Madam President, I rise to speak about progrowth tax reform. One week ago Monday, President Obama proposed to raise taxes on over 1 million small businesses in this country. Even though he said in the past that we cannot raise taxes in a recession and that higher taxes will hurt our economy and hurt job creation, he proposed raising taxes on more than 1 million small businesses across this country. Last week I came to the floor to talk about why that is not the right approach and to discuss the approach we should take, the right approach. I pointed out that his approach--the administration's approach--has made our economy worse since he took office. Here are the facts, and they speak for themselves. Today we have 8.2 percent unemployment. We have had over 8 percent unemployment for 41 straight weeks. We have more than 13 million people who are out of work and another 10 million people who are underemployed. That is 23 million people who are either unemployed or underemployed. Middle-class income has declined from an average of $55,000 down to $50,000 since the President took office. Food stamp usage is up. There were 32 million food stamp recipients at the beginning of the Obama administration; today there are 46 million recipients. We have gone from 32 million people on food stamps to 46 million people on food stamps. Home values have dropped from an average of $169,000 to an average of about $148,000. Let's talk about economic growth.…
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You mentioned 6,000 tribal regulators. What is your thought in terms of building some kind of connection or rapport with them?





