[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 116 (Friday, July 29, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H5767-H5774]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEBT LIMIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much. This evening I am going to be
joined by several of my colleagues. And as they come to the microphone,
let me just lay down some of the facts.
Not more than an hour ago this Chamber voted on Speaker Boehner's
proposal to deal with the debt limit. Very interesting comments that he
made prior to the speech--and while I can't quote them precisely--he
did say
[[Page H5768]]
that his whole strategy started way back in January when he told the
President that he was going to use the debt limit as a way of getting
his way.
Well, we saw what his way is, and that's what was voted on today
without any support at all from the Democrats and a lot of Republicans
saying that it was not the right way to go.
So what did he propose? We have two very, very basic paths that are
facing the American public today. One of those paths is a path that we
voted on, which is a path to basically unravel most of the things that
America holds dear.
In order to carry out the caps and the $2.5 trillion in reductions
that are in that legislation, we would have to decimate Medicare. There
is no way it could possibly continue to provide the services to our
seniors and similarly Medicaid, of which 70 percent of that money goes
to seniors who are in nursing homes. And so those two critical parts of
the foundation of the American society--that is providing health care
to our seniors and the aged, blind, and disabled--are going to get
unraveled as a result of the legislation that passed.
Similarly, there is no way to meet those spending reductions without
going after Social Security. The other path is one that we have
suggested on the Democratic side, and we are going to spend some time
talking about these two today, and that is the path that maintains
these pillars of the society of America that basically express the
values of our country, that our country is one that cares deeply about
our citizens, whether they are aged, seniors who may need medical care
and who need an income, Social Security and Medicare, or whether they
are young children that need an education and those in between that
need jobs.
That's the path that the Democrats have offered in the budget that we
put forth on this floor that we voted on, that was our recommendation
on how to move forward. It failed without any Republican support, but
it was a path that basically spoke to the values of this Nation that we
have held dear for these many, many years.
I would like to turn now to my colleagues here. I would like to start
with my colleague from Oregon, Peter DeFazio.
Peter, I know that you have some remarks that you would like to share
with us this evening.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Thanks, John. Thanks for helping organize this response
to the Republicans.
We do have one real and prevailing crisis in America. It's been with
us now since 2008, and that's a jobs crisis. There are probably 20
million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed in this country
when you get to the real numbers.
Now, credible economists say if we could find a way to put those
people or most of those people back to work and get unemployment down
from 9.6 nationally to, say, 4.5 or 5 percent, that would solve a
quarter, a quarter of this deficit and debt crisis. That would be $2.5
trillion over 10 years.
Now, the Republicans here have proposed $2.7 trillion of cuts over 10
years. So if we could put people back to work, we would have about the
same savings.
Then, you know, if we got people back to work and healed the economy
a bit, all we have to do, and I talked about this earlier this week, is
nothing. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Go back to the bad old days of
Bill Clinton, 3.8 percent unemployment, paying down debt, the rich
paying a fair share. Those were the bad old days, according to the
Republicans, because those job creators were paying some taxes.
Oh, my God, billionaires required to pay taxes at the rate equal to
or higher than their secretaries and the janitors. Can you imagine
that? Oh, what disaster. So, now, they are not only cutting programs
and ignoring the jobs crisis, they are making the jobs crisis worse.
Last week, they ended the Federal Aviation Administration
construction program for safety and security. They stopped collecting
the tax. The Republicans stopped collecting the tax. It's a user paid-
for system on airline tickets. That's $30 million a day. Most airlines
have taken it as a windfall. So the Republicans' mantra that if we
lower taxes on corporations they will pass it through to the
consumers--no, sorry suckers. They keep the money and you pay the same.
But then the other mantra is, well, if we get rid of taxes, we will
create jobs. That's how you create jobs, by cutting programs and
cutting taxes.
Interesting. We have cut taxes on the airline industry by $30 million
a day, $210 million a week. That's well over--you know, that's a lot of
money on a year's basis, over a billion dollars. And guess what? We
have lost 94,000 jobs; 4,000 jobs of people in the FAA who oversee the
safety and security construction program to make sure taxpayers get a
fair value for their dollar and 90,000 private-sector construction jobs
across America.
And guess what? The American public doesn't know it yet, but this
could well lead to either, you know, opening the door to terrorist
attack because we don't do some of the security programs, or causing a
runway incursion because we don't finish the runway incursion program
before the bad weather in the winter, or I don't get my instrument
landing system in Coos Bay, North Bend, before the winter and a plane
goes awry, we could have people die because of that. But to them this
is all good--we are giving people back their money, or we are giving
the corporations the money, and don't worry.
We need to focus on jobs. There is nothing that they have been doing
here for the last 6 months, 8 months, 7 months, however long they have
been in power--it seems like 10 years--that has created a single job.
In fact, they have cost us jobs. They are costing us jobs at an ever
accelerating rate, and now they want to cut one other, just one other
point. They want to cut all investment in transportation by 35 percent.
That's an immediate loss of 600,000 private-sector jobs.
It means we won't deal with the 150,000 bridges of the national
highway system that need rebuilding. We won't deal with the half of the
payment on the national highway system that needs redoing. We won't
deal with the $70 billion backlog for new equipment for our transit
systems, transit systems that are so decrepit in places like the
Nation's Capital that people are being killed. We won't deal with any
of that.
{time} 1900
We won't put millions of people to work building new transit vehicles
or new buses or bridges with steel and all those things with Buy
America.
The Republicans say, well, we'll just give the corporations the money
and the rich people the money and they'll trickle down on the rest of
us. Well, we've been pretty well trickled down upon for way too long.
It's time for new priorities. And I would reject the Republican agenda.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. DeFazio, thank you very much. You clearly pointed
out the dichotomy between the Democratic proposal, which is one of
building and creating and putting together a society and an economy
that actually works, and the Republicans seem to be just dismantling
time after time.
I would like now to turn to Congresswoman Betty Sutton, our colleague
from the State of Ohio, who has seen the effect of the cuts and what
they mean in her district.
So, Ms. Sutton, if you would care to share with us your thoughts.
Ms. SUTTON. I thank the gentleman for his leadership. You have been a
stalwart; and, boy, do we need leadership at this point.
Here we are, it's been 29 weeks, more than 200 days since the
Republicans took over the majority of the House, and not only have they
not done anything to create jobs or help working families. Here we are
today looking at what they have done.
What have they done? After walking away from the table five times in
negotiations to restore our Nation's fiscal health, House Republicans
have passed a bill today to kick the can down the road so we can
continue to have this debate over again in a matter of months. But make
no mistake, this is a political dodge. Republicans could not agree on a
long-term solution within their own ranks, so they just decided to take
a vote on a bill that kicks the can down the road that they know there
is not support for, and it's a part of this pattern.
What have they been doing in this over 200 days? They have an agenda
that aims to end Medicare, that guts
[[Page H5769]]
Medicaid, that has threatened Social Security, and at the same time
they have even targeted energy-efficient light bulbs. They have used
time in this body to do all of these things, while at the same time
fighting to preserve tax breaks for the wealthy, for Big Oil, and for
companies that ship jobs overseas when at this time we know that we
have a jobs deficit in this country.
There is nothing more important that we can do than to, of course,
make sure that America pays its bills, but the most important priority
facing our Nation is to get America back to work because we can't solve
that long-term deficit problem without people having jobs. And,
frankly, the American Dream doesn't live if we don't have opportunities
for families out there to go to work and take care of those that they
love, to send their kids to college. That's another thing that the
Republican agenda has targeted, to put college out of reach again of so
many middle class families.
Well, I'm glad to be here with the gentleman from California and my
other colleagues to make sure that we explain to the American people
that there are people who get it, people who know that the number one
priority is to put people back to work, to focus on building our
infrastructure, to strengthening U.S. manufacturing, because we know
that we have to be a country that makes things, that makes things made
out of American iron and steel and manufactured goods; that every time
you have a manufacturing job, that there is a ripple effect of four
more jobs, or if it's in the auto industry, it's 10 more jobs. We know
that if we are not a country that manufactures things, then we are at
the mercy of those who do. It is incumbent upon us to stand up to make
sure that we focus the agenda.
We've got to stop this political theater, deal with getting the debt
ceiling issue dealt with for the long term, not for 6 months, not for 6
months and be right back at this again, leaving the American people to
wonder, seniors to wonder whether they're going to get what they need
in their Social Security checks, veterans to wonder whether they're
going to get what they need. We really, really know that the priority
has to be on jobs, and we implore our Republican colleagues to join us.
Two hundred days is too long; 200 days is more than the American
people and the American families that I am so honored to serve can
take. We must focus on getting people back to work.
Mr. GARAMENDI. It is about jobs. There are very few economists--
except maybe some that supported the proposal that the Republicans put
together today--but nearly every economist in this Nation said the only
way we will ever get this Nation back to a balanced budget is with full
employment, putting people to work. And that is the Make it in America
agenda.
Let me now turn to Mr. Perlmutter from the great State of Colorado,
who has some concepts and ideas he would like to share with us this
evening.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. I thank my friend from California and Ms. Sutton from
Ohio.
And as they've said, the best way to pay the debt that this Nation
has incurred is for people to work. All of a sudden you've got revenue
coming in, and you don't have to pay unemployment, you don't have to
pay a lot of Medicaid, you don't have to pay COBRA and all these other
things. You have revenue coming in and less expense going out.
One of the things about this Nation is that it has always provided to
those people who really are prepared to work, who are prepared to play
by the rules, who take responsibility for their lives and the lives of
their family members, a chance to get ahead. That's what America has
meant to millions and millions and millions of people throughout our
history.
And one of the reasons this country was able to provide that kind of
a setting for all of us is because 235 years ago or so, this Nation
went through a war. And after that war, the States banded together and
said, you know what, we as a country will pay the debts of our
Revolutionary War. And this young Nation paid its debts and became a
strong Nation overnight because it paid its bills. And so for 235 years
now we've been paying our bills. You bet. And that's why we have had
the strongest credit, the full faith and credit of the United States of
America for two centuries.
My friends on the Republican side of the aisle, for the last 3 months
or more, have been putting that credit at risk. And I'd like to say
there was a real reason for them to do that, but there is no reason.
When you have incurred a bill, you pay that bill. You don't say, you
know what, we're not going to pay the bill unless some things happen in
the future. You pay the bill, and you deal with the future separately.
But not in this Congress, not with this Republican leadership. They
tie it all together and say if we don't get our way, we're not going to
pay our bills. Well, baloney, that isn't how it works. And so what
we've got to do is come together. The President has proposed a balanced
approach to getting this country's fiscal house in order.
Now, let's not forget how we got here. Ten years ago, we had a
surplus; revenues exceeded expenses. So in these last 10 years we had
two big tax cuts--that's a couple trillion dollars under George Bush.
We had a couple big wars, which instead of everybody being patriotic
and really assisting the country, we would borrow and do it on a credit
card--that's a couple trillion dollars. And then we had a crash on Wall
Street--another $2 trillion or $3 trillion. That's where the debt came
from.
Now, I can lay the blame at the feet of the Republican leadership and
administration, but we are where we are and we've got to deal with it.
And it's got to be done in a balanced way, both the revenue side of the
ledger and the expense side of the ledger. If our goal is to pay down
the debt, you need more revenue and you need less expense. And it's
both sides. And you can't just say we're going to cut, cut, cut. We're
going to take it out of Medicare, we're going to privatize Social
Security. We're going to eliminate early childhood education. You've
got to deal with the expenses, and we know that; but you've got to have
revenue.
In this instance, the Republicans say, you know what, we're not going
to have additional taxes for millionaires and billionaires and some
corporations with loopholes, no, that's off limits. But we are going to
go after Medicare, we are going to go after Social Security, we are
going to go after early childhood education. That's just not right, and
this country knows it.
{time} 1910
Every American knows that, so we have to get busy, ladies and
gentlemen, because we have work to do. If we are going to restore the
American Dream, we have a lot of work to do. And that is what Democrats
are going to do. We have a lot of work to do, and it is time to get
busy.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Perlmutter, you are so very correct. The American
Dream, you laid it out there so well--job, family, home, ability to
take care, kids off to school, good health care--the American Dream.
When you get old, you've got Medicare, you have Social Security. That's
really the foundation.
However, what happened on this floor not more than an hour and a half
ago will destroy that dream. Now, we have work to do; indeed, we do.
And now I would like to turn to my friend and colleague on the floor,
sometimes we call it the East Coast/West Coast show, my friend from New
York, Mr. Paul Tonko.
Mr. TONKO. Representative Garamendi, it is a pleasure to join with
you, speaking for your base in California, joining with our colleagues
from Colorado and Texas and Connecticut and Ohio and Virginia, myself
from New York, across this country, we are speaking for the American
public. The great populous of this Nation are asking: Where are the
solutions? Where is the responsiveness to a job situation, a jobs
deficit, a jobs crisis?
The solution here, well, last night we saw it. We saw the drama
unfold, not here on the House floor, but behind closed doors. We moved
into recess. The Republican leadership of the House said we are going
to move to recess. We were fully anticipating a vote last night in
short order, but we waited for hours and hours. They didn't have the
votes. So what happened? Today they moved for a measure that moved
further from the center, took us to the extreme edge in order to get
just by a
[[Page H5770]]
vote to amass sufficient support for a very extreme solution that
really kicks the can down the road, as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Sutton) indicated. It means that we don't have this long-term solution
that builds confidence in the economy but, rather, a political
response, a political solution that bought enough votes, that puts into
play measures that we know will not find support as negotiations need
to come to conclusion in just a matter of hours.
And so this has been a disingenuous approach to a very serious issue.
But what they are doing is destroying jobs, because as you kill the
confidence within our economy by threatening this economy with credit
ratings that could be reduced, that call for greater interest payments,
from car loans to mortgages to student loans to savings to pension
plans, we're putting the people of this country, every household,
regardless of income strata, economic strata, at risk. But an assault
certainly on the middle class of this country.
And is that the right thing to do when we have this looming dark
cloud of a jobs crisis, and how do we solve that? We do it by investing
in programs that create jobs and undo the programs that are outmoded,
don't create jobs. And we make certain that there is an investment made
in innovation, in clean energy, in manufacturing, making things here in
America, taking ideas, moving them along, embracing the pioneer spirit
of the people of this great land. That's not being done.
What they do is move to destroy some 700,000 jobs. They kill the
confidence factor for the economy. They move forward with harmful
measures that destroy our economic growth and end Medicare, because
with their proposal, we see it clearly, they would end Medicare and
transition Social Security into a privatized format.
These are the things that our phones have been ringing off the hook
about. We have heard, through the President's encouragement, from
several constituents, routinely through this debate of several weeks
and months now but enhanced over the last couple of days, and people
are very clear, couldn't be clearer: Why do we become a lesser priority
than Big Oil and millionaires and billionaires? People are asking that
question, and they have every right to.
This is an assault on the values of the middle class of this country.
It is a neglectful response to the jobs crisis of this country, and it
has moved us further away from the deficit situation with the debt
ceiling discussion by moving it to the extreme, because the extreme of
their party, in order to get their support, said over the last several
hours, the last half day: You want my support, move extreme. Don't move
to the moderate zone. Don't build a consensus. And so now the
consequences of their action puts this economy at risk and does nothing
but reduce jobs rather than promote the investments that will create
jobs.
Representative Garamendi, it's aggravating. It is ignoring what the
public's wishes are, and it's not responding to the challenges of the
moment. This is a tipping point moment for the Nation. This is a chance
to reengineer the economy after a long and deep and painful recession,
and they are risking that by perhaps pushing us back into a recession,
if not a full-blown depression.
Mr. GARAMENDI. What took place here on the floor, Mr. Tonko, over the
last couple of hours was really a charade. It was theater. It had no
sense of reality. There is no way that piece of legislation is going to
move forward. You said it so very well: It became more and more radical
with each iteration over time.
It seems as though there is a small group within the Republican
Caucus that really doesn't want government at all. Almost an anarchist
attitude about government is bad, get rid of it in every way.
And then there is group in that same caucus that actually published a
piece of paper, it came from the leadership, and one of the things that
they said that they wanted to do was to bring down the President. Well,
we have an election coming up, to be sure. But to use the full faith
and credit of the United States, that is the honor and really the
dignity, to say nothing of the financial strength of this Nation, to
bring down the President seems to be unconscionable.
Mr. TONKO. Our goal here should be to build up a Nation rather than
to bring down a President, and it is shameful to even have that
acknowledged.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Earlier this afternoon before we started this 1-hour,
one of our colleagues on the Republican side brought up a nice little
picture of a woman balancing her budget, presumably at home, and a
checkbook. She said that 40-some States have a balanced budget
amendment, and they balance their budget.
Earlier this afternoon, I was talking to my friend from the great
State of Virginia, and he said: Let me share with you how one State
balances their budget.
I yield to Bobby Scott.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I would like to bring that up because the
legislation that we considered earlier today had a provision that
required a constitutional amendment that is mislabeled. It is called
the Balanced Budget Amendment.
Well, if you look at the provisions of the bill, not just the title,
the provisions, you will see that it requires a three-fifths vote to
pass a budget that is not in balance. Every budget that we have
considered for the last 9 years and every budget that we will consider
for the foreseeable future will be unbalanced in the first year. So all
you've done is increase the threshold for any budget to be balanced.
The Republican Study Committee budget, which is probably the most
conservative budget in terms of spending on the table, other budgets
would probably cut the deficit just as much, but all of those severe
deficit reduction bills would require a three-fifths vote.
Now remember, when the Clinton budget passed, it passed by the
thinnest of margins. We balanced the budget and were on course to
paying off the national debt, created a record number of jobs. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average almost quadrupled. Fifty Democrats lost their
seats when they voted for that bill. When you vote for deficit
reduction, a lot of people will be casting career-ending votes.
Increasing the threshold to three-fifths will just make it harder or
even more impossible to pass.
What you can get three-fifths for, once you need three-fifths, any
kind of budget can pass. You can have more tax cuts, and we got three-
fifths votes from the $800 billion tax cut back in December. But a
three-fifths vote, you can pass new tax cuts and new spending. You can
make the deficit worse under the balanced budget amendment and probably
will.
Also consider that it had the provision of two-thirds vote to
increase taxes. That will obviously make it more difficult to balance
the budget. Two-thirds vote to spend more than 18 percent of GDP, a
number we haven't seen since Medicare was enacted. That means you're
going to have pressure on Medicare and Social Security.
Interestingly, if you put all of these things together, you'll notice
that you can cut Medicare benefits or Social Security benefits with a
simple majority. But to save those programs with new taxes, a two-
thirds vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate. And then
to add insult to injury, it requires a three-fifths vote to increase
the debt ceiling.
{time} 1920
As if the drama that we've been through in the last few days and last
few weeks isn't enough of a spectacle, they wanted to make that kind of
thing routine, where we'd have to go through this every year. We've had
to increase the debt ceiling on average once a year for the last 50
years. They want to go through this spectacle with a supermajority so
that we can have these kinds of problems all along.
Now, we heard during consideration of the balanced budget amendment
when we were in committee about Arizona's balanced budget amendment and
how well it works. And we kept hearing this over and over again. So I
thought, I wonder how they do that? So I Googled it.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me. You said that Arizona has a balanced budget
amendment in their Constitution and somehow they balance their budget.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. And I couldn't figure out how they have done
it over the past few years. I figured there must be something in there.
So
[[Page H5771]]
we Googled it, thanks to Google. And we found out. The first thing I
found out is, with 6.3 million people, they got $6.4 billion of
stimulus money that the Federal Government borrowed and then sent to
them. A thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child--$4,000 for
every family. That helped them balance the budget.
But that wasn't enough. You know what else they did? They sold their
State capitol and supreme court building. Did you hear what I said?
They sold the State capitol building for $735 million and sold the
supreme court building for $300 million and leased it back. That extra
billion dollars in the budget was necessary for them to balance their
budget.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me for a second, if I might interrupt. One of
the proposals coming from some of the Republicans was to sell America's
assets. Do you suppose they intended to sell the U.S. Capitol?
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Well, the Arizona State capitol was sold and
leased back. So there's no telling what they might want to do. But the
really regrettable part of this is the process that we're in. Because
we just passed a bill that provides for trillions of dollars in
unspecified cuts. They slapped the thing together behind closed doors.
The final version was developed this morning after the bill had been
debated. There was only 1 minute left in the debate, and they changed
the bill. They added in the balanced budget amendment and some other
kinds of changes and sprung it on the House.
We finished the debate this afternoon. Vote it up or down, no
amendments. We took all that time doing it on a bill that 53 Senators
have signed a letter saying that they're going to oppose it as soon as
it gets over there.
Now, I said unspecified amendments because they don't cut anything in
their bill. There are no cuts. There are caps. So we don't know what
the cuts will be because they're just spending caps. We will find out
next month what they have in mind because that's when we'll try to
appropriate under the caps, and then we'll figure out what actually has
to be cut.
But we'd have an idea of what they might cut because earlier this
year they had a bill of about $66 billion. Annualized, that would be
about a hundred billion for the full year. In 10-year costs, that would
be about a trillion. So if you want to know what a trillion-dollar 10-
year cut would look like, we can see it.
Look at what they cut. They cut safety net programs like community
action agencies, legal aid, energy assistance for low-income seniors,
community health centers, WIC nutrition. All cut. They had investments
in our future, education. All kinds of education programs, including
Head Start and Pell Grants. Cut. Job training programs in the middle of
an economic downturn. Cut. NASA and other scientific research, energy
research. Cut. High-speed rail, investments in our future.
Immunizations and AmeriCorp. Cut.
Then routine functions of government that you would hope would not
have to get cut, like air traffic controllers. They're working so hard,
they're falling asleep on the jobs. Cops and firefighters. Cut. FBI
agents. We spent the last couple of days in the Judiciary Committee
talking about trying to chase down cases involving child pornography,
and we don't have enough FBI agents to chase them down. And what do
they do? Cut FBI agents.
Clean Water grants, poison control, aid to small shipyards. We have a
lot of shipyards in my district. National parks. OSHA--Occupational
Safety and Health Administration--personnel cut. FEMA. With all the
problems we've got all over the country now, floods and everything,
FEMA is cut. They talk about border security. Border protection and
border security. Cut. Food inspection.
That's just a small sample of what they had in that. Then in the next
bill they're cutting Medicare. All of those cut. And that's just the
first trillion.
I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. I was going to say to my friend, over the course of
the last 10 years we know where the debt really came from. It wasn't in
early childhood education. It wasn't in national parks. It was in two
tax cuts--a couple trillion dollars or more. It was in two wars--at
least a couple trillion dollars. And it was in a crash on Wall Street
when people were laid off and had to have some kind of assistance.
Obviously, you said Arizona needed assistance--$6.4 billion and they
still sold their capitol.
I would yield to my friend from Connecticut because he has the chart
that describes this.
Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter and Mr. Garamendi, for
holding this.
As John Adams, our second President once famously said, Facts are
stubborn things. This chart here, which is a chart which is using the
Congressional Budget Office facts and figures in terms of what happened
to this country since 2002, which as my friend indicated, was the last
time we had a balanced budget in this country. This chart shows that we
have accumulated about $7.5 trillion in debt. And $5 trillion of that
was due to the policies of the last administration, starting with the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars, two wars which, again, lots of debate about
whether it was in our national interest. In any case, what is not
debatable is that we never paid a penny for either one of those
conflicts.
The Bush tax cuts, $1.8 trillion; nondefense discretionary spending,
$608 billion. TARP, the Wall Street bailout, which a lot of people
forget occurred under the last administration; a Medicare drug benefit
which was passed in 2005 and was never paid for. Not a nickle of that
benefit was ever paid for with either offsetting revenue or other
spending reductions.
And the 2008 stimulus bill which the Bush administration had
presented. A lot of people don't remember the check that people got
sent during that time. Again, none of those expenditures were paid for.
Many of those expenditures, such as the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, are still recurring expenses, which are still
accumulating bills and debts which this country is obligated for.
When the Obama administration took office in January of 2009, they
faced an economy that was in free fall. There were 800,000 jobs lost in
January of 2009. Obviously, a crisis that needed to be addressed in
terms of counter-recessionary policies such as extending unemployment
benefits and some stimulus, which is to get work out there in terms of
road and bridge construction projects, sewer treatment facilities. I'm
cutting a ribbon on Monday morning in my district for a plant which
provided a lot of work for people. Again, nonrecurring expenses to deal
with the emergency that we faced as a Nation.
When you look at, again, the comparative cost of the policies and the
Bush administration and the Obama administration and you think about
the fact that we have these bills and expenses which have been
accumulated by our Nation since 2002, and yet we had a default debate
here an hour and a half ago, where the Speaker, who, by the way, voted
for every single one of those Bush policies from 2002 up until
President Bush left office, stood on this floor, blamed the debt crisis
that we face in our Nation just on one administration, which, again,
CBO clearly documents was far less culpable in terms of what the
numbers show.
Again, it just shows how really corrosive the partisan debate that's
occurred under the 112th Congress since this new majority took office,
completing omitting the fact that eight times during the Bush
administration they voted to raise the debt ceiling to avoid default.
Under Ronald Reagan, 18 times. We've had clean debt limit increases.
Yet this administration, the Obama administration, for the first time
in American history is being held to a different standard in terms of
trying to deal with the debts and obligations of this country.
The rating agencies have spoken loud and clear in terms of the bill
that was just voted on here an hour and a half ago. A short-term
extension of 6 months is thumbs down from the rating agencies because
they see that as just an invitation this coming December to go through
the same political and economic instability that we saw this past week.
And that's not what our economy needs today.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. It's in that context that the actions of this
Congress have to be taken into consideration because last December we
passed
[[Page H5772]]
an $800 billion, 2-year tax cut--not new tax cuts--extending the ones
that were there.
{time} 1930
Had we let them expire, which I think would have been better
judgment, we would not be in the situation we're in. We passed $400
billion a year tax cuts. We now have a general consensus that we need,
in the next 10 years, $4 trillion worth of savings, deficit reduction,
about $400 billion a year, exactly the same as what we did in tax cuts
last year. All of these cuts we're talking about are necessary to
partially offset the fact that we extended the tax cuts last year. And
the process was all up or down. You had to vote it all up or down, one
vote, without any choices. We didn't need to extend all of the tax
cuts. Maybe if we extended some but not all, we could have avoided cuts
in Head Start, in food inspectors, firefighters and those kinds of
things. We didn't make the choice step by step. It was, we have to
extend the tax cuts, and in order to preserve those tax cuts, we're
making the cuts in Medicare and Social Security and Pell Grants and
Head Start, clean water grants, poison control, and on and on. It's in
that context that these cuts are so regrettable.
Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might, my good colleague from Virginia, on the
floor today it was perfectly clear that the Republicans are refusing to
even consider any increases in taxes or the elimination of tax breaks,
on oil, on corporations that send jobs overseas, it's no. On the high
end, the hedge fund managers that have a billion dollars of income, no,
they're going to keep those tax breaks.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. On that point, if we do nothing and let them
expire--we're not talking about new tax cuts--if we just let them
expire, we have enough deficit reduction on the table to match Simpson-
Bowles.
Mr. GARAMENDI. There you have it.
Our colleague from Ohio, if you could comment. We're going to do this
kind of moving along more rapidly. We've got several different
comments. Our colleague from Texas is back.
Please, if you would, and then I'll turn to our colleague from Texas.
Ms. SUTTON. I just want to say one more time, because I know that the
people that I represent in northeast Ohio, they don't want government
on their backs but they do want government on their side, and how do we
show that we're on their side? We focus on the issue that matters to
them the most, and all they want is a chance. They want a chance at
that American Dream.
How do we do that? We do that by focusing on jobs, and we do that by
focusing on this agenda to Make It in America. What does that mean? It
means policies that make sense regarding trade, that instead of
fighting to protect companies as the Republicans are through this whole
default debacle, instead of protecting those companies that ship jobs
overseas, we want to level the playing field, to allow our
manufacturers and our workers to fairly compete because we know that
they are the best in the world and given a chance, a fair chance, they
will not only compete, they will out-compete anybody in the world. We
need tax policies that make sense. We need to focus on not only
manufacturing but building our infrastructure. The world is working on
building their infrastructure, and here we are, we heard the cuts that
are going on aimed at our infrastructure.
It is time, it is past time, that we turn to the hard work of putting
America back to work, because while we have a jobs deficit, we don't
have a deficit of work that needs to be done. Let us get away from this
risk of default, let us settle the matter, allow America to pay its
bills, because if we don't, we're going to lose even more jobs.
Economists tell us we're going to lose 700,000 more jobs if America
defaults. We don't want to go in that direction. We want to go in the
direction that allows our workers, our companies and our country to
make it--Make It in America.
Mr. GARAMENDI. And there's the voice from the central part of the
heart of America from the great State of Ohio.
We know that America can make it. This is still the greatest
manufacturing center in the world, and part of our job agenda on the
Democratic side is what we call Make It in America.
The gentlewoman from Ohio very quickly pointed out several elements
in that. I put this up while she was talking so we could think about
it.
Trade policy. We can't give away our jobs on trade policy.
Taxes. We talked about the tax issues, corporations getting tax
breaks for going offshore.
Energy. We need energy security. We can't afford to continue to pay
all of our hard-earned dollars to the petro-dictators of the world and
the most dangerous places of the world. We need a domestic energy
policy, a green energy policy, a clean energy policy, with the tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs there.
Labor policies. We talked about educating our kids. Bobby Scott from
Virginia talked about the cuts that are in the Republican budget when
we need to educate, re-educate and prepare our labor force.
Education. In this budget that they just put forward are tremendous
cuts to the Pell Grants that allow kids to go to school.
Research. Again, Bobby, you talked about the research cuts, and the
infrastructure we've talked about several times. This is all part of
our agenda. This is how we're going to build America, how the American
Dream can become a reality once again by making the critical
investments on the public side, bringing the private side along.
I know that Texas likes to say everything is great in Texas, but I
have talked to our colleague, Sheila Jackson Lee, many times we've
talked to her on the floor, and it's not all perfect.
Could you share with us the view from Texas?
Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. The gentleman from California is very kind
for leading this effort, and I'm delighted to be here. We've really got
a regional, national perspective here: the gentlemen from Colorado,
from Connecticut, the gentlelady from Ohio, and, of course, the
gentleman from New York, and the gentleman from Virginia, and Texas.
Texas is a big State. I heard a colleague on this side of the aisle
say that Texas has got all kinds of articles to talk about how great a
State it is. It's a great State, but when you don't spend money on
people, you wind up like Texas, being 43rd in education, or you wind up
having the State with the largest number of individuals without health
insurance, and so I have joined my colleagues today because I truly
believe, standing on this side of the Chamber, that there is an
opportunity for bipartisanship. But yet we have individuals who have
been influenced by signs that say No Surrender. No Surrender. Those
words were more appropriate for our Founding Fathers as they stood
against oppression. No Surrender. But these words are not appropriate
against the American people, that we won't surrender, no matter what
happens to the American people, we in this Congress are so influenced
by voices that truly do not have the concept of invest and grow, and
they don't have the concept of Make It in America. What a wonderful
statement about the greatness of America. Not No Surrender but Make It
in America, because America is not broke, and the voices of negativism
that would propose legislation that would have us cut without
investment, cut without revenue, means that we surrender on the
American people.
I wanted to mention that we haven't said what is happening to local
government. Here is a major headline that says States Feel Pain Over
Debt Impasse. We all come from the people, outside of the Beltway, and
what is happening to the States is that the markets are being troubled.
I had a press conference and a meeting with my city comptroller whose
investments are in Treasury notes. It's not just what we do here on the
floor of the House. Our cities will have a troubled economic
infrastructure if the Treasury notes that they have invested in all of
a sudden drop with severe, if you will, losses.
And so I wanted to say that this is more than just us, it is more
than one person in a leaky boat, it is many of us in a leaky boat. Just
in the last 48 hours, to the gentleman, the Dow went down 200 points.
In the last 12 hours coming in today, the Asian markets
[[Page H5773]]
and our markets have seen a dramatic drop, and as you well know, we
were here until 11 o'clock at night trying to wait until the
conference, in essence, got itself together.
So let me just say that the debt ceiling from my perspective should
be a clean one, but we should go forward with innovation, investment,
and balanced cutting. We should preserve our Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security.
Finally let me say this. If the States are being troubled now and
people are being influenced by the language or the words No Surrender,
can you imagine what happens when 6 months from now the bill that
passed with no Democrats, we would come back again to the American
people, tell them to be fearful about Medicaid, Medicare, Social
Security, tell our students they might not have Pell Grants for the
second semester, tell people in the midst of buying a house their
interest rates will skyrocket, because we'll be back again trying to
debate the debt ceiling, and if various draconian measures are not
passed such as balanced budget amendments by three-fifths, two-thirds,
we will have another default.
{time} 1940
We need to be focusing on what is good about America. Make it in
America. Invest, innovate and grow, and have mutually balanced
sacrifice. That's what will make us great.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Ms. Jackson Lee, thank you so much.
We have about 10 minutes left here, and I'd like to do lightning
rounds.
My colleagues, you've been so eloquent and have really brought these
issues to bear, but why don't we all do a wrap--we'll do about a
minute--and we'll just pass it around.
Let's start with the great State of New York. So we'll go to the east
coast first.
Mr. Tonko.
Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Garamendi.
Let me just say that the challenge for America to pay her bills, many
of those bills that were accrued before this administration, is not a
Republican challenge; it's not a Democratic challenge. It's an American
challenge. The default crisis that is challenging our economy,
threatening our economy is not a Republican crisis; it's not a
Democratic crisis. It's an American crisis. The jobs crisis is not a
Republican crisis or a Democratic crisis. It's an American crisis.
You get the message. We need to come together, not pull farther
apart.
I represent what I'd like to call the original Tech Valley. The Erie
Canal/Barge Canal were hosted in the 21st Congressional District. It
provided for a westward movement. It embraced the pioneer spirit of
America. Mill towns became the epicenters of invention and innovation.
That same pioneer spirit is in our DNA at the very present day, today.
If we invest as we know we should, we will grow jobs; we'll respond to
the jobs crisis; we'll create revenues and they'll grow; we'll cut
spending required when unemployment rises; and we will solve many
crises.
I have seen the region I represent grow per capita, in per capita
measurement, to be the number one green-powered job growth region in
the country. That happened because of Federal investment and State
investment. Let's just make it in America and do sound policy that is
bringing us together and not dividing us as the leadership of this
House has done with their approach.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Tonko.
Let's move to the great State of Virginia, down in the tidewater
country.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Thank you very much, and I appreciate your
doing this.
As our friend from New York has said, we need to be focused on jobs.
The other side of the aisle is quick to say that you cannot raise taxes
in the middle of an economic downturn, and then the next thing they say
is we need to cut spending. Spending cuts have a much larger impact on
employment because, when you have an agency and when you cut the
budget, people get fired immediately. There is a more immediate effect
than tax cuts, which you don't pay until later on. It has a larger
effect. So, when we start talking about the jobs, these cuts will have
an adverse effect on jobs. We need to focus on jobs first.
We wouldn't be going through this kind of attack on our economy, on
Medicare, on the education programs if it had not been for the threat
to shut down the economy. This threat is unprecedented. We need to pay
our obligations. We cannot default. It's actually manufactured, because
never in American history has there been any serious effort to fail to
pay our obligations as we've been going through in just these past few
days.
We need to increase the debt ceiling in the same way we've done it
every year, sometimes twice a year--on average about once a year,
sometimes twice a year--over the last 50 years. Just increase the debt
ceiling. We should not be jeopardizing. We should not be having all
this uncertainty in the markets with what's going on here today. As
that saying goes, ``Just do it.''
Mr. GARAMENDI. Indeed, we do. If we're going to have the American
Dream continue to be a reality, we've got lot of work to do. We've got
to put the American people back to work, and we're going to have to
deal with the deficit, and it will take us a while to do it.
Mr. Courtney, you very well and eloquently pointed out how we got
into the deficit. Please, your final thoughts.
Mr. COURTNEY. Sure. Tonight, I know and every one of us here knows
there are a lot of older Americans who are watching this debate
extremely closely who are worried about their Social Security checks at
the beginning of next month, and they're worried about whether their
Medicare is going to be there.
What I would just say--and I know all of us agree--is we all
understand that it is our solemn duty to protect a program that just
celebrated its 45th anniversary, Medicare, which has made a difference
to every single one of us in terms of our parents and our grandparents.
We understand that we are not going to allow this political bullying
effort, using the tool of the default as a device, to butcher the
Medicare program. That is a solemn pledge which I know every single one
of us believes in, and we are going to fight until this episode is over
in order to make sure that we protect the basic components of
retirement security for seniors in America, which is Social Security
and Medicare.
Mr. GARAMENDI. How about the view from Colorado?
Mr. PERLMUTTER. I thank my friend from California.
I would say the view from Colorado is, there's a lot of pushing and
pulling back here, and I would call upon my moderate friends in the
Republican Party, if there are any anymore, to stop this tomfoolery.
No longer can we put the full faith and credit of the United States
at risk. I mean, we do have a duty to preserve and protect our
Constitution, and the full faith and credit of this country is referred
to at least three times in the article about the Congress in the ``full
faith and credit'' section of the Constitution and then in the 14th
Amendment. We pay our debts. We pay our bills. So I'd just say that the
President has proposed a solid, long-term fiscal plan. It took us 10
years to get into this financial mess from the time we had a surplus
under Bill Clinton, and it will take us several years to right
ourselves, but we can do it. This is America.
Then as we're doing that, we really do have to focus on making sure
that people who play by the rules, who are responsible and hardworking,
have a shot at getting advanced in this world. The best way to do that
is through a good job and through making things in America.
For Democrats, really our formula is to innovate, educate, rebuild
this economy, and rebuild our infrastructure. That will make this
country strong, and it will make Colorado strong. We love our clean
energy industry. That's a good place to start.
Mr. GARAMENDI. And from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. I thank the gentleman.
First of all, thank you for allowing us to really talk about how
great America is--I agree with you--and we are not broke. Chairman
Bernanke said fast, undefined cuts will hamper the economy, and he is
nonpartisan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
So what do we need to do?
We need to look at our history. Twenty million jobs were created
[[Page H5774]]
under the Democratic Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton--and then
this President, with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that we
supported, 3 million jobs. We know how to do this.
What I would say to my friends is that we have the responsibility to
be not ``any'' party, but Democrats are here to be for the American
people, and this weekend, Democrats will be the ones standing in the
gap for the American people. I am proud of that.
My last point is, there is no shame in taking care of the vulnerable.
The last thing we want to do as we leave this place in these next
couple of days with the debt ceiling in place, as it should be, is to
leave behind us seniors who may be thrown out of nursing homes because
we didn't do what was right. So I say we can do it, and we can do the
debt ceiling in the way that creates jobs and protects the American
people.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you.
I'll do a wrap here, and we'll be finished for this evening.
Unfortunately, the work has not yet been completed. We do need to
lift the debt ceiling. We can, and it will be done one way or the
other. The President has the ultimate authority under the 14th
Amendment of the Constitution to simply order the Treasury to pay the
bills.
All that has gone on here today will devastate the United States. It
will devastate it. We've talked about that part of this is the
requirement that no more debt ceilings will be lifted until there is a
constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds, or a 60 percent,
vote to do anything. That is guaranteed gridlock. The only thing that
could take place on a majority vote would be cuts. Think about that,
America. In order to raise taxes, in order to end the tax breaks given
to the oil companies or the rich barons on Wall Street, it takes a two-
thirds vote. But to cut Medicare?--a majority vote. We're not going to
let that happen.
There is one place that the Democratic Party is going to stand, and
that is: Keep your hands off Social Security and Medicare. No way.
Nohow. I don't care about all of this talk that goes on here. The
bottom line is: That is a fundamental building block foundation of this
Nation. It brought every senior out of poverty.
{time} 1950
There's not a family in America that doesn't depend upon Social
Security and Medicare for their parents. Now, if you want that cut, you
stay there with what the Republicans are talking about because there's
no way that you could possibly carry out what they're proposing unless
you go after Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.
We will not let it happen. This is where we stand. It's not a line in
the sand. It is etched into the very heart of the Democratic Party.
With that, I thank my colleagues for joining me this evening, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
____________________