[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16753]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1040
                 FISCAL SOLUTIONS AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the political parties are missing an 
opportunity to deal with both the discontent and the fundamental causes 
we see in the political process today. You don't have to identify with 
the tea party to be frustrated with the tax system. It is 
incomprehensible, expensive, unfair, and unsustainable. People of all 
parties and philosophies understand that the long-term debt of the 
United States and the fiscal practices that drive it are heading for a 
train wreck.
  The answer is not to ignore real problems, change the subject, or 
make it worse. A tax discussion should, frankly, address why the system 
is incomprehensible, the lack of certainty, how it doesn't pay for what 
America needs, and how we spend through tax breaks about what we 
collect overall.
  There are real problems that we should be zeroing in on, like the 
alternative minimum tax. It was a millionaire's tax some 40 years ago 
that now threatens 30 million American families, not the billionaires. 
They won't pay it at all. It will be the near rich and the middle 
class. It was a system that was actually made worse the way the Bush 
tax cuts were structured.
  We should deal with the corporate tax. Yes, it is the second highest 
stated rate in the world, but few companies pay the full amount because 
of a Swiss cheese of exemptions and special provisions. It actually 
penalizes people who manufacture here in the United States.
  I would suggest that, if we can borrow trillions of dollars for tax 
changes, shouldn't the trillions be used to fix the broken system and 
not to push problems ahead a couple of years?
  Instead, the debate is largely about extending $3.5 trillion in 
expiring Bush tax cuts or maybe about only extending $2.8 trillion, not 
to mention the cost of borrowing that money from the Chinese, the 
Europeans, or the Japanese. Missing in the debate is how much of that 
we can afford at all, not just the borrowed money and the deficit, but 
the lost opportunity to get the tax system right.
  Yet it is not just about taxation. We must also look at the expending 
side of the equation, which is widely acknowledged. Our defense budget 
can be reduced and redirected. There are hints of this in the Obama 
administration, but we can do far more. We cannot continue to spend 
above the rate of inflation, not counting the wars in Afghanistan and 
Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars to protect West Germany from 
the Soviet Union, neither of which exists anymore.
  We lavish agricultural subsidies on the richest agribusiness, but it 
doesn't help most farmers or ranchers. We can help far more for far 
less.
  There is the bottomless pit in the name of homeland security. Dana 
Priest's brilliant writing in The Washington Post pointed out: It is 
out-of-control spending, layer upon layer of activities, that doesn't 
make us any safer. Perhaps we may be less safe with all the 
expenditure.
  There are some on the other side of the aisle who talk about 
eliminating health care reform. No. We should actually accelerate the 
reforms that are in the health care bill so that they won't just save 
money but will actually improve health care. We can invest in value 
over volume. We must not ignore why the long-term picture is such a 
problem and certainly we don't want to make it worse.
  Many tea party sympathizers and Jon Stewart fans could agree on this 
path forward. It would be nice, instead of campaign documents that get 
people past an election but that don't solve a problem, to work on 
areas of agreement with the public which start us on a path to fiscal 
solutions and economic recovery.

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