Budget Negotiations

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the last thing we need when we are trying to get back on track is a default crisis that would grind our economy to a halt and bury us under even more debt. Yet the latest round of Republican politicians threatening to default on our debt has made their priorities clear: They would rather stop paying our men and women fighting overseas, force deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and throw even more Americans out of work than tell big oil companies and corporate jet owners to pay their fair share.

Clearly our Republican colleagues are serious about politics, not deficits. You cannot be serious about deficits and at the same time recklessly jeopardize our economic standing in the world in order to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few. Yet that is what leaders such as Mitch McConnell seem to be saying. Yesterday my Republican colleague drew a line in the sand on cutting wasteful spending in the Tax Code, calling elimination of special interest giveaways politically impossible. Politically impossible? Really? Just two weeks ago 34 Senate Republicans joined Democrats in passing the repeal of subsidies to ethanol companies. Politically impossible? The landmark budget agreements of the 1990s brought us into balance and ushered in surpluses that took a balanced approach and created prosperity and job creation such as we have not seen in this decade.

Politically impossible? Right now in America middle-class families are living paycheck to paycheck while Senator McConnell and his colleagues are going to the mat to protect billions in tax breaks to oil companies. They say two things--Senator McConnell says two things: He says he is not raising taxes. He wants the average American to think it is your taxes. No one wants to raise taxes on people below $250 million--many of us, people below $1 million. But when oil companies get big giveaways, when corporate jets get huge deductions, a greater deduction than Delta gets when it buys a plane for commercial use, that should be on the table. We should ask Senator McConnell and the press should ask Senator McConnell: When you say no taxes, do you mean some of our largest corporations should pay no taxes? When you say no taxes, should no taxes be on the table? Are you saying we should not close corporate loopholes? Are you saying people who are making $1 billion should not sacrifice and all the sacrifice should be the middle class? Because that is what Senator McConnell is saying.

Again, we do not wish to tax and will not tax average middle-class people. That is the President's pledge and that is our pledge. The question is: When you tell an average teacher or cop or firefighter you have to sacrifice, are you going to tell the millionaire they have to sacrifice too? Not because we dislike them, but because it should be shared across the board, and Senator McConnell has said: No, the millionaires should not sacrifice. Because the only way they are going to sacrifice is closing loopholes in the Tax Code. They don't need loans to help their kids get to college.

One other thing: Senator McConnell says we should take anything about corporate loopholes, about taxing wealthy people off the table. His ``my way or the highway'' approach is what is standing in the way of getting an agreement. The person standing in the way right now is Senator McConnell. You have not heard such strident language from the other leaders. He says: Take everything we want and nothing you want or we will not get an agreement. That is what he is saying.

The bottom line is very simple. Senator McConnell, cutting Medicare benefits will not make us stronger; Firing teachers will not make us stronger; rolling back investments in innovation and research and high-tech jobs of the future will not make us stronger, but ending wasteful tax subsidies that do nothing but contribute to the deficit for oil companies and corporate jet owners will make us stronger. Meet us part of the way here. Don't say my way or no way because that is too risky, and that is telling the world we will not fulfill our obligations the way every family in America has to fulfill theirs.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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