Job Protection and Recession Prevention Act of 2012
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, you know, when nearly 23 million Americans are struggling to find full-time employment, President Obama and his Democrat allies seem to think that now is the time to raise taxes on small businesses.
And the President may be satisfied with an 8 percent or more unemployment rate for 41 straight months, but I'm not and, more importantly, the American people are not. The American people don't need to settle for a country with fewer and fewer opportunities and a diminished future.
So the House today will vote to stop the tax hike for all taxpayers, and tomorrow we will vote to move forward with a comprehensive tax reform. This is a critical step in providing the certainty that our small businesses desperately need to grow and create jobs.
Now, the Democrats' proposal to raise taxes on nearly 1 million small businesses will cost more than 700,000 jobs, and they have not even offered a plan on tax reform. This is more of the same failed leadership that has given us the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression.
Democrats think that we are just one more tax increase away from prosperity. But when has a nation ever taxed its way to prosperity? Prosperity is built by the American people, not the government. American entrepreneurs and small business owners are the lifeblood of our American Dream, and they're the backbone of our economy.
It is clear that we must stop this tax hike and reform our broken Tax Code to revive our struggling economy and keep the American Dream alive.
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Mrs. BLACK. Mr. Speaker, as I have been back in the district talking to my constituents and visiting many of the businesses and the job creators in the district, I have continued to hear from them that if we place one more tax increase on them, they're just not sure that they can survive.
Now these are good people that I go to the grocery store with, that I go to church with. I know how hard they're working, and I know how hard their families are working in order to keep businesses going within our community. And when we know that two out of every three jobs are created by a small businessman or -woman, we impact those very folks who are creating the jobs for so many people in the district.
I hear this over and over again. And they look at me and say, Diane, please go back to Congress and please relay this to the Members of Congress, that we need to make sure that we have the certainty and that we don't impact them and their businesses so that they have to close down and, once again, increase the amount of unemployment.
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Mrs. BLACK. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not have a plan. Their plan is to increase the taxes on this group of people.
Second to that are those who continue to say to me--especially those who are looking at planning for their families for the future, of what they're going to leave for them--they're not going to be able to leave those things that they've worked so hard for because the estate taxes are going to go up.
We cannot do this to the people in my district. I'm going to be here to fight for that.
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