[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12021-12022]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Engel) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I want my colleagues to 
hear some of the things that I'm hearing from my constituents back 
home. People want to know why we cannot compromise. People want to know 
why we cannot work together. I don't know the answers to that because I 
think we should.
  What I see happening here is something that I haven't seen in the 23 
years that I've been here. It's that people do not seem to want to move 
to the center and to compromise.
  I know some of my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, 
particularly the Tea Party-backed freshmen, have signed a pledge never 
to raise taxes. Well, I want to say what Senator Coburn said the other 
day. He said, what am I upholding my pledge to? I uphold my pledge to 
abide by the Constitution, not upholding my pledge to abide by what a 
special interest group wants.

[[Page 12022]]

  People want us to meet in the middle. People don't understand why 
there seems to be intransigence.
  You know, we have spent too much over these past decades. And you 
know what else? In order to get back to where we can balance our budget 
and pay our bills, we can't do it all with just spending cuts. It has 
to be three things. It has to be spending cuts, for sure. It also 
happens to be and should be closing tax loopholes for the very wealthy 
who get away with paying no taxes at all, for large corporations who 
pay no taxes at all, for special subsidies to businesses that move 
their jobs overseas, to special subsidies for companies like Big Oil 
that don't need the subsidies.
  We also need to make sure that those who can afford to pay a little 
bit more pay a little bit more, because that's how we get our budget 
back in balance. But if my Republican friends only say, you know, all 
we're going to do is cut, and we're not going to meet the Democrats 
halfway, then I'm afraid we're moving to fall off a cliff.
  President Obama was absolutely right yesterday when he said that one 
side seems to be saying, my way or the highway; tax cuts forever, even 
if our budget is not balanced.
  We, as Democrats, are saying let's do it a compromise way. Let us cut 
spending, let us close tax loopholes, and let those who can afford to 
pay a little more, millionaires and billionaires, pay a little more.
  We are here because the American people sent us here. I know my 
constituents are concerned about Medicare and Medicaid, Social 
Security, and the New York Graduate Medical Education. I didn't come 
here to devastate those programs, and I want my constituents to know 
that I'm going to fight like crazy to preserve Medicare, Medicaid, 
Social Security, and GME. We cannot balance our budget on the backs of 
senior citizens.
  I want to remind my colleagues that when President Clinton, the last 
Democratic president before President Obama left office, we had record 
surpluses. President Bush came in and we have red ink deficits as far 
as the eye can see.
  And I want to remind my Republican colleagues that 6 of the 8 Bush 
years Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, and had the 
presidency for 6 years. If they wanted a balanced budget amendment they 
could have had it. If they wanted to try to balance the budget they 
could have done it.
  So I don't think lectures are important now. I think there's plenty 
of blame to go around on all sides. We had the Bush tax cuts, we had 
wars, and we had reckless spending. And it was done under President 
Bush with Republican majorities in the House. So we need to put our 
heads together and move to the sensible center in terms of what the 
American people want, to get us off this precipice that we're about to 
fall into.
  I think there's one other thing the President should do. If he sees, 
in a few days, that there's no progress being made, and we are about to 
approach August 2 and we're about to have this train wreck, the 
President should invoke the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment says the 
public debt shall not be questioned and, in my estimation, gives the 
President the authority to raise the debt ceiling by himself. I think 
the President should do that if we cannot come to a compromise.

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