Progressive Caucus

Floor Speech

PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - November 18, 2010)

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, Mr. Ellison, I was in my office. Of course this floor is constantly on the TV screen, so I looked up, and I said, Hey, there's my man. There's the guy who is from the great upper Midwest, who has seen the incredible downturn of the American economy. I know that you've worked hard for your district to try to bring in those jobs and to try to create the legislation that would bring the jobs into that district. As you were talking, I said, I'm going to go over and say just a couple of things in support of the message that you're giving today, a message that over the last 2 years has been one of a consistent effort by the Democratic House to stabilize the American economy. We did that with the Wall Street bank bailout, which a lot of people didn't like.

I had problems with it, too. I think those Wall Street barons should have paid a heavy price, but the price that they could not pay and should not pay is the total collapse of the financial industry of the world because we would wind up, mom and pop at home, whether you have a 401(k), which unfortunately became a 201(k), whatever, we did that and it worked.

Then you came right back, the Democrats in this House and the President came back with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 3 million jobs out of that, stabilizing once again the situation where the jobs were in free-fall the last months actually of the Bush administration in 2008, 800,000 jobs lost. But that began to turn around, and so in 2009 we began to see a turnaround, a lessening of the lost jobs. They continued to lose jobs, but nonetheless, each month that went by there was fewer and fewer jobs lost, and then in 2010 we've actually seen the growth of jobs in America once again, not only as a result of those two pieces of legislation, but dozens and dozens of other bills that I was fortunate enough to work on when I came here just over a year ago in a special election.

It's been hard work. We've not had much help, and this is one of the things that I find so disappointing having come here just a year ago, and on all of those bills, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill, the HIRE act that gave incentives to employers to go hire people, the saving of the American automobile industry. The Republicans voted against these bills.

On unemployment insurance, the Republicans voted against it. I mean it's easy enough I suppose if you have a job not to worry about the uninsured, but if you don't have a job, what are you going to do? How do you keep a roof over your family's head? How do you provide the food? Well, you do it by getting an unemployment insurance check, which, actually--workers in America and employers in America have paid into an insurance program year after year after year and that uninsurance program provides the insurance when a person loses their job.

I couldn't believe it today on the floor. We have more than 2 million Americans whose unemployment check is going to run out during these holidays. Between the end of Thanksgiving and New Year's, 2 million Americans will lose their unemployment check. Now, the economy not's running the way we want it to run, and hopefully you and I will have a chance to talk about making it in America, making this economy once again, but today, on this floor, not more than 3 hours ago, we were unable to muster a two-thirds vote to pass an uninsurance check extension so that people would have food, shelter, clothing, maybe even a small gift for their children at Christmastime.

What are we doing here? If we are such--we, not we, the Democrats voted en masse for this, but 143 Republicans, more than the one-third to block, voted against this. We're talking about the ultimate Scrooge. This would make Charles Dickens right up there on top with Scrooge on Christmas, on the holiday season, when we ought to be generous. 143 Republicans this day voted to deny 2 million Americans enough money to buy a gift for their child, to put a holiday meal on the table.

Okay, fine, I understand where they're coming from--no, I don't understand where they're coming from. I don't get it but we need to move forward. We need to move forward. I know you have been talking about that. And we can do it. We can rebuild the American manufacturing industry. It's there for us to do it if we use wise public policy, and I know you have been talking about this, and I'd love to engage in a dialogue with you and see if we can share some thoughts here.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. It is a local store. If you have no money, you are not going to do one thing for this economy except be an additional burden to it. And so if you have an unemployment check--and let's keep in mind, that's something that the workers and employers have paid into so that when you lose your job, you have a continuation of income and you use that money to go down and buy some clothing for your kid, stimulate the economy, give the retailer--you buy bread, you buy food, you're able to pay your rent, you're not going to have to face that foreclosure and help drive down the prices of homes in your neighborhood. It's all there. It makes so much sense on the economic level.

But on the human, moral level, about where we are as Americans, it's not the fault of that worker out there that lost his job that he doesn't have a job. Many, many reasons for it. Wall Street, greed on Wall Street, all of those things. We can talk about that later, but it's not that worker's fault. It's not his kid's fault. Can't we just muster enough compassion to give those families an opportunity during this holiday season and on into the new year enough money to stay in their home?

What are they are going to do, go out and live in their car? They can't afford to buy the gas, I guess they can become the homeless. 143 Republicans this day said go homeless, go live in your car, don't worry about the holiday gifts, don't worry about your children because they will have no food, they'll have no place to live. What are they thinking in this House? 143 Republicans said ``no.'' They blocked, 7 days before Thanksgiving, they blocked an opportunity for 2 million American families to have enough money to put a holiday meal on their table, to put shelter over their family.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, apparently those people that say that haven't been looking for a job.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. It's easy enough to say, but when you're out hunting for a job, you know these are difficult times. And we're going to make efforts to turn that around, and we've talked about that a little already, but the jobs are not there. We need to move this economy forward, and then as we do so, those jobs will come back. And let's understand, this is not a bunch of welfare. A lot of people are against welfare. We understand that, but these are middle class Americans----

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Who had a good paying job 2 years ago, a year and a half ago, 6 months ago. These are men and women who over the years have been the backbone of this Nation, middle class America, and yet 143 of our colleagues on the Republican side didn't see it that way. I guess they thought, well, if they don't have any money they will go to work.

I would ask any one of those 143 to leave here today and go out and see if they could find a job, and if I were an employer and somebody had that amount of compassion, I know where I would send them. I'd send them out the door and good-bye.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Go out, let's see if you can pay the building--let's see if you can go out and run a backhoe, dig a ditch, or operate a bus or train or whatever. No, no, no, and when they lose their job here, as they should for this vote alone--they should for this vote alone lose their job here--no, they will go down to K Street, and they will get one of those high-powered office building jobs and they'll come back and lobby us and try to tell us what we should do. I will tell them what they should do--they should take a hike right out of this building because they're the super Scrooges of this session.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, this is another issue that's going to be before the Congress in the next couple of weeks, and that is, what are we going to do about the 2001, 2003 tax reductions that expire on December 31?

Those tax reductions were pushed forward by George W. Bush and the Republicans, who then controlled both this House and the Senate. And they wrote the tax law so that the middle-income got a little bit. It was worthwhile. It was a good reduction. But the real reduction went to those with the big bucks, those who had more than $250,000, $500,000, $1 million, $1 billion annual incomes. They got the big bucks.

And what happened was, we saw, once again, the widening of the gap between the working men and women of the middle class and the high and the mighty, the top 1 percent of this Nation who now control 70, 80 percent of all the wealth of the Nation. They certainly have the big salaries. And do they need a tax break at the expense of an unemployed worker from a factory in your district, an unemployed worker from a factory or from a school in my district? I don't think so.

Let's talk about what it is. For those making $1 million a year, the tax cut is worth $83,000 a year. Now, you tell me how many out there in middle America are making $83,000 a year. Well, we know that there are 2 million that are unemployed that certainly aren't. But if you took that money, that $83,000 for all those millionaires, you could create 3 million jobs that would pay $30,000 a year. Not a great deal, but a living wage for 3 million Americans.

So we've got choices here. We've got choices. You are going to give the wealthy even more, $83,000 a year--that's just for millionaires. And there are billionaires out there who will make even more out of this tax cut. What are they going to do with it? Well, I guess they could buy a Mercedes-Benz E-Class which does cost about $82,000. Maybe we would like to think of them with a nice big, fat cigar. They could buy 2,000 of those cigars every year for the next decade, and they could light each one of those cigars with a $100 bill. Now that's a worthy way to do it. Or would you rather have 3 million Americans earning $30,000 a year or, in this case, even an unemployment insurance check?

And one of the things, Mr. Ellison, some days I want to stand up here on the floor and just scream and say, What are you guys thinking? Deficit reduction. Oh, my goodness, we just finished an election. And deficit reduction was on every advertisement. We have got to deal with the deficit. We have got to deal with the deficit. Well, what the Republicans are proposing is a tax break for those who earn more than $250,000 a year.

Let me back up here. Every American taxpayer, every American taxpayer will receive a tax reduction up to $250,000. If they are making more than that, the tax break that they have had for the last decade would end.

Now, my Republican colleagues want to extend that tax cut for the wealthy. What it means is an additional $700 billion of deficit over the next decade, $700 billion. So you can't talk out of both sides of your mouth here. Either you are a deficit hawk and you vote against a tax cut for the wealthy, or you are a hypocrite and you vote for a tax cut for the wealthy and increase the deficit by $700 billion.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, because tax cuts, particularly at the upper income levels, don't equate to economic growth. You are quite correct, the George W. Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 helped create the extraordinary deficit that we currently have. There were a couple of other things, two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, that were not paid for by American money but rather by borrowed Chinese money and the tax cuts and the ultimate near collapse of the economy in 2007 and 2008. Those all added to the huge deficit.

But it's also, just as you have pointed out, clear by the employment statistics that following the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that the number of people employed actually reduced by nearly 600,000 people over the period of the next 5 years. So, you know, it doesn't equate.

Now, we need to provide the current tax cuts for those in the middle class that are earning less than $250,000. And, really, for every American earning $250,000 or less--if they make more, they're going to pay a little more--it's very, very clear that if we continue to provide the tax cuts for the very wealthy, it's not going to create more jobs. For those who need the money, they're going to pay their mortgage, they're going to make that car payment, they're going to buy food, they're going to buy clothing, they're going to invest that tax money into the economy, stimulating the economy. For those that are wealthy, I guess they will go buy another Mercedes-Benz, which I think is manufactured overseas.

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