[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9298-9299]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  REPUBLICAN AGENDA LACKS COMMON SENSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I appreciate the fact that the gentleman who preceded me 
in the well talked about unemployment and creating jobs. I may not have 
agreed with his particular nostrums, but at least that's one Republican 
who's talking about creating jobs.
  Unfortunately, the Republican majority, in the last 6 months of 
leadership in the House, has brought forward no bills to put Americans 
back to work except they say do more of the same. What? Yes, more of 
the same.
  The last decade, George Bush dramatically cut taxes--twice--decreased 
regulations under the theory that that would create jobs. 
Unfortunately, the facts are in. We had the worst job creation post 
World War II in the last decade under George Bush and doubled the 
deficit and debt while doing it. It didn't create jobs. Trickle down 
economics doesn't work. It didn't work in the Reagan era. It didn't 
work then. Compare that to the Clinton era. We raised taxes, yes, 
particularly on rich people and big corporations. We actually balanced 
the budget, we paid down debt, we had 3.8 percent unemployment, and 
real incomes went up for the middle class. I'd love to go back to those 
``bad old days,'' but no, it's the Bush policies that will work, we've 
just got to do more of them. Reduce spending even more.
  Government can't do anything to create jobs, they say. Well, what 
about investing in the Nation's infrastructure? Who built the national 
highway system? Who built the bridges? Who built the transit systems in 
this country? Who helped build the rail systems? Who has maintained our 
ports and waterways? The Federal Government--sometimes in partnership 
with States or local government or the private sector. But those 
investments pay off.
  And what do the Republicans want to do? In the face of 150,000 
bridges on the national highway system that are about to--or in the 
not-too-distant future--have the same fate as the bridge in 
Minneapolis, Minnesota that is collapsed, they need either total 
replacement or repair 150,000 bridges; 40 percent of the pavement on 
the national highway system; $60 billion backlog on our transit 
systems.
  They want to cut Federal investment in transit. And they say if we 
give that money to rich people and to the corporations--who are sitting 
on $2 trillion worth of cash--they'll take care of the problem. Oh, 
really? What are you going to do, toll 150,000 bridges across the 
country in order to induce the private sector to come in and rebuild 
them? Are you going to toll the existing interstate in order to bring 
it up to a decent system of good repair?
  And transit systems, they all lose money. Now some on the Republican 
side say, well, we should just do away with transit systems, we don't 
need those things. Come on, let's have a little bit of common sense 
here. You want to talk about saving fuel? Invest in transit. You want 
to talk about creating jobs? Invest in infrastructure. We have the 
strongest Buy American requirements in transportation and 
infrastructure as any program of the Federal Government. We create more 
jobs per billion dollars than anything else. Way more than the Defense 
Department--where they want to shower all their funds--can be created 
in transportation. You can put Americans to work; not only construction 
workers who have horrible unemployment, not only steel workers for the 
bridges, not only people who maintain these systems, but engineers, 
software engineers, people who make tires, people who make rail cars, 
people who make streetcars.

                              {time}  1100

  We are making street cars in America for the first time in 70 years 
in Oregon due to one of those horrible earmarks they want to ban. We 
were buying them overseas. Now we are making them in America. Is that 
bad? They seem to think it is, and they want to decrease investment in 
these sorts of things that are proven job generators.
  Now, I have to give the Obama administration a big fat D-minus on 
this same issue. The so-called stimulus, which they rightly criticize, 
which I voted against, $800 million, 40 percent of it was Bush tax 
cuts, which didn't work for Bush and didn't work for Obama. Now all the 
Obama administration is talking about is more tax cuts. Extending the 
payroll tax holiday on Social Security, that will put America back to 
work.
  Give me a break. These things haven't worked. We need real 
investment. If you borrow money to build a bridge that lasts 100 years, 
at least you can look your kids and grandkids straight in the eye when 
they say, what did you do with all that money, because I am still 
paying the bills 30

[[Page 9299]]

years from now. And you can say, we built that bridge you drove over to 
go to work. We rebuilt that transit system that you took to work today. 
We made America more competitive in the international economy with 
those investments.
  You have got to start distinguishing between investments and wasteful 
spending. If you want to talk about cut-and-spend, then let's talk 
about it. Subsidies to people to not grow things, $5 billion a year; 
another $15 billion a year in agriculture subsidies to grow surplus 
crops? Don't want to touch that one. Tax loopholes, giveaways to the 
oil companies, let's cut that. No, we can't cut the tax subsidies to 
the oil companies.
  You know, common guys, let's get real here. Let's invest in America, 
in the American people, and put people back to work. We need a real 
program, and you people have offered us nothing.

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