Amending the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I rise to address the Obama-Boehner debt deal. I must say it is an issue on which I have been immersed in wrestling to understand the impact on unemployment, the impact on investments that will strengthen our Nation down the road; certainly an impact on programs that strengthen our families. It is in that context we try to understand how do we build the strongest possible Nation for working families. How do we do that? Is the Obama-Boehner debt deal the right path? I must conclude that it is not the right path. I conclude that for four reasons.

The first is the impact on jobs. We are facing a gathering storm on the job front. We have 5 to 8 million additional foreclosures that are suppressing the success of our construction market, driving down the value of houses and having a devastating impact on the attempts at a recovery.

Second, the unemployment benefits. The extended unemployment benefits expire this year, and the rough estimate is that that will result in a reduction of around 500,000 jobs. That is a tremendous blow in 2012. Then we have the termination of a payroll tax holiday and the estimate is that may well produce losses of jobs of more than 900,000 across America. Add them and you are talking about nearly 1.5 million lost jobs that we will face in 2012. So on top of this gathering storm comes the Obama-Boehner debt deal that is estimated to produce another job loss--and by varying estimates--from 100,000 to 300,000. Doesn't this deal take us in the wrong direction? Shouldn't we be on this floor working to create jobs, not to destroy jobs? The success of our families depends on it.

My second major reservation about the Obama-Boehner debt deal is its impact on working families through the concentration of cuts on the 18 percent of the budget that is the nondefense discretionary portion. This is the portion of the budget that involves Head Start and Pell grants--in other words, an opportunity for our children, our smallest children, success for university education for our college-bound students. It is the area of the budget that involves investments in clean energy. It involves our small business programs that support the success of our small businesses. It involves job training that helps families adjust to a changing dynamic in the economy, and so much more.

In this 18 percent of the budget is where the cuts will hit. What with the phase I required cuts, or title 1 cuts, in combination with the cuts under title 3, you have essentially 15 percent cuts from the 2011 March CBO baseline. Understand that baseline for 2011 is a very low baseline, much lower than 2010, much lower than 2009. It takes us back many years earlier. We have a very low baseline and we are going to cut 15 percent more out of the core programs supporting the success of our working families, supporting the success of our smallest children, supporting the success of our college-bound children. This is not the path that builds a stronger America.

The third factor is that while our children in Head Start and our children headed for college and our citizens seeking job training are going to take these blows, the wealthy and well-connected do not contribute one slim dime. As some of my colleagues have argued: Well, you know what, there are some of those programs embedded in the Tax Code that actually help the middle class. My colleague from Utah was just making that argument. Then the argument is extended: So don't touch any of those programs. Well, if we take that same attitude toward our spending programs, we would say some benefit the middle class, so don't touch any spending programs. Obviously, it is an absurd argument. Why is it made on the revenue side, to those programs there, but not in the programs that are on the appropriations bill? Why is the tax bill protected from not only that argument but the spending bills are not? One simple answer: The programs for the wealthy and well-connected are in the tax bill. So this false argument is used to defend the accumulation of wealth, the expansion of prosperity for the few--for the powerful few--at the expense of families across this Nation.

My fourth concern about the Obama-Boehner debt deal is that simply it was forged out of a process of extortion. If you look through the editorials, you see words such as ``hostage taking'' and ``extortion'' and ``lunacy.'' We only have to turn back to Ronald Reagan to remember what he had to say on this. He said: This brinksmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans' benefits. Interest markets would skyrocket, instability would occur in the financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and to the world to meet its obligations.

Those who have threatened, for the first time in U.S. history, for the United States not to meet its obligations, which would result in a devastating impact for families across this Nation, those who carried out that threat did so in the wrong spirit--not the spirit of America pulling together, but in the spirit of creating a situation of hostage taking and extortion designed to protect the most powerful and wealthy at the expense of families across this Nation.

Because this deal does damage to jobs and contributes to a gathering storm in 2012 that threatens to take us back to a double-dip recession, because the cuts are concentrated on the programs such as education and Head Start and Pell grants that support the success of our children and the success for our future economy, because it doesn't take one slim dime of contribution from those who are most able to contribute in our society, and because it was forged out of a fundamentally inappropriate use of extortion against the American family--for those four reasons I will oppose this deal.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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