American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky for offering his amendment. There are 14, I believe, maybe 15, pending amendments to this bill. I think it is healthy. It means we are actively debating this issue and getting suggestions from Democrats and Republicans about ways to change it.
But let's remember why we are here. This is H.R. 1, the first bill of the session. It is the bill, in terms of priority, that has the highest priority for the President of the United States and for the Nation. It is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
It has been only 2 weeks now since we swore in a new President, the 44th President of the United States. He comes to this office, I believe, with extraordinary talents and potential. But he also comes facing some of the most serious challenges any President has faced in 75 years. You have to go back to Franklin Roosevelt, in 1933, and the Great Depression to find another time in American history that was any more challenging than what we face today. I think most Americans know what we are talking about.
We found, for the gross domestic product; that is, the production of
goods and services in America, our growth in that area has started to decline for the first time in 25 years. We have found that unemployment rates are higher than they have been in 15 or 20 years--in some places even worse. Ask the average person or family member: Does this affect you? And they will say, of course, it does. My savings for my retirement are not what they used to be. I have lost a lot. I had planned on a life of comfort and security and now I am not sure.
How about your home? For most people it is the most important asset in their life. Even if you are paying your mortgage payment, your home value has been going down in most communities across America. People understand, too, that many of their neighbors are losing their homes to foreclosure. Some of these are hard-working families who have played by the rules and all of a sudden the world is upside-down. The principal they owe on their mortgage is more than the value of their home.
Ask people about jobs, about all the jobs we have lost across America--half a million jobs in December, even more in the month of January. As we lose more and more jobs, of course, people face hardships. Part of our effort is to try to find a way to help them, provide a safety net, to give them a helping hand--as we should.
Let me tell you what President Obama's proposal means to America. First, we are going to try to help those people who are suffering. For those on unemployment right now, many of these people have been stretched to the absolute limit. Imagine losing your job and trying to keep your family together and make the utility bill payments and not lose the house--in the hopes that this is going to turn around and you will find another job. We provide an additional help to them. It is not a lot. I would like to give more, but it means more money in unemployment relief for these families.
The second thing we find is that as soon as you lose your job, guess what happens next. You lose your health insurance. There is a program called COBRA where you can turn around and buy health insurance, but take a look at the price. The price is dramatically larger than you paid as an employee, if you had coverage at your workplace. So we try to extend health insurance for these families. Shouldn't we, for the millions of Americans who are out of work, give them a little more to live on and a little helping hand when it comes to the paying of their health insurance? That is not just humane; if you are looking at the pure economics of it, trust me, those unemployed families with an extra few dollars a week are going to spend this money back into this economy, keeping their families together.
Then we take a look at what we need to do to get this economy moving forward. President Obama said the first thing we need to do is to give working families, middle-income families, a helping hand. Tax policy over the last 8 years has been geared primarily, most of the breaks, to the wealthiest people in America. But the folks who have been falling behind are those whose wages didn't keep up. The cost of living kept up, but their wages didn't keep up. President Obama says, as part of our recovery plan, let's give a helping hand, $500 to an individual, $1,000 to a family, at least so that these working families can pay their bills and maybe try to get ahead a little bit. That, to me, is a sensible economic recovery.
Wouldn't we start at the base of America, the strength of America, the families of America, and make sure they get the first helping hand, after we have taken care of those who lost their jobs, through unemployment? That is part of it.
He also has asked us, in the Obama plan: Help businesses, small businesses in particular, because they are the bedrock of the American economy. They create most of the jobs. They are the most vulnerable. We have seen it happen. We get the announcements of the big companies that are laying off thousands of workers: 20,000 at Caterpillar, thousands at Starbucks and INTEL and the list goes on and on. But it is the small job in the mall or downtown that lays off a worker or goes out of business--then we start losing jobs that way. The President has proposed in his tax package, let's allow these businesses to write off their losses and apply them to previous years' tax liability. Give them a helping hand. If they want to buy things that might expand their businesses, let's encourage them, give them more of a tax writeoff. So we build this into the program here as well. I think these are all solid investments in people who are struggling with unemployment and middle-income families finding it hard to pay their bills and small businesses that are vulnerable to a weak economy.
Then the President goes a step further and the President says: Let's now create jobs, let's invest in America in a way that is going to build America's economy for decades to come. He has identified several areas of importance that I think will meet the test of time and I hope will meet the approval of my colleagues.
The first thing he says is energy. We know, as long as we are captives of foreign oil producers who can run the price of gasoline up to $4.50 next week and back down again to $2.50 a month later, it is tough to build an economy.
So President Obama has told us, as part of this, build into this energy-related investments, the kinds of things that make sense, research in areas that will give us energy capability.
We can't build an American economy without energy. Let's build it with homegrown energy, energy that uses our creativity and our resources and builds on them.
He also said: Let's take a look at our schools, let's take a look at our Government buildings, and if the energy is going out through cracks in the windows and the doors, let's do something about it--more energy efficiency.
That is a good investment. That is going to pay itself back over a period of time.
Secondly, there is this whole element of health care. We know that one of the crucial elements in our daily lives is the protection of health insurance, and we know the cost of that insurance and the cost of medical care continue to rise.
What President Obama has made part of this is something that is the most important single downpayment to health care reform. He believes we should start moving as a nation to put our medical records on computers so that we have technology that has my medical records, the records of my family, so that when you go to the hospital, the doctors who are there and the nurses who are there have access to solid available information. They are not going through pages hoping they don't miss one. It is going to mean that there will be more affordable health care, and it will be safer health care. That makes sense. That is a good investment.
The third element is education. What the President has said as part of his proposal here is that we need to start building--by building, putting people to work--we need to start building the laboratories, the libraries, and the classrooms of the 21st century.
Let's be honest about this. America is as ingenious, innovative, and creative as any nation on earth. But the reason we are is because our schools prepare our children to meet that challenge and to lead. That is part of the investment of this bill.
Overall, what the President is asking us to do is to do our very best today to invest about $900 billion--a huge sum of money, I do not doubt that--so at the end of the day we will have saved or created 3 to 4 million jobs.
My friends, some of them on the other side of the aisle, say that is way too much money, $900 billion. This $900 billion represents about 6.5 percent of the gross domestic product of America. So you say: Is that enough? Is that enough of a catalyst? Most of the economists say: Err on the side of providing enough water to put out the fire. Don't put so little on it that you will have to revisit that conflagration tomorrow. And if you follow the lead of some who want to cut back the size of this program substantially, every time they cut back the size of it, they will cut back the number of jobs we will be creating in America at a time when we desperately need more jobs.
We expect to lose in economic activity in America $1 trillion a year because of this recession. What we are putting back over 2 years, this $900 billion, means we are about at half of what we are going to lose. We are going to put some $450 billion of economic spending into an economy that is losing $1 trillion in activity. So we are not even keeping up with what the recession is doing to us. So those who want to cut this back dramatically, I can tell you, sadly, if they have their way, we will be back here again.
You remember last year, President Bush said to us: I think the economy is weak, and I know how to solve the problem. Tax cuts will do it. And he asked us, the Democratic Congress, to give the Republican President $150 billion in tax cuts. And we did. Senator Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, worked to deliver a bill, a bipartisan bill, focusing on tax cuts.
If you listen to my friends on the other side of the aisle, they believe this is the answer to every ill. If the economy is flourishing, more tax cuts; if the economy is struggling, more tax cuts. Well, tax cuts have their place, and they are a part of this, but they are not the complete answer. We learned that when we put $150 billion into the economy in tax cuts last April, I believe it was, and it did not have the kind of positive impact we expected on our economy.
The point I want to get to is this: We have to act, and we have to act now. Sure, we should have this debate on the amendments. Some will prevail, some will not. But at the end of the day, the American people will not accept as a final verdict that the Senate did nothing. They will find it absolutely unacceptable that one of the worst economic crises in America was met with political resistance. They want us to work together. And we should.
I am open--I believe most Democrats are--to good ideas and good suggestions, and a lot of our colleagues are, in good faith, working toward that end. But there is one basic thing we should remember: When we get down to the bottom line, most of the critics of this program, this $900 billion program, when you add up the total amount of their criticism, it is less than 1 percent--less than 1 percent.
Well, let's try to cure that 1 percent. Let's do our best to make sure we do. But let's not walk away from this challenge. Let's not walk away from this crisis because we find in some paragraph in here something to which we object.
If there were ever a time when the American people expect us to rise to the occasion, to stand with President Obama and try to turn this economy around, this is the time. I would say to my colleagues, let's get it done this week. We need to tell America first--and the world--that we are not going to stand back and be victimized by this economy. We are going to use every talent, every tool we can to get this American economy moving again for the workers and families and businesses that count on us so much.
In the Senate, it is easy to get something lost in the debate and end up doing nothing. That is the one thing that is prevalent in the Senate too many times. But this is different. This is a historic challenge.
I hope Senators from both sides of the aisle will work in good faith to find a way to put together a product that will ultimately serve this country and serve it well. Two-thirds of the American people now say they support this plan. They do not believe it is the last thing we are going to do, and they sure do not believe the economy is going to be cured in weeks or months; it may take us longer. But we need to start working together and give this our best effort. We need to follow on from this doing something about the housing market, mortgage foreclosures, people who are underwater with their own home mortgages, folks who will not consider buying a home because of the uncertainty of the economy. That is absolutely a priority. It may not be included in this bill. Perhaps it will be. But that is a priority we should turn to next.
Then we need to look at these financial institutions.
Make no mistake about it, when this Bernard Madoff is found guilty of a Ponzi scheme, people are wondering whether he will go to jail. I am not going to say whether he should or should not. He needs to be held accountable for what he did. A lot of innocent people lost a lot of money because of what he did. He needs to be held accountable.
What about the financial institutions that brought us to this moment in American economic history? I think we need accountability there too. We need to make sure these executives do not run off with millions of dollars in bonuses, capitalizing on the taxpayers' money, ignoring the fact that they failed in their business missions. We need to have a good, strong law in that regard too.
We need to have proper oversight and regulation of financial institutions so America never goes down this road again. That is our responsibility on our watch.
I sincerely hope both sides of the aisle will make it their business to get it done this week so the American people understand that we get it, we understand the severity of the crisis we face.
I yield the floor.
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