[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3340-3341]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          OUR ECONOMIC POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the President last week delivered the 
Central American Free Trade Agreement to this Congress as part of his 
economic plan to grow the economy. What we have seen from the 
President's economic plan, which consists of two basic solutions, are 
two things. One is tax cuts for the wealthiest people of our society, 
the 1 percent wealthiest, the people who need it least, hoping it will 
trickle down and create jobs. The other part of this program is to push 
through this Congress more NAFTAs, the Central American Free Trade 
Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, trade agreements which 
have no labor and environmental standards, trade agreements which 
hemorrhage jobs, which ship jobs overseas.
  We have seen that kind of economic policy, except we have seen it not 
work. We have seen in this administration a loss of almost 3 million 
jobs. In

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my State of Ohio, we have lost one out of every six manufacturing jobs. 
Hundreds of thousand of Ohioans have lost their jobs. We have seen no 
manufacturing jobs created. In fact, since President Bush took office, 
we have lost manufacturing jobs not just in Ohio but across the country 
every single month of the Bush administration.
  Now, just recently the President put out his economic report. This 
Economic Report of the President is put out every year. As my 
colleagues can see here, the President signed it on page 4, and this 
economic report makes a lot of promises. As one of his earlier economic 
reports had made, the President in 2002 promised an increase of 3.4 
million jobs. We have actually seen a loss of 1.7 million jobs since 
then. In this report, he makes another promise of 2.6 million jobs 
created just this year alone. Already the President's people are 
backing off that promise.
  But you might be interested, and there are some things in this report 
that the President and his people, his Chief Economic Adviser, have 
sort of bragged about. One of the things that the President's Economic 
Adviser said when he said, ``When a good or service is produced more 
cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to provide it 
domestically,'' and then the Chief Economic Adviser to the President 
said, That is a good thing. If it is made somewhere else cheaper, then 
good economics says we ought to ship those jobs overseas and make them 
more cheaply overseas and make them there and displace the jobs in the 
United States.
  That is not good economic policy. It is not good trade policy. It 
particularly is not good policy for our people. Yes, we want to do 
trade. Yes, we want that train to move out of the station advancing 
trade, but we want to do the trade, we want fair trade, not free trade. 
This administration, unfortunately, is committed to free trade.
  In the meantime, the President's Council on Economic Advisers has 
said in this report, also on page 103, In the long run, a large part of 
the burden of taxes is likely to be shifted to workers through a 
reduction in wages. In other words, the President's policy of tax cuts 
for the wealthy, hoping that it trickles down and provides something 
for everybody else, and these trade agreements with no labor and 
environmental standards, these trade agreements that ship jobs 
overseas, in the meantime, the President's people say what is going to 
happen is a large part of the burden of taxes is likely to be shifted 
to workers through a reduction in wages.
  That is why even people that have kept their jobs, as most people 
have during this Bush recession, even then those people's wages have 
been stagnant or in some cases have gone down. That is because the 
President's people say that we are going to see tax cuts for the 
wealthy, and we are going to see loss of wages for workers and for the 
middle class.
  The President's Chief Economic Adviser goes on to say, Analyses that 
fail to recognize this shift can be misleading, suggesting that higher 
income groups bear an unrealistically large share of the long run 
burden. In other words, when the President's people say, well, we have 
to give a tax cut to the richest people in our society because they are 
paying the most taxes, the President's own Economic Adviser said that 
is not the case.
  What is happening in our economy, you may applaud that, is these tax 
cuts shift the burden. As we cut taxes on the wealthy, it shifts the 
burden to the middle class in the form of lower wages, and we can also 
see that, Mr. Speaker, with what Alan Greenspan said last week.
  He came to this Congress and said I support continuing the tax cuts 
for the wealthiest Americans, and then he said, but because of that, we 
have a budget shortfall and we have to cut Social Security. So the 
President of the United States and Alan Greenspan, his man at the 
Federal Reserve, are saying to the American people, you have either got 
the tax cuts for the most privileged and if you take those tax cuts, 
then it means we have to cut Social Security.
  That is really what we are going to talk about in the next 8 months, 
that if we are going to make these tax cuts, if we are going to 
continue these tax cuts for the wealthy that the President wants, it 
means fewer dollars for education, less money for prescription drugs 
and other health care, and ultimately it means cutting Social Security. 
That is the choice. That is what the election will be about this year.
  That is what this Congress is going to be about in the next 6 months. 
That is what we are going to hear John Kerry and George Bush debate. If 
we do the tax cuts and cut the taxes of the wealthiest Americans, it 
means less money for Social Security beneficiaries. It means less money 
for environmental enforcement. It means less money for the middle 
class. It means a stagnation of wages, and it takes this country in the 
wrong direction.
  It is bad economic policy. It is bad for our country. It is bad for 
our communities. It is bad for our schools. It is bad for the middle 
class.

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