[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5272]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             NO JOBS AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, the Republicans ran on a jobs agenda; 
but so far this Congress, they have not done one thing to help 
Americans find jobs. For 14 weeks, they have been running the House 
with not one mention of jobs.
  The Republicans have put their budget proposal out now, and now we 
have their real agenda: a radically ideological plan to protect 
giveaways to corporations and to attack the elderly, the poor, women 
and children of the country. Reaganomics drove this country to the 
brink of bankruptcy in the 1980s. Reaganomics drove the world economy 
to the brink again in the Bush years, and now the Republicans are 
trying for a third time to impose their intolerance and everyone-for-
themselves economics on the American people.
  We need to be fiscally responsible. I think there are things moderate 
Republicans and Democrats can agree on, but the Republican plan is to 
dismantle the social safety net of this country.

                              {time}  1030

  This is a debate we should have.
  Republicans often chuckle that winning at politics is worth the cost 
to their conscience of being straight with the public. I think we need 
to let citizens come to their own conclusions by giving them some 
facts. And here are some indisputable facts about the Republican budget 
plan:
  First, the Republican budget has mostly fictitious numbers. The media 
has picked up on the Republican number of ``$6 trillion in savings'' 
like catnip, but the Republicans made up most of the numbers of the 
plan to get there. To create this big number, the Republicans ignored 
the Congressional Budget Office. That's quite a strategy. If the 
nonpartisan budget scorekeepers don't say what the Republicans want, 
the Republicans just ignore it and make up their own numbers.
  Secondly, the Republicans' answer to the people in need is to 
dismantle Medicaid and leave health care for the poor to the States. 
The Republicans will drop millions of low-income people, children, 
seniors, disabled, and pregnant women off their rolls. Not only that, 
those patients that are left on the rolls will get a different kind of 
care from State to State, and some of that care is very bare bones. You 
shouldn't have to care about where you live if you are poor, elderly or 
a child in this country. There are some States that you don't want to 
live in.
  Third, the Republican plan does nothing, not one thing, about the 
hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks American people give 
corporations every single year. The Republican plan even cuts more for 
the superrich in this country.
  Republicans say they don't like to pick winners and losers. But they 
pick winners and losers all the time when they give money to oil 
companies and Wall Street and then push the disabled people living in 
poverty off the Medicaid health insurance.
  And the Republican Party does nothing, not one thing, about the 
defense budget. Iraq is winding down, Afghanistan is winding down, and 
Libya will be over shortly, but they don't take one thin dime out of 
the defense budget. They can't find anything to save anyplace.
  Now, the American people need to know the facts. The fact is that if 
we restored the fair Clinton-era tax rates, what we had in effect 
before 2000, and kept all other spending at the same point, our deficit 
drops by two-thirds. That's where we are today. In 10 years, it drops 
by two-thirds. That's a simple plan that is very doable without 
destroying the safety net in this country, without going after all the 
poor and the dispossessed in this country.
  We still have to work to lower the deficit even more. We need the 
right priorities. And the right priorities should be figuring out more 
ways to save on health care spending. We spend too much for too little 
results. If we don't deal with health care costs, this deficit is going 
to be very tough to deal with.
  But the Republican plan is to demonize poor people and union workers. 
Take a good look at Wisconsin. You'd think all the problem in Wisconsin 
was because of school teachers. Now, that blaming everyone else for the 
economic disaster is simply to avoid the admission of what they have 
done. The Republicans take zero responsibility for their disastrous 
policies and then say the situation they created is the reason why we 
need to implement every form of their radically failed philosophy. It's 
cynical. It's ugly politics. And it's the Republican strategy.
  Consider what they're doing to seniors. They're saying to seniors: 
Now you have a set of guaranteed benefits. We're going to take it away 
and give you a voucher. Go look for some health insurance. And good 
luck.

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