91 (Thursday, June 17, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5099-S5100]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAX EXTENDERS
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I want to talk about something
else. I sat here, as did the Presiding Officer from Illinois, who was a
strong supporter of passing this legislation that again failed because
of the Senate's anachronistic, outmoded requirement of 60 votes, a
supermajority. We could not get there because no Republicans--no
Republicans--cooperated. We could not do today what we should do, and
that is extend unemployment benefits to tens of thousands of Ohioans
and millions of Americans. We could not extend the assistance to help
them keep their insurance, which Senator Casey has worked so hard on,
something called COBRA, so that people who lost their jobs would not
lose their insurance. We could not help those physicians who are about
to face a 21-percent cut in their payments. We could not stop the
outsourcing through our tax system of too many jobs abroad. We could
not do any of that today because we did not get any cooperation.
I understand partisanship. I understand ideological differences. But
what I don't understand is when I hear Republican after Republican
stand on this floor and talk about the budget deficit, I am just
struck. I have only been in this institution for 3 years. I was in the
House of Representatives for 14 years before. I am struck by the utter
hypocrisy when I hear Republicans all of a sudden decide deficits
matter, all of a sudden decide everything needs to be paid for.
When I was in the House of Representatives, George Bush came to
Congress and asked for the authority to go to Iraq and did not even try
to pay for it. I voted no, but that is beside the point. It passed. It
was not paid for.
Then President Bush came to the Congress again with a Republican
majority and asked for huge tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to the
richest Americans. They did not pay for that
[[Page S5100]]
either. They charged that to our grandchildren.
Then around the same time in the name of Medicare privatization, he
asked for what he called a Medicare drug benefit, what I call a bailout
for the drug and insurance industry, tens of billions in subsidies to
drug companies and insurance companies, and they did not pay for that
either.
Throughout the first decade of this century, Congress has spent close
to $1 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and did not pay for it.
Nobody on that side said: Wait a second. We shouldn't do this without
paying for it.
Then Congress passed hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts for
the richest Americans and did not pay for that. They did not say we
can't do that unless we pay for it. They did the same thing for this
give-away to the drug and insurance companies.
Now when we want to extend unemployment benefits to people who have
lost their jobs, when we want to extend some assistance for health
insurance to people who have lost their health insurance, all of a
sudden all these conservatives around here say we cannot do this unless
we pay for it. Then their little cheerleaders on the Wall Street
editorial board, and talk radio, and their people on Fox TV, like one
bird flying off a telephone wire, they all fly off and say: We have to
pay for it.
They never said we have to pay for a trillion-dollar war. They never
said we should pay for the tax cuts going to the rich people. They
never said we should pay for these subsidies going to the drug
companies. We start a war, we attack Iraq, we go to Afghanistan, and we
charge it to our grandchildren. We give a tax cut to the richest
Americans, and we charge it to our grandchildren. We pass this give-
away to the drug and insurance companies, and we charge it to our
grandchildren.
But again, when it is time to help laid-off workers--we know what
happens when a person is laid off. They almost act as if unemployment
insurance is a welfare program. All I can think of when I see the
behavior of refusal to extend unemployment insurance or the refusal to
help people get health insurance when they have lost their jobs, all I
can think of is most of my friends on the other side of the aisle, most
of my colleagues must not know anybody who has lost their job, who has
lost their insurance. They must not know anybody who, because they lost
their job and their insurance, may next lose their home.
Try to think about this. I know people who have lost their homes. I
know people who were doing pretty well and lost their homes. I have
tried to understand what it is like. You come home one day and for the
last 3 or 4 months you tried to make your mortgage payment. You were
late the first month. Then you got the second payment in on time. The
next month you were late. The following month you could not pay and you
realize you are in trouble. And then the bank comes to you and tells
you they will foreclose.
Think what that is like. You worked hard. Maybe your kids are still
small. You have lost your job. You want to pay your mortgage, but you
do not have the money to do it.
So the bank is going to foreclose on your house. Think about that.
You have three kids and your spouse has lost her job or you don't have
enough money to make these payments and you are going to have to tell
your kids: Guys, we are going to have to leave our house.
Where are we going to live, Dad?
We will try to move in with somebody.
What are we going to do with all our stuff?
I don't know; put it in storage. If we can't afford storage, I guess
we will have to give it away.
Think about what it would be like to lose your job, then your
insurance, then to lose your home. That has happened to a whole lot of
people who even look like me, people who dress well and have middle-
class jobs. This just doesn't happen to a bunch of people who were just
lazy and didn't do anything; this is happening to all kinds of people
in this country.
I wonder if my Republican colleagues--if the conservatives here who
always preach self-reliance and always say we have to do better in this
country and that people should have to stand on their own two feet--
really know people who have lost their jobs and lost their insurance
and lost their homes. I think if they did, they might be willing to
extend unemployment benefits; if they did, they might be willing to
extend subsidies to help those people get their health insurance.
That is what is so troubling about what has happened the last few
weeks. We can't get 60 votes because we need some Republicans. We can't
get 60 votes to extend unemployment to help people out a little bit.
Again, unemployment insurance is not welfare. You have a job and you
pay into unemployment every paycheck. You pay into this insurance fund
so that if you lose your job, you get help from that fund. It is as
simple as that.
So, Mr. President, I guess my patience runs short--as is the case for
many of us on this side--when I hear my colleagues saying we can't do
this because it would add to the budget deficit. Yet they continue to
vote for war funding, and they continue giving tax cuts to the richest
people in America, and they continue to subsidize the drug industry in
America. It is a moral question, and the Senate failed this moral
question.
____________________