Highway Technical Corrections Act of 2007--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

HIGHWAY TECHNICAL CORRECTIONS ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued -- (Senate - April 15, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the matter before the Senate now that is currently being blocked by the minority is a bill that would permit work to proceed on hundreds of highway and transportation infrastructure projects, creating tens of thousands of construction jobs, and pouring $1 billion into our economy. This is timely legislation to repair our roads and bridges now, while our economy needs the work. Yet this bill is stalled in this body because Republicans in the Senate will not allow it to move forward.

Unfortunately, we have seen this movie too many times. The minority has engaged in no less than 65 filibusters in this Congress--an astounding number that lays bare the minority's lack of interest in solving the real problems America faces. What a record--65 filibusters, the most ever. That is what the minority has to contribute to the problems America is facing.

A number of our Republican colleagues have come to the floor of the Senate to speak today, but we have heard very little in the way of substantive or reasonable objections to the highway bill. Instead, what we have heard is a lot of talk about taxes. Of course taxes are on the minds of many Americans today. It is, after all, April 15, filing day, the deadline for Federal and State tax returns to be filed. Today, we should remember that the work of Government does not just cost money, it costs our money. For that reason, we should ask how this Government is spending our hard-earned money and whether the priorities reflected in the Federal Government's spending are truly the right priorities for our people and for our time.

These are difficult days. Today, families throughout my State of Rhode Island and all across this country are reading their bank statements, opening their bills, reading their local newspapers, and finding that the looming downturn in the economy leaves them struggling to make ends meet. Everywhere we look, prices are rising, from the groceries that feed our families to the gasoline that fuels our cars. Every day, more Americans face the disaster of foreclosure. Every day, more Americans face the nightmare of catastrophic health care bills.

In these days of insecurity, the people of this country are looking for answers, for solutions, for a new direction. Democrats in the Senate are working overtime to provide that new direction. We passed an economic stimulus package, legislation to address the housing crisis, and a budget plan to put our Government back on the path to surplus and cut taxes for middle-class families. We know we need a change of course and, most particularly, a change of leadership in the White House to get our country back on track.

But Senate Republicans today are making it clear that they do not agree. Instead of putting working families first, instead of getting our infrastructure repaired, they want to protect the massive Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, a fiscally irresponsible policy that has left our country trillions of dollars in debt. Instead of a budget that focuses Federal Government spending on our children and our veterans, Republicans want to stick us with the status quo, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an endless war in Iraq without spending a dime here at home to fix the problems that face American families.

Senate Democrats support tax cuts for middle-class families, including targeted help for families with children or seeking to adopt a child. Indeed, the budget resolution this year would provide those tax cuts in a fiscally responsible way, without digging our country deeper into debt. But President Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate want to extend the extravagant portions of the 2001 to 2003 Bush tax breaks that are weighted heavily toward the wealthiest Americans.

Mr. President, 71 percent of the value of the tax cuts in 2009 will go to the wealthiest fifth of Americans, and 28 percent of the value of the tax cuts goes to the top 1 percent, a group whose incomes average around $1.5 million a year--clearly people who are hurting and need a lot of help from our Government right now. Almost nothing at all goes to the lowest earning fifth, families who earn $15,000 a year or less. This is the George Bush idea of fair tax policy.

The President's insistence on forcing through these cuts without making up for the lost revenue, to defer that pain to later generations--to our children, to our grandchildren--was not only cowardly leadership, it left our budget in precarious straits. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 cost a staggering $1.9 trillion, and they account for 25 percent of the $7.7 trillion Bush Debt. The $7.7 trillion Bush Debt is the difference between the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projections as President Clinton left office compared to the budgetary nightmare George Bush created--$7.7 trillion.

I am from Rhode Island. One trillion dollars is an unthinkable amount of money in a small State such as Rhode Island. I do not know what $7.7 trillion is. So I have tried to scale it for myself. I have here in my hand a simple penny. A simple penny. If this simple penny were $1 billion--now, even in Rhode Island $1 billion is big money--if this simple penny were $1 billion, $7.7 trillion is a stack of these simple billion-dollar pennies that is 39 feet high, takes us right to the top of this room with a simple penny being a full billion dollars.

It is an astonishing burden for this country to have to bear. It is the responsibility of George Bush and the Republicans, and we have to get serious about it. But are the Senate Republicans willing to get serious about it? No. If they have their way, the wealthiest Americans will continue to profit to the tune of trillions of borrowed dollars while those most in need receive virtually nothing. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the poorest Americans--the lowest 20 percent of income earners would receive less than 0.5 percent of the value of extending Bush tax cuts between 2009 and 2018. The top 20 percent, on the other hand, would receive a staggering 74 percent of the value, a total of nearly $4 trillion over that 10-year period.

And, of course, this is Bush tax policy, so the higher the income, the greater the benefit. Close to $1.2 trillion in Bush tax cuts would accrue to the top 1 percent of American households. Households with annual incomes of more than $1 million a year, those alone receive $834 billion, $834 billion in extended Bush tax cuts.

The reckless fixation on tax cuts for our wealthiest folks that the Bush administration has pursued is driving us to a bad place, to a divided America with two economies, a gilded economy for the wealthy, and a worried struggle for everyone else. That is not good for America. In fact, that is not America. But this does not seem to bother our Republican friends. They have hitched their wagons to the big winners in the gilded economy: the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the billionaires. The two economies, well, that is fine with them so long as their friends are winning. But that is not good for America.

In fact, that is not America, not the one we know. The tool they have used over and over and over is the filibuster. With a $7.7 trillion Bush Debt foundering us, with families across the country in their home States, everyone struggling, you would think they would want their role to be more productive than being the biggest filibusters in American history. You would think they would want a more productive record and legacy than that. But, no, they want to dig a $7.7 trillion hole and then filibuster the folks who are trying to get America out of it. It is so clear that Senate Republicans would prefer to engage in overheated and overhyped tax rhetoric than they would roll up their sleeves, sit down, and get to work on legislation solving the real problems working Americans are facing across our country each day.

I will tell you, it is clear and it is disappointing.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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