[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 27, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H6147-H6153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CORRECTING THE RECORD
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Maffei). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to rise this evening with
some of my colleagues to repudiate some of the comments that have been
made here tonight, to correct some of the record, and to provide, I
think, the real story, Mr. Speaker, of what is going on in America and
compare that--and my friend from Iowa, who was up here prior to me
stated that it's about the record. And I would 100 percent agree: it is
about the record.
And if you look at the past few years prior to the Democrats taking
over, our friends on the other side had complete control of the entire
Federal Government. And in States like Ohio, they had control of the
whole Ohio Government.
And with President Bush, Republican House, Republican Senate, they
had an opportunity to implement their economic policy. They had an
opportunity to implement their foreign policy. They had an opportunity
to implement their energy policy. They had an opportunity to implement
their health care policy.
All across the board, our friends on the other side had an
opportunity to govern this great country. And the end result, we saw
just a few short years ago with deregulation of Wall Street, turning a
blind eye to what was going on, hoping that the health care problem
would go away, hoping that the energy policy, the energy problems we
had in this country would go away.
And the end result was what happened just a couple of years ago with
the complete collapse of the American economy, with trillions and
trillions and trillions of dollars lost by American families and
American businesses, with millions of people losing their homes due to
foreclosure, with the Federal Government down here saying that
government never works, it has no
[[Page H6148]]
role, no place in our society, let the free market work, let Wall
Street run the show, let the multinational corporations run the show.
And we will do everything in our power, while President Bush was in
office, to completely denigrate the responsibilities of having a
referee on the field to monitor Wall Street shenanigans, Mr. Speaker,
to make sure, learning from history, that if you let Wall Street go
without any regulation, that they will run free and, for a short time,
monitor themselves. But then after a while, they will get greedy and
they will cheat, and it will become inherent in the system. And at some
point, as we saw many economists predict the collapse that they said
maybe would happen in '08, maybe '09, or maybe '06, they thought it
would come a little bit earlier. But there were economists out there
that could see what was going to happen. And it did. The unregulated
free market Wall Street collapsed and took Main Street with it.
For example, our friends on the other side, just in the last week or
so, when this Congress and this President passed a complete overhaul of
the regulations of Wall Street to make sure that this doesn't happen
again, our friends on the other side voted against it, Mr. Speaker,
voted against regulating Wall Street after we all just watched, as a
country, and as the world watched, this system collapse because people
just started moving money around.
You want to talk about family values and taking responsibility?
We are now holding Wall Street's feet to the fire, and our friends on
the other side said, nope, we're going to side with the big banks.
We're going to side with Wall Street. We're going to side with the
status quo. And to me, Mr. Speaker, that's unacceptable. That's
unacceptable.
And we have a bogey man America now. Oh, we've got to hold up. A San
Francisco agenda's coming. Or here comes socialism. It's coming at you.
This time in our country's history requires very sober, mature
analysis of the facts and an attempt to build a consensus around
solutions. And our friends on the other side have consistently said no,
no, no, no to everything that we've done.
Now, you can't disagree with everything. My goodness gracious.
Everything?
Regulating Wall Street, saying we need a referee on the field to keep
an eye on the big banks and the big-time money firms on Wall Street, to
say they need regulated and you say, no?
To say that we wanted to pass unemployment insurance at this very
difficult time, and the Republicans put up procedural block after
procedural block saying no?
They come out and readily admit we've got to pay for $30 billion in
unemployment insurance, but we don't have to pay for $650 billion worth
of tax cuts that go primarily to the top 1 percent of the people in the
United States of America, millionaires? That doesn't need to be paid
for?
So what we're here tonight to do, Mr. Speaker, is to provide for this
Chamber and for the American people, and to put into the Congressional
Record, the choice, the difference between the party that is now
governing the country, and the party of George W. Bush, who left us
this mess.
Now, no one's saying that we can fix this overnight; but, basically,
what happened is that we were in a football game, and President Bush
was the quarterback. And when they took President Bush out as
quarterback, we were down 50-0. And now President Obama is in as the
quarterback; Democrats are now in on the team. And we may not have won
the game yet, but we're still in the second quarter, and the score is
now 50-21. But we're moving in the right direction.
And when you look at where the Bush economic policies that everyone
on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, rubber stamped, those
policies cost our country millions and millions of jobs; 8 million jobs
were lost because of the economic collapse on Wall Street, which was
the final result of the Bush economic policies.
Millions of people and their homes went into foreclosure because of
the Bush economic policies. Trillions of dollars in wealth were lost
because of the Bush economic policies.
We were bleeding jobs. The January that President Obama came into
office, we were losing almost 800,000 jobs in that month alone, in that
month alone.
And so this President and this Congress took a series of bold
measures that weren't necessarily the most popular measures to take,
but definitely needed, mature measures to help stabilize our economy
and turn it around.
{time} 2100
And that, Mr. Speaker, beyond all facts to be presented, worked. Now,
as I said, we are not anywhere near where we need to be, but it worked.
The stimulus package worked. Did it work well enough? Probably not.
But I can only imagine what would have happened if our friends on the
other side were in charge and there wasn't any stimulus package at all.
How many thousands and thousands of teachers would have been laid off?
How many thousands and thousands of State workers would have been laid
off? Police and fire would have been laid off because our friends on
the other side said, No, we're going to implement a political strategy
that means we have to repudiate everything that President Obama does.
We have to hope that he does poorly. We have to root against the
President. We have to root for the President to fail. We have to root
for the country to fail so that we could maybe benefit politically in
the next election.
And that's what's happened.
``No'' to the stimulus. ``No'' to unemployment compensation. ``No''
on reducing dependency on foreign oil. ``No'' to taking on the
insurance companies. ``No'' to Wall Street reform. ``No'' to the banks.
``No'' to providing more credit for small businesses. ``No'' to tax
credits. This is the one I really like. Our friends on the other side
voted against getting rid of the tax credits that incentivized moving
jobs offshore.
Now, can you imagine saying that, you know, there are some things I'm
for and some things I'm against. Our friends on the other side voted
against a closing of a loophole to disincentivize jobs moving offshore
where Democrats are closing that loophole and incentivizing American
manufacturing. Things made in the United States again, making things in
the United States again, those times where our parents and grandparents
grew up where we made things as a country, where we built things.
And that's what the energy revolution is all about. We send a billion
dollars a day offshore. A billion a day, Mr. Speaker, offshore to oil-
producing countries that don't like us all that much, and in many
instances take our money and fund terroristic acts, try to in the
United States and across the world. And then we have to spend money in
our military to combat the global terrorist acts.
So if we come up with the idea of can't we produce our own energy
here with nuclear, natural gas, wind, solar and put people back to work
in the United States making the 8,000 component parts that go into a
windmill, making the 400 tons of steel that go into a windmill, making
the component parts that go into a solar panel, this is the idea of
putting America back to work. And our friends on the other side, Mr.
Speaker, are saying, No. Let's keep giving tax cuts to the oil
companies so that they can keep drilling when we only have 2 percent of
the world's oil in the United States of America.
There's a real choice here. There's a real difference here. And it's
important for all of us to recognize the choices that have been made
down here and the differences between the two parties.
So we stabilized things. We went from losing 750,000 jobs in that
first month in January, and now we have an average monthly job growth
of 170,000 jobs a month here in the United States. Not nearly enough.
We need more. And we're working on more by helping small businesses,
eight-plus small business tax credits to help create jobs, including a
tax credit to create jobs here in the United States--as opposed to a
tax credit that our friends on the other side support to move jobs
overseas--so that we can put Americans back to work making things,
manufacturing things, and taking on China. That's what these policies
are all about. A green revolution in the United States is about
resuscitating manufacturing in the United States.
And let me say that if you had a 401(k) or if you have a retirement
plan,
[[Page H6149]]
it looks a heck of a lot better today than it did when our friends
threw us the keys. Most families have gained about 60 percent of their
wealth back because of the increase in the stock market because of the
policies of this administration, the bold policies of this
administration.
We have seen 98 percent of families in the United States in this past
year see a reduced level of taxation.
Again, it's in vogue today in America, especially if you're a part of
the neoconservative radical right wing that has taken control of the
Republican Party, quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, to put up another
bogeyman to say, They're raising your taxes. Well, we haven't. Ninety-
eight percent of Americans have seen a reduction in taxes.
And so we are doing what we need to do to get us out of this economic
catastrophe that President Bush and his Republican Party left this
country. Deregulated Wall Street, looked the other way; let the
insurance companies run crazy over the health insurance industry. And
we've seen skyrocketing costs, incentivized ``drill baby drill,''
continue down that road while oil-producing countries take our money
and fund terrorism when we could be investing that money in the United
States and manufacturing renewable energy products here.
So we have seen, Mr. Speaker, a dramatic change over the course of
the last 2 years.
So the choice is quite clear. Do we return back to the failed tried
and tested policies, the worn-out, trite policies of the Bush
administration? Do we trot those back out after we saw where they took
us?
You know, here's the thing that I love.
Our friends on the other side say, Well, if we just cut taxes for the
people that make all the money, it will trickle down and it will
benefit everybody else. We tried that, Mr. Speaker. Those were the
policies of the first 6 years of this decade. Bush came in, passed his
tax cuts, and we didn't see extreme economic growth. We didn't see the
middle class rise. We didn't see wages go up. We saw more offshoring of
jobs to China and foreign countries. We saw the tax burden pushed off
on the middle class. We saw health care costs skyrocket and go through
the roof, continuing to take money out of the pockets of middle class
families. We saw tuition costs go up all across the country, 9 percent
a year.
And Pell Grant, because our friends said, Well, you're on your own;
we don't even want to invest in education. You know, Pell Grants did
not keep pace with where they needed to be. And our friend who was here
earlier was talking about the student loans, how the Department of
Education took over the student loan program and the free market. Yeah.
Because the banks were charging our kids 8, 9 percent.
You want to keep that system going where you've got to take out a
student loan and you get out of college and you owe $20,000 or $30,000
to get a college education? Or heaven forbid you get a master's degree
or go to medical school and you come out with hundreds of thousands of
dollars in debt so that banks could make a profit off of trying to
educate our kids so we could be globally competitive? That's what the
other side wants to do, Mr. Speaker. They want to keep that system in
place.
{time} 2110
They like it just the way it was. Everybody was happy. The insurance
companies were happy. The multinationals were happy. The banks were
happy. Wall Street was happy, but we weren't happy as a country. And
not only did the banks charge 8 or 9 percent for a student loan, check
this out. The government said, if a student defaults on that loan,
we'll pick up the tab. Jesus, I mean, wouldn't it be nice to be a bank
under George Bush. You mean I get to loan this student and this family
a student loan at 8 percent and if they default on it, the government
will come in and pick up the tab? Hey, we should all go into banking
and be that lucky.
They set up a system, Wall Street did, that if there were lots of
profits and lots of economic activity, they reaped all the benefits and
the wealth was not spread throughout society. They would benefit. And
that if it failed and collapsed, they would bring the whole country
down with them, Main Street included. And then President Obama gets in
and we pass the most sweeping Wall Street reforms since the Great
Depression and our friends on the other side voted against it, just to
keep the status quo.
So let's recap a little bit. Bush comes in, Republicans rubberstamp
his agenda, they cut taxes for the top 1 percent. They try to privatize
Social Security and Medicare. Their policies are implemented across the
board, economic, energy, foreign policy, right down the line. After
they're all implemented, the economy completely collapses and shuts
down.
And then the Democrats come in. We get the keys to the car. The
wheels are spinning, wobbling. There's cracks in the windshield.
There's steam coming out of the engine. The tailpipe's dragging on the
ground. There's no back window. It's like the car from ``The Big
Lebowski'' that the Dude used to drive. So this thing's just wobbling
down the aisle, wobbling down the street. We get the keys to the car.
We take some bold needed actions, and our friends on the other side
don't even try to solve the problem, don't even try to solve the
problem.
But what has happened is we went from losing 700,000 jobs a month to
creating on average 170,000 jobs a month. We saw the stock market go
from a little over 6,000 up to 11,000, and 60 percent of the wealth
returned to American families. We have seen a reduction in student
loans, an increase in Pell grants, an increase in the minimum wage,
making sure everybody in the country has health care. We tried to
provide, and we have provided, tax incentives for businesses who create
jobs here in the United States of America as opposed to our friends on
the other side who voted against closing the loophole to bring jobs to
the U.S. They wanted to keep the status quo which incentivized people
and businesses moving their companies offshore. And our friends on the
other side don't want us to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and
have consistently voted against initiatives to resuscitate
manufacturing here in the United States and invest in green
technologies and green energy here in the United States. So on and on
and on.
In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, which I think really highlights the
difference between the two parties is, if you look at the alternative
budget provided by the Republican Party here in the House of
Representatives, it privatizes Social Security and it attempts to turn
Medicare into a voucher system for our senior citizens. Again, a leap
back to the Bush-era policies. Do we really want to go back there?
I'm the first to say, Mr. Speaker, we haven't done everything right.
I could talk about my disagreements I have with some of what the
President has done, or everything we're not all in agreement here. But
clearly, there's a difference between what we have done and what our
friends on the other side handed us after full implementation of their
agenda.
I'd like to yield to the gentlelady from Florida.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Who has her Florida orange on tonight.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I do, that's because I bleed orange and blue,
and Mr. Ryan knows that, and I appreciate the recognition.
And we're also joined by our good friend who has been a weekly staple
of these important message hours where we're trying to communicate to
our constituents and to people across the country and to our colleagues
about the progress that we've been able to make that has been so
significant and evident.
One of the things that I wanted to highlight--Mr. Ryan, I'm not sure
if you have gone over any of this--but I think an important chart that
we usually begin with when we talk about the private sector that has
been made, the private-sector employment increases over the past year
and a half.
And if you look December of 2007 all the way through to June of 2010,
you can see the dramatic job losses that occurred during the Bush
administration. The Bush administration ended right about here in
January of 2009, and when President Obama took over, we at this point
in the year passed the Recovery Act, the stimulus package that
[[Page H6150]]
injected $787 billion into our economy, both in terms of an infusion of
spending as well as tax cuts, 98 percent of Americans received a tax
cut, mostly focused on tax cuts for small businesses and working
families. And then at that point, that's when you see the job growth
curve start to shift from almost 800,000 job losses a month in the
month before President Bush left office and President Obama was
inaugurated, then you begin starting to gain jobs to today where you
look in June of 2010 where we have added jobs for six straight months,
an average of 100,000 jobs per month, almost 600,000 jobs created this
year alone. And if we keep on this pace, by the end of this year we
will have created under President Obama's leadership and the Democratic
leadership in this Congress more private-sector jobs in this year than
the entire Bush presidency. I mean, that's just the facts, and it's an
unbelievable fact.
We have turned the economy around, and we've begun to go in the right
direction. We have a long way to go but look at the other indicators.
Look at the stock market. Look at the three straight quarters of growth
in the GDP. Look at the 11 straight months of growth in the
manufacturing sector. America has always been about making things. Mr.
Tonko and Mr. Ryan are from communities where your constituents, the
people that sent you here to represent them, they're used to rolling up
their sleeves, doing a hard day's work for a hard day's pay and making
stuff, and we want to make sure that we can get America back to work
making things again. And that's why we have our Making it in America
agenda that we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks as
we enter the August recess period.
And we're so pleased to be joined by our good friend Mr. Tonko, a new
Member who has been doing a fantastic job.
Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Wasserman Schultz. It's a
pleasure to join with you and Representative Ryan on the floor here to
talk about what's happening.
You talked about Representative Ryan's district and mine being about
making things. I thought tonight I would share some numbers that
personalize it to the 21st Congressional District in New York, the
greater capital region. Let's look at some of the numbers.
Beechnut, which produces baby foods, a tremendously powerful economic
engine in our Mohawk Valley. Their total jobs right now, new positions,
are at 106; 52 in the management position and some 54 in new factory
positions. These are workers that will be producing on the line. It is
a strength to our region.
X-ray Optical. The X-ray Optical system says that they need to share
with the world that throughout this recession they have maintained
their workforce. In their order of business, they believe this is a
monumental feat.
{time} 2120
So we are thrilled that they are able to survive throughout this
economic climate without any layoffs, any firings. Certainly the jobs
in the capital region are plentiful, or becoming more plentiful. The
Albany Medical Center has more than 400 openings, including nurses,
technicians and other specializations. General Electric company needs
some 200 engineers, researchers and financial analysts. Certainly
GlobalFoundries is hiring some 69 people, mostly engineers and
technicians. Comfortex has hired 40 people since May and is looking for
15 additional workers.
This time last year the State Labor Department in New York reported
that there were some 3,800 registered job openings in our area. Now
it's reporting that there are some 6,000 job openings.
The unemployment in the Albany area is down to some 6.6 percent, and
just recently 2,900 jobs were added to the regional private job sector
this past June. So these are numbers personalized to one congressional
district in one State.
As we continue to see this sort of increase in jobs across the
country, we begin to understand that the dynamics of the Recovery Act
are indeed important. There are those who might bemoan that investment.
We stop the bleeding of the recession; and for slightly less than a
trillion dollars of investment, we see factors now like $18.5 trillion
lost in the last 18 months of the Bush administration in household
income that was just lost in that 18-month period. We have recovered
some $6 trillion of that household income as a result of the Recovery
Act. So when we talk about that, a down payment of under a trillion
dollars has recovered some $6 trillion household wealth.
I think that's an amazing return for the dollar. That's an amazing
recovery, and so the Recovery Act is not only producing that private
sector job growth, as my two colleagues indicated this evening with the
chart that they have presented; it's also recovered some $6 trillion in
household income and for a down payment, again, of under a trillion
dollars. That's a great return.
So I think America is poised for greatness. This cleansing process
has been painful; but it allows us to go forward with the sense of
commitment to innovation, to a clean energy economy, to the sort of
emerging technologies and the innovative genius that is uniquely
American.
If we can move forward and take a number of these success stories,
success stories in our R&D centers, in our basic research and allow
them to be deployed into manufacturing sectors and into the workforce
by taking those passions and making the investment that we need to
make, we cannot only respond with a jobs agenda but respond to some
socioeconomic ills out there.
Our energy crises in this country, several crises under the umbrella
of energy, can be addressed by investment in technology, investment in
R&D and, certainly, job growth that comes into a new dimension that
allows jobs to be created from the trades on up to the PhDs. It covers
the full gamut, and I think that's the sort of investment we are
talking about here.
We are talking about advanced battery manufacturing. We are talking
about smart meters, smart grids, smart thermostats. These are the
investments that could be made, people that will install energy
efficiency improvements in homes and make businesses more productive,
maintaining homes at a cheaper cost by using less electricity and
creating jobs in the process.
I am thrilled to join you both as colleagues here this evening
because we have a message, we have a great message to share and people
need to know. The public needs to know that this investment was made in
a very deliberative, laser-sharp focus-type manner that allows us now
to begin to see the improvements that are taking hold. Had nothing been
done, had the previous administration been allowed its way, we would
have seen that straight-line decline continue until we hit the Great
Depression.
So I think we are on the right course; we are now bearing northward
with that V formation and we are going to continue to grow north to
make certain that we continue to grow the private sector economy.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it's important for us to say we have tried
the old way, and this is what we have been trying and attempting to
fix. Here you will see, again--or even a rise in manufacturing. What
the Democrats are saying here, and you see 2, 4, 6 months of job growth
in the manufacturing sector, and what Democrats are saying is that is
part of the economic stimulus package, that is part of moving towards a
green economy where our people in our country have always made things,
have always gone to the factory and made things.
Not everybody can be in an ivory tower; not everyone can do the
research. If we are going to succeed as a country, we need the middle
class of our country to make things.
You can see that our policies are beginning to work, beginning to
take hold; and the idea of taking a billion dollars a day that leaves
our country and goes to oil-producing countries that don't like us all
that much, that fund terrorism, and then we have got to fund the
military to chase them all around the world, is an ignorant policy.
It's a frivolous policy that doesn't work.
So what we have done is made investments in wind and solar and the
batteries and things that the gentleman stated earlier so that we can
do the cutting-edge research, but then we can make it here.
We could manufacture those products here; 8,000 component parts go
into a
[[Page H6151]]
windmill, 400 tons of steel. Solar panels are filled with different
components. In Toledo, for example, they are doing a lot of different
solar panels, in Toledo, Ohio.
Let's make this stuff in the United States of America again so we can
get back to a time when our parents and grandparents throughout the
country could go to work and make something and watch it ride down the
road or look at the steel in a building, in the concrete and the
windows and the framing and everything that goes into it.
That's what we are moving back to. We have broken with the past, we
have broken with the Bush economic policies that our friends on the
other side have rubber stamped. We are now moving in a new direction,
not nearly as quickly or with the celerity that we all want, but we are
going in that direction.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Ryan, a couple of years ago, when we would
be out here each night with the 30-something Working Group, our symbol
was the Republican rubber stamp that was emblematic of the philosophy
of our friends on the other side of the aisle.
I think we should take a walk down memory lane. Maybe we want to
bring the rubber stamp back because it does appear that they have not
shed those tendencies, and that's evidenced in the choice that
Americans are going to have over the next few months.
Let's go through some of those choices. You are talking about how
important it is that we go back to making things in America, that we
revitalize the economies that had manufacturing as the backbone of
cities and towns throughout this country, throughout the Northeast and
the Rust Belt and even--I don't even like the term ``Rust Belt''
because it implies something that's irretrievable. You know, once
something is rusted out, your perception is it's not able to be
regained.
I know we don't believe that, and we believe in investing in the
concept of making America and that it's more than just a concept, that
we are going to put resources into making sure that when we have a
choice that we choose to make sure that it's Americans that are doing
the manufacturing for the things that we need here, and we are doing
that by backing that up with action when it comes to our policy
decisions as well.
So are the Republicans. Their actions are vastly different than ours.
We propose to close tax loopholes that allow outsourcing U.S. jobs
overseas and use the savings to pay for hometown tax credits for small
businesses to expand manufacturing jobs. And what do they do? They
vote, ``they'' being the Republicans, vote 170-1, 170 Republicans voted
``no,'' to 1 that votes ``yes'' to protecting tax breaks for companies
that shipped jobs overseas; 170-1 they voted to keep that tax loophole
intact so that we could continue to allow companies to get tax breaks
when they ship jobs overseas.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Could I make a point real quickly. That vote is
such an example that the other side seems to just be playing politics.
They want Obama to fail, and they want to be able to say----
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. They have said it.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes, they have said it. And they want to be able to
say, see, we had nothing to do with any of that. So being so
ideological that they vote against getting rid of tax cuts that
incentivize off-shoring business. I mean, that says it all. It's one
thing to say you are against some of this stuff, but that too?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Let's take it one step further. It's not just
bad enough, okay, to say they voted to protect the tax break. On top of
that, 95 percent of House Republicans have signed a pledge to protect
those tax breaks, signed a pledge, put their name on the line and said,
I am going to protect tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
{time} 2130
It's absolutely mind-boggling. We want to make sure that we protect
companies and give tax breaks and incentivize companies that make
decisions to create jobs here in the United States, in your district in
New York, in your district in Ohio, in districts across this country.
And they would rather have those jobs created in China and in other
countries and boost up their economy.
Mr. TONKO. If the gentlelady would yield, you talk about telling
statements on the floor or the behavior in and around Washington that
proves very telling, actions sometimes speaking louder than words. The
activity that has taken place on this floor as it dealt with America
COMPETES, here was a major bill invested in by the Science and Tech
Committee, a number of groups overviewing this legislation, monumental
to the future of America's workforce, to manufacturing, to investment
in basic research, in R&D. And there were all sorts of efforts made to
hear everyone, to be totally inclusive about that final package that
was developed and then presented on this floor, approved in committees
and travels to the floor, and then the game of ``gotcha'' politics
takes hold.
We use all kinds of stall tactics, all sorts of gimmicks to
embarrass, to trap people, to really circumvent the real issue of how
do you strengthen manufacturing, how do you put together a package that
invests in the research monies that are required. How do you invest in
the training of the future workforce, beginning in the educational
networks, so that STEM--the science, technology, engineering, and
math--concepts can all be learned in a way that will enable us to have
the workforce of the future? That effort was so very important. It
almost went to defeat. It was pulled as a bill on the floor, and a few
weeks later we figured out how to get around the politics spirit that
existed.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Will the gentleman yield on that point?
Mr. TONKO. Yes, I will.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And your point is very well taken. We had to
use a procedural motion just to be able to get around there being an
obstacle to the America COMPETES Act coming to the floor and being able
to get a straight-up vote. And when it came right down to it, we were
for it and most of them were against it.
Mr. TONKO. And I think the actions taken by the majority in this
House--Speaker Pelosi and members of the Democratic majority--have been
about job creation, private sector growth. What I don't think the other
side realizes is that what we have out there is middle-class anxiety
and uncertainty that's at an all-time high. They're concerned about
paying their mortgage. They're concerned about paying for education,
for credit card bills that they have, for medical bills. And they are
impacted. They are losing jobs through no fault of their own, and now
finally they will see hope growing as we grow that private sector
situation. That is the dynamic that has really been avoided and not
addressed by the minority in this House.
When they asked to have control back--I think what we need to look at
is the contrast, and we've mentioned this, Representative Wasserman
Schultz, several times over in our frequent visits to the floor. But
what we need to do is take the big picture, the big frame here and
allow people to see the contrast.
We're looking at a group that drove the car out of the ditch. We
towed that car out of the ditch. When the minority in this House was in
the majority working with the previous administration, they drove this
car right into the ditch and couldn't get it out. And then up comes the
new team, and what we have done, working with the President and with
the leadership in this House, is towed that car out of the ditch, and
now they want the keys back to drive. And we say ``no'' because we need
to go forward, not backward. We need to continue to pursue a
progressive agenda.
I think when we look at those big picture issues, Social Security--
and where they are with that issue? They want to privatize. They want
to put it at risk. Imagine the trillions of dollars that would have
been lost had we enabled them in 2005 to have their way. I wasn't yet
in Congress, but fortunately the Republicans did not get their way and
they did not privatize Social Security. We are now here attempting to
keep that out of their wish list of privatization.
They also wanted to voucher out the Medicare program, a very
successful program for our seniors. They want to put a voucher system
in. We're trying
[[Page H6152]]
to keep it and maintain it, develop the security of that system into
the future.
They liken our work on Wall Street reform akin to attacking an ant
with an atom bomb. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It's
a deception that they're proud of. And a number of other things.
They asked our President to apologize for coming down hard on BP for
not responding effectively and efficiently and in rapid pace to make
certain that we save our environment in the Gulf States area.
So there are all these snapshots that we need to look at. And there
is a contrast. There is a team that wants to go back to the failed
policies of the past. There is a team that wants to promote an agenda
for the future. I firmly believe that what we need to remind them is
that there is this anxiety level, this uncertainty with our middle-
income Americans, with middle-class America that is at an all-time
high. And they are now beginning to see that there is a difference
between the former majority and now this Democratic majority. I think
we have a track record of history that will show that when we're in
control, we deliver for America's working families. I think that's a
record for which we can be very proud and which really speaks to the
strengthening of America, her families, and her economy.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Mr. Tonko.
Just to veer a little bit in a different direction towards, again,
the choice that Americans are going to be facing, because your facts
are stubborn things. You can run away from a lot of different things.
Facts are just persistent in chasing you. They've been chasing the
Republicans, those stubborn facts, for a long time. One of the facts is
that Republicans are consistently on the record of voting against
statutory pay-as-you-go legislation.
Now, back in the Clinton administration when PAYGO was first
established--and that was a tough, tough vote that Democrats led the
way on, made sure happened under President Clinton's leadership--the
country finished his Presidency with a record surplus, which was handed
to President Bush and he promptly squandered in just a few short years.
If you look at this chart, we will start back in the Reagan
administration. And I want to start back in the Reagan administration
because--walk with me down memory lane, shall we?
Mr. TONKO. Do we have to?
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I know it's painful, but I think it's
instructive.
As you walk with me down memory lane, let's look at under which
Presidents we operated on a deficit and under which Presidents we
operated at a surplus. President Reagan, $1.4 trillion deficit.
President Bush, didn't get any better, got worse, $3.3 trillion
deficit. Go to President Clinton, we went from a record deficit at the
time to a record surplus of $5.6 trillion. And then when President Bush
finished office after being handed a record surplus, he finished office
with an $11.5 trillion deficit, handing that record to President Obama.
And, as you said, after having driven our economy off a cliff, now the
Republicans are asking for the keys once again.
Facts being stubborn things, as I mentioned, the Republicans
consistently voted against statutory PAYGO. In fact, under the Bush
administration, they allowed statutory PAYGO to lapse, which is, in
large part, why we ended up in a deficit situation. They deficit-spent
like drunken sailors--two wars not paid for, the Medicare prescription
drug part D program. As good and as pleased as we are that seniors have
their prescription drugs paid for, we know that program was deeply
flawed, could have been a thousand times better. Ultimately, we were
able to fix it in the Affordable Care Act.
But they blindly spent, through tax cuts and spending, and now
suddenly seem to have found religion when it comes to spending and
deficits.
Mr. TONKO. Representative Wasserman Schultz, if you will allow me to
just make a comment here.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Sure.
Mr. TONKO. When you talk about the $11.5 trillion deficit, when the
Bush administration ended is when I arrived in Washington as a
freshman, several months ago now, in my first term. I distinctly recall
that economists of all stripes, from far right thinking to far left,
found unanimity in that they thought we needed to invest in solving
this deficit situation because the time had long but passed since
something like that needed to be done.
{time} 2140
The denial under the deficit growth, which became a record
proportion, could have been resolved if they had changed their
policies, if they had looked at the failure and tried to turn it
around. So, by the time the new administration took hold in January of
2009, the requirement was there. It was basic. Every economist was
suggesting and was strongly urging that it took investing. So we really
had to take additional moneys that drove the deficit a little larger,
but it was to stop the bleeding of the recession because the likelihood
of disaster was tremendous, so there was no choice but to further
invest.
That deficit really drove additional investment requirements, but
because of the track record we are showing this evening, it did have
its corresponding results. There were lucrative dividends that came
from those investments, but they were the smart investments that, yes,
grew the deficit slightly, but they finally stopped the bleeding and
now show the growth.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. One of the things that is important to note,
Mr. Ryan, is that, when we became the majority once again in 2006 and
over the last several years, we reestablished statutory PAYGO. First,
we established it in rule. Then we passed it in statute. One hundred
percent of the Republicans in this body voted ``no.'' They voted
against making sure that we made a commitment in the law to not spend
more than we take in, to pay for the legislation other than in
emergency spending, and obviously, we've been in an emergency. We've
been, you know, pretty careful about what we declare as an emergency,
making sure that we have covered the legislation with pay-fors. They
haven't believed in pay-fors in years and years, if ever.
Let's keep in mind the tax-cutting policy that they had, which was
exclusively focused on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, which
also wasn't paid for. I mean tax cuts are spending, and there is
nothing wrong with tax cuts. We have to balance tax cuts with our
spending policy, but when you don't collect revenue, that is less
revenue that we have in the Treasury, which affects the deficit as
well. So I mean their total disregard for balancing the books is not
something that they're going to be able to run away from, and we are
not going to let them run away from it.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I'm just standing here, listening to you both.
When you piece this all together, their philosophy, which obviously
didn't work because we saw how it ended, is to cut taxes for primarily
the top 1 percent of the people--millionaires and multi-,
multimillionaires--and expect that money to get reinvested. We all saw
that the money was reinvested, for the most part, abroad in China and
in other countries, so that was part of the offshoring.
Then their philosophy was to completely look the other way. It was to
take the referee off the field on Wall Street, and let those people who
are making all this money continue to find out all these other schemes
to make more money--that's how that ran--even to the tune of the
student loans where they let banks give student loans and charge 8, 9
percent. Then the government would back the loan if somebody defaulted.
So the system was set up to allow just the wealthiest people in the
country to keep making money any way they saw fit.
Mr. TONKO. If I might add to that, I think also--and history will
show--that it was a partnership with big interests. It was with Big
Oil, with big banks and with the big insurance industry. In the
beginning stages of the Bush Presidency, we saw some of the attempts
there for trade contracts, for contracts with China. When we look at
the investment, when we look at the job market, it can be broken down
into three elements--agriculture, manufacturing, and financial
services.
Well, it appeared as though the manufacturing was kind of pushed
aside. We didn't see the kind of execution of these trade contracts to
favor manufacturing. Instead, somehow, they were
[[Page H6153]]
gripped by the special interests of big banks, and they ruled in these
contracts that were developed.
So I think that, you know, history will show that manufacturing
didn't have a high priority with these groups. When you see the
emerging technologies, when you see the innovation, the American
innovation, there were many small businesses that were continuing to
grow, which could have prospered with the appropriate treatment from
Washington--policies, programs, resources--and that just didn't happen.
Then we saw the further relaxation of regulation with the financial
services sector.
So tools were being developed to intentionally circumvent regulation,
to relax regulation--perhaps avoiding an aggressive approach with
drilling deeper in the Gulf States. All of this created a failure that
brought America's economy to its knees, and it was all about
partnerships with special interests--big companies, big industries--
that really had a grip on what was happening here, and it has caused a
lot of failure.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Tonko, I want to bring us back to the
choice, to the choice of going in the direction that we have been
taking the country, which is a new direction to reinvest in America, to
make sure that we can create jobs here and not give tax breaks to
companies that send jobs overseas, to reestablish statutory pay-as-you-
go rules so that we can make sure we pay for the legislation we pass
and so that we don't spend more money than we take in.
Let's walk through some of the other bills that we have passed here
to make sure we can focus on our own economy and can compare the record
because, again, this is going to be about a choice that Americans are
making.
How about the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act? That was
legislation that provided loans to small businesses and access to
capital for small business start-ups to help support the economic
recovery and to create jobs. Ninety-eight percent of Republicans voted
against that legislation.
How about the Small Business Jobs Tax Relief Act? That was a bill
that provided tax incentives to spur investment in small businesses and
that granted small businesses some tax penalty relief. Ninety-seven
percent of Republicans voted against that legislation.
How about the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act? It is
legislation that would help create or save more than 1 million American
jobs and prevent corporations from shipping jobs overseas and sticking
American taxpayers with the bill. Eighty-three percent of Republicans
voted against that legislation.
There is the HIRE Act. That bill would give small businesses tax
incentives to hire jobless Americans. Between February and May of 2010,
an estimated 4.5 million new workers were hired, making American
businesses eligible for up to $8.5 billion in tax exemptions and
credits under the HIRE Act. Ninety-seven percent of Republicans voted
against that legislation.
I could keep going. I mean, really, this is an unbelievably long list
of job-creating legislation that we have passed, that we have put out
here on the floor of this House.
Mr. TONKO. Oh, absolutely.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Over 95 percent of Republicans voted against
it.
So we could continue to move in the direction in which we have been
going--job creation, spurring the economy, investing in America--or we
could backslide toward the Bush era and go back to the exact same
agenda as they have committed to focusing on, but I'm not sure that
I've met anybody who wants to go back to that agenda.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right. I think what we are proposing and have been
investing in is a pro-growth agenda for our country, and that is not as
simple as cutting taxes for rich people and hoping and praying that
they somehow will invest in the manufacturing in the U.S., you know,
and in other investments in the U.S.
We need to rebuild our infrastructure in this country--roads,
bridges, waterlines, sewer lines, and combined sewer in all of our big
cities. We've got to invest. That's going to put people to work, and
that's going to rebuild our country. Our highways and our bridges,
we're going to invest in those. We're going to rebuild our country, and
that's going to lead to economic development and to economic growth.
We're going to invest in technology--green technology--and in National
Institutes of Health biotechnology, which is ultimately going to make
us healthier and create more jobs.
Those investments aren't made by the private sector, and we need to
make those investments which will directly put people back to work. So
we want to go back to the philosophy we had in this country in the
1950s, in the 1960s and a little bit in the 1970s, when we had balanced
growth, a rising middle class, strong wage growth, and increases in
productivity. This is as opposed to what started in the 1980s, except
for the blip during the Clinton administration, which was deregulation
and letting the big dogs, as you said earlier--big insurance, Big Oil,
big banks, and multinational corporations--come into Washington, D.C.,
and run this show, too. That doesn't work for Main Street.
Ultimately, I think, as difficult as these last couple of years have
been, we have gotten to see the supply side economic policy and what
really happens once it is fully implemented. We saw the end result of
that.
{time} 2150
Mr. TONKO. To my colleague from Florida and my colleague from Ohio, I
would say this: I believe, the sense I get is that there's a very
thoughtful process now to provide the strong incentives to grow small
business, to grow private sector jobs, done in a way that really shows
respect, respect for the taxpayers' dollar, and wanting to pull us out
of this recession that was so deep and so long. And I think it's
happening.
I know that the innovative genius will be inspired by the legislative
route we're taking, by the priorities we're establishing, with the
budget priorities that we have put into play.
And it's about growing jobs. It's about giving people the chance
again to feel the greatness of America, the greatness of America that
allows us to know that we have it within our potential, we have it
within our grasp.
And I firmly believe that we will do our manufacturing, and our jobs
will grow in the manufacturing sector because we do it smarter. We do
it smarter.
And, Representative Wasserman Schultz, thank you for the opportunity
to share with you and Representative Ryan thoughts that I have and that
we all share on how we're going down the right course.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you. And I look forward, as we go into
the August recess, talking with our constituents about how we've begun
to turn this economy around.
I want to close out the last couple of seconds with the focus on tax
cuts, remind people that tax bills in 2009 were at their lowest level
since 1950, and we look forward to continuing to work on that, striking
that balance.
And Mr. Ryan, we'll turn it over to you to close us out.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. We're going to continue to go down the road. We're
not going to turn back. We've had too much success. We've got a long
way to go.
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