Floor Statements

The best way to put America back to work is to invest in the underpinnings of our economy: roads, bridges, highways, transit, rail, our ports, our airports. These things serve the private sector and make us more productive and more competitive in the world economy.

Unfortunately, at the current levels of investment, we're not even keeping up with our mid-20th century surface transportation system. Just think before the interstate highways what a disconnected country this was. And guess what? We're headed back there.

We are not investing enough to maintain the Eisenhower legacy of the National Highway System. We have 150,000 bridges that need replacement or repair; 40 percent of the pavement needs not just resurfacing but underlayment, a $70 billion backlog on our aged transit systems. And that's just to give us an updated and state of good repair, 20th century transportation infrastructure. We need a 21st century transportation infrastructure, which is going to require more investment.

And for the life of me, I don't get it on that side of the aisle. You've got this guy over there, the Republican Leader Cantor. He says, well, we might take the tax cuts with Obama. Those return almost 80 cents on every dollar borrowed. But, oh, that other stuff, spending money, that's like stimulus. Building bridges, repairing highways, repairing and building transit systems, having a new 21st century system for our planes to navigate more efficiently in the sky with fewer delays and less fuel consumed, that is bad according to Eric Cantor. But no, the tax cuts, oh, yeah, we're for tax cuts. We'll give the people their money back and then they'll take care of those problems. We'll pass the hat to rebuild the bridges and the transit systems. We'll pass the hat to have a new aviation system for navigation.

Come on. Are we a great Nation or not? Are we going to give up? Are we just going to keep pretending, give the money back to the job creators. I haven't seen the job creators build a national highway system lately.

Now, the private sector does all of these projects. You'll say, well, the government can't make jobs. You're right. This is taxpayer-invested money designated by the government to needed investment done by lowest competitive bid by competent private contractors.

Millions of jobs are on the table, and not just in construction. You're talking about construction equipment. You're talking about sophisticated avionics. You're talking about transit vehicles that have electronics and motor drives and everything that all come from manufacturing. And we have the strongest buy America provisions of any part of the Federal Government for transportation investment.

So we're not going to hemorrhage this money to China like the tax cuts will for cheap junk bought from China. No. This will create jobs here at home. The American people get it. We get it on our side of the aisle. It's time for the leadership on the Republican side of the aisle to get it, too.

We have the economy the tax cuts will give us. Eight years of Bush tax cuts, 2 years of Bush-Obama tax cuts, and now the individual Obama tax cut proposals. We have $5 trillion borrowed, distributed generally with the Bush tax cuts, principally to the job creators, as the Republicans call them--millionaires and billionaires-- and in little bits to working Americans. It's not working. So why would we do more of the same?

Apparently, the President tonight is going to propose again to extend the Social Security tax holiday. Two things wrong with that, maybe three. One, it's not putting anybody back to work. Two, we borrowed $110 billion this year to put into the Social Security trust fund because we cut the income of Social Security by $110 billion. And now we're being told perhaps we should double down. Let's give both the employers and the employees a little bit of a Social Security tax holiday.

That's $20 a week to someone who earns $50,000 a year. Not bad. They can use it. It's probably about the difference they pay for filling up their car to get to work. But ExxonMobil isn't hiring. Or maybe they use it to put food on the table for the kids or maybe buy junk from China. It's an old economic theory: Put money in the pockets of Americans and the idle plant capacity in America will rev up and hire Americans to make things in America. We don't make things any more because of failed trade policies. Apparently, failed trade policies are going to be part of this jobs proposal.

Three more Bush free trade proposals now adopted by Obama. That would be a disaster if that's a part of this so-called package. It would be a travesty.

Let's forget about the tax cuts. Let's not just have a little dribble or drab of infrastructure investment. People say, Oh, the stimulus failed. What happened? All your infrastructure investment, 40 percent of that stimulus was tax cuts; 7 percent was investment in infrastructure. Yes, it worked, but it was a pathetically small part of the package in a country that has a $3 trillion infrastructure deficit, with dams that are failing, levees that are failing, highways that are crumbling, bridges that are falling, transit systems that are based in 19th- and early 20th-century technology; and our competitors are building out a 21st-century infrastructure.

We need a bold vision. We don't need another little dribble or drab in infrastructure. We sure as heck don't need another one of these stupid shovel-ready project things. We need long-term investment. When you do long-term investment, the private companies who build all these projects--these aren't government projects. Taxpayers fund them. The private sector builds them. Many small businesses, they will go out and buy equipment. When they buy equipment, especially if we put Buy America requirements on all these proposals, they'll buy things that will be made in America that will put people back to work in manufacturing.

So this isn't just about construction jobs. It's about manufacturing jobs, it's about engineering jobs, it's about small business jobs. But it needs to be a major, bold, long-term vision on building a 21st- century infrastructure for America to make us more competitive in the world.

Enough with the tax cuts. They don't work. They don't put people back to work. Guess what? If you don't have a job, you don't get a tax cut, do you? Let's do something for the people who need jobs and for the future of the country and for our kids with a grand long-term vision tonight, not more of the same.

Well, here we are, after a long weekend of hyperbole and backroom deal cutting at the White House, and here's the product right here.

If you look through it, it's pretty interesting. There's no balance. There are no revenues. God forbid we would ask, as the Republicans call them, ``the job creators,'' the millionaires and billionaires, to pay anything toward further supporting our country, to close some of the tax loopholes that allow hedge fund managers to pay taxes at half the rate of their clerks, you know, things like that. No, that would be a reach too far to ask them to share in the sacrifice.

What we do see here is that there will be cuts, and very few are specified. But strangely enough, there's one that the Republicans always go after because, you know, they hang out at the country club, and at the country club, nobody's worried about putting their kid through college. But the one specified cut in here is in graduate school financial assistance.

Now, that's kind of peculiar. We have a doctor shortage looming, and medical school is phenomenally expensive. But I guess it's just going to be the rich kids who are going to go to medical school in the future, not the middle-class kids, not the struggling kids. Just the rich kids. So that's the one specified cut, the ``one'' specified cut. The rest, we don't even know.

Talking about a pig in a poke, this is a pig in a poke. Where's that $1 trillion of cuts going to come from? First round, second round, another $1.5 trillion, and not one penny in revenues. And the grand result is about $2.5 trillion of deficit reduction.

If we just let all the Bush tax cuts expire--all of them--if we went back to the bad old days of the Clinton tax rates that the Republicans claimed would destroy the economy--except actually what happened was, we had 3.8 percent unemployment, and we paid down debt with the Clinton tax rates. But, yes, ``the job creators'' had to pay a little bit more. Those were really bad times, the Republicans would have us believe. So we don't want to go back there. We want to stay in the current day.

We have been cutting taxes now for 11 years of Bush tax cuts, 3 years with Obama as a coconspirator on the Bush tax cuts. Where are the jobs? Well, let's just keep doing it, and maybe it will create jobs.

It's not going to create jobs. There are no jobs. There are no jobs in this package.

At the least, at the least, they could have extended the Federal Aviation Administration authority. Now, most people think, what does that mean? Well, a week ago last Friday, authority to run the Federal Aviation Administration expired. The air traffic controllers are working under emergency provisions, and they're being paid out of the trust fund, which is being drawn down. But all of the taxes went away. So we're walking away from $200 million a week--that is in taxes that would come from users of the system. Most of the airlines have raised their ticket prices to capture that money.

Four thousand Federal employees have lost their jobs or are laid off, are collecting unemployment. Republicans don't care about Federal employees; so let's put that aside.

But 90,000 private sector construction workers and small businesses are also unemployed because we have brought all the safety and security improvements across the entire system to a screeching halt because we are not collecting taxes, which the airlines are now capturing for profits. Could that be in here? That would put 94,000 people back to work. No, that's not in here. That's too much to ask.

There isn't a single job in this package. The biggest problem in America, the greatest deficit we have is in job creation. If we could get back down around 5 percent unemployment, guess what: Those people are working, they are not drawing unemployment benefits, they are not drawing food stamps because they are desperate to put food on the table and the unemployment isn't enough, and a quarter of the deficit would go away with people working.

How about transportation infrastructure? One hundred and fifty thousand bridges are crumbling, need to be replaced or rehabilitated; a $70 billion backlog in critical investment in our transit systems across the country, all made in America, manufacturing jobs, engineering jobs. No, can't do those sorts of things in this bill.

We can't make investments because the Republicans say everything government does is bad. So we can't even make investments. We can't discriminate between wasteful spending, consumptive spending, and investments that will put people back to work, as they claim government can't put people back to work.

That's funny. I wonder who built our national highway system. I don't think it was the private sector. I don't think it was the financiers on Wall Street. The billionaires and the millionaires are escaping any meaningful taxation at this point, seeing the lowest level of taxation on their incomes since, you know, forever, basically.

We can't ask them to do anything. We can't invest, we can't create jobs, and we are going to cut student financial aid for sure and a few other things.

This is a little different than the Reid bill we voted on

on Saturday. It actually increases military spending $78 billion over the bill that we voted on on Saturday, and it decreases domestic spending by $80 billion. And it doesn't end the wars, unlike the Reid bill we voted on on Saturday.

It has one specified cut--student financial aid. That's the only cut specified. What kind of world do you people live in?

And, of course, it doesn't ask a single thing of millionaires, billionaires, corporations that avoid taxes. It doesn't close a single loophole. It doesn't ask one millionaire or billionaire just to go back to Clinton-era taxes. And it does nothing about our most serious deficit in this country, and that is the jobs deficit.

Unless you really believe that tax loopholes, tax cuts, and cutting investment in aviation and surface transportation creates jobs on your planet, this bill creates none here today.

The Washington Post: The United States is a lot like a rich businessman who owns two homes, a yacht, millions of dollars in stock, but is in debt because he took out a big loan to buy a private plane.

So here we are. To protect tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, ``the job creators,'' $4 trillion over the last 10 years, loopholes for corporate jets, for private jets, for the oil companies, hedge fund billionaires, to continue tax cuts that haven't created a single job, we're going to cut real investment that would create jobs. We're going to reduce investment in transportation infrastructure 35 percent. That's a million jobs. Gone. Last week, you cut off the FAA, 90,000 private-sector jobs and 4,000 government employees. You don't care about the government employees, but what about those private- sector jobs? A lot of them are small businesses. Small businesses--I thought you liked small businesses?

So we're not only going to cut there, but we're going to cut student loans, we're going to cut school nutrition, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Medicare all so the billionaires can keep cruising at 40,000 feet in their private tax-subsidized jets, above the turbulence. The view looks good from up there, and maybe you'll get a ride.

Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Tax cuts solve all problems, especially for the millionaire and billionaire job creators.

We're in the 10th year of the Bush tax cuts: $4 trillion. We're in the third year of the Obama tax cuts: $1 trillion. Now we have to cut programs to continue the tax cuts that don't create jobs.

What's one of the specified targets? Student financial aid. Hey, they don't know anybody at the country club who can't afford to put their kid through medical school, but at the top of their list is cutting student financial aid.

Cutting investments in transportation that could put millions to work. Stopping taxes on the aviation industry, which is, guess what, capturing the money, not lowering prices, and laying off 90,000 people and stopping critical infrastructure jobs for that industry. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.

Let's get real. Let's do things for the American people, put people back to work, and solve the deficit problem.

Thanks, John. Thanks for helping organize this response to the Republicans.

We do have one real and prevailing crisis in America. It's been with us now since 2008, and that's a jobs crisis. There are probably 20 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed in this country when you get to the real numbers.

Now, credible economists say if we could find a way to put those people or most of those people back to work and get unemployment down from 9.6 nationally to, say, 4.5 or 5 percent, that would solve a quarter, a quarter of this deficit and debt crisis. That would be $2.5 trillion over 10 years.

Now, the Republicans here have proposed $2.7 trillion of cuts over 10 years. So if we could put people back to work, we would have about the same savings.

Then, you know, if we got people back to work and healed the economy a bit, all we have to do, and I talked about this earlier this week, is nothing. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Go back to the bad old days of Bill Clinton, 3.8 percent unemployment, paying down debt, the rich paying a fair share. Those were the bad old days, according to the Republicans, because those job creators were paying some taxes.

Oh, my God, billionaires required to pay taxes at the rate equal to or higher than their secretaries and the janitors. Can you imagine that? Oh, what disaster. So, now, they are not only cutting programs and ignoring the jobs crisis, they are making the jobs crisis worse.

Last week, they ended the Federal Aviation Administration construction program for safety and security. They stopped collecting the tax. The Republicans stopped collecting the tax. It's a user paid- for system on airline tickets. That's $30 million a day. Most airlines have taken it as a windfall. So the Republicans' mantra that if we lower taxes on corporations they will pass it through to the consumers--no, sorry suckers. They keep the money and you pay the same.

But then the other mantra is, well, if we get rid of taxes, we will create jobs. That's how you create jobs, by cutting programs and cutting taxes.

Interesting. We have cut taxes on the airline industry by $30 million a day, $210 million a week. That's well over--you know, that's a lot of money on a year's basis, over a billion dollars. And guess what? We have lost 94,000 jobs; 4,000 jobs of people in the FAA who oversee the safety and security construction program to make sure taxpayers get a fair value for their dollar and 90,000 private-sector construction jobs across America.

And guess what? The American public doesn't know it yet, but this could well lead to either, you know, opening the door to terrorist attack because we don't do some of the security programs, or causing a runway incursion because we don't finish the runway incursion program before the bad weather in the winter, or I don't get my instrument landing system in Coos Bay, North Bend, before the winter and a plane goes awry, we could have people die because of that. But to them this is all good--we are giving people back their money, or we are giving the corporations the money, and don't worry.

We need to focus on jobs. There is nothing that they have been doing here for the last 6 months, 8 months, 7 months, however long they have been in power--it seems like 10 years--that has created a single job. In fact, they have cost us jobs. They are costing us jobs at an ever accelerating rate, and now they want to cut one other, just one other point. They want to cut all investment in transportation by 35 percent. That's an immediate loss of 600,000 private-sector jobs.

It means we won't deal with the 150,000 bridges of the national highway system that need rebuilding. We won't deal with the half of the payment on the national highway system that needs redoing. We won't deal with the $70 billion backlog for new equipment for our transit systems, transit systems that are so decrepit in places like the Nation's Capital that people are being killed. We won't deal with any of that.

We won't put millions of people to work building new transit vehicles or new buses or bridges with steel and all those things with Buy America.

The Republicans say, well, we'll just give the corporations the money and the rich people the money and they'll trickle down on the rest of us. Well, we've been pretty well trickled down upon for way too long. It's time for new priorities. And I would reject the Republican agenda.

With one simple vote last December, Congress precipitated the so-called debt crisis. We voted to extend all of the Bush tax cuts at a cost of $4 trillion over 10 years. I voted ``no.''

So now, the debate comes down to what's more important to the American people--Social Security or tax cuts; Medicare or tax cuts; jobs or tax cuts. That's what this debate is all about right now-- preserving tax cuts, particularly tax cuts for the wealthy and the largest multinational corporations in this country.

Some are still trying to drag Social Security into this debate. Social Security did not cause one penny of this debt. In fact, Social Security is the largest owner of Federal debt in the world. They're the largest investor in Federal debt. Social Security did not cause this problem. Yes, long term, starting in 2037, Social Security is projected to only be able to pay 73 to 75 percent of benefits. We can solve that simply. Ask all Americans to pay the same percent of their income into Social Security.

Today, if you earn over $106,800, you pay a lower percentage of your income into Social Security. Lift that cap. You could lower the tax for everybody. All those who earn less than $106,800, they'd get a little tax cut. Everybody who earns more than $106,800 would pay the same percent of their income in taxes as those who earn less. That's fair. It solves Social Security's problems forever.

Then there are others who say well, it's Medicare. Medicare is the thing we've got to kill. The Ryan plan, the Republican plan: kill Medicare. Turn it into a voucher program. That's their solution there. Future seniors would have a subsidy to go to a government-sponsored exchange to buy private health insurance, and the voucher would be far less than the cost of health insurance. We don't need to kill Medicare to save it or to preserve the tax cuts.

Medicare, we could do away with the Bush-Republican unpaid-for prescription-drug benefit that subsidizes the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and instead say Medicare, we'll negotiate lower drug prices for all people on that program and give them an at-cost benefit. That saves $20 billion a year.

We could reform the way we buy durable medical equipment and save another $20 billion a year. And then we could move on to paying doctors for

good results rather than volume, saving tens of billions more.

Yes, we can fix Medicare. We don't need to destroy it to perpetuate tax cuts.

And then tax cuts create jobs. That's the reason we have to maintain the tax cuts, according to the Republicans. Tax cuts create jobs. Well, we're in the 11th year of the Bush tax cuts, the third year of the Obama tax cuts that supposedly are creating jobs. Well, where are the jobs? In fact, we just had a really good demonstration of this last week.

Last Friday, all taxes on airline tickets expired. Now, Republicans said, well, that will get passed on to the consumers. No. Most of the airlines are keeping the money. That's another issue. But did those tax cuts create jobs? No. Actually so far they've cost us 94,000 jobs-- 4,000 Federal employees. Now, they hate Federal employees, so that doesn't matter to them. But 90,000 private-sector construction jobs. Building of critical security and safety projects on airports all across the country has ground to a halt because they stopped us from continuing to collect that fee, that tax on people who use the system.

So tax cuts actually have destroyed 94,000 jobs. But they have profited a number of the airlines. One major airline, $4 million extra a day because, guess what, they raised their ticket prices to capture that money. They didn't refund it. A couple like Alaska have refunded it, but most of the airlines, no.

So we're putting a lie to a lot of their policies here, and the biggest core part of their policy is trickle-down economics. It failed in the Reagan years and it's failing again now.

Give billionaires, the job-creators, tax cuts, and they'll create jobs for us little people. Well, guess what; no. Maybe they hired another pool boy or someone else on the yacht. There are a few jobs there. They're now hiring private jets to fly their kids to camp in Maine. Yes, there's a job there, but not the jobs that 18 million American people need.

If we restore the taxes on airline tickets, we would put 90,000 construction workers, private sector workers back to work, and 4,000 government employees. And if we fully fund our transportation needs in this country, we could put another 2.7 to 3.5 million people to work.

No, they want to cut investment in transportation and infrastructure. Bridges are failing. They're falling down. The roads are potholed. Transit systems are decrepit, and the Republican answer is: Give people back their money and cut spending on those wasteful things like mass transit, bridges, and highways.

And, oh, by the way, under their plan, we lose another 600,000 private sector jobs on top of the 20 percent unemployment in construction.

It's time to get real around here. Put America back to work. If Americans were working, that would solve one-quarter of the deficit problem. Stop the tax cut mayhem.

Well, this week we have just disproven two items of Republican orthodoxy, and that is corporations don't pay taxes, only individuals pay taxes; and tax cuts create jobs.

What am I talking about? Well, last Friday the authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration expired. So the government is not collecting $200 million a week in security fees and other fees that pay for the aviation system. It is partially funded by the users of that system with ticket taxes and such. That is $200 million a week.

Now, what's happened since? Well, three airlines, three honest airlines--Frontier Airlines, Alaska, and Virgin America--lowered ticket prices because the government isn't collecting the taxes. But the other airlines, not so much. They actually raised their ticket prices to match the taxes, and they're collecting the windfall.

At the same time, their association, the Air Transport Association, is complaining about ticket taxes: But a big chunk of your ticket is going to Washington. Well, you can now X out Washington, and you can put in United Airlines, Continental Airlines, U.S Airways, Southwest Airlines, and Jet Blue, because they're taking the money.

And guess what? In addition to the consumers getting ripped off here, $200 million a week, we have another problem, the second one, tax cuts create jobs. Well, we've cut taxes, $200 million a week. That's a lot. And guess what? So far, 4,000 government jobs.

Now, Republicans don't care about government jobs even if they're doing some pretty critical stuff. But also, tens of thousands of private sector jobs are down the tube because not collecting the taxes means all of the airport improvement projects across America funded by these fees are grinding to a halt. Critical projects, projects that will save lives from runway incursions, control towers, security improvements in our airports to defeat terrorist attacks.

And in the case of my little regional airport on the coast in Oregon, their project to install a runway lighting system for instrument landing before winter has stopped. We just got jet service in there. The airlines say, Look, if we're going to come in here in the wintertime, you've got some bad weather. We need that system. Well, if this impasse continues, we will not have that system by next winter.

Now, who is that helping? Who are you guys helping over there with these stupid stunts you're pulling here? $200 million a week that the government isn't collecting that would pay for these critical projects, put tens of thousands of people to work, and now it's a windfall to a bunch of airlines.

But don't worry, the Air Transport Association says, these short-term increases, that is by the airlines increasing their ticket prices to make up for the taxes going away, these short-term increases benefit all stakeholders because it enables the airlines to invest in their product and service. Huh? What?

Let's see. The money used to go for safety and security and other essentials; now it's going to the airlines, and they're going to use it to improve their product and service. Maybe they'll start serving peanuts and soda again on some of these flights. I don't know.

But this is outrageous. So much for the Republican mantra. You know, corporations do pay taxes. And, in this case, now they are getting a windfall because the taxes went away. And no, tax cuts don't create jobs. Wrong twice.

It's clear to the American public that Congress, especially the Senate, is very good at doing one thing--and that is nothing.

Now, perhaps we can capitalize on this strength to resolve the impasse over the deficit reduction. Well, how could that work? How could Congress do nothing but solve this problem? Well, within 17 months, by doing nothing, we could lower the deficit by $3.8 trillion. In fact, the President could reinforce the message. Just in case Congress decided to do something, he could say, No, if they do that, I will pocket veto it. I will do nothing. So we've got a good chance here: Congress does nothing or the President pocket vetoes, he does nothing, we can save $3.8 trillion. Problem solved.

How do we do that? We allow all the Bush tax cuts to expire. Now, you heard the gentlelady, Oh, my God, the job creators will pay more. Yeah, the billionaire hedge fund guys on Wall Street might pay a little bit more in taxes; they're creating so many jobs today. And the other millionaires. Warren Buffet says it's kind of ironic that he pays a much lower tax rate than his secretary.

Now, if we let the Bush tax cuts expire and adopted some modest reforms, those inequities would no longer be in place, and we could have over $4 trillion of deficit reduction with a little bit of shared sacrifice. Yes, it would ask the millionaires and billionaires to pay as much as they did in the Clinton era. In an era when we had 3.8 percent unemployment, we actually paid down debt in this country. It was good for all Americans. And we asked those who were most capable to contribute the most. But we asked a little bit of everybody. That's what this doing nothing would do.

Now, after we've restored some confidence here by this big step of doing nothing, we could do another half of nothing and put people back to work. How could we do half of nothing and put people back to work? Well, President Obama has adopted this cockamamie Republican idea of a Social Security tax holiday putting people to work. I know a lot of families that can use an extra $20 a week. That's true. But them spending $20 a week on junk made in China or food on the table doesn't put any Americans back to work. And if you're unemployed today--one of the 18 million unemployed--you don't get the $20 a week. We're borrowing $110 billion to

do that under the guise that this is creating the jobs. And the President mentioned last night he wants to continue creating jobs that way. Well, guess what? It's not working.

So we do half of nothing. We allow the Social Security tax holiday to expire. It doesn't create any jobs. We don't borrow the $110 billion from China to put in the Social Security trust fund. Instead, we borrow $110 billion to put people back to work in private sector jobs. We resolve to begin to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

That $110 billion applied to the 150,000 bridges falling down on the Federal system, the $80 billion backlog on our transit vehicles, the pavement that's disintegrating across the country could put millions to work. And not just construction workers. Engineers would go to work, people who manufacture things--steel, buses, tires, engines. All those people would go to work. We could put millions to work.

Guess what that does? When people go to work, they don't collect unemployment, they don't need food stamps to feed their family, and they pay taxes. That reduces the deficit, too. So by doing one big nothing and one half of nothing and then one little action to put people back to work--nothing that anybody's talking about around here. Where are the jobs? Who's talking about jobs? We need jobs.

Let's stop blathering around here. Let's resolve to do nothing and solve the debt crisis and resolve to do half of nothing and then apply the money that we save by doing that nothing to putting people back to work.

That's an agenda a little more productive for the American people.

In December the President caved to the Republicans and extended all the Bush tax cuts, immediately increasing this year's deficit by $400 billion and the 10-year deficit by $4 trillion, precipitating the great debt and deficit crisis.

Now we're hearing from the press today that the President is preparing yet another great cave. Instead of saying we will have some revenues to solve this problem, he is apparently about to cut a deal that will be all cuts.

So it's ironic. He cuts taxes to create a crisis, and then we cut spending to protect the tax cuts because tax cuts create jobs, except they haven't created jobs, but we've got to continue to protect them. It's all very, very sad.

If we get rid of all the Bush tax cuts--$4 trillion--no cuts in Social Security, no cuts in Medicare, no cuts in veterans benefits, and $4 trillion less in deficits, now, that would be an equitable solution.

Colleagues, we are truly through the looking glass here into a strange world. The Gang of Six has supposedly met the President's requirements that we would have $3 trillion in cuts and $1 trillion in revenues. But actually, they are cutting taxes.

Now how does that work? Well, that only works inside the Washington, DC, Beltway. When you reduce revenues, you will increase revenues because you pretend that you wouldn't have had those revenues otherwise. It's a little bit complicated, isn't it? It is incredibly complicated. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors here.

There is a simple way to deal with this crisis. We need to rein in spending. We also need to make investments that will put people to work. Now, the Republicans don't think the government can invest in anything that puts people to work, except they haven't noticed that we have an infrastructure that's falling apart. We have 20 percent unemployment in construction and related fields. If we were to begin to invest and rebuild America's infrastructure, all private sector jobs put those people to work. They start paying taxes, then part of the deficit goes away, and the money will be spent on something that will benefit this generation and future generations. But, no, they categorize all Federal spending the same. They just want to slash it all.

So how about a plan that targets investment, putting people back to work that reduces spending appropriately across the government and actually pays for all of this with revenues? How could you do that? Simple. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Let all the Bush tax cuts expire. That's $4 trillion. It's not too complicated. It would take us back to those bad old Clinton years when rich people paid taxes. The ``job creators'' they call them.

You can't make the job creators pay taxes; it will ruin the economy-- that's what they said when Clinton raised the taxes back in the nineties. Guess what, we ended up with 3.8 percent unemployment, and we actually balanced the budget and paid down debt. But, yes, the wealthy and all Americans carried a fair share of that burden. I would love to go back to those bad old days.

We've been now, for a decade, living under the theory that reducing taxes creates jobs, especially reducing taxes on billionaires--you know, the job creators--creates jobs. It's not working too well, is it? No, it's really not working at all. But the Obama administration and the Gang of Six have apparently bought into this flim-flam. Let's continue the Bush tax cuts. Let's continue this stupid Social Security tax holiday that hasn't created a single job. Sure, there are a lot of American families that could use an extra $20 a week. But their spending an extra $20 a week does not create jobs. And now Obama wants to give employers $20 a week on each employee, saying, Well, they'll go out and hire millions if they get an extra $20 a week. Corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars of cash, trillions of dollars of cash. They don't need more cash. And for $20 a week, they're not going to go out and hire anybody.

So here's the plan: let the Bush tax cuts expire. That's $4 trillion. We've met the targets. We didn't cut Social Security. We didn't cut Medicare. We didn't cut veterans benefits. We didn't cut student financial aid. But we are $4 trillion ahead in this game. And then cancel the stupid Social Security tax holiday, but still borrow the money. We're borrowing the money to give people a Social Security tax holiday, borrowing the money to put back in the Social Security trust fund after we reduce the income.

Stop reducing the income to Social Security, go back to the statutory rate of taxes, and guarantee the benefits to people. And borrow, instead, that $110 billion to rebuild America's infrastructure--$110 billion, that's about 4.7 million jobs. And that is not just construction jobs, but engineering jobs, small business jobs, manufacturing jobs all across the country. It will put America back to work, and that would reduce the deficit by about another 25 percent.

So if we cancel the Bush tax cuts, $4 trillion. Okay, we're now at the President's ``big deal'' target which we're not going to meet under the Gang of Six or any of these other constructs around here. Cancel the Social Security tax holiday. Instead, borrow that money one more year, as the President has proposed, and invest in infrastructure. It will put millions to work. And then when those millions go to work, they'll be paying taxes, and that will reduce the deficit by another quarter.

So we've solved three-quarters of the problem without killing programs essential to the American people and without cutting taxes on the job creators.

The Gang of Six is proposing that billionaires should see their taxes cut by about 25 or 30 percent. That will help us balance the budget? It is time to get back to the real world and out of ``Alice in Wonderland.''

I have an amendment at the desk.

Hopefully, this will be an amendment which can be accepted. It's quite simple.

And what I'm addressing is what The Washington Post has called the revolving door that spins at a dizzying pace here in Washington, D.C. The New York Times has said that Goldman Sachs is ``Government Sachs'' for all the employees who bounce back and forth between the Nation's Capital, the regulatory bodies, administrative branch, and its Manhattan office tower.

All my amendment simply does is prevent potential conflicts of interest. Remember, a board here has been created in the original bill which can overturn any regulation, fairly unique among independent agencies if there is a board which can overturn the administrative procedures or rules that they adopt on the financial services industry. But in any case, that was in the original bill. This bill would reduce from a two-thirds majority to a 50 percent majority of this 10-member board.

And my amendment just says if there's 10 people sitting on the board and it's potentially a close vote and this is something that's going to affect, say--not to pick on Goldman Sachs--but let's just say Goldman Sachs and a member of the board is a former employee of Goldman Sachs within the last 24 months, that member would have to sit out the vote. Plain and simple. It is a conflict-of-interest rule.

I would hope that this would prove to be noncontroversial.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I think there is a misunderstanding.

They can serve on the board. It's just that if a proposal comes up that directly affects their previous employer and they have been on the board less than 2 years, they would have to sit out that particular vote. They can serve and vote on any and every other procedure, but just not on that particular thing. It's a very restrictive conflict of interest rule.

Mr. Chairman, obviously we've straightened out that misunderstanding, that the folks could serve.

Now let me just harken back to something where I think many of my Republican colleagues agreed with me. I voted against the TARP bailout. Hank Paulson, as I said at the time, I think he was Goldman Sachs's executive standing in as Secretary of the Treasury and meting out justice to some of his competitors in terms of who lived and who died on Wall Street.

So I would think there would be agreement on that side that for future conflicts of interest that these people would be restricted only on that one vote, only as it affects their former employer, only within the last 24 months.

I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my request for a recorded vote on amendment No. 3 be withdrawn.

Well, yesterday the so-called ``Gang of Six'' on the Senate side--six very important Senators--unveiled sort of an outline about how to save $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Immediately it was embraced by President Obama. We really don't know much about it, nor does he, but he immediately embraced it.

We know one thing about it. It contains something called a chained CPI. Okay. Well, who cares about a chained CPI? Well, seniors, they care a lot about a chained CPI; middle-income taxpayers, they care about it--they don't know it yet; veterans, and a whole host of other people.

What is a chained CPI? Well, the pointy heads, like Mr. Furman who work for President Obama, say we're understating and overstating inflation with the way we adjust. There is something called substitution effect. So when prices of things go up, you buy something cheaper, so that means

there isn't inflation. Well, no, wait a minute; the thing you used to buy is still more expensive and you're buying something else? But in the pointy-head economics world, this makes sense.

So let's say how this would work for someone on Medicare: Okay, you can't afford your heart bypass, so instead you'll say to the doc, ``Hey, look, I can't afford the copay on the heart bypass. Why don't you do a hernia instead?'' That's substitution. In Mr. Furman's world, this makes sense.

Now what this would do to seniors on Social Security, we already understate inflation. Seniors haven't gotten a COLA for the last 2 years. Tell me the price of prescription drugs and medical care hasn't gone up over the last 2 years. We need, in fact, a different measure for seniors, for Medicare, for our veterans and others who consume more health care and more essentials, which the CPI doesn't measure. It just measures junk that people buy. That's all it measures. And they're saying because people buy cheaper junk, we should change the CPI. That means the senior, by the time they reach 85 in this brave new world of the chained CPI, will get 100 bucks less a month in their Social Security--not too good. Veterans would see their benefits also be restrained and go down about the same amount.

And then there is this other little impact they're not mentioning. If you're earning $20,000 a year, the tax brackets get adjusted every year. Well, they wouldn't get adjusted so much anymore under the chained CPI. So someone who earns $20,000 a year over 10 years would see their taxes go up 14 percent, but for the rich people, you earn $500,000 a year, you're already at the top; their taxes will only go up .3 percent, three-tenths of 1 percent. Fourteen percent for someone who earns $20,000 a year; .3 percent for someone who earns $500,000. And Obama has embraced this?

What's happened down there at the White House? They're listening to these pointy-head economists, and they're going after programs that are important to the American people. All of this, all combined of this great ``Gang of Six,'' would save $4 trillion over 10 years. That is, seniors will pay more, working people will pay more, veterans will pay more--rich people, not so much--but it would save $4 trillion. Guess what? If we let all the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of next year-- all of them, and the stupid Social Security tax holiday--that would be $5 trillion over 10 years and we wouldn't have cut Social Security, we wouldn't have cut veterans benefits, we wouldn't have asked low-income and middle-income people to pay more in taxes. Now does that make more sense? I think so.

Let's hope they rethink this down at the White House, and I hope the American people are watching closely.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This used to be a legislative body. I'm not quite sure what it is now.

The way, traditionally, the House and the Senate resolve differences is the House and the Senate each pass a bill--most people learn this in their high school civics class. Then each side appoints conferees and they get together and hash through the differences. I've actually served on some of those conference committees. I've actually voted across the aisle on some provisions of bills in those conference committees.

But not now. What they're saying here is, after they have worked out all the differences with the Senate and only in the way that their bill passed the House--that is, my way or the highway, or, my way or your plane's grounded, however you want to look at it--then they will appoint conferees to a meaningless conference on something that's already agreed to and then we'll come back and pass their bill.

It doesn't work that way. It won't work that way. And this is just not a simple problem, because if the FAA has to close down all of its capital improvement programs--Friday night, very expensive, 4,000 people laid off--thousands of projects across the country that would put construction workers to work and suppliers to work won't happen. So this isn't a no-cost playing games kind of thing that they're doing here.

And what's it all about? The bottom line is it's about whether or not labor should have the right to organize. That is what hung up the bill in the Senate before because they wanted to have a level playing field. We wanted to have a level playing field between providers of railroad and airline services and allow people to actually organize, to be

represented. And, of course, Federal Express hated that, and their two Senators held up the last conference in the last Congress, plain and simple.

Now they're on the same wavelength here. The Republicans here want to overrule the National Labor Relations Board and impose a rule for organizing that says you have to have a majority of people voting and a majority of the majority voting; i.e., if you apply the same rule that they want to the United States House of Representatives, not one Member of this House would have won their election. Not even some people who are in totally partisan districts, Democrat or Republican. No one would have won because no one got a majority of the majority of the votes. That's the rule they want to apply to labor.

So if you want to organize a union, there's 100 people. First off, you've got to get 51 positive votes. Anybody who doesn't vote counts as a negative vote. So if we apply those same things, we would never have Federal elections in this country. You would never be able to elect anybody to anything. And they say, oh, that'll be fair for labor.

That's what's hanging up this bill: their anti-labor fervor, their hatred of working people and their right to organize. It's absolutely obscene that they are going to do that and cost us more jobs by not having a capital improvement program.