[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 14, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3763-S3765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
JOBS IN AMERICA
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, rarely has Washington been so completely
out of touch with the priorities and anxieties of ordinary working
Americans. Here on Capitol Hill, policymakers are obsessed--obsessed--
with the budget deficit. But the rest of America is most concerned with
a far more urgent deficit--the jobs deficit.
Our Nation remains deeply mired in the most protracted period of
joblessness since the Great Depression. Officially, some 14 million
Americans are out of work. But real unemployment--the real
unemployment, including those who are working part time but want to be
working full time; those who are marginally attached; those who have
never worked in the first place because they never got a job--if we add
that all up, we have closer to 25 million Americans unemployed, and
millions of Americans who are employed are increasingly anxious about
holding on to their jobs or, at their present income, making ends meet.
But many of our political leaders in Washington are treating the jobs
crisis as yesterday's news. They are putting this deficit reduction
above all else. They are demanding extraordinary funding cuts--
trillions of dollars in cuts, and the sooner the better, with little
concern as to its adverse impact on jobs. But this is exactly the wrong
approach. It is the economic equivalent of applying leaches and
draining blood from a sick patient, which we used to do, by the way.
That is what they did to George Washington as he lay dying. They
applied leaches to him. What does that do? It just makes us weaker, and
in the case of President Washington proved fatal.
In the same way, trillions in budget cuts would massively drain
demand from a still weak economy. It could destroy millions of jobs.
This is not just the wrong medicine for our economy; it will slow or
stop economic growth, and it will make deficits worse in the future.
As Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke warned last week:
A sharp fiscal consolidation focused on the very near term
could be self-defeating if it were to undercut the still
fragile economy.
I strongly disagree with the slash-and-burn approach to deficit
reduction favored by some of our colleagues. We need to recognize one
of the very big reasons for the budget deficit is the jobs deficit. The
best way to bring the budget under control is to help these 25 million
Americans who are unemployed get good-paying middle-class jobs. It is
hard-working Americans who would be delighted to be taxpayers once
again.
Now, obviously, we are counting on the private sector to help drive
job creation and make the economic recovery self-sustaining. It should
be the case if we put more money into infrastructure. If we were to do
our job in rebuilding our roads and our bridges, our highways, our
sewer and water systems, our rail systems--the government doesn't do
that; it goes to private contractors, private companies. Some of this
is already happening but certainly not at the pace we need.
Since March of 2010, the private sector has created about 2 million
jobs. However, businesses remain reluctant to invest and hire for the
simple reason there is not sufficient demand for their goods and
services. All of those people who are unemployed and underemployed are
spending the bare minimum just trying to get from week to week.
Meanwhile, the middle class is tapped out with stagnant incomes--
stagnant incomes. For over 30 years, the middle class has had stagnant
real incomes. They have insecure jobs, high levels of mortgage,
insufficient pension funds, and other consumer debt.
That is why the Federal Government has had to play an aggressive role
in helping us to recover from this great recession. Over the last 2
years, we have repeatedly cut taxes. We have extended financial aid to
the States. That helped prevent massive layoffs of teachers and first
responders and other essential employees.
We have made major investments in research, education, and
infrastructure. All of these have either preserved jobs or created new
jobs. Listen to this. We have gone from when President Obama took
office--we were losing 700,000 jobs a month--700,000 jobs a month. That
is just a couple of years ago. Now we are adding new jobs for the first
time--and we have had 16 new consecutive months of adding jobs. Not
enough. Not enough. But we are at least moving in the right direction.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that as of the fourth quarter
of 2010, the Recovery Act had created or saved up to 4 million jobs and
as many as 5 million full-time equivalent jobs. The nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office estimates that through the end of 2010, the
Recovery Act had raised the real inflation-adjusted gross domestic
product by as much as 3.5 percent.
So to those who said the Recovery Act did not do anything, that is
nonsense. That is absolute nonsense. It did a lot. But here is the
problem: The shot in the arm provided by the Recovery Act is now
winding down. In the absence of further Federal assistance, many States
are making deep budget cuts and layoffs of public employees.
Listen to this. In Texas, Governor Perry has proposed to cut
education funding by a staggering $10 billion. New York City Mayor
Bloomberg has proposed laying off 6,000 teachers. Total State and local
government layoffs since August of 2008 have been nearly 500,000. If
the Federal Government follows suit with massive short-term spending
cuts, the prospect of a double-dip recession will be all too real.
Last week the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published an article
about what it called the ``Mistake of 1937,'' referring to premature
fiscal and monetary pullbacks that cut short the fragile recovery and
ended up prolonging the Great Depression.
Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that in important ways, we have
already repeated the mistake of 1937. We have taken our eyes off what
should be our No. 1 priority, creating jobs. We have pivoted since 6
months ago, since the last election, to an obsession with deep short-
term budget cuts, which by their very nature will destroy jobs and
weaken the economy.
Everyone agrees we must take aggressive action to reduce the deficit.
But we have to do it right. We need to reduce long-term deficits but in
a way that absolutely minimizes immediate job losses. We need to reduce
the deficit in a balanced way.
Unfortunately, the extreme budget offered by Congressman Paul Ryan,
supported by almost every Republican in the House, and I would say also
in the Senate, would make our fiscal and jobs problems far worse. That
Republican budget lavishes yet more tax cuts on corporations and the
wealthy, as it slashes investments that undergird the middle class in
this country, everything from education funding to Medicare and
Medicaid.
Let me state what I think is obvious. If working people and the
middle class are going to take a hit in tough times, it should not be
to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy. If the middle class is going to
take a hit, let's use those taxes to put money into rebuilding the
infrastructure of this country, put it into better education, better
schools, better teachers.
I have often said the key to renewing America and restoring our
economy is to revitalize the middle class. That means investing in
education, innovation, infrastructure, boosting American
competitiveness in a highly competitive global marketplace. It means
restoring a level playing field with fair taxation--fair taxation.
It also means an empowered workforce, a strong ladder of opportunity
to give every American access to the middle class. I believe that
corporations and the wealthy can return to the levels of taxation they
had in the 1990s when the economy boomed and incomes also skyrocketed.
It is absurd to take the position that any dollar in tax increases
that results from having the wealthy pay their fair share or ending tax
loopholes is bad and unacceptable. I think it is absurd to take that
position, while at the same time you take the position that it is okay
to slash funding for education, for infrastructure, for research.
In both the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan, and in the 1990s under
Clinton,
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we achieved a sensible balance of revenue increases plus domestic and
Pentagon spending cuts in order to dramatically reduce deficits while
we protected the middle class and we maintained safety net programs.
I agree with the economists who believe that given the fragile
economic recovery, we should not reduce fiscal support for job creation
at this time. Deficit reduction efforts can start, but we should
sequence the lion's share of spending cuts so that they take place in
the midterm and the long term when the economy is recovered. But now we
have to keep our priorities straight.
Deficit reduction, yes, is important, but it is not our most
important economic challenge right now. Our most urgent economic
challenge is the fragile economy and the jobs crisis and the fact that
the middle class in America is under siege. The middle class, in fact,
is being dismantled as fast as big corporations can ship our
manufacturing jobs overseas. People are losing their savings, their
health care, their pensions, in many cases even their homes.
With good reason, people feel that they are losing the American dream
for themselves and their kids. That is why we cannot look at the
deficit reduction challenge in isolation. We cannot just take a
Draconian slash-and-burn approach to the budget. Smart countries in
tough economic times do not turn a chainsaw on themselves.
The extreme Republican budget is far more focused on shrinking the
size and role of government than it is on cutting the deficit. Instead
of that budget, the Republican budget, which is being sold through fear
and fatalism, we need a budget that reflects the hopes and the
aspirations of the American people. We need a budget that allows us to
continue investments, that boosts competitiveness, creates jobs, and
strengthens the middle class. There can be no real economic recovery,
there can be no return to fiscal balance, without the recovery of the
middle class in America. That is why our immediate No. 1 priority must
be helping to create jobs, putting people back to work. That is how we
will start to restore more demand for goods and services, the key to
healthy economic growth. Economic growth, in turn, will help generate
the revenues that will help bring deficits back into balance, into
rough balance. So this is our most important job in front of us.
Yet all we hear is the constant drumbeat: Cut the size of government;
cut spending; slash and burn and cut everything that supports the
middle class in America; ship our jobs overseas; more tax breaks for
the wealthy and big corporations.
We need to be focused on rebuilding the infrastructure of America,
because that is most necessary now. That is one of the fastest ways we
can put people back to work and start stimulating the economy. We need
to put more money into education: rebuilding our schools across
America, hiring better teachers. We need a longer school day, and we
need a longer school year. I know some of the young people probably do
not want to hear that.
Most young people in Europe, Asia, Japan, do not go to school 9
months out of the year, they go to school 11 months out of the year.
They do not go to school for 5\1/2\ or 6 hours a day, they go for 8
hours a day. We wonder why they are getting ahead of us. But that costs
money. If you are going to have a longer school year, that costs money.
If you are going to have longer schooldays, if you are going to have
better technology in our schools, schools that have the latest in
technology so our young people can learn on the latest innovations, so
they can be competitive in that global marketplace, that does cost
money.
Yet to hear it around here, we cannot do anything. No, of course, now
there is one place we can spend money. We can continue our operations
in Iraq for God knows how many more centuries. We have already spent
over $1 trillion in Iraq. We have already spent close to $100 billion
in Afghanistan. But we can continue to do that with no end in sight. We
can continue to buy more weapons that do not do anything to protect us
in the new global fight against terrorism. They might have been good
back in the Vietnam war, maybe in the Cold War. But that is over with.
But, no, we have got to keep pouring money into weapons systems that do
nothing to protect the country.
Two decades ago, President Clinton's team defined our Nation's
central challenge with a slogan--I remember it well--they said: ``It's
the economy, stupid.''
Well, today America's central challenge can be defined with more
precision. ``It's the middle class, stupid.'' It is what we do to
encourage, promote, protect, invigorate the middle class in America, to
make sure the middle class has good jobs, good pensions, good health
care systems, the ability to make sure their kids are well educated,
and that they do not go to college and get out with a mountain of debt
on their heads so that they too can have a good start in life. This is
all part of the middle-class structure of America, as to what made
America the greatest country in the history of the world.
I will close. It seems that the Republican budget they have
proffered, and so much that I hear of those who keep saying, we have
got to cut, cut, cut, we have got to cut spending, we have got to cut
education, we have got to cut infrastructure, we have got to cut all of
that stuff, it almost seems as though it is premised on the belief that
we are poor--our country is poor and our country is broke and we cannot
afford to do all of those things. That is really what it is. They say
we are broke. We cannot afford to do all of that stuff, so we have got
to cut our spending. Yet we are the richest Nation in the history of
mankind. We are the richest country in the world. We have the highest
per capita income of any major country. I guess you have to ask the
question: If we are so rich, why are we so broke? If we are the richest
country in the history of the world--we are the richest country in the
world today, we have the highest per capita income of any major
economy--why are we so broke?
Well, my response is, we are not broke and we are not poor. We are
wealthy beyond all imagination as a nation. We are not broke. But the
system is broken. That is what is broken. The system is broken, the
system of who we tax and how we tax, how we raise revenues, the system
of allowing corporations to tax benefits and ship jobs overseas, the
system that allows companies to almost willy-nilly break up what has
been one of the strengths of the middle class, that is, our labor
unions. They are breaking up labor unions because they know the middle
class working together in organized labor has been able to bargain more
effectively for better jobs and better wages, better conditions of
employment. You break them up and you can reduce their incomes, and
more of it can go to profits and to higher CEO salaries. That is the
system that is broken.
You can cut all the spending you want. You can cut the Federal
Government to the bare bones. It will lead to another great recession,
maybe even a depression. If you want to do that, that is a dead-end
road.
We need more stimulus now. Does that mean we have to borrow more
money and go further into debt? Not necessarily. Why don't we fix this
unfair tax system we have and generate more revenues to come into the
Federal Government? Why don't we say to those who made so much money in
the last decade or so, maybe you ought to pay a little bit more, and
for big corporations, pay a little bit more, and for the Federal
Government to put that money to use rebuilding the infrastructure and
educating our youth and having a health care system that is affordable
and comprehensive. That is what we ought to be doing. That will support
the middle class. In supporting the middle class, you will then support
economic recovery.
I will close. There will be no economic recovery in America of any
substance or lasting any length of time without a recovery of the
middle class, which is the backbone of our country. It is time our
political leaders showed some backbone in supporting the middle class.
With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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