Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to House Amendment to Senate Amendment to H.R. 4213, Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman from Florida.
The question of unemployment benefits being conflated with the debt that was caused by tax cuts that we couldn't afford--$2.3 trillion--by a war that was on the credit card, President Bush's war in Iraq that cost over $1 trillion and rising, a Medicare part D program unfunded, put on the credit card, that drove this economy into a ditch. If there's going to be honest discussion about what caused this debt, then we've got to go back in history--and not distant history--to acknowledge that it was the reckless spending policies of the Republican administration and George Bush that contributed more to this debt than any other administration in the history of this entire country.
George Bush, in 8 years, accumulated more debt by more reckless decisions than all of the Presidents who preceded him. All of those decisions, incidentally, were discretionary decisions: A war of choice--wrong war, wrong time--put on the credit card of the American taxpayers; tax cuts that did not stimulate the economy but burdened us with generations of debt; a Medicare prescription drug program where the choice was not only to put it on the credit card but to make it embedded in law the unwillingness of the Federal Government to negotiate bulk price discounts with the drug companies. It guaranteed high prices at the expense of the taxpayers and our consumers. That is the legacy of debt that brought us to this situation.
Then, there is some joint responsibility. This economic collapse we had as a result of the implosion of Wall Street that happened basically 2 years ago today, there were many reasons for that, but it was excess debt, reckless speculation on the part of the folks on Wall Street, and it led to this economic crisis that we have right now.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to providing unemployment benefits for people who had no responsibility for getting us here, when it comes to the question of who is going to pay the price, should it be the victims of these reckless decisions, the squandering of choices that we had to make the right decision at the right time to build jobs? Should the people who are the victims of reckless policies in Washington--and in many cases by the Republican administration, in some cases because of joint lax regulation by both administrations, Democratic and Republican--are we going to impose the burden of those bad choices on the people who had no responsibility and are the victims? That would be wrong.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source