Burgess Owens: “I want to point out that the problem of putting people to work on welfare and the problem of providing decent jobs and…”

“I want to point out that the problem of putting people to work on welfare and the problem of providing decent jobs and wages for workers is not unrelated to the overall scene here in this House. The budget drives everything. We have certain developments in the budget which automatically take away job opportunities. We have a great decrease in the amount of public housing construction and repair. We have a great decrease in terms of money available for school repair and renovation. In fact, they took the whole Presidential initiative of $5 billion, which would have gone into repair and renovating and building new schools, providing jobs for people in inner cities. We had a big fight over the transportation bill which in the inner city communities would provide jobs for people who work for mass transit and for the construction and repair of subways and bus systems, et cetera, as well as provide jobs for people who work on highways. So the job creation part of the budget is given away to tax cuts. We have large tax cuts to the same categories of people that the gentleman from Vermont was talking about earlier. They are already the richest people in America. Our budget is dedicated to giving them more to take capital gains cuts and inheritance cuts.”