Tax Extenders Act of 2009

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LINDER. I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this deficit extender bill.

This bill reflects the American people's rejection of the even more expensive bill Democrat leaders wanted to pass this week but couldn't, so now they're searching for an exit strategy and, mostly, for someone else to blame for their inability to govern.

Let us be clear: This charade is an effort to entice Republicans into defeating an unpaid-for bill. The Senate is gone. The door is closed. Nothing is going to come of this bill irrespective of who votes for or against it.

The title suggests its authors think this bill is about jobs. One expert at the Urban Institute calls that "Orwellian'' and "hideously mislabeled.'' From a taxpayer perspective, this is not about jobs. It is about more government spending, more debt, more taxes. That means fewer private-sector jobs.

This bill is also an admission that the trillion-dollar 2009 stimulus plan has failed. We were told that, if we passed that plan, unemployment would be 7.4 percent and falling, not 9.9 percent and rising. So now our colleagues want to extend the unemployment benefits for another 6 months.

Why just through November? Why not through December as originally intended?

Well, we need to get through the next election cycle. Not one penny of the $40 billion that it will cost is paid for. Instead, our colleagues simply declare this eighth extension of unemployment insurance an emergency and add it to our $13 trillion debt.

But can an eighth bill doing anything still be called an "emergency''?

This bill perpetuates the payment of a record 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, which encourages benefit collection over work. As the Detroit News recently put it, even in Michigan, which has America's highest unemployment rate, "Some job applicants are rejecting work offers so they can continue collecting unemployment benefits.''

Stop the madness. Defeat this bill. Then let's really promote jobs by relieving job-creating businesses and workers of higher government spending, borrowing, and taxes, instead of adding to those burdens.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source