Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to House Amendment to Senate Amendment to H.R. 4853, Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER of New York. I thank the gentlelady for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to oppose this bill, however the rule comes out, for several reasons. Number one, if this bill passes, we will extend the upper income tax cuts at a cost of increase in the deficit by $700 billion over 10 years.

We're told that in 2 years it will expire. Of course, we also know that our friends on the other side of the aisle will try to extend it in 2 years, and in 2 years, we'll have the same kind of coercion. We'll be told that if we don't extend the upper end tax cuts, the middle class tax cuts will also expire, and I don't see any reason to believe that we wouldn't succumb to that coercion 2 years from now in an election year as much as we're doing now in this bill.

So I believe that passing this bill, in effect, would make permanent the upper end tax cuts which, in effect, would generate a $700 billion increase in the deficit, which would make it almost impossible to fund housing, education, everything else we need. It would be the culmination of the 30-year Republican effort to starve the beast, to deliberately create huge deficits in order to provide the political cover for reducing expenditures in housing, education, Social Security, and Medicare.

Secondly, I hope that Mr. Pomeroy's amendment on the estate tax will pass, but if it doesn't, that's another problem.

Thirdly, Social Security. We are going, in this bill, to provide for a 1-year tax reduction of 2 percent in the Social Security tax. That will cost us $120 billion in 1 year, which will be replenished from the general fund, but we know perfectly well that, politically, once you make that tax cut, it will be impossible to restore it, which means it will be $120 billion a year forever taken away from Social Security but replaced by the general fund.

Now, the conservatives have always told us we have to reduce Social Security, increase the retirement age, reduce benefits, because it contributes to the deficit. We said, no, it doesn't contribute to the deficit. Social Security is walled off; it has nothing to do with the deficit. But now it will be put right in the middle of the deficit debate, and it will cost the general fund $120 billion a year, $1.2 trillion over 10 years, and we'll be told you've got to reduce Social Security benefits, increase the retirement age because of the deficit, and it will be in the middle of the deficit debate. We will be told a year or two or three from now, by the way, we'll only replace $100 billion of the $120 billion we have taken away from Social Security this year because we need the money for education and housing and something else, and we should not want to be in that position.

FDR decided in 1935 that Social Security would be supported by its own tax, by its own situation of people paying into it year after year so they take it back when they retired. Now we are going to take some of that money away, and we're going to say the general fund will support it. FDR knew that by setting up Social Security as self-financing, it would be difficult to abolish or to reduce. This undoes that genius by the New Deal and puts Social Security at great risk, and, accordingly, Mr. Speaker, I must oppose this bill.

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