30-Something Working Group

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I want to underscore how important it is that you have seen a remarkable degree of coordination and bipartisan cooperation in the House on the second stimulus package. Because you and I both know as acutely as anybody in this Chamber, because we were out there campaigning for change here in Washington, that folks were sort of sick and tired of everything being a fight here, everything being lined up as Republicans against Democrats, conservatives against liberals, X against Y, A against B. That was kind of the order of the day here during the last 12 years before the election of 2006. Everything was going to be a partisan fight, and there really wasn't going to be any real effort to reach across the aisle. That's changed. You and I weren't here, but we know what the perception was from the outside. And the perception, and I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz will testify, that was backed up by reality.

Now, cooperation that you see on the economic stimulus package doesn't mean that you still don't fight for what you believe in when you have an honest-to-goodness disagreement, and we are going to talk a little bit tonight about some fights that are about to come, some lines in the sand that we, as Democrats, are prepared to draw with the President and his Republican followers here in the House. But there are so many other things that you don't need to fight about, there is honest-to-goodness agreement on, whether it be jump-starting this economy with an economic stimulus package, whether it be passing reasonable restraints on the mortgage market, opening up access to liquidity for people who want to refinance their homes, have a means to do it but can't find anybody to give them the money and the access to capital. Those are issues that don't have right and left divides. The economic downturn doesn't discriminate against you whether you're a Republican or a Democrat.

So we are passing bills here to deal with this economic slowdown with Republicans and Democrats behind it, and that's what people want us to do.

Now, that doesn't mean they want this Chamber to be Kumbaya on every single issue. They sent us here to fight for what we believe and what the American people believe in. But you don't have to default to one position all the time or the other position all the time. You don't have to be cooperating on everything or fighting on everything. You can pick and choose. That's what a parent does every day. I mean, you choose the battles that you are going to fight with your kids. As a kid, you choose the battles you are going to fight with your parents. There are things that you get along with them on and things you disagree on.

This place, for a very long time, resorted to the fault of fight about everything, never bother to reaching across the aisle, never try to pass a package with the Republicans and Democrats. I mean, why would you have to? If you have a majority of Republicans here, you can just pass it with Republicans. So why reach out to Democrats? The majority rules in the House.

That's not what the American people want. They want to see that bipartisan partnership. They want to see bills not passing 51 percent to 49 percent. They want to see some bills passing by a real majority. That's what you saw with the 100 hours agenda, and that's what Ms. Wasserman Schultz pointed out. That's what you saw with the economic stimulus. You might not see it every time, but you are going to see it a lot more times in this Congress.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I think it serves us to point out that this belies conventional wisdom that Democrats are the ones to draw the line in the sand when it comes to fiscal responsibility. I mean, the image out there, for whatever reason, for a long time was that if you cared about deficit reduction, if you cared about drawing the line on spending, you might vote Republican. Well, that hasn't been backed up by facts for 12 years now. It was the Clinton administration that had record surpluses. It was a Republican President and a Republican Congress that racked up those enormous deficits. So now, we, as Democrats, are the ones coming down here and saying, listen, if you care about fiscal responsibility, this is the party that you want in charge of your Congress. This is the line that we're going to draw in the sand.

And it bears pointing out the sort of strange irony of that because for a long time the conventional wisdom was the opposite. But the facts back up the reality, which is that if you care about spending, it's the Democrats that are going to offer to draw that line in the sand.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Altmire, we're talking about giant numbers here, but let me give you another point of comparison. I mean, there are so many different ways to make this point to the American people that we have allowed spending in this budget to spiral out of control under Republican leadership and to hammer home the point that the problem that the Democratic majority has inherited is one that is going to take a long time to fix, but it is only going to be fixed by having a truly fiscally responsible leadership here in the House in charge.

Here is another way of putting it. I mean, this is remarkable, Mr. Altmire. And this is a chart that Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan have shared several times, but it bears putting out here one more time. Forty-two Presidents took 224 years to rack up about $1 trillion in foreign-owned debt, debt owned by China, European countries, OPEC nations. 42 Presidents, 224 years, over two centuries they took to get $1 trillion in debt held by foreign countries. This President, one President, has now, this number isn't even accurate anymore, has now racked up $1.33 trillion in foreign-held debt. One President in about 7 years has racked up more debt than 42 Presidents in 224 years.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Well, it's not that hard, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, maybe to grasp over 224 years, but it's hard to grasp how you do $1.3 trillion in foreign borrowing in just 6 years. And I'll be honest, I can't name every guy here, but I bet you there are some pretty wild spenders in that group, and I bet you there were some real deficit lovers somewhere buried in that group of Presidents. And still, all of them together, $1.01 trillion, this one President.

Remember, a President alone can't do this, Ms. Wasserman Schultz; you have to have a Congress that's willing to back you up on this kind of deficit spending. And he had it, but he only had it for 6 of his 8 years. I mean, that's the difference. He had a Congress that's willing to spend that kind of money, that's willing to rack up those kinds of deficits for 6 of his 8 years. For the last two, he doesn't get that deal. For the last 2 years of his Presidency, he gets a fiscally responsible Democratic Congress that for the first time in 8 years is going to push back. It might not be successful every time, but we're going to push back for the first time in a long time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And Ms. Wasserman Schultz, we're also committed as 30-somethings. I mean, the reason why this group for 3 years, and before that, before you were here, when Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan were down here, talk about this debt that we owe to foreign countries, talk about the deficit night after night, I mean, people may wonder, why are these guys and why is Ms. Wasserman Schultz down here talking night after night about the debt? Well, we're the 30-something Working Group. We're here, in part, to represent the concerns of some of the younger voters in this country. And we need people to understand, we need our 30-something brethren and our 20-something brethren and even kids in high school to understand----

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. And sisterhood.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. That's right, that this is going to be their problem, that these loans that we've taken out from China and from the Caribbean and from OPEC nations, they're going to want that money back. And they're going to want that money back 10 years from now, 20 years from now when folks who are now in their teens and their 20s and 30s are in their prime earning years. Just when they need to be mustering the money to send their kids to college, they are going to be paying exorbitant taxes to the Federal Government because we're going to have to start paying back that debt.

So this is an issue that the 30-something Working Group talks about a lot because the problem is today, but even more gravely, the problem is in 20 or 30 years. And it's our obligation to be making policy not just for next week, but for the next decade.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, I know we want to talk about that budget and how clear, once again, the President has made it, that his priority is going to be to turn the Federal Government's back on regular working folks out there who need a little bit of help getting their parents into a nursing home, who need a little bit of help getting quality education for their kid, who want to make sure their streets are safe. We're going to talk about that.

But I think it's worth noting that we've gone through one budget cycle already here with Democrats in charge of the House, and we have shown this place, Washington, D.C., that we have shown everybody out there in America that you can have a responsible budget that sets you on a path towards balancing that budget within 5 years, and you can do it in a way that is still compassionate about the people out there who need a little bit of help from their government. You can do both.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, let me just get this right. So we have spent billions upon billions of dollars, another 170 this year, on the war in Iraq, which is feeding the international terrorist movement, and this isn't our saying it, that's the 22 most important national intelligence organizations through the National Intelligence Estimate, that is feeding the frenzy of international terrorism and is growing the ranks of the people who want to do harm to us. So we're spending money in Iraq to increase the ranks of people who might do harm to us, and then we are cutting the money here at home that would make sure that none of them lands on our soil and does harm to us. That is a very odd thing for the President or the Republicans or anyone who supports that policy to have to explain to somebody.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. All the while with the President's continuing to insist that we make the tax cuts permanent, that we extend permanent tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, to cut more of our ability to make sure that we can fund first responder grants for communities across this country, and all the while having a $407 billion deficit and a $1.33 trillion debt. I don't know. In my dictionary, fiscal responsibility, that doesn't meet any of the definitions in the dictionary that I use. Maybe the dictionary in bizarro world. Maybe there's some opposite universe. I remember when I watched Star Trek, there was a bizarro world, opposite universe episode, and everything that was one way in one universe was the opposite way in the opposite universe. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe that aisle right there, maybe that side of the Chamber is actually a parallel universe, and so everything we believe is the opposite on that side. That's what it is. I figured it out.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. If the gentlewoman would yield, it's a wonderful world to live in, though, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I mean this world in which you can spend money on all of these things that you want to spend money on, that you can have no one pay for it, that you can kind of convince yourself that all of the people that are lending you the money aren't going to really ever ask for it back, that you can additionally convince yourself that the fact that you owe money to all of your enemies isn't going to have any consequences when you want to fight them or negotiate with them. I mean, that's a great place to live in. A world full of no consequences. A world full of postponing all bad things until a moment in which no one is here to answer for them anymore. It's a wonderful place to live.

But I've got to believe that that's why Mr. Altmire and I got sent here as part of the new class last November, that the American people kind of figured out that it was a myth. I mean, they figured out that it was an alternative universe. Now, they might not be as big a science fiction fan as you are, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, but they figured out that something was up. I mean, I come from a district that was Republican for 24 years that has these Rockefeller Republicans that are sort of socially moderate but fiscally conservative, and they came out and voted for Democrats in droves this year because they figured out what you knew all along, that this was just a made-up world here where you could just spend wildly on a war in Iraq, that you could borrow in order to pay for it, that you could rip the guts out of social services, and everything would be all right. So the American people, I think, have figured it out and they sent us here to fix it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Annualized $400 billion operating deficits, the three largest operating deficits in the history of the Republic under the Bush administration, Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you. And at the beginning of the Bush administration, Mr. Altmire, we were on track to pay down all of our publicly held debt. All of it. I am not sure if you have the chart in front of you right there; but, Mr. Murphy, we were on track to pay down all of our publicly held debt. And what is the Bush administration leaving behind?

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Curiously, as we talked about here, a $9 trillion debt owed mostly to foreign nations, a President that has racked up more publicly held foreign debt and privately held foreign debt than any other Presidents combined in the history of the Republic.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is really astonishing, the dramatic difference and the swings we have gone through in the last 8 years. Who would have thought that we could go through that type of rapid deterioration?

How about the economy? We are certainly not facing a strong economy right now. At the beginning of this administration, as President Clinton was leaving office, Mr. Murphy, we had the strongest economy in three decades. We had 22 million jobs that had been created. We had a record surplus. We had a thriving economy by any definition. And now that we are wrapping up the Bush administration, what is this President leaving behind?

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Well, we know he is leaving behind one of the weakest and one of the most fragile economies that we have seen in a very long time. Today we get reports from the Nation's largest retailers telling us that they still have not unburied themselves from the holiday malaise. We had a report recently from the service sector showing the service economy starting to bottom out. We have news yesterday from the Labor Department telling us that worker productivity continues to slow. We have an economy after 6, 7 years of the Bush administration's policy left over from 12 years of neglect by the Republican majority that is as weak as it has been in a very long time.

Mr. ALTMIRE. I want to talk about a few things that the President is leaving behind as he leaves office going into next year, and we look forward to working with him certainly throughout this year, $400 billion in annual deficits, deficits as far as the eye can see, as Mr. Murphy talked about, an exploding debt burden, a slowing economy; and this is something that I think really needs to be talked about because we had in January a net loss of 17,000 lost jobs. And there was a lot of talk in the administration about how, well, this was the first loss in 4 years in job growth in a month, which is true.

Now, any economist will tell you, anyone who studies these issues will tell you that because of the population growth in the country that works, we are experiencing in any given month, it takes between 100 and 150,000 new jobs being created just to keep pace with the increase in population growth in the country. So just to maintain, you have to have at minimum 100,000 new jobs. Well, many of the months that we are talking about going back 4 years, we have had much fewer jobs created per month than 100,000. And in fact, this administration, if you look at the job growth that has taken place over the 7-plus years of this administration and pro rate it, this is the weakest record of job growth in any administration since the Hoover administration.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Did they have good job growth in the Hoover administration?

Mr. ALTMIRE. Right. And Mr. Murphy held up his chart with all the Presidents on it and talked about big spenders and fiscally irresponsible people, and I think Mr. Hoover may not be remembered in those categories, but he is certainly not going to be remembered as a job creator, let's put it that way. So for this administration to have the worst record of job creation since the Hoover administration, I think really spells out the failure of these economic policies.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. And as we begin to wrap up, getting back to the lecture that you referred to earlier, Mr. Altmire, that we received from President Bush last week, the matter of transparency is incredibly important. This is a President who talked about how we need to make sure that we disclose earmarks, which we took the lead on when we became the majority and made sure that we put our names next to the earmarks that we get in the appropriations act, and we are the ones that made sure that there was full disclosure and adopted the ethics package that was the most comprehensive in American history.

And with this President's proposed budget this week, let's outline, and we are going to have some of these charts next week that are blown up so that people watching can see, but let's talk about what was left out of the budget, because he talked very nicely about transparency, and make sure that people really understand clearly what we are doing here. He left out of his budget any war costs, any costs for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the first half of this year. He also left out AMT reform beyond 2008. So all of the millions and millions of taxpayers that we helped avoid be subject to that AMT tax when we passed that legislation at the end of last year, there is no fix for them. And President Bush doesn't even count them as that going forward, which we know we are obviously going to have to do.

It is fake. It is just, again, bizarro world. We can just make stuff up in the budget and hope that people believe that it is true. This was a fairy tale document that he gave us on Monday. The good news is that the Congress actually writes the budget when push comes to shove.

Then in terms of any spending policy details beyond fiscal year 2009, there was nothing detailed in this President's budget. Let's just give you, as I wrap up and then turn it over to the two of you to bring us home, let's just go through last year. In fiscal year 2008, President Bush requested $193 billion, Mr. Murphy, for the war in Iraq. And in the fiscal year 2009 budget he just proposed to us on Monday, he asked for $70 billion. Good news. We are only going to spend $70 billion on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We get some discounts this year.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Wow, that is so exciting. Again, we have to make sure that we are honest, transparent, and forthcoming with the American people. We can't fake it. We can't gloss it over. We have to make sure that we give them the straightforward facts and be honest with them in the budget document and in everything that we do.

Mr. Murphy, why don't you bring us home. It is a privilege to be here again with you and Mr. Altmire, and we miss our colleagues, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek, tonight; but the 30-Something Working Group is always here to talk about the issues that are important to the American people, but particularly to our generation of Americans who are going to inherit the results of the decisions that we make here.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, just to leave on some good news, I think the passage with the Republican and Democratic votes of the economic stimulus package shows that this Democratic Congress has the potential to reach across the aisle and push back on a lot of these policies that we have been talking about today. This is bad news, the President's budget he submitted to us. It is not a good budget for people, for families, or for fiscal discipline.

But the good news is that we have shown a record here of being able to work together, Republicans and Democrats, to be able to push back.

Source