[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12019-12020]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1040
                   LET'S ADDRESS CAUSES, NOT SYMPTOMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, too often, Congress and Washington deal with 
symptoms, not underlying causes. And that's what's going on with this 
current debate about the debt limit. It's kind of like you have an ill 
patient that has a fever, and you say, well, they're sick so throw some 
water on the patient and their fever will go down. But you never deal 
with the underlying infection, the underlying cause that is tripping 
the fever in the first place.
  Let me put a little map on the table here this morning, to look at 
the nature of current economic challenge. When you have 14 million 
Americans out of work, and up to 24 million who are working part-time 
that want to work full-time or others who have completely dropped out 
of the workforce, none of them are earning a full check. Money is not 
being taken out of that check to pay their social insurance for Social 
Security, and they're not going to pay their regular income taxes 
either. And so the government falls short on revenues. It's quite 
clear.
  We have a jobs problem. That's the causal problem that underlies the 
deficit problem that America faces.
  Now, if you look just at this year alone, 2011, so far this year the 
government's taken in over a trillion dollars--$1.2 trillion in 
revenue. That's not bad for an economy that's just limping along. But 
we've spent $1.8 trillion. So we've spent already this year over $600 
billion that we didn't have. We've had to borrow that money. That 
borrowing gets added to the long-term deficit. But why do we have that 
deficit this year?
  We have that deficit because the revenues aren't coming in at the 
same rate as in prior years because there is a jobs problem. When you 
have 14 million to 24 million people who want a better job and can't 
get one, that's the underlying cause which Washington fails to see or 
address.
  Now, the cost of that unemployment with the attendant shortage of 
revenues, is added to this huge accumulated debt, which now is over $14 
trillion. So where did that come from? Let me outline the reasons. The 
largest share, not only of this year's deficit but of prior debt that 
we've accumulated, is due to a lagging economy. Families know this. 
They can't pay as much in taxes or any taxes when they're out of work. 
Companies, banks, and real estate firms that go bankrupt can't pay 
taxes either. Revenues fall short.
  If you take a look at the cost of our sluggish economy triggered and 
caused by Wall Street abuse, that's what threw us into this mess in the 
first place, right, back in 2008. The increased costs of resulting 
unemployment are staggering indeed: Add them up. First, we have to pay 
the unemployment checks, and some people even got 99 weeks of 
unemployment because jobs are scarce. Add to it the costs of food for 
those unemployed people. They are enormous.
  When an economy isn't fully functioning, the Federal costs of medical 
care skyrocket because people fall off their own insurance. So many in 
this country simply can't get good care, and that's all tied in to a 
very sluggish economy. Yes, the costs of unemployment are huge.
  Then let's add the cost of the housing meltdown. All of the bad 
mortgages, four out of five bad mortgages were dumped on the Federal 
Government. Did Wall Street take care of its dirty laundry? No. They 
gave it to you, the American people. At the FHA, the Federal Housing 
Administration, at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, the Veterans 
Administration, guess who's holding all of the mortgages that are under 
water? Eighty percent of them. Us, the people of the United States, 
because Wall Street's insurance company or vacant units become the 
property of Uncle Sam; not Wall Street. Did Wall Street write off any 
losses? Oh, no, no, no. They gave them to us. That is a huge and 
growing part of the Federal deficit related to the housing crisis and 
what it is going to cost to revitalize or demolish that housing 
inventory.
  Then, add to all this a trillion dollars more that's been spent on 
two wars that have not been paid for. That is a major part of the 
growing deficit. We can't ignore that. Do we say we should have a war 
tax? Do we say we should end the wars? Do we say our allies should pay 
more? The point is we haven't said anything other than just add that 
trillion dollars on the deficit.
  Now let's take a look at the Bush trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the 
very wealthy, who said that if we gave them

[[Page 12020]]

the money, they would create jobs in our country. Guess what? They took 
the money and they created jobs offshore. Corporate profits are at all-
time highs, but are jobs increasing in this country? No. Those 
corporate profits are due to the booking here in our country of profits 
earned offshore.
  So some say give them more tax breaks. Why, unless they invest in our 
country in job creation here at home. We would be foolish to waste 
precious dollars on more outsourcing.
  And finally, former President Bush had this idea for pharmaceuticals. 
He said don't let the Federal Government bargain the cost of 
pharmaceuticals in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Yet when we 
can't do that, when we fail to negotiate the best, competitive prices, 
that omission adds hundreds of billions of dollars to our debt.
  Mr. Speaker, to solve the deficit problem, Congress and the executive 
branch must focus on employing the citizens who are out of work. That 
is the real cause of our economic sluggishness. America ought to 
address causes, not symptoms.

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