Alan Grayson: “Here in the House and in the Senate and with the President's pen, we make policy for America. We make foreign policy. We…”

“Here in the House and in the Senate and with the President's pen, we make policy for America. We make foreign policy. We make security policy. We make health policy and environmental policy. And we make economic policy. And it's time to take a close look at exactly what the tax cuts for the rich have done for us for the past 9 years because now we are going to make policy for not just the next 2 years, but I believe for far longer than that. Let's simply take a look at the 9 lean years that we have experienced under tax cuts for the rich and compare them to the 9 fat years that preceded that. The first thing you'll know, which you can see from this chart here, is that in the 9 previous years before we enacted the Bush tax cuts for the rich, 23 million jobs were created. Since we enacted those tax cuts for the rich, we have lost 2 million jobs in America. The next chart shows that the average unemployment rate as a result rose from 5.5 percent approximately to well over 6 percent after we enacted the Bush tax cuts. So often I have heard that the Bush tax cuts for the rich will somehow create jobs when the record is directly to the contrary. In fact, it doesn't only affect people who work, it affects everyone.”