Jim McDermott

So you now have no more unemployment benefits, and you are middle class yesterday, and today you are with food stamps.

You have to have a disability that is going to keep you off the rolls for a year, that you are going to be unable to work for a year, or die.

The bottom line being if you keep them poor enough and hungry enough, they will ultimately finally find some way to get out of it; is that what you are saying?

I watched what happened yesterday on the floor, when the floor was controlled by people who really believe that government should have no role in doing anything.

As I look out on this committee, or this panel, I am really pleased to see people who believe in the market.

The Republican budget would cut $600 million of the IRS. This would hurt the program's integrity efforts.

The Republican budget would hurt taxpayer service and administration of energy and other tax credits.

The Republican budget would cut over $105 million from taxpayer service.

They need food and clothing and housing and medical care. That is what AFDC was about.

What State would you suggest they go to where they could find a program that would meet the needs of a middle-class couple that is being crushed by this economy of 9.2 percent unemployment?

Is there a place for nurse practitioners in that kind of a thing?

When you sit at the Federal level, when you sit at this dais, and you look out on the United States, and you try and figure out what should we do, then the question that--I mean, Dr. Jenny raises the question of more…

It seems to me the problem is we are always coming in at the back end, looking at the problem.

I have watched these hearings since 1970, when I was in the State legislature.

If the Affordable Care Act were repealed, as the majority is trying to do, it would require a 53 percent reduction in benefits or 134 percent increase in the payroll tax to cover the deficit.

Now you have moved up to this Federal level. Do we need a national standard that emulates Illinois or something similar?

So, the case load starts at two months----

You are dealing with 20 million people who are living under the poverty level and are supposed to report monthly if their income went up or down $25.

When you get in the FEMA car run by Republicans, you get what you got in New Orleans.

But the Republicans don't believe that the government's job is to fix this kind of stuff.

We seem to have another example here of the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Democrats believe that the government is supposed to solve a problem, and that you work to keep trying to make it work better.

I hope the chairman will have another hearing where we get a hearing from the squealing ones who have gotten bit by this new getting rid of all the tax credits and lowering the rates.

So lowering the tax rate is not going to stop the faltering of the manufacturing in this country, is it?

I have been waiting for six months for a jobs bill, and they keep saying if we lower the tax rate to the corporations, somehow we will get jobs in this country.