Pathway to Job Creation Through a Simpler, Fairer Tax Code Act of 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman.
As Americans watch their Olympic favorites this week, House Republicans are handing out gold medals to all their favorites right out here on the House floor.
In London, speed, agility, and strength determines who gets the gold. But in the Republican-controlled House, it's the wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations who secure all of the gold medals.
Two weeks ago, Republicans awarded the gold to America's defense contractors by actually increasing defense spending. Despite sequestration, despite our ballooning deficit, despite the looming fiscal cliff, they increased defense spending.
Then last week, oil companies scored a gold medal by securing new drilling rights off of America's coastline, off of our beaches in California and New England and Maryland to drill. And the Republicans refused yet again, even though Big Oil's margin of victory was enormous on that issue, Republicans refused to end $4 billion in annual tax breaks to the oil companies we cannot afford, despite the fact that the oil companies made $137 billion in profits last year, the most profitable industry in the history of the planet.
And today, it's millionaires and billionaires who will cross the finish line and secure the biggest gold medal of all, as the Republicans double down on the Bush tax cuts by rewriting the Tax Code to include $331,000 in additional tax cuts for the average millionaire in this country, a tax break they do not need and America cannot afford.
House Republicans are setting a world record in rigging the tax system for the ultra-rich while cutting middle class priorities like education and investing in good American jobs. The big losers in the Republican Olympics: the middle class, whose taxes will go up. The middle class, where the Medicare guarantee for millions of seniors will ultimately be destroyed. The big losers: investment in finding cures for Alzheimer's and cancer and Parkinson's, which will have to be drastically cut so the Republicans can crown billionaires, Big Oil, and nuclear bomb builders the big gold medal winners. The losers: the American people, and their families' health and well-being.
Vote ``no'' on this fixed Republican Olympics. Vote ``no'' to take care of the billionaires in our country as ordinary families suffer. Nostalgia for a past that never existed has overtaken the idealism which should animate our debates here on the House floor. For the poor, the sick, and the elderly, the past is just a memory and the future is their hard reality. And this Republican budget makes that future all the more difficult for the middle class in our country. Vote ``no'' on this fixed Republican Olympics.
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