Madam President, my friend the Republican leader--and I will talk in more detail in a few minutes--is complaining about a tax of one-half of 1 percent--one-half of 1 percent on people who make more than $1 million a year to pay for a…
Madam President, my friend the Republican leader--and I will talk in more detail in a few minutes--is complaining about a tax of one-half of 1 percent--one-half of 1 percent on people who make more than $1 million a year to pay for a program that would stop teachers from being laid off and rehire some of the teachers who have been laid off.
The massive layoffs we have had in America today of course are rooted in the last administration. It is very clear that private sector jobs have been doing fine. It is the public sector jobs where we have lost huge numbers. That is what this legislation is all about. It is unfortunate my friend the Republican leader is complaining about that.
I would also note that my friend said the House passed another bill. Well, they pass lots of bills, but they rarely go anyplace. A report led by Henry Waxman of California, long-time Member of the House, indicated last week that the House has voted 168 times to roll back regulations on clean air, clean water. These safeguards are important to have a healthier America. But the Republican response has been cutting back environmental and health safeguards, I guess hoping that a sicker, more polluted country is a better place to create jobs. It is not.
I am going to talk a little bit today about the legislation that I moved to on Monday dealing with, as I have indicated, maintaining jobs for teachers, firefighters, and police officers. Seventy-five percent of Americans support this legislation. This is not a poll that some Democratic pollster did, it is a CNN-Gallup poll.
This week, my Republican colleagues have rallied against teachers and first responders. That is our latest proposal, to create hundreds of thousands of American jobs and save other jobs. Republicans point to a similar program with a proven track record keeping 422,000 teachers in the classroom. That is important. They are using this as evidence that our programs are a failure.
I know the American Recovery Act saved Nevada from going into bankruptcy. The money we got there, hundreds of millions of dollars, allowed the Governor, a Republican Governor, to save Medicaid. Money is fungible. It saved teachers. It saved a lot of programs in Nevada.
So I say again, they call Democratic legislation--my Republican colleagues, my friend the Republican leader--legislation that created hundreds of thousands of jobs a failure. That is because they are using a different benchmark for success than we are.
Democrats' No. 1 priority is to create jobs. There are 14 million Americans out of work today. So to us, putting hundreds of thousands of people back to work teaching children, having more police patrolling our streets, firefighters fighting our fires, doing the rescue work they do so well, is our priority.
It seems that the No. 1 priority of my Republican colleagues is to defeat President Obama. Their strategy is to keep the economy weak as long as possible, so they oppose legislation with a solid record of creating jobs. Never mind that Republicans have yet to propose a single idea on their own--a single idea--to get 14 million people working again. Never mind that in the past they have supported every one of the job-creating measures we have proposed. We have a bill that was defeated, so we have taken pieces of that legislation, and virtually every piece of that legislation Republicans, in the past, have supported.
It appears that Republicans suit up every day and come to work with the sole purpose of defeating President Obama instead of suiting up with the sole purpose of creating jobs. And they oppose the policies that will turn our economy around for one reason and one reason only: politics and defeating President Obama.
The famous author Gore Vidal once said: ``It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.'' It seems this is the Republican motto this Congress. To me and to most Americans, putting politics ahead of this country's economic future is so far outside of the mainstream, it is barely on the map. That is where the Republicans have headed.
Republicans have been candid about their goal this Congress. My friend the minority leader said:
The single most important thing we want to achieve is for
President Obama to be a one-term President.
Defeating job-creating legislation, defeating the economy, and defeating the President--that is how Senate Republicans measure success. But it is not how Republicans in the rest of the country measure success. The rest of America doesn't share those out-of-touch values. Like Democrats, the rest of the country believes there are some things more important than politics, even in an election year. Creating jobs is that most important thing.
To Democrats and the vast majority of Americans, there is no goal more important than getting our economy humming once again. That is why Americans overwhelmingly support our plan to retain or rehire more than 400,000 teachers and put more cops and firefighters back doing the things they do to keep our communities safe.
In Nevada, this legislation will provide an additional $260 million to keep teachers in the classroom and maintain class size. It will support 3,600 jobs in my State and pump much needed money back into the economy.
Seventy-five percent of Americans believe we should help State and local governments put teachers, police, and firefighters back to work, and 76 percent of Americans agree that the wealthiest people in this country should help get our economy back on track. I repeat, three out of four Americans--actually, it is a little more than that: 76 percent--including two-thirds of Republicans, support the Democrats' Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act.
Republicans in Congress aren't just out of touch with America, they are out of touch with other Republicans. Fifty-four percent of Republicans support the Democrats' plan to create jobs building roads, bridges and schools. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans support our plan to extend the payroll tax for American workers and businesses. Sixty-three percent of Republicans support our plan to put teachers in the classroom and police officers on the beat. Fifty-six percent of Republicans even support our proposal to ask millionaires and billionaires to contribute their fair share--one-half of 1 percent--to pull our Nation out of this terrible recession.
The trend is clear: Americans overwhelmingly support the Democrats' plan to create jobs, even with Republicans supporting our ideas by a wide margin. Yet my friend the Republican leader said this yesterday on the Senate floor:
There's a growing bipartisan opposition to trying the same
failed policies again. And there's bipartisan opposition to
raising taxes, especially at a time when 14 million Americans
are out of work.
Well, I say to my friend the Republican leader, you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. There is not bipartisan opposition to legislation that will create and save jobs for teachers and first responders. On the contrary, there is bipartisan support for the legislation. I have just gone over those numbers. Republicans, like the rest of Americans, do not oppose our proposal to ask millionaires to contribute their fair share. On the contrary, they support that proposal--a one-half of 1 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million a year. It is only in Congress that Republicans oppose job- creating legislation and fair tax policy for the sake of politics.
In the rest of the country, Republicans, like other Americans, are focused on where their next paycheck will come from and how they will make their mortgage payment. Like Democrats, they are tired of Republicans in Congress rooting for the economy to fail instead of working with us to secure our economic future.