Additional Continuing Appropriations Amendments, 2011
Floor Speech
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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank my dear colleague for his great leadership and for yielding me this time.
Let me just say that I urge my colleagues to vote no on this continuing resolution. It cuts money for jobs to people that give social services to our senior citizens at a time when gas prices are going up and food prices are going up; it cuts jobs to clean up our brownfield sites across this country, and if you don't know what those are, you are lucky; it cuts jobs that affect our public broadcasting, the only decent broadcasting left in this country with the garbage that's on the airwaves today; and it cuts jobs dealing with construction and repair of our Save America's Treasures Program, some of the oldest buildings in America that our children and grandchildren have a right to enjoy, as we have.
So people say, where are you going to get the money? Let me tell you where the money is, and what is not on the table in trying to balance the Federal budget. How about the profits of the Wall Street ``Big Six'': Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup. They scooped up just last year $51 billion in profits; $51 billion at the expense of the American people hit hard in this great recession that we're enduring. Wall Street titans are happy as clams.
Their top executives alone took $26 million in compensation, not counting all their stock options. We didn't touch a penny of their bonuses. Oh, we can't do that! Wall Street banks are paying at an effective 11 percent tax rate when businesses in my district have to pay at 35 percent. What's fair about that? We could have $13 billion, $14 billion, $15 billion, $16 billion if Wall Street just paid at the same rate as other honest businesses do--just for last year.
And oil prices? The American people are being gouged all across this country. But Exxon made $9 billion in the third quarter of last year--the largest profit of a company in U.S. history. Guess how much they paid in taxes? A big goose egg. Zero. Zero. And British Petroleum, $5 billion in one quarter. How much did oil companies pay in taxes? Where's that on the deficit cutting table?
So, we say to the American people, you can't balance a trillion-dollar deficit on 14 percent of the budget. All you do is hurt people. Wall Street and Big Oil have already hurt the American people.
Let's pay the bills by expecting those who have much and give nothing to pay their fair share.That's how you seriously balance the budget--everything has to be on the table.
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