Whitehouse: Economic Recovery Bill is Necessary to Revive Economy
Whitehouse: Economic Recovery Bill is Necessary to Revive Economy
February 13, 2009
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today, all over the country, millions of Americans went to work unsure whether they would bring home a paycheck or a pink slip.
Today, millions of Americans got up, put on their suit, left the house - not to go to work, but for another interview, another visit to the unemployment office, another spot in a long hiring line.
Today, millions of Americans will have that late night session at the kitchen table trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet on their stressed family budget.
And today, millions of Americans worried how they could afford it if a child or an elderly parent were to get sick.
In my home state of Rhode Island, where the unemployment rate is the highest it has been in decades, the second-highest in the country, I hear stories like this over and over again.
This past Sunday, I had one of our community dinners that we hold. This one was at the Tri-City Elks Lodge in Warwick. More than 200 people came from all over the state to talk to me about their struggles to afford health care in this economy.
From them all, the message was the same: We're trying to get by, but times are tough, and we feel the deck is stacked against us so we just can't make ends meet. What can you do to help?
Our economy - our country - is in crisis. Americans are urging us to take action now, before things get worse, before it's too late.
So this week, the Senate took action. It was not easy, it is not perfect, and it won't be cheap. But it was the right thing to do.
The bill we passed on Tuesday will create or save 12,000 jobs just in Rhode Island over the next two years. Many of those jobs will come from new investments in Rhode Island's infrastructure, including millions for road and bridge repair, to improve drinking water and sewer systems; and to help families weatherize their homes and cut their energy bills.
The recovery plan will provide a refundable tax credit - a down payment on the middle class tax cuts that President Obama promised this country - that credit will reach 470,000 Rhode Island workers and families, giving as much as $800 worth of breathing room in a family's budget in this year when every little bit counts.
I'm also proud that the recovery bill will provide a one-time, $250 payment to those living on Social Security or SSDI. In the Ocean State we know that for vulnerable seniors, that little bit of extra help from the federal government can make the difference between housing and homelessness, between health and sickness.
Approximately 138,000 Rhode Islanders receive Social Security, so this bill will mean more than $34 million into Rhode Island's economy for Rhode Island seniors and those who are disabled.
The recovery plan will send an additional $100 per month in unemployment insurance benefits to 86,000 Rhode Island workers who've lost their jobs. And it will provide extended unemployment benefits to an additional 17,000 laid-off Rhode Island workers.
The bill we passed doesn't stop there. It increases Pell Grants, so people who can't find work can go to college, improve their skills, and come back into the workforce, better-trained, and in better days. It increases funding for food stamps, for Head Start and other early childhood education programs, and for Medicaid, all to help struggling families just weather this storm.
And it includes $18 billion in Medicare and Medicaid incentives to build health information infrastructure to improve the quality and safety and efficiency of our health care system.
The bill we passed will put people back to work, it will jump-start our faltering economy, and it will support struggling families. It is not a perfect bill. But at this moment, in this crisis, it is necessary.
We tried to do this together with our Republican friends. President Obama reached out his hand in unprecedented ways. George Bush never once came to the Senate to talk to us, to Senate Democrats. President Obama traveled to Congress to meet with the House Republicans; he came over here to meet with the Senate Republicans; he did individual calls and meetings.
Three Republican senators, Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine and the distinguished Ranking Member of our Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, heard his call, put their country first, and helped us pass this bill. I don't agree with all the compromises that they required, but without them we might have had no bill at all.
But from the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, from every Republican Member of the House of Representatives, what did President Obama get for his pains? They slapped away his hand of friendship. And they gloated about it, saying "the goose egg you laid on the President's desk" (the goose egg meaning zero Republican votes in the House of Representatives) "was just beautiful."
They claimed - hold your horses here - to take inspiration from the Taliban. They said their boycott of President Obama's bill was a political "shot in the arm going forward." And their party leader said this: "You and I know that in the history of mankind and womankind, government - federal, state, or local - has never created one job." I guess his history book ended at the chapter on Herbert Hoover. Mr. Steele, read on, read the next chapter about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Works Progress Administration, and the Citizens Conservation Corp, and how the government got us out of the Great Depression.
Another measure of whether our Republican friends are being fair is to look at the arguments they have made. Do they make sense?
"We should do housing first." We've heard that one. Well, fixing the housing market is indeed important. But actions speak louder than words, and while the Republicans' words call for action, their actions spell obstruction. They still resist the single most important and effective thing we can do to stem foreclosures, which is Senator Durbin's bill to allow bankruptcy courts to modify mortgages on principal residence. The only loans that don't have this authority in all the loans in our country.
And when we tried to address the housing crisis only a few months ago, they stopped all those bills - refused to allow us to move forward - because they said expanding - remember this - oil drilling was more important, and we had to do that first, it's the number one issue facing the American public. Look at where we are now and how important oil drilling is in our crisis. If we had done housing first, can you not just see the signs here saying "jobs first?" I fear our friends would rather move the goalposts than move legislation.
"It's full of spending and it's too big." Yes, it's full of spending: the recession of consumer spending and business spending is what is draining the economy, and the whole idea is to counterbalance the loss of that spending with government spending - and you know what? It's probably not enough.
Our economy has already lost more than 3.6 million jobs since the peak of the business cycle in December 2007. 11.6 million Americans are currently looking for work.
A report last month estimated that, in the absence of this legislation, we could lose another three to four million jobs. This legislation will create or preserve three to four million jobs. 11.6 million Americans out of work. This accomplishes the first necessary step of stopping the bleeding, but more, I suspect, will be required to cure the patient. Realistically, the danger that this bill is too small is worse than the danger that it is too big.
"The bill doesn't all create jobs." Well that's true, but let's look at two examples of provisions that don't create jobs: Pell Grants and Medicaid. The Pell Grant money lets people step out of the market for jobs at a time when it is highly stressed, train up, improve their skills, and move back in in better times. Isn't that smart? Doesn't that make sense for our country?
And the health care spending will protect precarious state budgets, and protect people's health care as they ride out the storm. Isn't that just the decent thing to do as this storm hits American families?
Another argument: "Some of it isn't soon enough." Well, health information technology, for instance, will take awhile to ramp up, but it is necessary infrastructure to avert the $35 trillion health care calamity that is now bearing down on us; it has to be done sooner or later; the recession will almost certainly be here two years from now; and if it does take a little while to do - isn't that just all the more reason to start now?
And then there are the, what I call the "oh, please" arguments. The party that ran up nearly $8 trillion in debt under George Bush, now that Barack Obama has been elected, and now in the one time of crisis when every respectable economist is saying this is the time for deficit spending, NOW they suddenly get religion about deficit spending? If this weren't so serious, it would practically be funny.
Finally this: If our opponents really cared about jobs, and putting people quickly to work, with effective, valuable infrastructure, why such widespread opposition to the $20 billion for school repair and construction?
This money could have put contractors to work on school repairs, green renovations, weatherization and conservation measures. It would have made schools cleaner and greener, it would have lowered local fuel budgets, and it would have reduced dependence on foreign oil. What does opposition to that tell you?
And what did they argue for? Here's a golden oldie: reduced corporate tax rates. How many companies do you think are out there reporting big taxable profits in this economy?
On even brief consideration, the Republican arguments against the bill don't hold water. It's instant replay of the same tired, flawed ideology that put us in this mess in the first place.
Barack Obama did not ask for this mess. He inherited this mess. Barack Obama would rather have come into a budget surplus, a growing economy, and a trajectory to a debt-free America, like George Bush and Dick Cheney did.
But that's not what they left him. And now he's the guy who has to dig us out of their mess. In simple decency, you'd think the least one could ask is that the party whose President made the mess not slap away Barack Obama's hand of friendship. ("I'm sorry, but I won't help you clean up my mess unless you do it my way.")
After weeks to ventilate their arguments, our friends now have an opportunity to show that when all is said and done, they care more about moving the country forward than scoring political points.
Now we have the chance to come together and pass this bill, and send it to President Obama's desk, so we can begin to restore confidence and hope to our country. I hope - I hope - our Republican friends will join us.
There is too much at stake to do nothing.
I thank the presiding officer, I thank the distinguished senator from Texas for her courtesy in yielding me additional time, and I yield the floor.
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