Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011-Motion to Proceed-Continued

Floor Speech

Madam President and colleagues, I have been struck in the discussion about cut, cap, and balance that there has been virtually no mention--virtually no mention--of the No. 1 issue on the minds of the American people, and that is jobs. What we need above anything else is to create more good-paying jobs. In this discussion about cut, cap, and balance, the whole question of jobs has virtually not come up.

Now, what we know is that between the worst of this fiscal crisis and the end of 2010 we lost 8.5 million jobs, and our country has only recovered a small portion of those jobs. The fact is, many of those new jobs that have been created don't pay as much as the jobs that have been lost. We also know millions of our people can't find full-time work, and they have had to settle for part-time jobs to make ends meet. Cut, cap, and balance virtually ignores that question.

I hear, for example, from our business community that they have a very serious challenge in terms of generating sales. Sales are all about middle-class folks coming into our stores and, in a consumer-driven economy, making purchases. As we have seen a number of times, David Leonhardt--particularly over the weekend in an excellent piece in the New York Times--described how in one area after another, in terms of consumer durable goods, middle-class folks have essentially walked off the economic playing field.

There is, however, one particular approach to job creation that has a proven track record--a proven track record--and bipartisan support, and it is one I hope the Congress will soon move to. I find that we have plenty of disagreement now in the Congress on a whole host of issues, but whether one is part of the Warner-Chambliss group or any other particular group, there is a sense that even though cut, cap, and balance doesn't talk about it, job creation is the most important issue. The path to that--the proven path to that, Madam President--is tax reform.

The fact is, that is the one unused tool in the economic toolshed. The Federal Reserve has thrown tremendous efforts at trying to boost the economy. The Recovery Act was a path. Various steps have been taken with respect to housing. Tax reform is the one area from the economic toolshed that has not yet been picked up and actually used. I think the country understands what needs to be done. Certainly, the Congress does. We had the report from the Bush Commission--George W. Bush--that made a number of excellent recommendations in their report. The Volcker Commission for President Obama had a number of sensible ideas.

I have had the pleasure of working with two very thoughtful colleagues on the other side of the aisle--Senator Gregg, before he retired, and now Senator Coats--and we have picked up on the model that populist Democrats and former President Ronald Reagan pursued in the early 1980s. It was all about cleaning out scores of special interest tax breaks and using that money to hold down rates for everybody and keep progressivity.

The reason I bring it up this afternoon--in the context of the fact that I sure don't see any mention of cut, cap, and balance focusing on jobs--is when Democrats and Ronald Reagan got together, the results on job creation were real, they were tangible, and we saw middle-class people get a chance to get back into the economy and get back to work.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the 2 years after Democrats and Ronald Reagan got together on a bipartisan basis to focus on job creation, our country created 6.3 million new jobs--6.3 million new jobs. Between 2001 and 2008, when tax policy was partisan, we only created about 3 million jobs. We have lost jobs in this last fiscal crisis, looking particularly at the measure that I cited at the end of 2010. So we have to get people back to work.

I see my friend from Iowa is here, and we have talked about tax reform on a number of occasions. Let me just cite an example of an approach on which Senator Coats, a Republican, and I have teamed up. We take away the tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas.

Right now, there are a huge array of tax breaks for, in effect, exporting jobs, when the country wants to export goods and services--goods made in the United States, where we add value to them in the United States and then we ship them somewhere. What Senator Coats and I propose is taking away those tax breaks for exporting jobs and using those dollars for what I call red, white, and blue jobs--jobs that pay a good wage in the United States so we can get full-time employment for some of the folks so hard hit now who can't find more than 15 or 20 hours of work a week that doesn't pay a good wage so they can support their families.

Cut, cap, and balance doesn't raise those kinds of issues. It doesn't raise the fact that when we put people back to work, have good-paying jobs in this country, that generates revenue Democrats and Republicans alike can support.

I know Senator Harkin has focused particularly on this question of where the revenue is going to come from to pay for our safety net with so many people hurting and falling between the cracks; tax reform that puts middle-class people back to work as we saw when Democrats such as Dick Gephardt and former President Reagan got together that generates revenue both sides can support, private sector job growth that puts folks back to work and gets the middle-class consumer back into the economy and back into our stores.

Look, for example, at the bipartisan proposal Senator Coats and I have. The typical middle-class person can get $3,000, $4,000 worth of tax relief under our proposal, not by raising the deficit, not by spending more money, but by closing out some of these special interest loopholes. Where is that consumer going to go? They will have a chance in a consumer-driven economy to go back into the stores. Maybe they will buy a washing machine, maybe they will buy a computer for their kids. They will go back into the economy and help, as we have seen time and time again over our history, to get our country back on its feet by middle-class people who have good-paying jobs going back into the marketplace and helping our economy grow.

The numbers are striking. Again, after Democrats such as Dick Gephardt got together with Ronald Reagan, in the 3 years after those reforms in the middle 1980s, Federal tax receipts for individuals and corporations rose by $137 billion. That is the kind of revenue-raising approach that Democrats and Republicans alike can support. But we don't hear a word about job growth in the private sector under cut, cap, and balance.

We hear a lot of technical terms about whether Federal spending ought to be 19.9 percent of gross domestic product or should it be 20 or 21. Those are important issues, but to their credit, one economist after another has made it clear that we don't get to economic recovery in this country just by cutting. We are going to have to do some growing.

Colleagues, we are going to have to do some growing. And, to me, to be out on the floor talking about cut, cap, and balance and not paying any attention to a Tax Code that is a job killer rather than a job creator for what I call red, white, and blue jobs in this country just seems to be a mistaken set of priorities.

The reality is, as Senator Coats and I have made clear in offering our bill, the Tax Code is larded down with so many special interest goodies and sweetheart deals, and I just touched on one that we would actually be rewarding: the export of good American jobs. What we ought to be doing is taking away these foolish tax breaks and creating ones that get the middle class back into the economy and get our companies investing in our country.

Now, it does not take a constitutional amendment to do what Dick Gephardt, Ronald Reagan, Dan Rostenkowski, Bob Packwood, and a whole host of Democrats and Republicans got together to do in the 1980s. It requires Democrats and Republicans to work together to take on the special interests that currently benefit from the broken tax system.

Make no mistake about it. Those special interest groups are taking tax breaks that ought to instead go for real relief for hard-hit, middle-class families and American business to create jobs in this country.

I see colleagues on the floor. I want to wrap up with one last point, briefly. I would not say for a second that tax reform is the only component of economic recovery. Senator Blunt is here, and as chairman of the Trade Subcommittee on the Finance Committee, we have worked very closely together on another important trade issue. What we have seen--and I know Senator Harkin is interested in this--is the Chinese have essentially been involved in merchandise laundering--some companies. What they have done after they have been found guilty of violating our trade laws, instead of changing their practices and complying with the trade laws, some of these Chinese outfits essentially go to another country and export through that country, and put on, for example, ``Made in Korea''--big implications with these trade agreements--and end up shipping those goods to the United States.

Senator Blunt and his constituents have made the correct point that is again taking away jobs from middle-class folks. But we have to get back to the issue of jobs on the floor of the Senate. That is the most important question for our constituents.

Staff told me on the way over here that in a recent survey of businesses cites, again, their No. 1 concern is that sales are going down in their stores. I think everybody in the Senate knows you can often go to a store on a weekend or an evening and you hardly see anybody there because middle-class people are very worried about what is ahead and simply because of these economic times do not have the money to go in and buy those goods and arrange for those services that, in an economy that requires they be in the marketplace, they simply don't have the resources for it.

So I hope my colleagues will oppose cut, cap, and balance. I hope they will see the No. 1 issue in the country is jobs. Tax reform has a proven track record, colleagues--a proven track record: 6.3 million new jobs in the 2 years after Ronald Reagan, a conservative President, and Dick Gephardt, a populist Democrat, got together--a conservative Republican President, a populist Democrat. That is the tool we ought to take out of the economic toolshed and use as quickly as possible.

I hope we will move on certainly to tax reform in the fall, and I hope colleagues will remember that as we have this discussion about cut, cap, and balance. I think it misses the central question of our time, which is job creation. For that reason, I oppose the bill.

Madam President, colleagues are on the floor. With that, I would yield.

Source