[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11667]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      LET THE BUSH TAX CUTS EXPIRE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Colleagues, we are truly through the looking glass here 
into a strange world. The Gang of Six has supposedly met the 
President's requirements that we would have $3 trillion in cuts and $1 
trillion in revenues. But actually, they are cutting taxes.
  Now how does that work? Well, that only works inside the Washington, 
DC, Beltway. When you reduce revenues, you will increase revenues 
because you pretend that you wouldn't have had those revenues 
otherwise. It's a little bit complicated, isn't it? It is incredibly 
complicated. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors here.
  There is a simple way to deal with this crisis. We need to rein in 
spending. We also need to make investments that will put people to 
work. Now, the Republicans don't think the government can invest in 
anything that puts people to work, except they haven't noticed that we 
have an infrastructure that's falling apart. We have 20 percent 
unemployment in construction and related fields. If we were to begin to 
invest and rebuild America's infrastructure, all private sector jobs 
put those people to work. They start paying taxes, then part of the 
deficit goes away, and the money will be spent on something that will 
benefit this generation and future generations. But, no, they 
categorize all Federal spending the same. They just want to slash it 
all.
  So how about a plan that targets investment, putting people back to 
work that reduces spending appropriately across the government and 
actually pays for all of this with revenues? How could you do that? 
Simple. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Let all the Bush tax cuts expire. 
That's $4 trillion. It's not too complicated. It would take us back to 
those bad old Clinton years when rich people paid taxes. The ``job 
creators'' they call them.
  You can't make the job creators pay taxes; it will ruin the economy--
that's what they said when Clinton raised the taxes back in the 
nineties. Guess what, we ended up with 3.8 percent unemployment, and we 
actually balanced the budget and paid down debt. But, yes, the wealthy 
and all Americans carried a fair share of that burden. I would love to 
go back to those bad old days.
  We've been now, for a decade, living under the theory that reducing 
taxes creates jobs, especially reducing taxes on billionaires--you 
know, the job creators--creates jobs. It's not working too well, is it? 
No, it's really not working at all. But the Obama administration and 
the Gang of Six have apparently bought into this flim-flam. Let's 
continue the Bush tax cuts. Let's continue this stupid Social Security 
tax holiday that hasn't created a single job. Sure, there are a lot of 
American families that could use an extra $20 a week. But their 
spending an extra $20 a week does not create jobs. And now Obama wants 
to give employers $20 a week on each employee, saying, Well, they'll go 
out and hire millions if they get an extra $20 a week. Corporations are 
sitting on trillions of dollars of cash, trillions of dollars of cash. 
They don't need more cash. And for $20 a week, they're not going to go 
out and hire anybody.
  So here's the plan: let the Bush tax cuts expire. That's $4 trillion. 
We've met the targets. We didn't cut Social Security. We didn't cut 
Medicare. We didn't cut veterans benefits. We didn't cut student 
financial aid. But we are $4 trillion ahead in this game. And then 
cancel the stupid Social Security tax holiday, but still borrow the 
money. We're borrowing the money to give people a Social Security tax 
holiday, borrowing the money to put back in the Social Security trust 
fund after we reduce the income.
  Stop reducing the income to Social Security, go back to the statutory 
rate of taxes, and guarantee the benefits to people. And borrow, 
instead, that $110 billion to rebuild America's infrastructure--$110 
billion, that's about 4.7 million jobs. And that is not just 
construction jobs, but engineering jobs, small business jobs, 
manufacturing jobs all across the country. It will put America back to 
work, and that would reduce the deficit by about another 25 percent.
  So if we cancel the Bush tax cuts, $4 trillion. Okay, we're now at 
the President's ``big deal'' target which we're not going to meet under 
the Gang of Six or any of these other constructs around here. Cancel 
the Social Security tax holiday. Instead, borrow that money one more 
year, as the President has proposed, and invest in infrastructure. It 
will put millions to work. And then when those millions go to work, 
they'll be paying taxes, and that will reduce the deficit by another 
quarter.
  So we've solved three-quarters of the problem without killing 
programs essential to the American people and without cutting taxes on 
the job creators.
  The Gang of Six is proposing that billionaires should see their taxes 
cut by about 25 or 30 percent. That will help us balance the budget? It 
is time to get back to the real world and out of ``Alice in 
Wonderland.''

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