Preventing Paygo Sequestration

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for his and his committee staff's steady hand over the last couple of months to make sure that the American Rescue Plan was enacted last week.

Mr. Speaker, in that week's time up to today, the American people have had a chance to listen to the debate and evaluate for themselves what they think of the American Rescue Plan. A Morning Consult poll that came out yesterday showed 72 percent support for the plan, 44 percent among Republicans across the country.

Why not? Ninety million Americans on Wednesday received $1,400 checks totaling $242 billion. For those Americans who are not connected digitally to the IRS, they are going to get their checks through the mail.

For those Americans who are filing their 2020 tax returns, whose income now qualifies them for the economic impact payments, they are going to receive their checks.

On Monday, people who were on unemployment got an extension because of the American Rescue Plan. These are working people in the service sectors, in the commercial real estate sector, in most parts of the economy that are still hurting out there.

Every ``no'' vote was a ``no'' vote in terms of people getting that critical economic help.

Another vote of confidence happened on Wednesday, which is, the Federal Reserve Board met and voted to keep their key benchmark rate at zero, not just for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, but for the balance of 2021, for all of 2022, and into 2023.

So for all of the historical arguments that we are overheating the economy and inflation is going to go up, Jerome Powell, Donald Trump's nominee as chair of the Federal Reserve, took questions for over an hour on this inflation issue, argued, accurately, with a battalion of economists that they have at the Federal Reserve that there is still slack in this economy and 10 million folks on unemployment need to get this type of fiscal relief that the American Rescue Plan responsibly targeted, which is going to make sure that this country recovers as soon as possible.

This is a routine bill today. We have done it over and over again in the last 10 years. Vote ``yes'' and make sure that this economy, as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve advised us, gets the help it needs.

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