The Budget

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened carefully to the statement made by the Republican minority leader about deficits, and I think it is worthy to note that history suggests an opposite conclusion from what he just said.

Remember this: The last time the Federal Government ever balanced its budget and generated a surplus was in the closing years of the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat.

When President Clinton left office, the national debt accumulated over the history of the United States of America was $5 trillion. When Clinton left office and handed the keys to President George W. Bush and said: Incidentally, next year's budget--welcome to Washington--another surplus, a $120 billion surplus. The economy has created 23 million jobs in my 8 years, and I wish you the best. He left, turned the keys over to President George W. Bush, and gave him control for 8 years.

Eight years later, another snapshot. The national debt was no longer $5 trillion; it was $11 trillion, more than doubled under President George W. Bush. We had dramatically lost jobs in America, unlike President Clinton.

When George W. Bush handed the keys over to President Barack Obama, he said: Welcome to Washington. Incidentally, next year's budget is a deficit of $1.2 trillion.

It is quite a different story; isn't it? We wouldn't know that from the speech just given. The suggestion is that Democrats just don't get it right when it comes to deficits but Republicans do. History tells us otherwise.

President Barack Obama inherited one of the weakest economies since the Great Depression. In fact, we were teetering on another depression. The month he took the oath of office, putting his hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible, we lost over 750,000 jobs in America. That is what President Obama inherited. We didn't hear that from the Republican minority leader.

I wish to show one chart that tells the story and tells it graphically. It is a chart which those who follow the floor debates will see over and over.

The red reflects job losses under President George W. Bush. The blue lines reflect employment under President Obama.

This was the month President Obama was sworn into office. Almost 800 thousand jobs were lost in America. That is what he saw as he came to the Presidency, and then look what happened. The job losses started reducing and finally turned the corner on the positive side.

There, we have a graphic presentation of two views of the economy, the views of the Republicans and George W. Bush, with all this job loss, and the views of President Obama. That is the debate in which we are currently engaged. The Republicans want us to return to these policies, policies which call for tax breaks and cuts for the wealthiest in America, and basically ignore the investments we need to put people back to work.

I served on the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission. I understand this issue a little bit, maybe more than some. I don't profess to be an expert. The deficits have to be brought under control. We can't borrow 40 cents for every $1 we spend in Washington and sustain economic growth in America, period. But I also know this: With 10, 11 or 12 million Americans out of work, we cannot balance this budget. We have to get America back to work. These workers have to start earning a good wage, paying their fair share of taxes, and creating growth in this economy and also growth in revenue which allows us to balance our budget.

The President has two accelerators; he has to push them both at the same time: fiscal responsibility on one side and economic growth on the other. And we have to move forward in a straight path. That is what his budget does. There are those who say ignore economic growth, ignore creating jobs. Just cut spending, just cut the deficit. If we did that alone, I am afraid the result would be disastrous. The President understands, and we all should.

There are three basic pillars to economic growth in America, and they are obvious: training and education. Is there a single Senator, Congressman or anyone here who doesn't understand they wouldn't be here without an education? We value education in America. It is the ladder of opportunity, and President Obama in his budget focuses on educating and training the next generation of skilled workers and leaders in the American economy. When we walk away from that commitment to education, we walk away from our future.

The second thing the President's budget focuses on is innovation, finding those new technologies, those new discoveries which make our lives less burdensome and create more economic opportunity. It may be the next medical device, a diagnostic tool which saves a life. It may be the next pharmaceutical breakthrough at the National Institutes of Health. It may be a new process for developing clean energy in America that puts us back in the race to be the world leader in that field. Those investments by our Federal Government pay off in good businesses, good jobs, and a better life for all of us.

Education, innovation, and the third piece is one that

is on the floor today, infrastructure. It is kind of a sterile word, but what it gets down to is it represents the highways, the bridges, the airports, the mass transit, and the ports of America that are literally the arteries through which our economic blood will flow. When they are not as good as they should be or as efficient as they should be, our economy struggles. Let me give one example.

I live in Illinois and am proud of it. My family came to that State, my mother as an immigrant to this country, my father off a farm in southern Illinois, to work in East St. Louis at a railroad. We almost equate Illinois with railroads. We are in the center of America and most railroads pass through the State. There are railroads in every direction.

Right now, it takes as long to take a freight shipment through the city of Chicago as it does from the west coast to Chicago or from Chicago to the east coast. Why? Our railroad infrastructure hasn't kept up with the growing need for rail freight transportation. We need to invest in that. We have an opportunity to invest in it. When we do, when goods move more quickly, there is more profitability, businesses do better, and they hire more people. The same is true with our highway system, with mass transit, with passenger rail. Look at what the Republican view is, how they view this issue.

Currently, we are considering a bill coming over from the House of Representatives which would be a disaster for America's infrastructure and for the State of Illinois, an unqualified disaster. Instead of investing in building the infrastructure so America's economy can grow, this bill, sadly, cuts the Federal investment in transportation by 15 or 20 percent over the next 5 years. It cuts the investment in mass transit dramatically by eliminating the transfer of money from the highway trust fund to mass transit, something that has gone on for 30 years, and it makes a 25-percent cut in Amtrak. At a time when Amtrak is growing and proving itself, they want to basically start shutting it down, closing it down, eliminating trains. That is no vision for the future. That is betting on failure. That is what the House Republican Transportation bill will do. We can do better.

We have a bipartisan bill--a word we don't hear that often in this Chamber but a bipartisan bill--with Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. They have agreed on a transportation bill which moves us forward for 2 years. We need to make that investment. The President understands that in his budget. We should understand it in the Senate, and we should make it happen.

The last point I will make is this: There was a breakthrough yesterday. Some people will be critical perhaps of the House Speaker for reversing field and changing his position. It is a question of whether the payroll tax cut which President Obama put in place is going to be continued beyond the end of this month.

Many may remember the flap that occurred in December when we were questioning whether to extend it for 2 additional months. I went back to my State and talked about it county by county as to how much it meant to working families. The Republicans relented in the House and agreed to extend it to the end of February. Unfortunately, just a short time ago, the Speaker said:

If we're going to extend the payroll tax credit, unemployment benefits, with reforms, and take care of the so-called doc fix, we're going to have to offset the spending.

That is what the Speaker said. That was just a few days ago. Yesterday, there was a different announcement. The Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner of Ohio, said:

We are prepared to act to protect small businesses and our economy from the consequences of Washington Democrats' political games.

In other words, now the Republicans are prepared to extend the payroll tax cut without paying for it.

It would be easy to take a shot at the Speaker because he changed his position, but I will not. I remember this, the week of celebrating Abraham Lincoln's birth, the 203rd anniversary of his birth, Lincoln was much criticized for changing his position on an issue.

Lincoln said: Yes, I did change my position. But I would rather be right some of the time than wrong all of the time. I think Speaker Boehner is right.

The last point I will make is this: Let us extend the payroll tax cut. The extension of unemployment benefits is of equal value to the economy and immeasurable benefit value to those out of work who are struggling to find a job. Make sure, if we get this done on a payroll tax cut, we don't give up on extending unemployment benefits, benefits that will allow people to get back to work. I wish to see these blue lines growing. I wish to see us moving in the right direction, creating jobs in America.

President Obama's payroll tax cut and the unemployment benefits which we have pushed for have pushed us over the line in creating jobs. Let's not end this record of success. Let's build on it.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source