Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5618, Restoration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 2010, and Waiving Requirement of Clause 6(a) of Rule XIII with Respect to Consideration of Certain Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend from Grandfather Community, North Carolina, for yielding me the time.
I would like to say that it's very sad and unfortunate that we are here. And, Mr. Speaker, let me say that I believe that it's really unnecessary, really unnecessary for us to be here. Why? Because if we had 17 months ago put into place a bipartisan vision for economic growth that was utilized very effectively by John F. Kennedy during the decade of the 1960s, and Ronald Reagan during the decade of the 1980s, that's why I call it bipartisan, I am convinced that we would in fact have attained what President Obama promised us would have happened with passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill.
You'll recall he said that if that measure passed, that the unemployment rate would not exceed 8 percent and that at this point we would be at an unemployment rate of somewhere around 7.4 percent.
Mr. Speaker, my friend from California is joining in managing of this rule, and he knows very well that we not only don't have a 7.4 percent unemployment rate, we not only don't have an 8 percent unemployment rate as was promised by the President, but we nationally have just under 10 percent unemployment. And tomorrow we're going to be getting numbers which, according to reports, are not going to be terribly positive.
But in our State of California and the area that my friend represents, the unemployment rate is far beyond that. The area I represent in southern California has unemployment in the Inland Empire of right around 14 percent. And I know that it's well in the double digits in the Central Valley of California.
So when I say it should be unnecessary for us to be here, Mr. Speaker, the reason I say it is that if we were to take the bipartisan John F. Kennedy-Ronald Reagan model and use that for economic growth, we could have an unemployment rate which would be significantly less than we are facing today, and we could have a GDP growth rate which would be significantly higher.
Now, what is that model? That model, the one that worked, that actually doubled the flow of revenues to the Federal Treasury during the 1960s and the 1980s, is one which is designed to bring about marginal tax rate reduction to encourage savings and productivity. Now, Mr. Speaker, that's the kind of thing that we should be doing to avoid where we are today facing this continued extension of unemployment benefits.
The notion that somehow those of us who want to put into place pro-growth economic policies aren't concerned about those who are today in need of unemployment benefits is a preposterous argument because we believe very passionately that the level of compassion of a government should be based not on the number of people who have to draw unemployment benefits but based instead on the number of people who do not need to draw unemployment benefits.
That's why we found that over the past 17 months clearly the economic plan, which was put into place by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership, is one that has not met up to what was promised. In fact, from my perspective, it's been an abject failure when you have an unemployment rate that nationally is nearly 2 percent greater than the level that we were promised.
I also believe, Mr. Speaker, that we have an opportunity that emerged from the discussion that took place last weekend at the G-20 meeting. That plan that the President--and I congratulate him for putting forward--calls for moving ahead in a lame duck session after renegotiating a U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement. And I look forward to working with my friend, the distinguished chair of the Committee on Ways and Means, on this just as soon as we are able to move forward with it.
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Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding.
Let me say, Mr. Speaker, that I believe that if we were to take that vision of opening up markets when 96 percent of the world's consumers are outside of our borders and pass not only the U.S.-South Korea agreement but right here in this hemisphere, if we were to pass the Panama and Colombia agreements, which were negotiated before the South Korea agreement was put into place, we would have tens of millions of new consumers. In Colombia alone, 40 million consumers. American jobs could be created for Caterpillar, John Deere, Whirlpool. Other great U.S. companies could create U.S. jobs.
And I hope very much, Mr. Speaker, that we're able to put those kinds of pro-growth policies into place so we don't have to face what we're facing today.
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