Bring Jobs Home Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. I thank the Senator very much.

Madam President, on Monday we heard from Democrats who insist that Congress must now raise taxes on the American people. In fact, they are so committed to this task that they are willing to take the country off the fiscal cliff in order to get their way. This is unfortunate. It is unnecessary, and it is a course of action we cannot pursue.

Mind you, they are not trying to pursue comprehensive tax reform. No. They are not trying to fix this Byzantine-era Tax Code which occupies tens of thousands of pages. What they are doing instead is just to raise taxes right now so they can get their way right now, so they can cover the shortfall that exists right now because of a chronic failure by Congress over time to set and stick to spending priorities.

Well, the vast majority of Republicans are committed not to raise taxes--not on anyone. There are some very good reasons for it.

First, the Federal Government has proven its inadequacy in this area. Congress has proven time and time again that the money it takes from the American people, from hard-working taxpayers, is not always spent carefully. In fact, it has been spending more than it takes in for so long people almost cannot remember a time when Congress routinely balanced its budget. This is a problem, and it is a problem that should not be fixed by taxing the same people who are already paying this bill even more. This is not the fault of the American people, and the job of fixing it lies right here in Congress--not with the American people.

Second, from the CBO to the IMF to the Federal Reserve to Ernst & Young, experts around the world are warning of the dire economic consequences that await us if we raise taxes. We cannot allow it to happen. We have had over $4 trillion added to the national debt during this President's administration. At the same time, we have had unemployment exceeding 8 percent for the last 41 consecutive months. Nearly 13 million Americans are currently out of work, and millions more are underemployed and looking for more work. We cannot allow this to continue.

I would add here that there is a certain irony in the President's proposal to increase taxes on some Americans while leaving the necessary tax relief in place for others. While purporting to help hard-working Americans, this approach would actually have the opposite effect, hurting most--many of those Americans who can least afford the hit right now.

A new study from Ernst & Young reveals that this tax hike--the tax hike that hits some Americans but not others--would kill 710,000 jobs. These are people who cannot afford to lose their jobs. These are people who are living paycheck to paycheck. These are not CEOs. These are not the top 1 percent. These are hard-working Americans who cannot afford to lose a job. We cannot let a tax hike bring about that kind of terrible consequence.

Democrats will assure you that their tax hikes are all about reducing the deficit. That is curious because their proposal would leave 94 percent of this year's deficit intact, which makes it an inherently unserious proposal insofar as it relates to deficit reduction.

Further, the President's own 10-year budget, which includes massive tax increases, by the way, still adds $11 trillion to the national debt.

I really do appreciate the fact that the President is finally talking about these issues--issues that have long gone unaddressed and need to be addressed--but he cannot look the American people in the eyes and tell them he is doing something about the debt when his own budget, while raising taxes, nearly doubles our already sprawling national debt over the next 10 years.

Republicans have proposals. We have proposals to reform the Tax Code, reduce the deficit, and to do so in ways that will grow the economy, not cause it to contract. I have an amendment I hope will get considered in the next week or two that would permanently keep tax rates at their current levels so American families and businesses can know what to expect. It would also eliminate the death tax, and it would stop the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, which is quickly becoming the middle-income penalty tax.

These measures and others would go a long way--a long way--toward improving our economy and getting the American people back to work again. If my friends on the other side of the aisle disagree, as is their right to do, then let's come together and work to find some common ground. These election-year antics and distractions are not what the American people sent us here to do, and the longer we wait before enacting real reform, the worse the problem is going to get.

I would now like to turn the time over to my friend, the junior Senator from Missouri, who has fought long and hard on these issues, who will wrap this up for us.

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Mr. LEE. That is right. I think that is the point that often goes missing in this debate, which is that when people talk about wanting to raise takes on one group of Americans and not increasing them on another, that causes problems. And we are concerned about job creation. We are not concerned about any one particular group, we are concerned about Americans as a whole--most importantly, about those who are most vulnerable, those who can least afford to lose their jobs.

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