[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12017-12018]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               DEBT CRISIS AGENDA FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. It's clear to the American public that Congress, 
especially the Senate, is very good at doing one thing--and that is 
nothing.
  Now, perhaps we can capitalize on this strength to resolve the 
impasse over the deficit reduction. Well, how could that work? How 
could Congress do nothing but solve this problem? Well, within 17 
months, by doing nothing, we could lower the deficit by $3.8 trillion. 
In fact, the President could reinforce the message. Just in case 
Congress decided to do something, he could say, No, if they do that, I 
will pocket veto it. I will do nothing. So we've got a good chance 
here: Congress does nothing or the President pocket vetoes, he does 
nothing, we can save $3.8 trillion. Problem solved.
  How do we do that? We allow all the Bush tax cuts to expire. Now, you 
heard the gentlelady, Oh, my God, the job creators will pay more. Yeah, 
the billionaire hedge fund guys on Wall Street might pay a little bit 
more in taxes; they're creating so many jobs today. And the other 
millionaires. Warren Buffet says it's kind of ironic that he pays a 
much lower tax rate than his secretary.
  Now, if we let the Bush tax cuts expire and adopted some modest 
reforms, those inequities would no longer be in place, and we could 
have over $4 trillion of deficit reduction with a little bit of shared 
sacrifice. Yes, it would ask the millionaires and billionaires to pay 
as much as they did in the Clinton era. In an era when we had 3.8 
percent unemployment, we actually paid down debt in this country. It 
was good for all Americans. And we asked those who were most capable to 
contribute the most. But we asked a little bit of everybody. That's 
what this doing nothing would do.
  Now, after we've restored some confidence here by this big step of 
doing nothing, we could do another half of nothing and put people back 
to work. How could we do half of nothing and put people back to work? 
Well, President Obama has adopted this cockamamie Republican idea of a 
Social Security tax holiday putting people to work. I know a lot of 
families that can use an extra $20 a week. That's true. But them 
spending $20 a week on junk made in China or food on the table doesn't 
put any Americans back to work. And if you're unemployed today--one of 
the 18 million unemployed--you don't get the $20 a week. We're 
borrowing $110 billion to do that under the guise that this is creating 
the jobs. And the President mentioned last night he wants to continue 
creating jobs that way. Well, guess what? It's not working.
  So we do half of nothing. We allow the Social Security tax holiday to 
expire. It doesn't create any jobs. We don't borrow the $110 billion 
from China to put in the Social Security trust fund. Instead, we borrow 
$110 billion to put people back to work in private sector jobs. We 
resolve to begin to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
  That $110 billion applied to the 150,000 bridges falling down on the 
Federal system, the $80 billion backlog on our transit vehicles, the 
pavement that's disintegrating across the country could put millions to 
work. And not just construction workers. Engineers would go to work, 
people who manufacture things--steel, buses, tires, engines. All those 
people would go to work. We could put millions to work.

[[Page 12018]]

  Guess what that does? When people go to work, they don't collect 
unemployment, they don't need food stamps to feed their family, and 
they pay taxes. That reduces the deficit, too. So by doing one big 
nothing and one half of nothing and then one little action to put 
people back to work--nothing that anybody's talking about around here. 
Where are the jobs? Who's talking about jobs? We need jobs.
  Let's stop blathering around here. Let's resolve to do nothing and 
solve the debt crisis and resolve to do half of nothing and then apply 
the money that we save by doing that nothing to putting people back to 
work.
  That's an agenda a little more productive for the American people.

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