Mr. Speaker, I'm going to rise this evening with some of my colleagues to repudiate some of the comments that have been made here tonight, to correct some of the record, and to provide, I think, the real story, Mr. Speaker, of what is…
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to rise this evening with some of my colleagues to repudiate some of the comments that have been made here tonight, to correct some of the record, and to provide, I think, the real story, Mr. Speaker, of what is going on in America and compare that--and my friend from Iowa, who was up here prior to me stated that it's about the record. And I would 100 percent agree: it is about the record.
And if you look at the past few years prior to the Democrats taking over, our friends on the other side had complete control of the entire Federal Government. And in States like Ohio, they had control of the whole Ohio Government.
And with President Bush, Republican House, Republican Senate, they had an opportunity to implement their economic policy. They had an opportunity to implement their foreign policy. They had an opportunity to implement their energy policy. They had an opportunity to implement their health care policy.
All across the board, our friends on the other side had an opportunity to govern this great country. And the end result, we saw just a few short years ago with deregulation of Wall Street, turning a blind eye to what was going on, hoping that the health care problem would go away, hoping that the energy policy, the energy problems we had in this country would go away.
And the end result was what happened just a couple of years ago with the complete collapse of the American economy, with trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars lost by American families and American businesses, with millions of people losing their homes due to foreclosure, with the Federal Government down here saying that government never works, it has no
role, no place in our society, let the free market work, let Wall Street run the show, let the multinational corporations run the show.
And we will do everything in our power, while President Bush was in office, to completely denigrate the responsibilities of having a referee on the field to monitor Wall Street shenanigans, Mr. Speaker, to make sure, learning from history, that if you let Wall Street go without any regulation, that they will run free and, for a short time, monitor themselves. But then after a while, they will get greedy and they will cheat, and it will become inherent in the system. And at some point, as we saw many economists predict the collapse that they said maybe would happen in '08, maybe '09, or maybe '06, they thought it would come a little bit earlier. But there were economists out there that could see what was going to happen. And it did. The unregulated free market Wall Street collapsed and took Main Street with it.
For example, our friends on the other side, just in the last week or so, when this Congress and this President passed a complete overhaul of the regulations of Wall Street to make sure that this doesn't happen again, our friends on the other side voted against it, Mr. Speaker, voted against regulating Wall Street after we all just watched, as a country, and as the world watched, this system collapse because people just started moving money around.
You want to talk about family values and taking responsibility?
We are now holding Wall Street's feet to the fire, and our friends on the other side said, nope, we're going to side with the big banks. We're going to side with Wall Street. We're going to side with the status quo. And to me, Mr. Speaker, that's unacceptable. That's unacceptable.
And we have a bogey man America now. Oh, we've got to hold up. A San Francisco agenda's coming. Or here comes socialism. It's coming at you.
This time in our country's history requires very sober, mature analysis of the facts and an attempt to build a consensus around solutions. And our friends on the other side have consistently said no, no, no, no to everything that we've done.
Now, you can't disagree with everything. My goodness gracious. Everything?
Regulating Wall Street, saying we need a referee on the field to keep an eye on the big banks and the big-time money firms on Wall Street, to say they need regulated and you say, no?
To say that we wanted to pass unemployment insurance at this very difficult time, and the Republicans put up procedural block after procedural block saying no?
They come out and readily admit we've got to pay for $30 billion in unemployment insurance, but we don't have to pay for $650 billion worth of tax cuts that go primarily to the top 1 percent of the people in the United States of America, millionaires? That doesn't need to be paid for?
So what we're here tonight to do, Mr. Speaker, is to provide for this Chamber and for the American people, and to put into the Congressional Record, the choice, the difference between the party that is now governing the country, and the party of George W. Bush, who left us this mess.
Now, no one's saying that we can fix this overnight; but, basically, what happened is that we were in a football game, and President Bush was the quarterback. And when they took President Bush out as quarterback, we were down 50-0. And now President Obama is in as the quarterback; Democrats are now in on the team. And we may not have won the game yet, but we're still in the second quarter, and the score is now 50-21. But we're moving in the right direction.
And when you look at where the Bush economic policies that everyone on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, rubber stamped, those policies cost our country millions and millions of jobs; 8 million jobs were lost because of the economic collapse on Wall Street, which was the final result of the Bush economic policies.
Millions of people and their homes went into foreclosure because of the Bush economic policies. Trillions of dollars in wealth were lost because of the Bush economic policies.
We were bleeding jobs. The January that President Obama came into office, we were losing almost 800,000 jobs in that month alone, in that month alone.
And so this President and this Congress took a series of bold measures that weren't necessarily the most popular measures to take, but definitely needed, mature measures to help stabilize our economy and turn it around.
And that, Mr. Speaker, beyond all facts to be presented, worked. Now, as I said, we are not anywhere near where we need to be, but it worked. The stimulus package worked. Did it work well enough? Probably not.
But I can only imagine what would have happened if our friends on the other side were in charge and there wasn't any stimulus package at all. How many thousands and thousands of teachers would have been laid off? How many thousands and thousands of State workers would have been laid off? Police and fire would have been laid off because our friends on the other side said, No, we're going to implement a political strategy that means we have to repudiate everything that President Obama does. We have to hope that he does poorly. We have to root against the President. We have to root for the President to fail. We have to root for the country to fail so that we could maybe benefit politically in the next election.
And that's what's happened.
``No'' to the stimulus. ``No'' to unemployment compensation. ``No'' on reducing dependency on foreign oil. ``No'' to taking on the insurance companies. ``No'' to Wall Street reform. ``No'' to the banks. ``No'' to providing more credit for small businesses. ``No'' to tax credits. This is the one I really like. Our friends on the other side voted against getting rid of the tax credits that incentivized moving jobs offshore.
Now, can you imagine saying that, you know, there are some things I'm for and some things I'm against. Our friends on the other side voted against a closing of a loophole to disincentivize jobs moving offshore where Democrats are closing that loophole and incentivizing American manufacturing. Things made in the United States again, making things in the United States again, those times where our parents and grandparents grew up where we made things as a country, where we built things.
And that's what the energy revolution is all about. We send a billion dollars a day offshore. A billion a day, Mr. Speaker, offshore to oil- producing countries that don't like us all that much, and in many instances take our money and fund terroristic acts, try to in the United States and across the world. And then we have to spend money in our military to combat the global terrorist acts.
So if we come up with the idea of can't we produce our own energy here with nuclear, natural gas, wind, solar and put people back to work in the United States making the 8,000 component parts that go into a windmill, making the 400 tons of steel that go into a windmill, making the component parts that go into a solar panel, this is the idea of putting America back to work. And our friends on the other side, Mr. Speaker, are saying, No. Let's keep giving tax cuts to the oil companies so that they can keep drilling when we only have 2 percent of the world's oil in the United States of America.
There's a real choice here. There's a real difference here. And it's important for all of us to recognize the choices that have been made down here and the differences between the two parties.
So we stabilized things. We went from losing 750,000 jobs in that first month in January, and now we have an average monthly job growth of 170,000 jobs a month here in the United States. Not nearly enough. We need more. And we're working on more by helping small businesses, eight-plus small business tax credits to help create jobs, including a tax credit to create jobs here in the United States--as opposed to a tax credit that our friends on the other side support to move jobs overseas--so that we can put Americans back to work making things, manufacturing things, and taking on China. That's what these policies are all about. A green revolution in the United States is about resuscitating manufacturing in the United States.
And let me say that if you had a 401(k) or if you have a retirement plan,
it looks a heck of a lot better today than it did when our friends threw us the keys. Most families have gained about 60 percent of their wealth back because of the increase in the stock market because of the policies of this administration, the bold policies of this administration.
We have seen 98 percent of families in the United States in this past year see a reduced level of taxation.
Again, it's in vogue today in America, especially if you're a part of the neoconservative radical right wing that has taken control of the Republican Party, quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, to put up another bogeyman to say, They're raising your taxes. Well, we haven't. Ninety- eight percent of Americans have seen a reduction in taxes.
And so we are doing what we need to do to get us out of this economic catastrophe that President Bush and his Republican Party left this country. Deregulated Wall Street, looked the other way; let the insurance companies run crazy over the health insurance industry. And we've seen skyrocketing costs, incentivized ``drill baby drill,'' continue down that road while oil-producing countries take our money and fund terrorism when we could be investing that money in the United States and manufacturing renewable energy products here.
So we have seen, Mr. Speaker, a dramatic change over the course of the last 2 years.
So the choice is quite clear. Do we return back to the failed tried and tested policies, the worn-out, trite policies of the Bush administration? Do we trot those back out after we saw where they took us?
You know, here's the thing that I love.
Our friends on the other side say, Well, if we just cut taxes for the people that make all the money, it will trickle down and it will benefit everybody else. We tried that, Mr. Speaker. Those were the policies of the first 6 years of this decade. Bush came in, passed his tax cuts, and we didn't see extreme economic growth. We didn't see the middle class rise. We didn't see wages go up. We saw more offshoring of jobs to China and foreign countries. We saw the tax burden pushed off on the middle class. We saw health care costs skyrocket and go through the roof, continuing to take money out of the pockets of middle class families. We saw tuition costs go up all across the country, 9 percent a year.
And Pell Grant, because our friends said, Well, you're on your own; we don't even want to invest in education. You know, Pell Grants did not keep pace with where they needed to be. And our friend who was here earlier was talking about the student loans, how the Department of Education took over the student loan program and the free market. Yeah. Because the banks were charging our kids 8, 9 percent.
You want to keep that system going where you've got to take out a student loan and you get out of college and you owe $20,000 or $30,000 to get a college education? Or heaven forbid you get a master's degree or go to medical school and you come out with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt so that banks could make a profit off of trying to educate our kids so we could be globally competitive? That's what the other side wants to do, Mr. Speaker. They want to keep that system in place.
They like it just the way it was. Everybody was happy. The insurance companies were happy. The multinationals were happy. The banks were happy. Wall Street was happy, but we weren't happy as a country. And not only did the banks charge 8 or 9 percent for a student loan, check this out. The government said, if a student defaults on that loan, we'll pick up the tab. Jesus, I mean, wouldn't it be nice to be a bank under George Bush. You mean I get to loan this student and this family a student loan at 8 percent and if they default on it, the government will come in and pick up the tab? Hey, we should all go into banking and be that lucky.
They set up a system, Wall Street did, that if there were lots of profits and lots of economic activity, they reaped all the benefits and the wealth was not spread throughout society. They would benefit. And that if it failed and collapsed, they would bring the whole country down with them, Main Street included. And then President Obama gets in and we pass the most sweeping Wall Street reforms since the Great Depression and our friends on the other side voted against it, just to keep the status quo.
So let's recap a little bit. Bush comes in, Republicans rubberstamp his agenda, they cut taxes for the top 1 percent. They try to privatize Social Security and Medicare. Their policies are implemented across the board, economic, energy, foreign policy, right down the line. After they're all implemented, the economy completely collapses and shuts down.
And then the Democrats come in. We get the keys to the car. The wheels are spinning, wobbling. There's cracks in the windshield. There's steam coming out of the engine. The tailpipe's dragging on the ground. There's no back window. It's like the car from ``The Big Lebowski'' that the Dude used to drive. So this thing's just wobbling down the aisle, wobbling down the street. We get the keys to the car. We take some bold needed actions, and our friends on the other side don't even try to solve the problem, don't even try to solve the problem.
But what has happened is we went from losing 700,000 jobs a month to creating on average 170,000 jobs a month. We saw the stock market go from a little over 6,000 up to 11,000, and 60 percent of the wealth returned to American families. We have seen a reduction in student loans, an increase in Pell grants, an increase in the minimum wage, making sure everybody in the country has health care. We tried to provide, and we have provided, tax incentives for businesses who create jobs here in the United States of America as opposed to our friends on the other side who voted against closing the loophole to bring jobs to the U.S. They wanted to keep the status quo which incentivized people and businesses moving their companies offshore. And our friends on the other side don't want us to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and have consistently voted against initiatives to resuscitate manufacturing here in the United States and invest in green technologies and green energy here in the United States. So on and on and on.
In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, which I think really highlights the difference between the two parties is, if you look at the alternative budget provided by the Republican Party here in the House of Representatives, it privatizes Social Security and it attempts to turn Medicare into a voucher system for our senior citizens. Again, a leap back to the Bush-era policies. Do we really want to go back there?
I'm the first to say, Mr. Speaker, we haven't done everything right. I could talk about my disagreements I have with some of what the President has done, or everything we're not all in agreement here. But clearly, there's a difference between what we have done and what our friends on the other side handed us after full implementation of their agenda.
I'd like to yield to the gentlelady from Florida.
Who has her Florida orange on tonight.
I think it's important for us to say we have tried the old way, and this is what we have been trying and attempting to fix. Here you will see, again--or even a rise in manufacturing. What the Democrats are saying here, and you see 2, 4, 6 months of job growth in the manufacturing sector, and what Democrats are saying is that is part of the economic stimulus package, that is part of moving towards a green economy where our people in our country have always made things, have always gone to the factory and made things.
Not everybody can be in an ivory tower; not everyone can do the research. If we are going to succeed as a country, we need the middle class of our country to make things.
You can see that our policies are beginning to work, beginning to take hold; and the idea of taking a billion dollars a day that leaves our country and goes to oil-producing countries that don't like us all that much, that fund terrorism, and then we have got to fund the military to chase them all around the world, is an ignorant policy. It's a frivolous policy that doesn't work.
So what we have done is made investments in wind and solar and the batteries and things that the gentleman stated earlier so that we can do the cutting-edge research, but then we can make it here.
We could manufacture those products here; 8,000 component parts go into a
windmill, 400 tons of steel. Solar panels are filled with different components. In Toledo, for example, they are doing a lot of different solar panels, in Toledo, Ohio.
Let's make this stuff in the United States of America again so we can get back to a time when our parents and grandparents throughout the country could go to work and make something and watch it ride down the road or look at the steel in a building, in the concrete and the windows and the framing and everything that goes into it.
That's what we are moving back to. We have broken with the past, we have broken with the Bush economic policies that our friends on the other side have rubber stamped. We are now moving in a new direction, not nearly as quickly or with the celerity that we all want, but we are going in that direction.
Could I make a point real quickly. That vote is such an example that the other side seems to just be playing politics. They want Obama to fail, and they want to be able to say----
Yes, they have said it. And they want to be able to say, see, we had nothing to do with any of that. So being so ideological that they vote against getting rid of tax cuts that incentivize off-shoring business. I mean, that says it all. It's one thing to say you are against some of this stuff, but that too?
I'm just standing here, listening to you both.
When you piece this all together, their philosophy, which obviously didn't work because we saw how it ended, is to cut taxes for primarily the top 1 percent of the people--millionaires and multi-, multimillionaires--and expect that money to get reinvested. We all saw that the money was reinvested, for the most part, abroad in China and in other countries, so that was part of the offshoring.
Then their philosophy was to completely look the other way. It was to take the referee off the field on Wall Street, and let those people who are making all this money continue to find out all these other schemes to make more money--that's how that ran--even to the tune of the student loans where they let banks give student loans and charge 8, 9 percent. Then the government would back the loan if somebody defaulted. So the system was set up to allow just the wealthiest people in the country to keep making money any way they saw fit.
Right. I think what we are proposing and have been investing in is a pro-growth agenda for our country, and that is not as simple as cutting taxes for rich people and hoping and praying that they somehow will invest in the manufacturing in the U.S., you know, and in other investments in the U.S.
We need to rebuild our infrastructure in this country--roads, bridges, waterlines, sewer lines, and combined sewer in all of our big cities. We've got to invest. That's going to put people to work, and that's going to rebuild our country. Our highways and our bridges, we're going to invest in those. We're going to rebuild our country, and that's going to lead to economic development and to economic growth. We're going to invest in technology--green technology--and in National Institutes of Health biotechnology, which is ultimately going to make us healthier and create more jobs.
Those investments aren't made by the private sector, and we need to make those investments which will directly put people back to work. So we want to go back to the philosophy we had in this country in the 1950s, in the 1960s and a little bit in the 1970s, when we had balanced growth, a rising middle class, strong wage growth, and increases in productivity. This is as opposed to what started in the 1980s, except for the blip during the Clinton administration, which was deregulation and letting the big dogs, as you said earlier--big insurance, Big Oil, big banks, and multinational corporations--come into Washington, D.C., and run this show, too. That doesn't work for Main Street.
Ultimately, I think, as difficult as these last couple of years have been, we have gotten to see the supply side economic policy and what really happens once it is fully implemented. We saw the end result of that.
We're going to continue to go down the road. We're not going to turn back. We've had too much success. We've got a long way to go.