Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, our Republican colleagues have been saying for maybe 100 years that if we don't regulate and have fair, good rules for health and safety and financial markets and in other areas of our economy, and if we don't tax people, the wealthy and corporations, then our economy will take off. They have been saying this for years. They didn't just start saying it with Bush or Reagan. They were saying it back in the thirties.

Thank God the American people did not listen to them, because it was in the thirties that we put up the SEC, we put regulations on banks, and we put other sorts of health, safety, and commonsense regulations in place. Because of that, between 1948 and about 1975, we had an expanding economy. Sometimes tax rates were way higher than they are now.

They are wrong. They don't know economic history, and so they continue to repeat Herbert Hoover-type myths that were dispelled decades ago. Oh, but they came back and they deregulated the economy in the late 1990s, and then in the early 2000s they cut taxes on the wealthy, and we have had a dismal jobs economy since that time.

The Better Off Budget is here to present a better alternative that involves investment in our Nation's economy to put Americans back to work. The Better Off Budget puts 8.8 million Americans back to work by doing something that everyone--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--agrees that everyone needs: we invest in infrastructure. We put $820 billion into fixing our roads, our bridges, and our smart grids, into our transit systems and our wastewater treatment systems. We invest in our Nation's infrastructure.

Just like under the great Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, as we invest in infrastructure, we put people to work building it, and we make our economy more productive as we use it. This is exactly what this version of Republicans--my goodness--doesn't understand, that you have got to invest in the economy in order to reap benefits from the economy.

The Better Off Budget puts 8.8 million people back to work. The Ryan budget puts 3 million people out of work. Vote ``yes'' on the Better Off Budget today.

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