[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3812]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         BURDEN OF BUDGET CUTS

  (Mr. YARMUTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, we are engaged in a process now and over 
the next week to decide how we are going to fund the government for the 
next few months and for the next year. Republicans have already decided 
where they want to put the burden of the cuts that we all know we have 
to make in the budget. They want to put them on the least fortunate of 
our country.
  Let me read something from The Washington Post this week written by 
Harold Meyerson. Mark Whitehouse of the Wall Street Journal looked at 
how businesses were dividing up the pie 18 months into every previous 
recovery since 1947 and found that 58 percent of their increases in 
productivity trickled down to their workers in increased wages. What 
has happened today is the other way around: Only 6 percent of 
productivity gains have gone to our newly more productive workers. In 
other words, our people, our working families have already paid the 
price.
  What have the corporations and businesses done with that profit that 
they have made? Mostly, they are buying their stock back. They are not 
hiring people or investing in research. So as we decide where we are 
going to tighten the belt as we move forward on our budget, let's make 
sure that we tighten it on the fat cats as well as the people who have 
already been strangled.

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