Congressional Black Caucus Hour

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Congresswoman.

I think that what Congressman Bobby Scott just said has to be echoed. And as is often said on the floor in this august Chamber is that I would like to associate myself with the comments of the previous speaker.

Congresswoman Donna Christensen has led the discussion on this vital issue that we will not be silent about. Mr. Speaker, in my real life as an ordained United Methodist pastor, I say to our congregation and congregations where I speak that if you want to know what a person is really like, if you want to know who a person really is, look through their checkbook. The checkbook will reveal quite clearly what a person believes in.

The same thing is true of a corporation and a nation, and the budget of the United States is a bold statement about who we are as a Nation. It says clearly what we believe in and the things we don't believe in. It is a statement that paints a picture of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, the picture that is being painted now is a picture that could be used on the chiller channel. It is a picture of a nation that would prefer to move toward deficit and debt reduction by unduly placing pain on the poor or, most appropriately and significantly, on the men and women of this country who are now pushed aside.

Normally, when we talk about the poor, in people's minds they see minorities and the people who are lazy and shiftless and who don't want to work. We are experiencing the greatest economic crisis since October 1929, and the people who we are looking at as being available to be discarded are police officers and teachers and State employees and municipal workers who have been laid off.

Every State in the Union is having financial problems. Every State in the Union is laying off employees. In my hometown, Kansas City, Missouri, we have a $60 million shortfall. The State government has a $200 million shortfall, and so State workers are being laid off. What we are saying now is that the people who are already experiencing pain should get ready to experience some additional pain.

And I have heard over and over and over again, well, everybody must share in the pain. The question that I have asked that nobody has answered, I asked this in our committee last week: Why? Why should everybody end up suffering? Because everybody didn't contribute to this problem, number one. And, on top of that, the individuals who were hurt as a result of the recession we are asking to receive some additional pain. And that is simply not the way I think we want to project ourselves to ourselves, and certainly to the international community.

As Congressman Scott mentioned, we had a tax cut and made some major decisions before we went home for Christmas, and nobody stood on the floor and repeatedly asked the question: How are we going to pay for it? Well, now we are going to pay for it by equally, as we like to say, trying to place the pain on everyone.

We are not talking about getting rid of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And the amazing thing is that the people, Wall Street, who caused much of the problems, are now being rewarded for causing the problems. We are going to say, okay, we're going to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We're going to do all kinds of things that would accommodate the Wall Street barons who helped cause the crisis.

And the poorest people in this country are going to end up suffering even more so. We even had to fight to continue unemployment benefits. We had a battle on this floor to continue the unemployment benefits for people who, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs, such as police officers and firefighters.

Then we come out with this budget. This budget that we are about to debate is a nervous breakdown on paper. It is not something that we can be proud of as people of the United States, because it shows that we don't think in terms of trying to minimize the pain on the least of these.

Now, to be sure, the United States faces a painful and profound problem with our deficit and our debt. It has to be dealt with. I am on the Financial Services Committee. I asked this question in the committee last week: Are we serious about cutting the debt, when we say we are not going to talk about the entitlements?

We are not going to talk about Social Security, we are not going to talk about Medicare or Medicaid, and we certainly can't do anything with the annual debt service, which is a part of the budget that we can't make decisions on. We have to pay it. So, if we are not seriously trying to reduce the deficit by dealing with the entitlements, then what we are saying is we are going to play with the American public, tell them we are trying to be serious about the debt, when we know we are not.

This is not going to make any kind of substantial reduction in our deficit over the long term. We have got to seriously deal with this problem, and we are not doing it. We are absolutely not dealing with it. Nobody wants to talk about the Social Security issue, because they are thinking about reelection. Not because it shouldn't be dealt with, but they are thinking reelection.

There is criticism, well, the President should have lead the discussion on changing the retirement age on Social Security to a higher number, or somehow creating a new system whereby we have a means test, where individuals who are making $500,000 a year simply can't also draw their Social Security. We are not even talking about that. And there is nobody on this Hill who can stand up and say we can address this problem very seriously without dealing with the entitlements.

So I am sorry that we are going to hurt so many people in the process of just kind of tinkering around the edges of what is a very serious problem.

My final comment, Congresswoman Christensen, is there are a lot of people who ran for office and said we are going to deal with this deficit. But even they are not talking about the only way in which we can change this problem that we are having. Every economist will tell you that that is the only way we are going to deal with the deficit. There is not a single economist who is credible who will say we can deal with this in any other way, yet we are not dealing with it, and it is really a great tragedy.

I do think, as I conclude my comments, Mrs. Christensen, that the whole issue of what we are doing is so painful that even Ben Bernanke is saying, yes, we have to make cuts. But he is also saying you have to be careful. Look, the United States is the only entity putting money into the economy in any serious way right now, and if we withdraw it there could be economic consequences of withdrawing the kind of money we are talking about withdrawing.

Some of us are going to challenge it at every opportunity, because it is the wrong thing to do.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source