John Yarmuth: “Mr. Chairman, when families around the country try to deal with their budgetary issues and there are limited resources…”

“Mr. Chairman, when families around the country try to deal with their budgetary issues and there are limited resources available, what they do is, they say, Well, we may have to borrow money; but if we're borrowing money, we're going to borrow it for survival--meaning necessities--or we're going to borrow it to make an investment that will pay off over time. There are many things in this package that represent those two standards. Unemployment benefits represent necessities. Those are things our citizens need to survive for them and their families, and there are business tax credits in these bills that represent investments that will create jobs and stimulate economic activity. All of those are good things. On the other hand, there are expenditures in this bill that don't meet either of those standards. These are the expenditures that give over $100 billion to the wealthiest citizens in this country, the ones whose net worth has dramatically increased over the last decade, who now, 1 percent of this country, control a vast majority of the wealth of this country. They have done extremely well. To give them more money when we're borrowing it is not the kind of priority we need to set. It does not represent an investment in jobs or in stimulative activity, and it does not represent necessities. These are bonuses to people who don't need them. There are lots of good things in this bill. Unfortunately, the price for getting them is much too high.”