[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9072-9074]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            JOBS IN AMERICA

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, rarely has Washington been so completely 
out of touch with the priorities and anxieties of ordinary working 
Americans. Here on Capitol Hill, policymakers are obsessed--obsessed--
with the budget deficit. But the rest of America is most concerned with 
a far more urgent deficit--the jobs deficit.
  Our Nation remains deeply mired in the most protracted period of 
joblessness since the Great Depression. Officially, some 14 million 
Americans are out of work. But real unemployment--the real 
unemployment, including those who are working part time but want to be 
working full time; those who are marginally attached; those who have 
never worked in the first place because they never got a job--if we add 
that all up, we have closer to 25 million Americans unemployed, and 
millions of Americans who are employed are increasingly anxious about 
holding on to their jobs or, at their present income, making ends meet.
  But many of our political leaders in Washington are treating the jobs 
crisis as yesterday's news. They are putting this deficit reduction 
above all else. They are demanding extraordinary funding cuts--
trillions of dollars in cuts, and the sooner the better, with little 
concern as to its adverse impact on jobs. But this is exactly the wrong 
approach. It is the economic equivalent of applying leaches and 
draining blood from a sick patient, which we used to do, by the way. 
That is what they did to George Washington as he lay dying. They 
applied leaches to him. What does that do? It just makes us weaker, and 
in the case of President Washington proved fatal.
  In the same way, trillions in budget cuts would massively drain 
demand from a still weak economy. It could destroy millions of jobs. 
This is not just the wrong medicine for our economy; it will slow or 
stop economic growth, and it will make deficits worse in the future.
  As Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke warned last week:

       A sharp fiscal consolidation focused on the very near term 
     could be self-defeating if it were to undercut the still 
     fragile economy.

  I strongly disagree with the slash-and-burn approach to deficit 
reduction favored by some of our colleagues. We need to recognize one 
of the very big reasons for the budget deficit is the jobs deficit. The 
best way to bring the budget under control is to help these 25 million 
Americans who are unemployed get good-paying middle-class jobs. It is 
hard-working Americans who would be delighted to be taxpayers once 
again.
  Now, obviously, we are counting on the private sector to help drive 
job creation and make the economic recovery self-sustaining. It should 
be the case if we put more money into infrastructure. If we were to do 
our job in rebuilding our roads and our bridges, our highways, our 
sewer and water systems, our rail systems--the government doesn't do 
that; it goes to private contractors, private companies. Some of this 
is already happening but certainly not at the pace we need.
  Since March of 2010, the private sector has created about 2 million 
jobs. However, businesses remain reluctant to invest and hire for the 
simple reason

[[Page 9073]]

there is not sufficient demand for their goods and services. All of 
those people who are unemployed and underemployed are spending the bare 
minimum just trying to get from week to week. Meanwhile, the middle 
class is tapped out with stagnant incomes--stagnant incomes. For over 
30 years, the middle class has had stagnant real incomes. They have 
insecure jobs, high levels of mortgage, insufficient pension funds, and 
other consumer debt.
  That is why the Federal Government has had to play an aggressive role 
in helping us to recover from this great recession. Over the last 2 
years, we have repeatedly cut taxes. We have extended financial aid to 
the States. That helped prevent massive layoffs of teachers and first 
responders and other essential employees.
  We have made major investments in research, education, and 
infrastructure. All of these have either preserved jobs or created new 
jobs. Listen to this. We have gone from when President Obama took 
office--we were losing 700,000 jobs a month--700,000 jobs a month. That 
is just a couple of years ago. Now we are adding new jobs for the first 
time--and we have had 16 new consecutive months of adding jobs. Not 
enough. Not enough. But we are at least moving in the right direction.
  The Economic Policy Institute estimates that as of the fourth quarter 
of 2010, the Recovery Act had created or saved up to 4 million jobs and 
as many as 5 million full-time equivalent jobs. The nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office estimates that through the end of 2010, the 
Recovery Act had raised the real inflation-adjusted gross domestic 
product by as much as 3.5 percent.
  So to those who said the Recovery Act did not do anything, that is 
nonsense. That is absolute nonsense. It did a lot. But here is the 
problem: The shot in the arm provided by the Recovery Act is now 
winding down. In the absence of further Federal assistance, many States 
are making deep budget cuts and layoffs of public employees.
  Listen to this. In Texas, Governor Perry has proposed to cut 
education funding by a staggering $10 billion. New York City Mayor 
Bloomberg has proposed laying off 6,000 teachers. Total State and local 
government layoffs since August of 2008 have been nearly 500,000. If 
the Federal Government follows suit with massive short-term spending 
cuts, the prospect of a double-dip recession will be all too real.
  Last week the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published an article 
about what it called the ``Mistake of 1937,'' referring to premature 
fiscal and monetary pullbacks that cut short the fragile recovery and 
ended up prolonging the Great Depression.
  Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that in important ways, we have 
already repeated the mistake of 1937. We have taken our eyes off what 
should be our No. 1 priority, creating jobs. We have pivoted since 6 
months ago, since the last election, to an obsession with deep short-
term budget cuts, which by their very nature will destroy jobs and 
weaken the economy.
  Everyone agrees we must take aggressive action to reduce the deficit. 
But we have to do it right. We need to reduce long-term deficits but in 
a way that absolutely minimizes immediate job losses. We need to reduce 
the deficit in a balanced way.
  Unfortunately, the extreme budget offered by Congressman Paul Ryan, 
supported by almost every Republican in the House, and I would say also 
in the Senate, would make our fiscal and jobs problems far worse. That 
Republican budget lavishes yet more tax cuts on corporations and the 
wealthy, as it slashes investments that undergird the middle class in 
this country, everything from education funding to Medicare and 
Medicaid.
  Let me state what I think is obvious. If working people and the 
middle class are going to take a hit in tough times, it should not be 
to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy. If the middle class is going to 
take a hit, let's use those taxes to put money into rebuilding the 
infrastructure of this country, put it into better education, better 
schools, better teachers.
  I have often said the key to renewing America and restoring our 
economy is to revitalize the middle class. That means investing in 
education, innovation, infrastructure, boosting American 
competitiveness in a highly competitive global marketplace. It means 
restoring a level playing field with fair taxation--fair taxation.
  It also means an empowered workforce, a strong ladder of opportunity 
to give every American access to the middle class. I believe that 
corporations and the wealthy can return to the levels of taxation they 
had in the 1990s when the economy boomed and incomes also skyrocketed.
  It is absurd to take the position that any dollar in tax increases 
that results from having the wealthy pay their fair share or ending tax 
loopholes is bad and unacceptable. I think it is absurd to take that 
position, while at the same time you take the position that it is okay 
to slash funding for education, for infrastructure, for research.
  In both the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan, and in the 1990s under 
Clinton, we achieved a sensible balance of revenue increases plus 
domestic and Pentagon spending cuts in order to dramatically reduce 
deficits while we protected the middle class and we maintained safety 
net programs.
  I agree with the economists who believe that given the fragile 
economic recovery, we should not reduce fiscal support for job creation 
at this time. Deficit reduction efforts can start, but we should 
sequence the lion's share of spending cuts so that they take place in 
the midterm and the long term when the economy is recovered. But now we 
have to keep our priorities straight.
  Deficit reduction, yes, is important, but it is not our most 
important economic challenge right now. Our most urgent economic 
challenge is the fragile economy and the jobs crisis and the fact that 
the middle class in America is under siege. The middle class, in fact, 
is being dismantled as fast as big corporations can ship our 
manufacturing jobs overseas. People are losing their savings, their 
health care, their pensions, in many cases even their homes.
  With good reason, people feel that they are losing the American dream 
for themselves and their kids. That is why we cannot look at the 
deficit reduction challenge in isolation. We cannot just take a 
Draconian slash-and-burn approach to the budget. Smart countries in 
tough economic times do not turn a chainsaw on themselves.
  The extreme Republican budget is far more focused on shrinking the 
size and role of government than it is on cutting the deficit. Instead 
of that budget, the Republican budget, which is being sold through fear 
and fatalism, we need a budget that reflects the hopes and the 
aspirations of the American people. We need a budget that allows us to 
continue investments, that boosts competitiveness, creates jobs, and 
strengthens the middle class. There can be no real economic recovery, 
there can be no return to fiscal balance, without the recovery of the 
middle class in America. That is why our immediate No. 1 priority must 
be helping to create jobs, putting people back to work. That is how we 
will start to restore more demand for goods and services, the key to 
healthy economic growth. Economic growth, in turn, will help generate 
the revenues that will help bring deficits back into balance, into 
rough balance. So this is our most important job in front of us.
  Yet all we hear is the constant drumbeat: Cut the size of government; 
cut spending; slash and burn and cut everything that supports the 
middle class in America; ship our jobs overseas; more tax breaks for 
the wealthy and big corporations.
  We need to be focused on rebuilding the infrastructure of America, 
because that is most necessary now. That is one of the fastest ways we 
can put people back to work and start stimulating the economy. We need 
to put more money into education: rebuilding our schools across 
America, hiring better teachers. We need a longer school day, and we 
need a longer school year. I know some of the young people probably do 
not want to hear that.
  Most young people in Europe, Asia, Japan, do not go to school 9 
months out of the year, they go to school 11

[[Page 9074]]

months out of the year. They do not go to school for 5\1/2\ or 6 hours 
a day, they go for 8 hours a day. We wonder why they are getting ahead 
of us. But that costs money. If you are going to have a longer school 
year, that costs money. If you are going to have longer schooldays, if 
you are going to have better technology in our schools, schools that 
have the latest in technology so our young people can learn on the 
latest innovations, so they can be competitive in that global 
marketplace, that does cost money.
  Yet to hear it around here, we cannot do anything. No, of course, now 
there is one place we can spend money. We can continue our operations 
in Iraq for God knows how many more centuries. We have already spent 
over $1 trillion in Iraq. We have already spent close to $100 billion 
in Afghanistan. But we can continue to do that with no end in sight. We 
can continue to buy more weapons that do not do anything to protect us 
in the new global fight against terrorism. They might have been good 
back in the Vietnam war, maybe in the Cold War. But that is over with. 
But, no, we have got to keep pouring money into weapons systems that do 
nothing to protect the country.
  Two decades ago, President Clinton's team defined our Nation's 
central challenge with a slogan--I remember it well--they said: ``It's 
the economy, stupid.''
  Well, today America's central challenge can be defined with more 
precision. ``It's the middle class, stupid.'' It is what we do to 
encourage, promote, protect, invigorate the middle class in America, to 
make sure the middle class has good jobs, good pensions, good health 
care systems, the ability to make sure their kids are well educated, 
and that they do not go to college and get out with a mountain of debt 
on their heads so that they too can have a good start in life. This is 
all part of the middle-class structure of America, as to what made 
America the greatest country in the history of the world.
  I will close. It seems that the Republican budget they have 
proffered, and so much that I hear of those who keep saying, we have 
got to cut, cut, cut, we have got to cut spending, we have got to cut 
education, we have got to cut infrastructure, we have got to cut all of 
that stuff, it almost seems as though it is premised on the belief that 
we are poor--our country is poor and our country is broke and we cannot 
afford to do all of those things. That is really what it is. They say 
we are broke. We cannot afford to do all of that stuff, so we have got 
to cut our spending. Yet we are the richest Nation in the history of 
mankind. We are the richest country in the world. We have the highest 
per capita income of any major country. I guess you have to ask the 
question: If we are so rich, why are we so broke? If we are the richest 
country in the history of the world--we are the richest country in the 
world today, we have the highest per capita income of any major 
economy--why are we so broke?
  Well, my response is, we are not broke and we are not poor. We are 
wealthy beyond all imagination as a nation. We are not broke. But the 
system is broken. That is what is broken. The system is broken, the 
system of who we tax and how we tax, how we raise revenues, the system 
of allowing corporations to tax benefits and ship jobs overseas, the 
system that allows companies to almost willy-nilly break up what has 
been one of the strengths of the middle class, that is, our labor 
unions. They are breaking up labor unions because they know the middle 
class working together in organized labor has been able to bargain more 
effectively for better jobs and better wages, better conditions of 
employment. You break them up and you can reduce their incomes, and 
more of it can go to profits and to higher CEO salaries. That is the 
system that is broken.
  You can cut all the spending you want. You can cut the Federal 
Government to the bare bones. It will lead to another great recession, 
maybe even a depression. If you want to do that, that is a dead-end 
road.
  We need more stimulus now. Does that mean we have to borrow more 
money and go further into debt? Not necessarily. Why don't we fix this 
unfair tax system we have and generate more revenues to come into the 
Federal Government? Why don't we say to those who made so much money in 
the last decade or so, maybe you ought to pay a little bit more, and 
for big corporations, pay a little bit more, and for the Federal 
Government to put that money to use rebuilding the infrastructure and 
educating our youth and having a health care system that is affordable 
and comprehensive. That is what we ought to be doing. That will support 
the middle class. In supporting the middle class, you will then support 
economic recovery.
  I will close. There will be no economic recovery in America of any 
substance or lasting any length of time without a recovery of the 
middle class, which is the backbone of our country. It is time our 
political leaders showed some backbone in supporting the middle class.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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