Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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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.
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