[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 16, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H946]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           REPUBLICAN BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Kentucky (Mr. Yarmuth) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, we are involved in probably the most 
important thing that this body does on a year-to-year basis--figuring 
out how to spend taxpayers' money.
  The budget process is more than taking dollars from one place and 
spending them in another. It's a statement of our values, a statement 
of our values as representatives who are trusted by our constituents to 
do the right thing, and a statement of our values as a Nation.
  I think it is pretty clear, from what we have seen in H.R. 1, the 
Republican version of the continuing resolution proposal, that we have 
a very distinct difference in our values. At a time when millions and 
millions and millions of Americans, hundreds of thousands of 
Kentuckians are suffering, the Republican continuing resolution would 
take money and would put the burden of these very, very serious 
economic times on the people least able to afford them. At the same 
time, we're taking money away from incredibly important investments 
that this Nation has to make if it wants to remain competitive in this 
global economy a generation from now and two generations from now.
  Instead, the Republicans would slash money from police departments, 
slash money from fire departments, slash money from our education 
system, deal a very serious blow to Head Start, all of the things that 
we need to fulfill our basic obligation as a government. One is to 
provide opportunity, one is to protect our citizens.
  And then the final thing they would slash is important investments in 
infrastructure, which we know, if we review history, is one of the most 
important investments that we can make in terms of long-term economic 
vitality.
  The Republican budget, slashing money from infrastructure, from 
transportation projects, would cost this economy, according to one 
estimate, 300,000 private-sector jobs.
  Now we are fighting as hard as we can to create jobs. As a matter of 
fact, for the last entire Congress the Republicans kept saying on this 
very floor, Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? Now, after 6 weeks 
of their majority rule in the House, we haven't seen one proposal to 
create a job. But what we've seen is a budget that is so draconian in 
its cuts that it would actually destroy American jobs.
  This is not the type of values that the American people want to see 
coming out of this body. All of us agree that we have a serious long-
term financial picture in this country. We do need to deal with our 
deficits and with our national debt. We do need to make some long-term 
changes.
  But if you are a family and you have got a lot of people in your 
family and are overweight, you don't just say, ``Okay, we're just going 
to stop eating today. We're just not going to eat.'' No. You say, 
``We're going to go on a program, we're going to reduce our calories, 
we're going to exercise.'' But we still have to do some important 
things. We have to eat, we have to pay for that roof over our head. 
We've got kids who are college age. We want to send them to college so 
they can have a brighter future. We do want to make those investments, 
even if we have to borrow money. We just don't stop. We can't stand in 
place, because the rest of the world is not standing in place.
  So as we move forward in these few days considering the continuing 
resolution, H.R. 1, let's remain mindful of what our values as a 
country are. This is a country that has always made investments, has 
always looked to the future, has always said, yeah, in a capitalistic 
society some people are not going to do as well or are not going to 
have as good of luck or are going to be downfallen, and we've got to 
lift them up. We've got to help them out.
  Over the last 25 years, the percentage of wealth or the amount of 
wealth owned by the top 5 percent in this country has gone from $8 
trillion to $40 trillion, according to David Stockman. He is the former 
budget director under the Reagan administration.

                              {time}  1100

  That is an enormous amount of wealth. That increase in wealth alone, 
for the top 5 percent of this country over the last 25 years, is more 
than the entire wealth of the world prior to 1985. So the people at the 
top have done very well, enhanced and encouraged by tax policies that 
Republicans have put in place. But, meanwhile, we have got to make sure 
that those other 95 percent of the American people do well too, and we 
have got to make sure that the policies we enact, the budgets that we 
approve in this body, reflect those values.

                          ____________________