Senate Needs to Get To Work

Floor Speech

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, here we are on New Year's Eve working to avoid this latest fiscal cliff. Of course, if you wonder why we're here, just look at the fact that we shouldn't have to be here.

Back on August 1, this House, with a bipartisan vote, passed a bill that would have avoided this fiscal cliff. It would have protected every American family from seeing a tax increase. The bill passed on August 1, and it's been sitting over in the Senate every day since then. But here we are on New Year's Eve, and the Senate is finally rolling up their sleeves and working to avoid this crisis.

Well, here we are at another crisis, and, unfortunately, as we look towards this New Year tomorrow, this is not the last time that we may be here. We passed a budget here in the House months ago. It's been more than 3 years since the Senate passed a budget, yet months from now we'll be hearing another cliff approaching of a government shutdown because the Senate hasn't passed a budget.

It's time for the Senate to start doing their work and stop creating these crises and forcing American families to wonder what's going to happen next and what's going to be the next crisis. We should not have any American family facing a tax increase. Let's get the American economy on track.

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