Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, the job market is still suffering from the fallout of the recession from the end of the Bush years. The unemployment rate nationally is near 10 percent; in my State, it is well over 11 percent. The proposal of Chairman Baucus would inject hundreds of billions of dollars into this faltering economy, helping struggling families make ends meet and creating jobs in the process. On behalf of the 65,000 Rhode Islanders who are out there currently looking for work, I express my support for the Baucus 1-year extension of emergency unemployment benefits. Without this extension, thousands of Rhode Islanders will soon be left with no source of income as they continue to search the want ads, no money for the mortgage or rent, no money for food, no money for medicine or for holiday presents for the children.

The 1-year extension of this lifeline will quite literally mean for Rhode Island families the difference between keeping a home or facing homelessness this winter. The vast majority of unemployed Rhode Islanders are out there looking for work. They are out of work through no fault of their own. They are looking for work every day. The jobs simply are not there.

I was at the Cranston senior center yesterday for their Christmas holiday party and spoke to a lady whose son had been in the workforce for 28 years. He had a substantial career. He was out of work. He is stocking shelves at the minimum wage. People are not ducking work. The jobs are not there.

Historically, Congress has extended unemployment benefits when the national unemployment rate has been above 7.2 percent. It is over 9 percent. It is 9.8 percent, according to a report Friday. This 1-year extension will give the 65,000 unemployed Rhode Islanders and over 15 million unemployed Americans the support they need to continue weathering this tempestuous economy.

In addition, this tax package would continue a powerful incentive for more investment in smaller companies. Under the proposal of the chairman, qualified investments made in 2011 in small businesses would be eligible for a 100-percent capital gains tax exclusion, if they are held for at least 5 years. As the credit market continues to slowly thaw, I have heard from numerous Rhode Island business owners that they would like to expand operations, but they can't get the capital. This provision will encourage much needed equity investments so businesses in Rhode Island and around the country can create and expand jobs.

The Baucus proposal would make permanent the current tax rates for 97 percent of taxpayers and deliver tax savings to 100 percent of taxpayers. I am sure my colleagues hear from their constituents, as I hear from Rhode Islanders, that it is getting more and more difficult for families to balance their budgets. Each year ticks by bringing higher fuel, food, and medicine costs. Budgets are stretched paper thin. It would be harsh now to let taxes go up for middle-class families. The Baucus proposal would keep tax rates where they are for individuals earning less than $200,000 per year and families earning less than $250,000 per year. Continuing these rates will spare middle-class families considerable tax increases. For example, a family of four earning $60,000 per year would save $2,500 under our plan. I can assure my colleagues that for some of my constituents, that $2,500 could be the difference between paying their mortgage and facing foreclosure or sending a child to college instead of into the minimum-wage workforce.

In addition to continuing the middle-class tax cuts, this will inject about $200 billion into the economy over the next 2 years. When middle-class families get additional resources, they tend to spend them, invigorating the economy and supporting local and regional jobs. From family budgets to the national economy, extending the middle-class tax cuts is a clear win-win.

This is not necessarily the case for extending tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Under the Democratic plan, the first $250,000 of income for a wealthy family would benefit from extended lower rates. This means $6,000 to $7,000 in savings. But our Republican friends want to go much further and give the average multimillionaire a $100,000 tax bonus. Every economist knows a middle-class family is more likely to spend an extra few thousand dollars on groceries, on clothes, on pharmaceuticals, than a person who already has millions to spend will with an extra $100,000. In an age of large deficits, we need to start to make tough choices on our budget, and this should be an easy one. Let's keep rates where they are for the vast majority of Americans and permit the rates at the very tiptop to go back to Clinton-era levels.

We are warned that if millionaires and billionaires have to pay the same tax rates as the 1990s, the economic recovery will suffer. But were the Clinton years a time of economic suffering? Of course not. The economy thrived in the 1990s under Clinton income tax rates, far better than it did under the Bush tax rates. There is no reason to think the recovery would suffer if we restored the Clinton-era rates for the very wealthiest and most fortunate.

I find it astonishing that our Republican colleagues continue to filibuster our efforts to get a tax break for all Americans in order to secure a bigger tax bonus for the top 3 percent of the American population at a cost to our debt and deficit of $700 billion. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earn about 21 percent of all income and own over one-third of our Nation's wealth. Those figures are at their highest levels since the Roaring Twenties. Quite simply the rich are richer than they have ever been, and Senate Republicans are holding hostage a tax benefit for all Americans to demand a superbenefit for the superwealthy.

I hope our Republican colleagues will stop obstructing this important tax reduction and emergency unemployment legislation. From funding the government to authorizing the military, we have so much work to do this year. The price for regular Americans of obstruction in the Senate is becoming too high.

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