[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15305-15306]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1040
                         POISONOUS PARTISANSHIP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Cleaver) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons I rarely come to the 
floor to make such comments is that it is so troublesome to me that we 
will have fact-free debates. One of the problems is that we are talking 
in a parallel universe. There are small businesses that will pay more 
taxes, but I think it is important to say to you that the top hedge 
fund managers last year earned $22 billion and then paid a 15 percent 
tax rate as small businesses. So I am troubled when we are not being 
accurate and factual with the American public.
  Mr. Speaker, my concern today--and I believe it is the concern of 
many Americans--is the situation in which we find ourselves. The 
American people have elected a government wherein only cooperation can 
bring progress. We have a House of Representatives that is 
predominantly Republican, and we have a Democratically controlled 
Senate. It would not take a 3-year-old a great deal of time to figure 
out that the only way we can do the work of the American people is if 
we stop this ridiculous partisanship--this poisonous partisanship--that 
is damaging the country and creating a level of anger. There are State 
legislators in at least 13 States who have introduced legislation for 
secession from the Union based on the fact that they didn't 
particularly like the President who was elected. One of the reasons, I 
think, is that we are exporting hate. If it's not hate, it's certainly 
anger, and ``anger'' is just one letter short of ``danger.''
  The American people gave us a mandate to do the simple things, and 
that is to lead. We understand that the challenge before Congress in 
the coming weeks is no simple task. I would be wrong if I said that 
what we need to do is simple. We have some major challenges:
  The Postal Service is losing $25 million a week, and we are running 
around here acting as if the most important thing in the world is 
remaining faithful to our ideology. Ideology, tragically, has trumped 
logic in this place, and that cannot continue. Right now, we are facing 
hundreds of billions of dollars in expiring tax cuts. It might be 
important, Mr. Speaker, for all of us to keep in mind that, if we fail 
to deal with the sequestration issue, 90 percent of the people in this 
country will have their taxes raised.
  But there is another problem.
  We have three major credit rating agencies in this country--actually, 
for the world, essentially--Standard & Poor's, Moody's and then Fitch. 
We have been warned as a Congress and as a Nation that if we walk up to 
this precipice again as we did two Augusts ago that we will suffer 
another downgrading of our credit rating. The United States of 
America--the most technologically powerful and economically powerful 
Nation on the planet--will have a credit downgrading.
  This should cause every American to be angry enough to put aside 
petty partisanship and understand that this body will not function and 
that our government will not function unless we work together. We've 
got to come to

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the conclusion that compromise does not equal capitulation.

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