Bill Pascrell: “there is a credit card problem here on the House floor. You know what it would take to balance the budget while…”

“there is a credit card problem here on the House floor. You know what it would take to balance the budget while preserving these tax cuts? Let's take a look at your budget. To balance the budget by 2016, only 10 years away, while making the tax cuts permanent, you would have to cut Social Security benefits by 45 percent, you would have to cut defense spending by 66 percent, and you would have to cut Medicare by 56 percent. Every other program except Social Security, Medicare, Defense and Homeland Security you would have to cut by 32 percent. Now unless you are prepared to do that, you ought to take a look at the real facts. The President promised that 5.5 million jobs would be created by 2003. Those tax cuts that we passed, that you passed in 2003. Instead, less than half of those jobs ever materialized. If the workforce had only grown with the rate of population since 2001, there would be 3 million more people between the ages of 20 and 65 in the workforce than there is today. Last year, middle-income wages actually grew less than the rate of inflation, reducing their buying power and their ability to grow the economy. That is why the American people are not fooled by your press conferences, by your budgets, by your shenanigans about we want to tax and spend. They don't believe you anymore. Real wages have not grown since the passage of these tax cuts and are now at the level seen all the way back in November of 2001, before the tax cuts.…”