Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011
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Ms. CLARKE of New York. I thank my colleague for the time.
Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority has spent over 6 months of the American people's time making it abundantly clear what their priorities are not. The Republican majority does not have time to address jobs. As I stated, we are here over 6 months into the 112th Congress, and we have yet to take one vote on a single comprehensive jobs bill.
The Republican majority does not have time to address the economic realities facing millions of homeowners still facing foreclosure. In fact, we have voted on Republican bills that further undercut those who have lost their homes.
The Republican majority does not have time to work with the President and congressional Democrats to deal with our national debt. They would rather protect tax cuts for multi-millionaires and billionaires and tax loopholes for corporate interests.
What the Republican majority does have time for is playing games, spending 4 hours debating a bill that, thank God, is dead on arrival in the Senate.
Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
After a 3-year spending spree in which the President drove up the national debt 56 percent, he has the nerve to tell the American people to eat their peas. After he has been on this supersize-me diet, he turns around and tells struggling middle class families how to behave.
One must ask, where has the President been? He owns this economy. He has been in office nearly 3 years; it is his. It's his policies that have left 15 million Americans out of work; it's his policies that have stifled growth and business investment; it's his policies that have created and are continuing these so-called ``tax breaks'' for Big Oil. It's his very signature that has extended the Bush tax cuts.
It's his policies that have given us the highest deficit spending in the history of the United States of America. He owns this, not President Bush, not Vice President Cheney, not the Republican Party, not Halliburton, not all the other straw men that the President likes to set up to distract the American people. It was President Obama who cut Medicare $562 billion. It was President Obama who set up IPAB, which is a health care rationing system which our moms and dads and grandparents will have to be suffering under. It was this President who took unemployment from 7 percent up to nearly 10 percent.
And now we're having the debate of the decade, and where is the President? We get from him, not a plan, but speeches, finger-pointing, rhetoric, vague promises, but no plan. If there is a plan, could you lay it on the table? And I'll ask my Democrat friends, do you have a plan? We keep hearing the President has a plan. Could you put it on the table? I might want to vote for it. I might be interested in reading the bill. If there is a plan, could you please put it on the table? Just as I thought, there is no plan.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I yield the gentleman an extra 15 seconds.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. The gentleman asked a question. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KINGSTON. This is the plan: cut, cap, and balance. And this is the President's plan: speeches. That's all we're getting, no legislation whatsoever.
I'll be glad to yield to my friend from Maryland.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well-timed.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman well knows, the President has put on the table a balanced approach, $4 trillion in 10 to 12 years, $3 in spending cuts to $1 in revenue. In fact, the Speaker of the House and the President of the United States, as my colleagues well know, were talking about a number of components of that plan. What was very clear is our colleagues didn't want to touch it because
of this principle they have that not $1 from closing a tax loophole or revenue can go for the purpose of reducing the deficit.
We heard a little rewrite of history. Let's just remember that when the President of the United States was sworn in, he immediately faced a record $1.3 trillion deficit. The guy took office, and it was $1.3 trillion that he inherited. And 700,000 jobs were going down the tubes every month. It took a little while to turn things around, and things are still very, very fragile.
What would be a huge mistake is to go back to the same trickle-down on steroids policy that got us into this mess to begin with, because we know how the movie ended at the end of the Bush administration. They left this administration with a pile of debt, an economy that was falling through the floor. We need to work together to fix this problem. But taking the position that you're going to prevent the United States from paying its bills unless you implant in the Constitution a provision that says it is easier to cut Social Security and Medicare than cut corporate tax loopholes to reduce the deficit is not going to fly with the American people.
With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee.
Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman. A poll completed by Gallup just 3 days ago basically showed what Democrats have been saying all along--Americans want their Congress to come together to tackle our debt level with a responsible program of spending cuts and new revenues.
Here is what the poll said: 80 percent of all voters want the Democrats and Republicans to come together on spending cuts and tax increases; 77 percent of Independents, even 74 percent of Republicans agree. CBS has a very similar poll.
But what the Republicans are saying is we're not going to pay attention. The Republicans are suffering from deficit attention disorder. They've spent their time in power paying attention to everything but the deficit. They have deficit attention disorder. They extended massive Bush tax cuts for the rich. They voted to support billions in subsidies to the most profitable oil companies. They ran up trillions in debt to finance two wars; allowed Wall Street to run wild with deregulation and smash our economy onto the rocks, but they only want to focus on the deficit when it means ending Medicare, when it means shrinking Social Security. They only want to focus on the deficit when they can still protect billionaires and protect big business, Big Oil.
The Republicans have political amnesia. They controlled the Congress for 12 years. President Bush controlled the Presidency for 8 years. They are the ones that ran up this huge deficit on their watch. And now what are they saying? They're saying pass a constitutional amendment before we win the Presidency again so we stop us from killing the economy again. Pass a constitutional amendment that doesn't let us do it again with a Republican President, with 12 years of controlling the House and the Senate.
They want to leave America on the brink of becoming a deadbeat debtor to the world because they are irresponsible, ignoring what the American people are screaming at them: work together as parties; have deficit reductions and revenue increases and tax increases on billionaires. But the Republicans refuse to come together. They refuse to ensure that not just grandma having a shrinking of her Medicare benefit, kids losing their Pell Grants, but also billionaires are at the table if this is such an Armageddon level of financial crisis facing our country.
But they are tied. They are tied back to the Tea Party. They are tied back to those who have tethered them to a policy that does not allow them to escape their deficit attention disorder.
Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold).
Mr. DOLD. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding.
We did hear some rhetoric on the other side that basically said we do have a plan, that the President has laid out a plan; it's clear. Well, frankly, the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--has taken a look at that to say we can't score speeches. This is a very serious time. We do need to talk about a big, bold plan to put ourselves and our country back on the right course.
We just heard some rhetoric talking about how this was the deficit that the Republicans had run up. Let me tell you, yes, the Republicans have had some deficit spending. This is a bipartisan issue. Washington has a spending problem. We are spending $1.6 trillion this year of money we don't have; 42 cents of every single dollar that we are spending is borrowed.
Mr. Speaker, I'm a small business owner. I employ just under 100 people. For me, that's 100 families. These are families that are living paycheck to paycheck. If I ran my business like the Federal Government is run today, I would be out of business inside the month. It is frankly irresponsible the way that this country is being run right now. We have to talk about tightening our belt. We cannot continue to spend the way that we have been spending and expect that we're going to get jobs. This is about jobs and the economy. We have to make sure that we're providing more certainty because I can tell you I have received phone calls from constituents and from business owners back in my district. There are 650 manufacturers in the 10th District of Illinois. They do need to have some certainty before they are going to invest back in their business and create additional jobs.
We cannot be looking at trillions of dollars in deficit spending and expect that this is going to be a jobs plan. We have to tighten our belt. The American public has tightened their belt. American families are living under a balanced budget in their own right. American businesses are doing the same. They should expect that their Federal Government should also live within their means.
There is no question that this is a very serious time. We are not going to become a deadbeat debtor. The way I tell my constituents back home, it is like purchasing a business. We think we have the best business in the world in the United States of America. And yes, it has got some debt, which we are obligated to pay. But we have to restructure how that business is taking on that debt if we are serious about wanting to reform it for next generations.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, it does not encourage certainty or confidence in the markets or anywhere else for one party to say that if they don't get the budget their way, they're going to prevent the United States from paying its bills. That sends a terrible message. American families don't have the luxury of saying that they're not going to pay their bills.
With that, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Clarke).
Mr. CLARKE of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I ask this Congress to cut and cap the true debt that is crushing Americans right now, robbing them of any financial security and killing off jobs. I'm asking this Congress to take certain mortgage loans, cut those mortgage principals and cap them to current home value. Let's do that. That will help people who are underwater right now on their mortgages.
Let's cut, cap, and forgive certain student loans so Americans won't have to spend a lifetime repaying back on their education. You see, when you give Americans more money by eliminating their personal debt, they'll be able to save more and invest more and responsibly spend more. That's how you create jobs, the most powerful way. To get this economy engaged again is to help Americans become free of personal debt.
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