[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 610]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      STOP CUTS IN PUBLIC SPENDING

  (Mr. MORAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, this is a wealthy country. Corporate 
profits are at record highs. By the end of last year, the private 
sector was expanding at a healthy 4.5 percent annualized pace. But why, 
then, wasn't economic growth in the most recent quarter even better 
than the 2.8 percent that the Commerce Department reported last week? 
As David Leonhardt of The New York Times explains, the answer is 
because the economy is the combination of the private and public 
sectors. The public sector has been shrinking for the last 1\1/2\ years 
because of cuts in State and local governments and some Federal cuts, 
especially to the military.
  In the fourth-quarter government shrank at an annual rate of 4.5 
percent. Over the last 2 years, the private sector grew at an average 
annual rate of 3.2 percent while the government shrank at an annual 
rate of 1.4, and the combined result was that economic growth was 2.3%. 
That's a lot of numbers. But the fact is economic growth and employment 
growth would have been significantly stronger over the last 2 years 
without those government cuts.
  And that's why we shouldn't be continuing to discourage Federal 
employment by continuing to freeze their pay, as the majority wants to 
do today. And it's why we shouldn't be letting unemployment benefits 
expire for 6 million people. It's why we should let the Bush tax cuts 
expire. It's a far better alternative than cutting trillions of dollars 
more in public spending.

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