[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15513-15514]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            REPUBLICAN GOALS

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened carefully when the Republican 
leader from Kentucky, Senator McConnell, came to the floor. This is the 
key time, before an election campaign, when parties announce their 
goals, their strategy, their message to the voters.
  So I listened carefully as the Republican Senate leader came to the 
floor for the first time in this 3-week period, to spell out what his 
goals would be in terms of where the country has been coming from and 
where it will go. It struck my as strange. Because, at this time of 
year, we are used to new shows coming on television, new seasons 
beginning, being introduced to new plot lines and new stars and new 
ideas and broadcasts, but we do not expect reruns. To get reruns being 
announced on television at this time of year would be defeating the 
purpose of attracting an audience interested in what is new.
  I listened to Senator McConnell's speech, and it was a Republican 
rerun, things they have been saying for the last year and a half, in 
fact for many years, still the message of the Republican Party. What 
they say and what Senator McConnell said today is: Elect us to lead the 
Senate and we will give you more of the same. We will return you to the 
Bush economic policies.
  I listened carefully as he criticized President Obama. I have heard 
him before. Senator McConnell has come to the floor and criticized 
President Obama for intervening to try to save the automobile companies 
across the United States. Many of us supported the President. I think 
the President was right. He did not run for office to become a major 
leader in saving American automobile companies.
  This was a challenge thrust on him. Yet he accepted it and realized 
if we started closing down automobile plants across Illinois and across 
America, thousands of people would be out of work. He did not want to 
see that happen. So the government did intervene.
  I have heard the Senator from Kentucky come to the floor before, as 
he did this afternoon, and criticize the President for his intervention 
in the automobile companies. Well, during the course of our August 
break, many of us were busy doing a lot of things. It is possible that 
Senator McConnell missed the good news, the good news in the New York 
Times on Friday August 13 and Saturday August 14.
  On Friday, August 13, headline: ``Profit Strong, G.M. Names a New 
Chief.'' Then, on August 14: ``Detroit Goes From Gloom to Economic 
Bright Spot. Optimism is Rising With Sales, Profits and Hiring--Economy 
Still a Threat.''
  Here is what the article said:

       After a dismal period of huge losses and deep cuts that 
     culminated in the Obama administration's bailout of General 
     Motors and Chrysler, the gloom over the American auto 
     industry is starting to lift. Jobs are growing. Factory 
     workers are anticipating their first healthy profit-sharing 
     check in years. Sales are rebounding, with the Commerce 
     Department reporting Friday that automobiles were a bright 
     spot in July's mostly disappointing retail sales.

  The Senator from Kentucky must have missed it. The very action he 
criticized, of the Obama administration intervening with the automobile 
companies, has been a success. Mr. Whitacre is stepping aside. GM is 
picking its own chief. They are off on their own now, in a profitable 
way, to keep jobs in the United States and not ship them overseas. All 
the criticism of what President Obama did notwithstanding, this worked. 
This was a success. This saved jobs.
  But, again, the litany of grievances from the Republican side 
included that the President did something to help GM and Chrysler. 
Thank goodness he did for the thousands of workers in my home State of 
Illinois and across the United States of America.
  I heard the Senator from Kentucky criticize the President's attempt 
to reduce the cost of health insurance for Americans; the President's 
attempt to give senior citizens on Medicare a helping hand to pay for 
their prescription drugs. I wish the Senator from Kentucky could have 
been with me in Champaign, IL, when I met with a group of senior 
citizens who thanked us for the $250 of relief this year, which will 
grow every year, until we fill the doughnut hole in prescription Part 
D.
  I wish the Senator from Kentucky could have been with me as I 
traveled around Illinois and had mothers come up to me and talk about 
22-year-old sons with preexisting conditions who did not qualify for 
health insurance and thank me because the health care reform bill now 
says that son or daughter can stay under the family health insurance 
plan until they reach the age of 26.
  If Senator McConnell and others believe we should repeal this, that 
we should take away this protection for families on health insurance--
$250 to help those under Medicare prescription Part D--or the strength 
that people will now have to fight off insurance companies that deny 
them coverage when they need it the most, if that is his position, so 
be it.
  But it is not a new idea. It is a speech he has delivered on the 
floor over and over and over. So the Republican message for November 
is: Go back to the old days when you did not have a fighting chance 
against health insurance companies, when nobody would stand up to them. 
Go back to the old days when we would not put any money into the 
recession that is threatening our country.
  The President did with the stimulus package, which is being ridiculed 
with some dance lessons or whatever he said. I wish Senator McConnell 
would have come to see this President's stimulus package at work in 
Illinois. It takes a lot longer to drive because we are building 
highways right and left and airports.
  Downtown Normal, IL, has an intermodal center that is the centerpiece 
of revitalizing downtown; major contribution from the President's 
stimulus package, putting hundreds of people to work smack-dab in 
central Illinois, where those jobs count.
  I heard the minority leader, the Senator from Kentucky, criticize the 
Wall Street reform bill. He criticized the Wall Street reform bill, 
after Bernie Madoff and the bailouts of the Bush Administration, after 
billions of dollars sent to Wall Street because of their failures, and 
they thanked us, sent us a little thank-you card and said: Oh, 
incidentally, we are giving one another bonuses with your bailout 
money.
  Well, for some that was fine but not for President Obama, not for 
this Congress. We have real Wall Street reform, which will guarantee no 
more bailouts. That was Senator Boxer's amendment. No. 2, make certain 
Wall Street is regulated so it does not sink us in another recession, 
the way we are languishing now in one that is going to take a long time 
from which to recover.
  The Senator from Kentucky believes that was a bad idea. He voted 
against it. I think it was a good idea to pass Wall Street reform. The 
final centerpiece of the Republican message for November is to return 
to the Bush tax cuts. President Obama has said, we should extend the 
tax cuts for married couples making under $250,000 and for individuals 
making under $200,000 but, he said: Let's not give them to the 
wealthiest Americans, the top 2 percent.
  So if you happen to be among the fortunate few in America who make $1 
million a year, what is the difference? Well, the difference is this: 
Under our plan of capping this tax cut at $250,000, the millionaire is 
only going to get $6,300 in a tax cut. I do not know if they will even 
notice it, $6,300.
  But under Senator McConnell's plan, the centerpiece of the Republican

[[Page 15514]]

campaign strategy for November, he wants the millionaire to receive a 
$100,000 tax cut, a tax cut most have not asked for and many do not 
need. They do it in the name of helping small business.
  Do you know how many small business owners are in that category? 
Three percent. It includes some doctors, some lawyers, and the like. So 
what we are saying is, let us do something to put money in the economy, 
tax cuts for those with $250,000 or less in income, let us help the 
middle class people in America who have been struggling with an economy 
that has not been very generous to them over the past decade or two.
  Third, let's not ignore the deficit. Senator McConnell's proposal for 
tax cuts for people making the highest levels of income in America will 
add $700 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years, $700 billion. 
So for the so-called deficit hawks on the other side, those hawks are 
circling, but they are blind to the fact that tax cuts to the 
wealthiest people in America plunges us more deeply into debt and makes 
it more difficult for future generations that will face this 
responsibility.
  So I listened carefully as the Senator from Kentucky spelled out the 
Republican plan. We have heard this song before. We have seen this 
play. We watched all these reruns before. We do not need to see them 
again. We need to move forward as a nation. The first thing we have to 
do tomorrow is break the Republican filibuster on the small business 
bill, this bill supported by the Chamber of Commerce, by the National 
Federation of Independent Business, and small businesses across 
America. Tomorrow, with the help of at least one Republican Senator, we 
are finally going to break this Republican filibuster and we are going 
to finally send the credit that is needed to Main Street in America so 
small businesses have a fighting chance to put new people on their 
payroll and help bring us out of this recession. That is looking 
forward, not backward.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona.

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