Floor Statements

Later today, something stunning is going to happen that will catch many Americans by surprise. The so-called Postmaster General is going to announce details that will lead to the end of the United States Postal Service and universal postal delivery in this country.

This is an incredible blow to our economy. You're talking about closing processing centers. Let me just be specific. In my area, they're talking about closing the Eugene/Springfield processing center. It means if I mail a letter from Springfield to Eugene, 6, 7 miles away, it will be carried by truck to Portland, Oregon, and then sorted there and then trucked back down sometime that week.

They're saying they will no longer guarantee 1-day or 2-day delivery on first-class mail. They're going to move to a guarantee of sometime. If you mail it on Wednesday it will be a minimum of three days till-- oops, wait--we don't have Saturday delivery anymore under this plan. So, actually, you mail a letter on Wednesday or a bill on Wednesday, it won't get there until the next Monday.

They will drive more people to use the services that have cut into their revenues. But some people don't have that option, and some things are essential to commerce in this country. There are many, many businesses that will be affected by these delays, and in addition to the delays of prescription drugs or Netflix, mailing DVDs, or, you know, people buying things on eBay, Amazon.com--these things will flood over to UPS and to FedEx and further undermine their revenues.

This guy, this so-called Postmaster General, should be fired because of a lack of any imagination or initiative in proposing the death knell for the great United States Postal Service. With 100,000 people laid off, oh, that's just what we need in America today. Let's lay off 100,000 people. Great idea.

And then he's going to close local post offices. Let's talk about little Tiller, Oregon, in my district, 16 miles on a winding road subject to heavy rain, subject to black ice and snow in the wintertime to the next town, a generally elderly population and generally not very affluent.

These sorts of closures, which will save minuscule amounts of money for the post office, are going to be death knell blows to small rural communities across America.

Now, weekly periodicals: Get today's news next week, sometime. Yep, that's right, 7 to 9 days for your weekly periodicals. That's going to do a great thing for the remaining periodical industry. That's really, really special and, again, driving people to look for alternatives that will further undermine their revenues.

I don't think there could be a more shortsighted proposal. Now, there's plenty of blame to go around because this Congress has failed to act. The Postal Service overpaid $7 billion into a Federal retirement account, but the Republicans are refusing to give the money back to the post office.

They'd rather lay off 100,000 people. They think somehow the private sector will take this over. Tell me, who in the private sector is going to deliver a letter for 45 cents to a small rural community 40 miles from the nearest or 100 miles from the nearest sorting facility? That's not going to happen. These people will be deprived of any meaningful service.

There are other critical reforms that could be undertaken short of dismantling, killing the United States Postal Service. If these proposals go forward and if this Congress continues to fail to act, and this guy gets to continue to put in place his dyspeptic vision of a future for the Postal Service--and the White House continues to be totally silent, absent from this debate, as they are so many--we will no longer have a United States Postal Service in this country.

That would be an incredible blow to our economy, to our future, and to the prestige of the United States of America. I guess we'll become the first developed nation on Earth without a postal service, just like we're the only developed industrial nation on Earth without universal health care.

We're the best.

I agree, let's do something meaningful to put America back to work. Let's put millions to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

The Speaker promised us we'd do that this month, the Republicans would bring a surface transportation bill to the House, and they said no, can't figure out how to pay for it. It's more important to continue tax cuts for the rich.

Now, with millions unemployed, can't find jobs, the Republicans want to jerk their lifeline. They want to kill off extended unemployment benefits. To do what? Preserve tax cuts for the rich, the job creators. Ah, they're doing a heck of a job creating jobs, aren't they?

This is the discredited theory of trickle-down economics. America's unemployed are being trickled on, and it stinks.

I thank the gentleman, and I particularly want to thank Mr. Goodlatte for his extraordinary leadership on this issue. We both supported a virtually identical amendment in 1995.

Now, when I first came to Congress, I did not support a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I said things similar to my good friend and colleague Mr. Neal from Massachusetts: It's a gimmick. We don't need it. People will come together. We can make these decisions.

It didn't take me long in observing the Congress to realize that there's an infinite capacity in this Congress to kick the can down the road. And the problem is that can's getting pretty darn heavy to kick down the road, and it's going to land on the next generation with full force--$15 trillion of debt. For the first time since World War II, this year our deficit exceeds the gross domestic product.

Now, we're going to have to force people to make tough decisions. That's a conclusion I came to when I changed and I supported the amendment back in the mid-nineties.

Now, just think about it. It passed the House, failed by one vote in the Senate. And had that become the law of the land, today we would be paying down the last of the debt. We might still be in this hole economically that we're in, but we would actually then perhaps have the capacity and the will to go out and borrow a couple of hundred billion dollars to rebuild the Nation's crumbling infrastructure. We could afford it. But in this environment with this amount of debt, that's a very tough sell around here.

This is an honest balanced budget amendment. It does not prejudice the debate between taxes--and there are many on that side who object to any new taxes or revenue--and spending cuts--and there are many on my side who object to many spending cuts. It does not discriminate. It's fair. It's evenhanded.

There were many on the Republican side who preferred one that would have tied the hands of Congress, said, No, you need a 66 percent vote to have taxes; no, you have to be limited to 18 percent of GDP. But, no, they brought forward something that is fair, and it would be something that would force Members of Congress and future Members of Congress to make the tough decisions that we have to make.

A lot of talk about Social Security. I'm an expert on Social Security. Social Security is the largest creditor of the United States of America, $2.66 trillion. We have to have the capability to redeem that debt to pay future Social Security benefits in the not-distant future when we have to draw on what's called a trust fund. It's not a trust fund. It's government bonds. It's debt. And if we keep adding to the pile of debt, will we have the capability to repay those Social Security bonds?

And there's a long-term problem with Social Security. I have a bill to fix that. Lift the cap on wages. I didn't notice that--many on my side have been down here carrying on about the attack on Social Security in this bill; they're not on my bill. Because that's a tough thing to say, we're going to make people over 250 pay the same amount of tax as people who earn less than 250.

That's a solution long term. But short term we've got to worry about being able to redeem those bonds and pay promised benefits of Social Security.

And then a lot of talk about the debt limit. Well, when we're in balance, you're going to have to have a 60 percent vote to deficit spend, and you would need a 60 percent vote for an increase on the debt limit. I would say that they could be done at exactly the same time. It requires the same number of votes. Is someone going to vote today to say we're in balance, to vote in deficit to deal with the economic situation today, perhaps to fund infrastructure investments, and then vote later on today against raising the debt limit by that same amount? That would just vitiate their earlier vote. So I don't think that that's a real threat.

If you vote ``no,'' you're assuming that we have an infinite capacity to borrow money to pass on to future generations and still meet our obligations to the American people. I don't believe that. We need limits. We need to be forced to make tough decisions, and this would force future Congresses to make those tough decisions.

Eight days until the so-called supercommittee is to report. They're limping toward failure; although perhaps now they've found the way Washington always loves to do things--let's kick the can down the road. Let's pretend we did it. Let's say we'll adopt some future tax measures in the next 12 months that will get us to their rather modest goal of $1.2 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years. I tell you what, the do-nothing option is starting to look a lot better. Now, that's something that Congress is really good at doing-- nothing.

So what happens if we do nothing? Well, first you get the sequestration. There's much gnashing of teeth about that. But Congress will have discretion

within accounts, within the Defense Department and elsewhere to find those cuts, which would be relatively modest over a 10-year period. But then the better thing with the do-nothing option is if Congress really, really can do nothing and continues to do nothing for the rest of this session, then all the Bush tax cuts go away and that means $4 trillion of additional revenues with a little bit of shared sacrifice. It hits the people at the top mostly, takes them back to the Clinton-era rates of taxes. That's without closing tax loops and going through all that. Just let the Bush tax cuts expire; that would take care of 40 percent of the deficit problem over the next 10 years. Add in the sequestration from the failure of the committee another 1.2, plus the 1.3 we passed last summer, suddenly we're up to 67-70 percent of the projected deficit. That's pretty much what we need to do around here. And you can do it in an honest way, which is with revenues and spending reductions. That's how we balanced the budget in the 1990s. You can't do it all with just stopping cuts. Stop pretending that that'll work. It won't work.

Now, there'll be much gnashing of teeth, particularly on Wall Street, about oh, Congress can't get things done, and we're worried. And the crooks are the unindicted co-conspirators at the ratings agencies. The same people who rated designed-to-fail mortgage collateralized debt obligations as AAA-plus investments are now concerned about the government of the United States and how it conducts itself in its honesty and dealing with these difficult problems. Well, you know, maybe they should take a look at the do-nothing option, too. If they're really concerned about debt reduction, the do-nothing option is the best.

And then finally this week, Congress will have a chance to vote on a balanced budget amendment, the same one that passed in 1995. Let's think of what the world would look like today if the one that passed the House in 1995 had become the law of the land. We wouldn't have had 10 years of Bush tax cuts at a cost of $5 trillion of new debt and no jobs. We wouldn't have had the wars fought on the credit card. We would have had to vote every year because we didn't declare war, and under this balanced budget amendment if you don't declare war and you have an overseas emergency, you have to vote every year on the spending. Maybe we wouldn't have spent those many hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars.

And, finally, the prescription drug benefit designed to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry with borrowed money and that gives seniors a donut hole, we wouldn't have had that either.

Now, I have liberal friends over here who say: Oh, we can't have a balanced budget amendment. That would be horrible. Well, just think, if those things hadn't happened and we didn't have $14 trillion of debt today, wouldn't we be in a place to make the investments we need to put America back to work and not burdening our kids with a mountain of debt? Think about it. A balanced budget amendment works both ways. This one's honest. It doesn't say supermajority for taxes. It doesn't say supermajority for cuts. It says you figure it out. You were elected, you figure it out. And do it in a way that both builds a country with a sustainable economy and gives us a financial future that isn't a huge burden to our kids.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am in its current form.

Mr. Speaker, I asked to have the reading suspended because I want to expedite things.

I listened to the debate over the previous motion to reconsider. I'd just like to address a couple of points in advance.

This will not delay the bill. In fact, if we adopt this motion by voice vote, we can move directly on to passage of the legislation, which I believe enjoys broad bipartisan support.

Now, I know we all have tremendous pride of authorship in legislation we write or we move to the floor, and that's to be understood, but sometimes bills are not quite perfect. And I would look at this amendment, which narrows the scope of the bill, that is, it says basically that we're opening up a new way for small business and other undertakings to offer a share of stock in their business to the public in order to raise capital and grow and employ folks. That's great, and I think everybody here supports that. However, I think that we should adopt one minor restriction to that, one that would narrow the scope of the bill, and it's quite simple. It just says that these new rules apply to everyone, except for persons who have been convicted of fraud in connection with a financial transaction, including predatory lending to a veteran.

Now, it seems to me that there should be unanimous support for that. We want to open up this new vehicle for small businesses and others to gain investors, but we certainly don't want to open it up to people convicted of fraud in connection with a financial transaction or predatory lending to a veteran.

In fact, I'd just sort of poll the House here and ask: Does anybody think that we should allow those who were convicted of fraud or predatory lending be allowed to engage in this? If so, raise your hand.

Okay. I don't see anyone raising their hand, so I would hope that we can move along very quickly to this amendment and adopt it by voice vote. It is narrowing the scope, it's a commonsense amendment, and it just addresses the potential for abuse for those who have a proven record of fraud due to conviction.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership on this issue over almost a couple of decades. It's been a long struggle. I hope the time is here.

I was one of 73 Democrats in 1995 to support a balanced budget amendment which was basically silent on the issue of whether we would get there with additional revenues and reforms that would raise revenues, or with spending cuts, or a combination of both. Ultimately, in the nineties, by a combination of revenue increases and reforms and spending cuts, we did reach a balance in the year 2000, and actually paid down debt. And had we passed that amendment in 1995, we wouldn't be looking at a $14-plus trillion mountain of debt today.

As the gentleman before me spoke, that's not the legacy that I want to leave to our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, given the magnitude of that debt. We have a responsibility to act, and anyone who is observing Washington these days can see that it's hard, it's really hard for Congress to come together and decide on issues that are extraordinarily important to our Nation.

We really need a little bit of forced discipline, I would say; and that's the way I look at a balanced budget amendment, that H.J. Res. 2 would force us over a relatively short period of time to make very difficult decisions on, yes, the potential for revenue increases or spending cuts with virtually everything on the table to get to a mandatory balance of the budget within a short period of time.

Then to begin to pay down the debt, which will take, if we aren't running surpluses and we merely balance the budget into the future, including our payments of interest and principal on the debt, it will be some 30 years before our country could be debt free.

But that would at least be a point in time in which we knew that our grandkids and others to follow would not be inheriting that debt.

So I'm very hopeful that when we have a vote some time, I understand, perhaps in the next month, that we have an opportunity to bring up what I believe is the version of the balanced budget amendment, most likely to be able to engender a majority as it did in 1995, and that would be H.J. Res. 2.

With that, I thank the gentleman for the time, and I look forward to continuing to work with his leadership on this issue.

Madam Chair, in December 2008 an impoundment holding disposed ash waste generated by the Tennessee Valley Authority broke open, creating a massive spill in Kingston, TN. The spill covered the surrounding land and Clinch River with one billion gallons of coal fly ash, displaced residents, and resulted in $1.2 billion in cleanup costs.

The accident underscored the need for rules to ensure structural stability and safety of coal ash impoundments.

In response, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first- ever regulations to ensure the safe disposal and management of coal ash from coal-fired power plants under the nation's primary law for regulating solid waste, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,

The United States of America has failed trade policies. They are unlike any other in the world. And I guess the question before this body today should be: Will these trade policies create jobs? The answer is yes. Will they create jobs in America? The answer is no.

Like all the other free trade agreements we've entered into, these are designed to benefit multinational companies seeking cheap labor and fewer restrictions in terms of the environment and labor protections and other things overseas. That's what these are about. They're also about transshipment of goods with the low content requirement in Korea. Yeah, goods will be cheaper. Made in China, maybe made by slave labor in North Korea, those will be really cheap.

American consumers who don't have jobs will benefit from this. No, American consumers would benefit a heck of a lot more if their neighbors had jobs, if they had jobs and if our kids had a future. Passing more of these free trade agreements, which has led to this sea of red ink, isn't going to fix the problem.

Directly before us now is Panama. Now, Panama has a very interesting economy, mostly bolstered by being a tax haven and money laundering center. Now, the agreement that we're voting on doesn't prohibit that, but there's a separate agreement entered into by the administration that will go into effect a year from now. It doesn't require an automatic exchange of tax information between the U.S. and Panama, unlike other countries where we have these sorts of agreements. We must know what we want and submit detailed information to Panama, and Panama might or might not honor that request; i.e., we submit a request for drug money laundering. They say, ``You have to be more specific.''

``Name the drug money people's deposits.''

``Well, we can't do that.''

``All right. Forget about it.''

We can name them. Good. But then Panama says they won't give us the information if it is contradictory to their public policy; i.e., the way they make a living, by being the largest Western Hemisphere haven for the laundering of drug money, as a tax haven, and also terrorist money in recent cases. We're going to facilitate that with this agreement.

Somehow, a country with 3.5 million people, about the same size as my State but a much lower income per capita, has 400,000 corporations domiciled there, almost one for every Panamanian.

No, these aren't really domiciled there. They're very conveniently avoiding our laws and the laws of other advanced nations around the world.

As I said yesterday on Colombia, the noted economist Joseph Stiglitz says that our agriculture--yes, we'll get a few agriculture jobs--will displace traditional agriculture in Colombia, causing huge disruptions in that country, driving people to produce more coca. But don't worry. Right next door, the Colombian drug lords will be able to deposit their money and not have to worry about the U.S. finding out about it--right next door in Panama. How convenient.

This is really a great series of trade agreements.

My friend who preceded me talked about the reduction in tariff exports. Well, guess what? That will be blown away if they manipulate their currency, and Korea is one of only three nations on Earth identified as a currency manipulator by our own U.S. Treasury. Does this agreement preclude currency manipulation? No, it does not.

Secondly, they rebate their national taxes, a Value Added Tax, to all their exports. Build a car in Korea, you don't have to pay taxes in Korea. Guess what? Build a car in the U.S., we can't rebate the taxes under these crummy trade laws we've bound ourselves to, and when the U.S. car gets to the border of Korea, they have to pay a 10 percent tax. So we're going to be able to export autos to Korea if they're 20 percent cheaper than those produced by cheaper labor in Korea. Not very likely, but let's say we could do that. Then there are a couple of other problems.

If you buy a U.S. car and if you're a Korean citizen, they will audit your taxes. Most employers do not allow the owners of foreign automobiles, which are mostly luxury automobiles over there--there are very few foreign automobiles--to have parking spaces at work. Also, Korea does not buy very many cars. They have a 65 percent mix: 65 percent of the cars they produce are exported.

This is not about U.S. exports to Korea. Once again, it's a platform for them to say to us stop here--it's cheaper--and displace American jobs.

Even the U.S. International Trade Council, the wildest cheerleader in the

world for all of these failed agreements, says we're going to have a bigger deficit in autos. These are the same people who said we were going to have huge trade surpluses with Mexico. Whoops, got it wrong. They can't even mess around with this and pretend we're going to benefit from this--$300 million, they say, of additional auto exports to Korea and $1.7 billion of more auto exports from Korea to the U.S. That's what the cheerleader is saying. Imagine what the real numbers are going to be like.

We're talking about 160,000 to 200,000 U.S. jobs. Kiss the remainder of the auto industry and auto parts goodbye with this agreement.

Well, at last, it's been a long year. The House this week is finally getting around to considering legislation to create jobs. You have got to admit, their objective, and the dream of Grover Norquist, of delivering a government so small that you can drown it in a bathtub has kind of a depressive effect on investment in the economy.

Cutting investment in education has lost jobs; it hasn't created jobs. Cutting investment in infrastructure--28 percent unemployment in construction, allied trades, small businesses that provide the work and the equipment, which are all private sector jobs--is not too good. So their pursuit of these goals so far this year has had a bit of a depressive and negative effect on the economy.

But to congratulate the Republican leaders, finally they've turned to creating jobs this week. Three trade agreements. Now, these are kind of musty, dusty trade agreements. They were negotiated by the Bush administration. Unfortunately, they have been adopted by the Obama administration. Nothing ever changes down at the Trade Representative's office. It doesn't matter who's in charge--Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama. People in the Trade Office push the same policies. So these are job-creating trade agreements. Congratulations. We're building upon the success of the past. NAFTA, great success. The WTO, great success. Job creation. Phenomenal job creation. The only problem is the jobs are being created in foreign nations because of our failed trade policies in this country. We are hemorrhaging jobs.

This is the record over a decade:

We lost 15 factories a day--15. Now, some of them were kind of small, local small businesses, but Republicans love to talk about their advocacy for small business. Fifteen a day for 10 years, that's our current trade policy. So what else? Well, that figures out to about 1,370 manufacturing jobs a day over the last decade.

So, learning from past experience, we are now going to do exactly the same thing yet again. We are going to adopt--I can predict the future. The Republicans will all vote for it and a substantial number of my colleagues, a minority of Democrats, but they'll sign on too, to this false promise of job creation under the guise of free trade.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, for starters, the Korea Free Trade Agreement will cost us 160,000 jobs. Bye-bye to the last vestiges of the auto parts industry. They have little provisions, like 35 percent Korean content requirement, which means they can source all their stuff from China, or maybe even better, North Korea, where they use slave labor. It will be really cheap. And we're going to ask our workers to compete with that. There goes another industry.

Now, Colombia and Panama. Well, EPI estimates they're kind of dinky economies. That will only lose us about 55,000 jobs to start. So, for starters, we're creating a quarter of a million jobs overseas with more failed trade policies.

There are other minor problems. Colombia: they kill labor organizers. But, hey, they promised they won't do that anymore.

Panama: a huge haven for drug smugglers, terrorist money, and others. They launder money, but they promised the Obama administration, even though Bush said they could keep doing it, they promised the Obama administration they won't do it. They will no longer allow people to secret ill-gotten gains in Panama unless it's in their national interest. That's a little bit of a loophole.

So these are a great deal for the American people. How's that? I don't know. Because the special Trade Representative's office, unfortunately, rather meekly and quietly, the President, and the Republican leadership say these are a good deal for the American people because, yes, they will benefit Wall Street and a few multinational corporations. They'll just cost another quarter of a million Americans their jobs.

It's time to put an end to this craziness. I can hope--but it won't happen--that we can stop these trade agreements here this week on the floor and look for a new trade policy, a trade policy that creates and brings jobs home to the United States of America. I thought that's who we were here to represent.

This is momentous. We're finally talking about jobs on the floor of the House of Representatives. And the United States of America is

number one. Let's have a little enthusiasm. We're number one. We're number one, and we want to make certain that we continue that status.

What are we number one in? We are number one in exporting jobs to foreign lands over the last 20 years. Every day we lose 1,370 manufacturing jobs because of our failed trade policies. And guess what? These agreements are duplicates of all failed past trade agreements.

Now, the chairman of the committee says we're going to have lengthy debate, and we will dispel misinformation. Well, the first misinformation is that we're having any lengthy debate here on the floor of the House; 4\1/2\ hours for three trade agreements, 270 minutes, boy, a lot of time. Not exactly like we're burning the midnight oil around here, or even working 5 days a week. Couldn't we have a little more time?

Fast Track would have allowed for 20 hours on each of the two Fast Track agreements and who knows what? So that would have been 40 hours. No, we're going to have 165 minutes by the proponents to dispel the misinformation, and 105 by those of us who are opposed to these job- killing trade agreements. That's fair, 165 on their side and 105 on our side because our arguments are honest, and theirs aren't. But that's the way things break around here. That is lengthy debate.

Let's talk for a minute about Colombia. You know, in Colombia, the average income is $3,200. Think of all the U.S. manufactured goods those Colombians are going to buy with $3,200 of income. Whoa, thousands of Americans go to work.

Does that remind you of the myth about NAFTA?

No, this is about yet one more platform to get and access abused labor, unorganized labor under Colombian law to send goods back to the United States of America.

I thank the gentleman.

And then there's the issue of, yes, we will get some more agriculture exports, insignificant to our industry, won't employ any Americans, may employ some more people who are in this country to harvest the crops.

But it will cut dramatically into the principal form of employment in Colombia. There'll be a 75 percent drop potentially in rural employment in Colombia. And where will they turn?

The noted economist Joseph Stiglitz says they will turn from traditional farming and farming for their own economy to growing coca. So not only are we going to facilitate the collapse of their agricultural economy, like we did in Mexico; we're going to facilitate the drug lords with this crummy agreement.

Mr. Speaker, ten years ago today the United States pursued the perpetrators of 9/11 into the mountains of Afghanistan. Our original mission--which I supported--was to bring justice to members of al Qaeda who planned and executed one of the largest mass murders in history and the Taliban who enabled al Qaeda.

Members of the U.S. military have done everything that has been asked of them. They have fought heroically, and have selflessly served their country.

But, thanks to strategic and diplomatic missteps, a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq that distracted the U.S. from accomplishing our original mission, and the pursuit of failed policies, we have lost our way in Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan has cost the United States greatly in lives and taxpayer dollars. We have lost more than 1,700 American troops in Afghanistan, with this past August being the deadliest month. Tens of thousands of Americans have been injured, maimed or made permanently disabled. Meanwhile, we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars trying to sustain an unsustainable war. To date, the U.S. has spent $454 billion--nearly half a trillion dollars--in Afghanistan.

As we make drastic cuts in infrastructure, education, social services, and federal programs here at home, we are spending tens of billions of dollars per year to build critical infrastructure in Afghanistan, investing in roads and bridges in Afghanistan, and training Afghan troops and law enforcement officers.

That's wrong. We should use that money to hire teachers here at home, modernize our schools, repave our crumbling roads, rebuild our failing bridges, put sheriffs back on the roads and police back on the street.

It is long past time to bring this ten year war--the longest in the history of the United States--to a responsible end. I will continue to do everything I can in Congress to bring our troops home and to reinvest scarce federal resources in rebuilding our own country, rather than nation building in a failed state half a world away.

Three years ago, after a decade of deregulation, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which was the deregulation of derivatives, Wall Street--the ``job creators''--gambled our economy into oblivion, but they never paid the price.

Remember George Bush and Hank Paulson, who was the Secretary of the Treasury? Well, he was kind of a stand-in, because, actually, he was the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, pretending to be Secretary of the Treasury. He took care of his buddies on Wall Street, but he was aided and abetted by none other than Tim Geithner, the chairman of the New York Fed. In fact, in one of the most outrageous moments of this whole scenario, Tim Geithner, now Secretary of the Treasury--although he wasn't chairman of Goldman Sachs, but it's probably in his future-- decided to pay off the gamblers 100 cents on the dollar when the government had to do the biggest bailout in history of AIG. Now, that was incredible--100 cents on the dollar.

At the time, I proposed that, in fact, Wall Street should pay for its own bailout--that is, a tax on speculators and reinstituting a tax we had from 1916 to 1966 while we built the greatest industrial Nation on Earth. It didn't hurt investment in capitalism then. It wouldn't hurt it now. In fact, if we reined in some of the speculators, our real economy would be better off for it.

But now there's sort of been this amazing political jujitsu where somehow the Republicans, aided by the Koch Brothers, who have also subsidized the Tea Party, have changed the narrative. It was the government. It was overregulation. Overregulation? Oh, come on, guys. There were no rules. They gambled our economy into oblivion. You cannot pretend that this wasn't wild and reckless, but you've changed the narrative. You took over the House.

Now, this fall, something is happening. Something in this land is happening. I call it the American awakening--the occupation of Wall Street, which is now spreading to other cities across this country.

They make fun of these young people because they are not totally focused on what they want, but what's happened is their future has been stolen from them. I saw some Fox commentators yesterday morning making fun of them saying, Oh, do you think they got time off from work? Oh, well, they don't have jobs, do they?

No, they don't have jobs. What are we doing to create jobs and give these kids a future in this country and rein in the gamblers on Wall Street and restore the real economy, the productive economy of this country? Nothing. In fact, you want to go back to 2008. That was your dream.

It is time to begin to deal meaningfully with these problems in this country and that we have the greatest disparity of wealth in our history. Corporate profits are up; jobs are down. CEO pay up; jobs are down. Bonuses on Wall Street, whoa, six figures, up. Jobs, down.

It's time to rectify this, and I think the young people and the others who are joining them on Wall Street get it. They may not be totally focused, but they know that this isn't a country that gives them a fair shot at the American Dream anymore. It's a stacked deck, and it's time for a new deck and a new order.

Reregulate the reckless gamblers on Wall Street. Rein them in, take steps to rebuild our real economy, give people a future, invest in education, invest in the basics of this country, transportation, infrastructure; and we can be a great Nation again. But if we continue down this path, or even if they accelerate us down this path with helping the job creators destroy the economy again, there's no hope.

Well, I was initially very supportive of the President's proposed Buffett tax based on the premise that no millionaire or billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a checkout clerk at the Albertsons supermarket or a small business owner who only earns $40,000 a year. It seemed fair to me. But, you know, then I started listening to the Republican response, and it's pretty heavy and it really gives you pause to think about whether or not this is a good idea for our country. It's class warfare. It will hurt job creation. You know, these are arguments. It won't raise money. These are arguments that certainly are very, very telling.

In fact, I have some direct quotes from one Representative: ``This is really the Dr. Kevorkian plan for our economy. It will kill jobs, kill businesses, and yes, kill even the higher tax revenues that these suicidal tax increasers hope to gain.''

Another Representative: ``Class warfare may win political campaigns, but it doesn't spur economic growth. Raising the capital gains tax may garner political capital, but it will not create any jobs.''

And then, finally, of course: ``When are we going to get it? We do not have a revenue problem in this Congress; we have a spending problem.''

Those are heavy criticisms. And just think if they proved true what a disaster it would be for America. Now, of course, these criticisms were all leveled in 1993, the last time we had a Democratic President propose that millionaires and billionaires should pay a fair rate of taxes in this country.

The first one was from Representative Christopher Cox, a total idiot who ran the Securities and Exchange Commission while Wall Street gambled our economy into the tank. He said the part about killing jobs, and we wouldn't get jobs and we wouldn't get higher revenues.

Well, actually, with the Clinton tax increases, we did get higher revenues, we did balance the budget, we did pay off debt, and we had 3.8 percent unemployment. And we were asking the job creators, the millionaires and billionaires, to pay a fair share. I guess Chris was wrong.

Well, let's see, the second one was from former Representative Pryce of Ohio about political capital not creating any jobs. Well, we already addressed that. We had 3.8 percent unemployment.

What have they done to create a single job so far this year? Nothing. In fact, they eliminated jobs. But, you know, that's because we want to give the job creators a break. We don't want to tax them, all to protect tax cuts.

And then, finally, the final quote about we don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem is from then Representative Boehner, now Speaker Boehner.

Now, of course, our taxes are at 15 percent of our gross domestic product, considerably lower than the percent of taxes that were levied in the Reagan era. And, you know, we do have a revenue problem, $5 trillion of tax cuts over the last decade, $5 trillion, 5 thousand billion dollars of tax cuts, heavily oriented toward the job creators-- the millionaires and the billionaires.

Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs?

It doesn't work. First it was 8 years of Bush tax cuts, then 2 years of Bush-Obama tax cuts, and now we have President Obama's further proposed tax cuts.

Tax cuts don't create jobs.

Now, I think, actually, now I have considered their arguments, the President's right. Billionaire hedge fund speculators on Wall Street, let's think about it. Their rate of taxation is 15 percent on billions of dollars of income. A small business owner, $50,000 a year, whoa, more than twice that. Army captain, just back from defending America in Afghanistan, whoa, more than twice that.

Who gives more value to this society, the parasite on Wall Street who is speculating and driving up the price of our fuel and making billions of dollars doing it or the Army captain or the small business owner, the real job creators?

We can, by levying a fair rate of taxes on the millionaires and billionaires under the Buffett tax--the best

investor in this country, who thinks this is the direction we should go--we can both create jobs, stabilize the economy, get down the deficit, and continue to fund critical programs. Ironically, in the grand deal that was adopted back here a month ago that I voted against, there was only one specified cut, one cut specified in that bill-- graduate student financial aid. That's because at the country club they don't meet anybody who can't put their kids through medical school.

We need doctors. We need other professionals. We need to help the next generation succeed, education and infrastructure investment, and we need money to help pay for it.

I don't mean to contradict my colleague, but the Republicans do have a jobs plan. Now, it's true that Majority Leader Cantor kicked off the week by saying, Not a penny for infrastructure. We don't want to just build things in America. We don't want to invest. That doesn't put people to work. You know, the $50 billion the President proposed, that would create about 1.5 million private sector jobs in the construction industry, but they're not interested in that.

They do have a jobs plan: snakes. Yes, snakes. Yesterday, in the Oversight Committee, they held a hearing similar to what we're talking about here today on a job-killing regulation being proposed by the Obama administration. Keep out invasive species. Giant pythons, which are taking over the Everglades, the Republicans say that is a job- killing restriction. Just think of all the jobs related to snakes. First, there's the importer of these invasive species. Secondly, we sell them. Then there are people who raise things for them to eat.

I thank the gentleman.

Then when they escape, we hire people, pest control eliminators, to go out and try to find them when people abandon them. What a jobs creator.

No, we're not going to rebuild our infrastructure. We're not going to try and continue to have fair wages for people who build the best airplanes in the world, Boeing. No, those things are off the table as far as the Republicans are concerned. It's job-killing regulations, that's what's hurting America.

Come on guys, get real. Let's rebuild America. Let's invest. Let's pay workers a fair wage. You know, when a worker earns a fair wage, they can afford to go to the small business down the street and patronize them and buy their goods. And then maybe some day, if you stop these job-killing trade deals, they'll be able to buy goods that are actually made in America with their decent wages at an American company. Get real.