Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014 -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I too want to welcome the new Senator from Massachusetts to the Senate. He will find presiding over the Senate an enlightening experience. And if tradition is followed, he will get to do it a lot.

THE PIVOT

There are many overused expressions here in Washington. Game changer comes to mind. But I think the worst may be the so-called pivot. I say this not just because it is used too much to mean anything, but also because it is a troubling frame of mind.

I mean, the idea that the White House can pivot to jobs for a day or two and then abandon it for a few weeks or months and then pivot back again for a couple of days epitomizes the attitude that turns people off from politics. It is the notion that job creation is somehow more about scoring points at convenient moments than doing what is necessary to get Americans back to work. This is the kind of thing that angers folks in Kentucky and across the country, but it seems to be the only thing this administration and its allies in Congress are ever interested in because here is the thing. Not only should we be focused on jobs day in and day out around here, as Senate Republicans have been all along, but it is also not as though we don't know what is needed to get our economy back on track. It is not as though we don't know how to get the private sector moving again and creating jobs.

We don't need to pivot. We need to do the things that have been staring us in the face for the past 4 1/2 years. If Washington Democrats are serious about turning the economy around, they would be working collaboratively with Republicans to do that instead of sitting on the sidelines and waiting to take cues from the endless political road shows the President puts up whenever he feels like changing a topic.

I mean, there are some pretty obvious things we should be spending our time on around here--things such as implementing a revenue-neutral reform of our Tax Code to make it fairer, flatter, and more conducive to the kind of economic growth that can generate the type of stable middle-class jobs we desperately need, things such as reimagining a regulatory state that was designed in the 20th century so that American companies and workers can remain competitive in the 21st. The regulatory state we have now is entirely geared toward the past, not the present and the future--things such as developing and refining more energy right here at home, instead of importing it from overseas.

But Washington Democrats haven't worked with us to do almost any of that. Instead, they have mostly given us higher taxes, an endless stream of regulations, and an unwillingness to pursue commonsense energy projects that could put more Americans to work right now.

They have given us a stimulus that ballooned the debt, maddeningly complex regulations that failed to solve too big to fail, and made bailouts the official law of the land. And they gave us a 2,700-page health care law that almost no one read, with a tower of at least 20,000 pages of accompanying regulations and redtape that almost no one can understand.

It is no wonder so many Americans remain out of work, with 54 months of unemployment at or above 7.5 percent. In Kentucky, the rate is, regrettably, even higher.

Meanwhile, Washington Democrats have been pivoting back and forth, back and forth. In fact, they pivot so much these days that they often don't seem to know what to do with themselves when there is an actual policy issue to be solved--an issue where you would assume many Republicans and Democrats would normally agree. Take the student loan issue. Right now the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds is about 13.5 percent.

For teens it is even worse--about 24 percent. The youth of our country are struggling. Yet, with that backdrop, Senate Democrats still continue to fight with each other over the student loan bill 23 days after the deadline they themselves warned us about.

Congressional Republicans and President Obama have actually been more or less on the same page on this issue from the very start. We have agreed on the need to pursue permanent reform for all students, not just a short-term political fix for some of them. Still, Senate Democrats persisted with show votes on a bill that always seemed more about politics than policy--wasting precious time. Then, with the July 1 deadline blowing past, they started bickering among themselves about the way forward and continue to do so, apparently, even now. They need to stop. Democrats need to finally allow the bipartisan student loan reform proposal to come to a vote this week so we can pass it and ensure there is one less Washington-created problem for young people to worry about in this economy because it is tough enough out there for them already.

The Obama economy has not been kind to the youth of our Nation. I hope the White House and Senate Democrats will help us change that because this persistently high unemployment is simply not acceptable, and neither is pretending it can be changed by simply executing another pivot or delivering another campaign-style speech or just spending more taxpayer money because Washington Democrats have tried all that before, over and over, and, in fact, it is just not working.

I yield the floor.

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