[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         WE NEED A REAL BUDGET

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I know we're not supposed to 
remind us of our history. I won't be long. But if you will recall, some 
8 years prior to this present administration, day after day after day, 
our budget was simply imploding with millions, trillions of dollars 
going into the war in Iraq. So here we are. Someone wants to blame the 
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Well, let me explain to you, we 
were in double-digit unemployment. Look where we are today, going up 
and not down in terms of job creation and going down in terms of 
unemployment. The economy was sick, and it is coming back. But what do 
our colleagues want to do? Pass CRs that every economist says is the 
wrong direction to go in 2011.
  It's like you started out with $150 for the household expenses that 
you have. You had that money to pay for the expenses of that month, and 
all of a sudden, somebody came and said, You know what, I'm taking $75 
away from you, so you don't have that money to pay your expenses. And 
guess what, you are in the hole. Why are you cutting budgets in 2011? 
Why are you cutting 16,000 law enforcement jobs? Why are you cutting 
800,000 jobs? Why are you cutting 800 Border Patrol jobs? This is the 
wrong direction to go. We need a real budget. We need real leadership. 
Adults need to come to the table and work together and solve this 
budget crisis.

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