On the recordFebruary 8, 2012
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, thankfully we're in a leap year, because we have 2 weeks to the day to come to an agreement to extend the payroll tax cut, the doc fix, and the important unemployment benefits. We can't let taxes go up for the American people by $100 billion. Let's get this clear what this costs. Yet the majority is willing to bail out certain banks, to protect billionaires from having their taxes go up by one dime, and the majority has to be dragged kicking and screaming to provide the middle class a little help. The gentleman from New York was absolutely correct to compare what the Reagan administration faced--and I thought they did a good job in responding to the problem--to this almost catastrophe off the cliff, which is a stretch beyond one's imagination. It doesn't stand up to logic. So far this year, the economic indicators have shown some improvements, not what you would like, not what I would like, not what the gentleman from Long Island would like. Well, we're going in the right direction. I'm sorry if some folks on the other side don't like that, but that's what's happening. We've had 23 months of private sector job growth and increases not since the mid-nineties in manufacturing. When the President raised his hand in January of 2009, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. Now the unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent, which is nowhere either side wants it to be.…
