American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009 - Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I thank my friends, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, for their eloquent comments. I thank them for their leadership. I thank them for their courage. I am honored to be in their presence. All of America is indebted to them for what their leadership, on behalf of this unifying amendment, will mean to the people of our country.
Tonight the Senate is passing a test. It is not as hard a test as the test millions of Americans are facing every day in this terrible economic crisis our country is going through. It is not as hard as the test facing the families whose mothers and fathers have lost their jobs or whose children cannot afford to go to college or whose employers cannot afford to give them the health care benefits they have had.
I could go on and on. It is the American people who, in the midst of this economic crisis, greater than any we have faced since the Great Depression, are facing the most serious test every day. But their test now confronts the Senate, the House, this Congress, the President, our Government with another test.
Are we able to come together and give the American people, the American economy, American businesses, American workers, the help that they can get from nowhere else, to get this economy of ours moving again, to protect jobs and to create jobs. The help is not going to come from the private sector; it is not there. It is not going to come from the personal consumption that normally drives 70 percent of our gross domestic product; it is not there. You do not need to be an economist to understand that.
People see it in their own lives: lost jobs, fear that their jobs will be next, an anxiety so deep they will not buy what they need, businesses that are constantly laying off people. It has been referred to, but here it is today, 600,000 Americans lost their job last month, January of this year.
So the only place help can come from for this economy now is the Federal Government. The question is, Would we rise to the test? I think tonight, thanks to some very strong leadership from Senator Nelson, Senator Collins, some really courageous work by the two of them, and Senator Specter and others in both parties, we are going to show tonight that the U.S. Government passes the test.
As a result, we will then help the American people pass the test, restore their hope, protect their jobs, create new jobs, give them more money in their pockets as their payroll taxes go down. This journey we have been on this week, very intense, very emotional, very difficult, was never about winning or losing, it was about governing.
Would we be able to find common ground to get 60 votes to pass this legislation so critically needed by the American people. Tonight we are going to do it. It was not easy, but we are going to do it, and it should give us all in this Chamber hope as we go on to confront the next problems and challenges we will face: health care reform, climate change, entitlement reform to secure the retirement of the American people in future years.
The bill that came to the floor, as has been said, was a very strong and good-faith effort. But many of us on both sides of the aisle, both parties, even a couple of Independents, felt there were some things in it that though very well intended, could not be justified as part of an economic stimulus package.
On another level, what was clear as a result is that the proposal, as it came to the floor, simply did not have the 60 votes it needs to get adopted. You cannot get anything done, I was told a long time ago when I went into Connecticut politics, by a wise and seasoned politician: You cannot get anything done for the people who were good enough to send you to serve unless you pass legislation.
It is great to give a beautiful speech, but a beautiful speech doesn't protect anybody's job. It doesn't put more money into the paycheck. It doesn't provide health care or hope.
In what looked like another moment of failure, inability to lead, inability to govern, inability to help the people of our country who are suffering now as they haven't suffered for a long time, a gang was formed. I must say, as a teenager I never got to join a gang. The Senate has given me an unexpected opportunity to join some good gangs. It shows if you live long enough, as the old saying goes, you experience anything. This wasn't a gang of 14. This was a gang of people who wanted to get the economy moving again--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. But it took two people with the guts to step forward and form it, lead it: Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Senator Susan Collins of Maine. A lot of others of us came together. We worked very hard. We worked openly. We worked honestly. We had a common goal, as has been said; $110 billion has been cut out of this program.
Our Republican colleagues offered an amendment that would have cut the original program down to $411 billion. Senator Collins, in our meetings with one another, came in with a proposal of $620 billion. The bill, as it came to the floor, was $885 billion. We compromised. That is always the way anything gets done in an American legislative body because we represent this extraordinarily diverse country. We come with different philosophies, different backgrounds, different constituencies. If you try to get everything you want, you won't get anything for anybody who was good enough to send you here to represent them.
So through some steadfast, patient, creative leadership from Senator Nelson and Senator Collins, we moved forward and, ultimately, today have come up with this agreement. This actually cuts over 20 percent of the money recommended for spending by the Appropriations Committee, but it comes very close to the $800 billion President Obama has quite rightly said this country needs to make this stimulus work. We have a $1 trillion gap in our economy this year. This $780 billion will be spent over 2 years. Frankly, we need that, and probably more, to get the economy going in the way we want it to be going.
I wish to say a special word of thanks and admiration for Senator Collins and Senator Specter. They differed from the majority of the members of their party. I have been in that position. It is no fun. It is lonely. It is not that anybody is right--we think we are right--it is just that people come to a different decision about what the national interest requires. Both of our colleagues and others on the Republican side have put what they think to be the national interest ahead of party interest. I think what we are doing here tonight will be a tremendous help to the people of this country.
A lot of our colleagues on the Democratic side are accepting less than they thought was necessary to do the job. They are compromising too. They are compromising because they want to get something done, and they know, as they watch the economic indicators and the human suffering changing every day, getting worse and worse every day, that it is urgent we do something now.
So we come together tonight to prove we are capable of governing, we are capable of leading, we are capable of reaching across party lines to get things done when the American people need it most. I am proud to be here. I am grateful to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I am encouraged that what we have done tonight will set an example for what we can do for the rest of this session. The leaders of the gangs may change. The Members may come and go. But we only get things done here if we build bridges across the aisle. That is what we are celebrating tonight.
Ultimately, as I said, there were no winners or losers. This is not about winning or losing. There is a winner tonight. It is the American people. They deserve it.
The leader set up this time for debate. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that this period of time be for debate only.
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