American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, in the Rose Garden on Tuesday, President Obama stood with three long-time job seekers and reminded us that out-of-work Americans want to find work, and no one here, of course, questions that. I hear every day from Arizonans who look for a job day after day, week after week. They are just getting by.

I realize that few things can be more frustrating and demoralizing than struggling to find a job and that the effects of unemployment for families are deep and severe.

President Obama would have the American people believe congressional Republicans have been blocking an extension of unemployment benefits in order to make some political point. He accused us of this again on Tuesday and claimed we are refusing to help out-of-work Americans.

I wish to set the record straight. This is not a dispute about extending unemployment benefits. There is broad bipartisan agreement that we should do that. Republicans have voted several times in the past to extend benefits. I have.

The dispute, rather, is over who should pay for those benefits. Should we finance this $34 billion obligation in the short term with a loan from a foreign government and pass the tab on to our kids and grandkids or should we pay for it now by cutting other Federal spending? That is the question. It is a matter of who is going to pay for the benefits we provide to people.

I do not think we should be sending that tab to our kids. I believe we should pay it now. This is our generation. This is our problem today. We have an obligation to help take care of our fellow citizens when they are in time of need. We should find a way to pay for that. Our kids and grandkids are going to have their own problems in their day. We do not need to compound those problems by adding our obligations to those that they will need to deal with.

Republicans have offered an array of constructive solutions to the problem, proposals to pay for what we are spending, including using unspent money from the President's failed stimulus package. Almost half that money remains available.

We have tried five times to pass an extension of unemployment benefits that does not add to the debt. But our Democratic colleagues have repeatedly rejected our proposals. So the principal they are defending is not the need for unemployment insurance extension, it is that they will not pass a bill unless it adds to the debt. They will not pass a bill to extend unemployment benefits unless it adds to the debt.

The extension likely would have passed weeks ago if Democrats had simply agreed to pay for it now by cutting other Federal spending. In this $3 trillion budget that we have, obviously, there are plenty of places for us to find the offsets. Our national debt has been increased again and again during this recession. That creates long-term burdens for everyone--the employed, the unemployed, and generations to come.

While President Obama argues that we have increased the debt in the past to pay for other items, I will note that we were not in the middle of a debt crisis back then, for one thing. I suggest we pass a bill that is paid for now and recalibrate efforts to encourage private sector job creation.

As unemployed Americans know, while unemployment benefits provide a lifeline, they are only a temporary fix. They are not a substitute for new private sector jobs. I will venture a guess that everybody who is unemployed today would much rather have a job tomorrow than another check from the government for unemployment benefits.

So what do we do to create jobs and get the economy moving again? Well, you do not do it by borrowing more money. The President's job-creation initiatives have been a bust. Since his enormous stimulus bill passed in February of 2009, the private sector has lost over 2 million jobs.

While there has been some anemic economic growth since the recession started, employers are still clearly reluctant to hire. That probably has to do with the reality that businesses, both small and large, look down the road. They see massive tax increases beginning next year, on top of all the new regulations imposed by this administration.

They hear about a proposed national energy tax and proposed new pro-union policies. So they are reluctant to take a chance on the future because of all the uncertainty and the burdens we have already placed upon them. The key to job creation, and thus helping unemployed Americans, is having stable and sound policies in place for employers to make long-term decisions.

More spending, taxing, regulating, and debt are not the answers. I would hope we can find a way to extend unemployment benefits without asking our children to pay the tab for this generation's problems.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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