Paul Tonko: “Thank you, Representative Yarmuth and Representative Garamendi. Thank you both for your input. Now, Representative Bass…”

“Thank you, Representative Yarmuth and Representative Garamendi. Thank you both for your input. Now, Representative Bass of California talked about the Medicare transformation that would really hurt people across this great country, and it seems as though you would expect everyone that serves here to be an avid fan of history, that we would want to be taught by the history that has built this great Nation. We heard earlier from Representative Yarmuth about the repeats of the tax cuts that were recent history. We saw it during the second Bush Presidency. We saw it during the Reagan era where we did this trickle- down theory: if we reduce the burden at the top, it will trickle down and everyone will have jobs galore. Well, you look at the history, and those two scenarios just did not work. They did not work. And as students of history, all of us as Representatives, we should absorb that lesson, and we should know that a repeat of that kind is only going to wreak damage on the American economy and, more importantly, on the American families, the middle class. What did work, what lesson in history stands very strong and tall is that during the FDR Presidency when this country was hurting from one of the worst economic struggles it had to face, they came up with a program that invested in job creation, invested in the American worker, invested in American families. We created infrastructure; we built across America the needs of this great Nation.…”