Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlelady. I oppose neither the rule nor the transportation funding in this bill, but I do oppose the so-called ``jobs'' tax credit. I only have one big problem with it, that it does so little to create jobs while adding to our very big debt. In deciding whether to waste more resources on such legislation that will not accomplish its purpose, I think it's important that we look at one of the last jobs bills that this Congress considered. We were told that the only way to extend unemployment benefits to families in need through Christmas was to simultaneously approve a measure that sent $33 billion to corporations with no requirement that they use their cash windfall to create or preserve jobs. The so-called ``loss carry-back'' provision simply directed the Treasury to begin writing checks, $33 billion in checks this year, to corporations. One corporation, a bankrupt financial services company, Washington Mutual, got $2.6 billion in checks this year from the Treasury. That just happens to be a little more than all of the unemployed people in America combined got from this piece of legislation. So I think we need to take a close look at every piece of legislation to see whether it really creates jobs as this one did not. Today, we have another tax break that is weak on policy, strong on politics. It's a retread proposal that this Congress rejected last year, and it doesn't smell any better this year.…”