Tax Extenders

Floor Speech

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I want to talk about something else. I sat here, as did the Presiding Officer from Illinois, who was a strong supporter of passing this legislation that again failed because of the Senate's anachronistic, outmoded requirement of 60 votes, a supermajority. We could not get there because no Republicans--no Republicans--cooperated. We could not do today what we should do, and that is extend unemployment benefits to tens of thousands of Ohioans and millions of Americans. We could not extend the assistance to help them keep their insurance, which Senator Casey has worked so hard on, something called COBRA, so that people who lost their jobs would not lose their insurance. We could not help those physicians who are about to face a 21-percent cut in their payments. We could not stop the outsourcing through our tax system of too many jobs abroad. We could not do any of that today because we did not get any cooperation.

I understand partisanship. I understand ideological differences. But what I don't understand is when I hear Republican after Republican stand on this floor and talk about the budget deficit, I am just struck. I have only been in this institution for 3 years. I was in the House of Representatives for 14 years before. I am struck by the utter hypocrisy when I hear Republicans all of a sudden decide deficits matter, all of a sudden decide everything needs to be paid for.

When I was in the House of Representatives, George Bush came to Congress and asked for the authority to go to Iraq and did not even try to pay for it. I voted no, but that is beside the point. It passed. It was not paid for.

Then President Bush came to the Congress again with a Republican majority and asked for huge tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to the richest Americans. They did not pay for that either. They charged that to our grandchildren.

Then around the same time in the name of Medicare privatization, he asked for what he called a Medicare drug benefit, what I call a bailout for the drug and insurance industry, tens of billions in subsidies to drug companies and insurance companies, and they did not pay for that either.

Throughout the first decade of this century, Congress has spent close to $1 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and did not pay for it. Nobody on that side said: Wait a second. We shouldn't do this without paying for it.

Then Congress passed hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts for the richest Americans and did not pay for that. They did not say we can't do that unless we pay for it. They did the same thing for this give-away to the drug and insurance companies.

Now when we want to extend unemployment benefits to people who have lost their jobs, when we want to extend some assistance for health insurance to people who have lost their health insurance, all of a sudden all these conservatives around here say we cannot do this unless we pay for it. Then their little cheerleaders on the Wall Street editorial board, and talk radio, and their people on Fox TV, like one bird flying off a telephone wire, they all fly off and say: We have to pay for it.

They never said we have to pay for a trillion-dollar war. They never said we should pay for the tax cuts going to the rich people. They never said we should pay for these subsidies going to the drug companies. We start a war, we attack Iraq, we go to Afghanistan, and we charge it to our grandchildren. We give a tax cut to the richest Americans, and we charge it to our grandchildren. We pass this give-away to the drug and insurance companies, and we charge it to our grandchildren.

But again, when it is time to help laid-off workers--we know what happens when a person is laid off. They almost act as if unemployment insurance is a welfare program. All I can think of when I see the behavior of refusal to extend unemployment insurance or the refusal to help people get health insurance when they have lost their jobs, all I can think of is most of my friends on the other side of the aisle, most of my colleagues must not know anybody who has lost their job, who has lost their insurance. They must not know anybody who, because they lost their job and their insurance, may next lose their home.

Try to think about this. I know people who have lost their homes. I know people who were doing pretty well and lost their homes. I have tried to understand what it is like. You come home one day and for the last 3 or 4 months you tried to make your mortgage payment. You were late the first month. Then you got the second payment in on time. The next month you were late. The following month you could not pay and you realize you are in trouble. And then the bank comes to you and tells you they will foreclose.

Think what that is like. You worked hard. Maybe your kids are still small. You have lost your job. You want to pay your mortgage, but you do not have the money to do it.

So the bank is going to foreclose on your house. Think about that. You have three kids and your spouse has lost her job or you don't have enough money to make these payments and you are going to have to tell your kids: Guys, we are going to have to leave our house.

Where are we going to live, Dad?

We will try to move in with somebody.

What are we going to do with all our stuff?

I don't know; put it in storage. If we can't afford storage, I guess we will have to give it away.

Think about what it would be like to lose your job, then your insurance, then to lose your home. That has happened to a whole lot of people who even look like me, people who dress well and have middle-class jobs. This just doesn't happen to a bunch of people who were just lazy and didn't do anything; this is happening to all kinds of people in this country.

I wonder if my Republican colleagues--if the conservatives here who always preach self-reliance and always say we have to do better in this country and that people should have to stand on their own two feet--really know people who have lost their jobs and lost their insurance and lost their homes. I think if they did, they might be willing to extend unemployment benefits; if they did, they might be willing to extend subsidies to help those people get their health insurance.

That is what is so troubling about what has happened the last few weeks. We can't get 60 votes because we need some Republicans. We can't get 60 votes to extend unemployment to help people out a little bit. Again, unemployment insurance is not welfare. You have a job and you pay into unemployment every paycheck. You pay into this insurance fund so that if you lose your job, you get help from that fund. It is as simple as that.

So, Mr. President, I guess my patience runs short--as is the case for many of us on this side--when I hear my colleagues saying we can't do this because it would add to the budget deficit. Yet they continue to vote for war funding, and they continue giving tax cuts to the richest people in America, and they continue to subsidize the drug industry in America. It is a moral question, and the Senate failed this moral question.

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