200 Days of Delivering for the People

Floor Speech

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Mr. LIEU. Mr. Speaker, I would ask to engage Representative Neguse in a colloquy to ask a question.

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Mr. LIEU. Mr. Speaker, that wonderful tax cut for American families with children, did any Republican congressman vote for it?

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Mr. LIEU. That's right. It was Democrats in the House, Democrats in the Senate that got the American Rescue Plan signed into law, and President Biden enacted it.

Some of you may wonder, well, what else is in this American Rescue Plan.

So we have this amazing tax cut for millions and millions of American families with children, but in addition, the American Rescue Plan was designed to do four things: To get shots into arms, children into schools, people back on their jobs, and cash in their pockets. And it is doing all four of those.

We know that since January 20, there has been over 3 million jobs created under the Biden-Harris administration. We know that jobless claims have been cut in half. The American Rescue Plan had stimulus checks go out to millions of Americans who needed cash in their pockets. It also provided billions of dollars to schools across our country so they could reopen safely, and it also had money for restaurants and small businesses. It had additional economic injury disaster grants. It also had shuttered venue grants to help those shuttered venues. It was so full of programs to help the American people that we now have projections that our GDP is now going to skyrocket.

We see people coming back into jobs, and we see America back on track, and not a single Republican voted for that American Rescue Plan.

You know what else was in that plan? Funding for local government. I served in local government. I was on the Torrance City Council; I loved that job. It is very clear to me that one of the big aspects of local government funding is funding for public safety, funding for our firefighters, funding for police officers. Not a single Republican voted for that local funding for public safety. This American Rescue Plan was a transformative law and it is still continuing to provide benefits to the American people.

Just a few days ago, as Representative Neguse mentioned, on July 15, most American families got a tax refund--hundreds of dollars. This is going to happen again the middle of next month; they are going to get hundreds of dollars again. And then it is going to happen again on the 15th of September, and again on the 15th of October, and again on the 15th of November, and again on December 15.

This is transforming the lives of Americans. It is allowing hardworking parents to have cash to provide childcare, cash to get gas for their car, to go to work, to get back into our economy, get back into the labor market; and again, not a single Republican in the House or in the Senate voted for the American Rescue Plan. And this was just the first 6 months of Democrats in control.

What did the Republicans do when they were in control? Well, they also did give tax cuts, except it went to the top 1 percent. It went to billionaires. And all of you know that, because you didn't get a tax cut. You would have remembered if you did, but you didn't. The American people actually did not get this, because it went mostly to billionaires.

Democrats and Republicans, very starkly different. The first 6 months in office, we chose to give a tax cut to the middle class, to families with children, and we are not done. Now we are working on the American Jobs Plan that is going to have an infrastructure component. It is going to have money for elder care. It is going to have workforce retraining. It is going to help restore the millions of jobs that were lost during this pandemic. We are working on the American Families Plan, because this amazing tax cut for families with children, we want to make it permanent. We want to give Republicans another chance to vote for it, because we want to make this tax cut for families with children permanent. Hopefully, we are going to get bipartisan support for that.

What else is going to be in the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan? It is going to have funding also for education. Studies show that in terms of education, the most impact it can have on a human being's life is under the age of five. So we are going to have funding to have universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds. This is when their brains are developing. This is when you can have tremendous impact that is going to affect them for the rest of their lives.

We are going to extend higher education funding to provide free community college for anyone who wants it. We are in the 21st century now. We simply have to expand our education. People have to learn more skills so they can prepare for the economy of the 21st century.

Hopefully, Republicans will join us. Hopefully, we will get bipartisan support, and we will continue to make America as great as we want it to be and to move forward on a bipartisan basis. We ask Republicans to join us, but for now, we do know not a single one of them voted for the American Rescue Plan.

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Mr. LIEU. That is correct. Even though a number of them took credit for that program, they actually didn't vote for it. So I don't want the American people to be confused. If your Republican Member of Congress claims credit for the American Rescue Plan, they did not vote for it. But hey, if they want to talk good things about it, we are happy to accept it, but your Republican Member of Congress did not vote for the American Rescue Plan.

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