[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 154 (Tuesday, December 4, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H6609]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FISCAL CLIFF

  (Mr. FLEMING asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. FLEMING. For 2 years, President Obama and Democrats have clamored 
for a so-called ``balanced approach'' to fix the budget deficit by 
raising taxes in exchange for entitlement reform. We must reform 
entitlements. We know that, without reform, Medicare becomes insolvent 
in just 10 years. Then there's welfare. For the first year ever, we 
spent over $1 trillion on welfare, and food stamp usage is up now to 15 
percent of the population. All of this is creating annual trillion-
dollar deficits, which, along with anemic economic growth and 
stubbornly high unemployment, means 23 million Americans still have no 
jobs.
  Now some Republicans say they'd consider a balanced approach, but how 
much revenue is gathered from the tax increases proposed by Democrats? 
About $80 billion a year. That's barely enough to run Washington for 8 
days.
  Mr. Speaker, we are less than 4 weeks from falling off the fiscal 
cliff. It's time for Democrats to come to the table with something more 
than job-killing taxes. If they have serious ideas for entitlement 
reform, the American people deserve to hear them. Unfortunately, Mr. 
Speaker, the reason we haven't heard Democrat ideas for entitlement 
reform may be because they have no plans to cut or to reform 
entitlement spending at all. This is just another game from their 
playbook--raise taxes and increase spending, as always.

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