American Jobs

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. I thank the gentleman from

California. Connecticut, Rhode Island--you know, when you're from California, I'm sure we all look like one of your counties there. But it's eastern Connecticut. At least I abut Rhode Island. But thank you for the invitation to speak this evening.

I wanted to start, first of all, by just sharing with you that I am in the final day of a 1-week challenge that myself and four other Members of Congress have engaged in to live on a food stamp budget for a week. That's $4 a day, which is what the budget is for millions of Americans today. And my wife and I and my daughter got through it in one piece--although I had to kind of take my little care package down to D.C. with me. And frankly, it has been harder than I thought and a real eye opener. I mean, a cup and a half of coffee----

Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me. May I interrupt? You and three of your colleagues or four of your colleagues have undertaken a program to try to live on the unemployment insurance?

Mr. COURTNEY. No. This is a food stamp budget, the SNAP program. Again, the SNAP budget for millions of Americans is $4 a day. And so obviously you've got to shop as aggressively as you possibly can, and frankly you're buying somewhat lower-cost items. As I said, we're about to get across the finish line at midnight tonight. Again, a cup and a half of coffee a day, half a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, generic cereal, little bananas, some meals at night. You don't have to worry about cleaning dishes when you're on this kind of budget because you eat every bit of it. And as I said, it has been a real eye opener in terms of the fact that this is really an experience that isn't just limited to 1 week for millions of Americans. It's something that, again, is just part of a growing reality.

I raise it in the context of the Jobs Act because today there are, again, millions of Americans who are 99ers; they are people who have gone through their unemployment compensation period, which, as we all know, has a cap of 99 weeks. For a lot of them, there really is nothing else waiting at the end of that time other than food stamps--or the SNAP program as it's now called. To basically live on $32, which is really what the amount is for a single adult, is really impossible.

As a result, we're seeing, again, record numbers of people showing up at food banks, record numbers of people showing up at soup kitchens. There is now a suburbanization of poverty that's going on in this country. Again, I represent Connecticut, which has the highest per capita income in America--obviously lots of suburbs. There are now, again, food banks that are operating in a lot of these communities.

Clearly, this is an issue in terms of the supercommittee and the sequestration, whether or not a program like SNAP is going to be at risk. For people to go backwards from $4 a day is something that I personally can't imagine.

But at the end of the day, the real solution is to get this economy growing again, and the best social program is a job. I mean, that is the bottom line in terms of what is a real fix to this problem.

One of the things that I just wanted us to, again, spend a minute on, and then I'll hand it over to my friend from Ohio who's here, is that the pay-for that's been proposed and supported in the Senate and the White House is a 5 percent surcharge on income above $1 million. Recently we had, again, in my opinion, a patriotic, courageous American who stepped forward to really put the spotlight on what that means. Warren Buffett, who, again, is a legendary investor, financier, commentator on all the news programs and the business channels, shared his tax return for last year.

His gross income, his top line was $63 million, his adjusted gross income was $32 million, and his payment was roughly about $6 million. As he explained in a number of op-eds, that roughly translates into a tax rate of 17 percent, which, again, you're here, Johnny-on-the-spot with the charts, which is terrific.

If his tax return was subjected to the surcharge which has been proposed and supported in the Senate, basically, it would add about another $2 million to $3 million of tax liability in terms of what his return would be, and his overall effective rate would be roughly about 25 percent.

He clearly makes the argument about the Buffett rule that he should pay a higher rate than his secretary and his staff--today he pays a lower rate than all of them. But the real, I think, power of his argument which he made in The New York Times op-ed piece, ``Stop Coddling the Rich,'' was that the tax rates that he paid gladly back in the eighties and nineties, which again, is even higher than it would be if we passed the surcharge, did nothing to inhibit his willingness or desire to go out and compete and invest and participate in the drive for the American Dream.

And if you look at the growth rates that we experienced in the 1990s when, again, the tax rates on both capital gains and regular income were much higher than today, and would still be higher than if we adopted the Jobs Act pay-for, as he powerfully makes the point, it would do nothing to inhibit growth, and it would do nothing to inhibit or punish success.

It, in fact, would just do a lot to try and create some balance in our public finances so that we can afford to do the great things that a great Nation must do to get us out of the predicament that we're in today.

What I want to say to anyone who's watching here today, who's on food stamps, having experienced briefly the challenge that you face over a 1-week period of time, we can do better, as a Nation, than that, and we must adopt the Jobs Act to make sure that we solve the problems of Americans who today are trapped in an economy that allows no way out except subsistence programs that are inadequate to lead a healthy productive life.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

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