Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to join my colleagues in taking a step back from the partisan bills on the floor this week to talk about the ways we should be able to work together to grow the economy and help our working families.

Democrats have an economic theory that we are pretty confident about. We believe that real, long-term economic growth is built from the middle out, not from the top down. We believe that government does have a role to play in investing in our working families and making sure they have the opportunity to work hard and succeed, offering a hand up to those who want to climb the economic ladder and provide a better life for themselves and their families. We believe our government and our economy should be working for all families, not just the wealthiest few.

Thankfully we have had the opportunity to put some policies in place over the past few years that have pulled our economy back from the brink and have started moving it in the right direction. We are not there yet, but across the country businesses have added almost 12 million new jobs. We have had over 59 straight months of job growth, including almost 1 million manufacturing jobs. The unemployment rate is now under 6 percent. Health care costs are growing at their lowest rate in almost 50 years, while millions more families now have access to affordable coverage. The Federal budget deficit has been reduced by over two-thirds since President Obama took office.

Although many Republicans seem to keep threatening to bring us back, we have been able to move away from the constant tea party-driven crises and uncertainty that were really destroying jobs and holding back our economy.

We are headed in a good direction. I am proud of the policies that we fought for that helped us to get here, but we do have a whole lot more to do.

The economy has changed over the past few decades, and our Tax Code has not kept up. Working families have seen their incomes stagnate while the cost of living, health care, and education has continued to go up. More and more families have two workers in the workforce, which is a good thing for so many women but brings additional expenses, such as childcare and transportation and the increased marginal tax rate paid by the second worker in the family. That is why I am very proud to introduce two middle-class tax cut bills today that will put money in the pockets of working families and update our Tax Code for the 21st-century economy.

My 21st Century Worker Tax Cut Act would create a new 10-percent credit on up to $10,000 of the income of the second earner in a family. In other words, qualifying working families can reduce their income taxes by up to $1,000, which can go a long way toward offsetting some of the additional costs these families bear as they go back to work. That tax cut rewards families for more work, and it would especially help women who want to rejoin the workforce today.

The second bill I am introducing today is the Helping Working Families Afford Child Care Act. This bill will update and reform the outdated child independent tax credit to help more working families. It would increase the tax credit to keep up with the rising costs of quality childcare and would make sure that the credit actually keeps up with the times by indexing it to inflation.

I am very proud to introduce these two bills today, but I am even more proud that my bills are just two of the bills Democrats are introducing today that will help working families by putting more money in their pockets and helping them access more opportunity. My colleagues are going to be talking about the bills they wrote, but our package of bills also includes, besides what I just talked about, an earned-income and childcare tax credit expansion and expansion of the American opportunity tax credit to help middle-class families afford childcare so they can get back on the job and help them pay for college so they can work hard and invest in themselves and their careers.

We know Republicans like to talk about cutting taxes. Well, with these bills we are giving everyone a chance to do exactly that--and not with more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. Republicans have given that trickle-down theory a try, and it failed. Our approach is tax cuts for the middle class, for the workers who need it the most, to help them afford the costs they are faced with, such as childcare, putting food on the table, getting back on the job, and to give them the opportunity to work hard and succeed.

We want to grow the economy from the middle out, not the top down, and we think these middle-class tax cut bills are a very strong step in the right direction. We hope Republicans will join us to get these done.

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