Providing For Consideration of Senate Aamendment to H.R. 2608, Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, there is a not-so-thin line between being frugal and fiscally responsible and then downright cheap and stingy, and this bill demonstrates the difference.
To say to somebody who was in a disaster, to say to somebody who might lose everything, where the waters are rising, the fires are burning, the storms are knocking things down, to say, you know what, we can only help you if we cut somewhere else, is the most stingy, shortsighted, poorest form of representative government I have ever seen. It is outrageous to tell Americans facing disaster that you don't get any help unless you can find how to squeeze it out somewhere.
Americans help Americans. Americans stand up for each other at time of crisis. This is a hallmark of who we are, and it doesn't matter whether you are Republican or Democrat, whether you are from the north, the south, the east or the west, whether you are black, white, Latino, wherever you come from, when Americans are in trouble, Americans respond. And we don't reach inside and say, well, if I can afford it, we will help you out. We just jump forward and we help out.
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Mr. ELLISON. No, I will not yield, and I won't cede any of my time, so you don't need to ask again.
I am also just absolutely appalled, appalled, that the Republican bill will cost at least 10,000 good-paying American manufacturing jobs and perhaps tens of thousands more by cutting the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program, which is putting Americans to work at producing cleaner American cars.
This provision, perhaps more than any other, demonstrates the fraudulent nature, fraud, fraud, of claiming that the Republicans are trying to produce jobs. They are not trying to make jobs.
They run around saying that rich people are job creators, they are profit creators. And you know who is absolutely not a job creator? Anyone who votes ``yes'' on this bill.
Vote ``no,'' absolutely ``no'' on this bad piece of bill.
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