Helping the Middle Class

Floor Speech

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, last week President Obama came over to Congress to deliver his annual State of the Union Address. His speech focused heavily on something Republicans have been talking about for the last 6 years: helping the middle class. Occasionally the President even sounded as if he had stolen a line from Republicans, which I can assure you Republicans were happy to provide.

Seriously, Republicans were glad to hear the President pivoting back to the middle class. Providing relief for the middle class is the Republican priority in the new Congress and we are eager to work with the President to get things done for American families.

Unfortunately the President's speech didn't show the same willingness to work together. In fact, Wolf Blitzer from CNN said: ``I don't remember a State of the Union Address where I heard a President issue so many veto threats to the opposite party in the United States Congress.''

While it was good to hear the President focus on the middle class, his actual proposals for helping them left much to be desired, because unfortunately they were more of the same top-down, big government policies that have failed to help Americans over the past 6 years. For example, the President proposed a new tax on middle-class families' college savings accounts--the last thing families need when they want to save for their children to go to college. Fortunately, the President because he received so much pressure has been forced to withdraw this particular proposal, but his speech contained a lot of other proposals that would not provide the help American families need.

If there is anything the past 6 years have shown, it is that big government is not the solution to our economic challenges. In fact, it is the cause of many of our economic problems.

Take a look at ObamaCare. A Gallup poll released last week found that health care costs are one of American families' top two concerns. It is no wonder. ObamaCare was supposed to help our Nation's health care problems. It was supposed to drive down premiums and make health care more affordable. Instead, it has generally done the opposite.

Since ObamaCare became law in 2010, health care premiums have risen. Millions of Americans have lost their health insurance plans. Others have lost access to doctors or to convenient hospitals. Still others are stuck in insurance plans paying more for less coverage. Then of course there are all the problems the law has created for workers and businesses and the pain millions of Americans will be feeling this tax season when they discover they owe the government money from their ObamaCare subsidies or that they must pay a tax penalty for failing to have government-approved health insurance.

The American Action Forum recently ran the numbers and estimated that 6,000 people in South Dakota will have to pay the ObamaCare tax penalty for not having government-approved health insurance. According to a calculator on the Wall Street Journal's Web site, the average individual in South Dakota will pay a $394 penalty this year, while the average family of four in South Dakota will pay a $650 penalty. Now that is a lot of money. That is a lot of money for a family in South Dakota, and it is only going to go up because the tax penalty will rise in 2016.

As we can see on this chart, South Dakotans could be spending that tax money on a number of essential items if they didn't have to pay the penalty. In fact, for $394 in South Dakota you can buy 201 gallons of gas at current South Dakota prices, buy 6 weeks of groceries or make 1.1 car payments with that amount of money. That is for an individual and the amount they can be basically hit with in terms of the tax penalty.

If we look at how this impacts a typical South Dakota family--and the distinguished Chair knows exactly what I am talking about--if they didn't have to pay that $650 tax penalty, it could be used for 332 gallons of gas in South Dakota at South Dakota prices, 3 weeks of groceries or almost two car payments. If we think about 332 gallons of gas in South Dakota, that would cover a lot of trips to school or to football practice or to dance practice. These are real-world impacts on real people. As ObamaCare has demonstrated, big government is not the answer.

While it is great the President wants to focus on helping the middle class who suffered for years under his policies, he cannot help them if he insists on pushing more of the same failed top-down, big government policies. The last few years have involved laying a lot of burden on American workers and on the American economy to fund big government programs and the President's pet projects.

Take the ObamaCare tax on lifesaving medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps. This tax was put in place to help pay for the President's health care law, but it has ended up negatively affecting jobs in this industry. Even Democrats who voted for the President's health care law are pushing to get rid of this tax.

Take the Obama Interior Department's recent decision to push for closing off large swaths of Alaska to energy development that would create jobs and benefit Alaska's economy, as well as strengthen America's energy independence or take the crippling new energy rules the President's EPA has proposed, such as a new tax on coal-fired powerplants that could result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastate entire communities; likewise, the EPA proposal to lower the ozone standard that would be the most expensive EPA regulation in history.

I intend to reintroduce my bill, the bipartisan CASE Act, to make sure we tackle places with the worst smog in the country before forcing cleaner areas to meet what is an impossible standard.

If we want to fix the economy, we have to stop weighing it down with taxes and regulations. We have to reject yesterday's stale policies with their focus on taxing, spending, and regulating. Instead of pushing big government solutions, we need to rebuild our economy from the bottom up.

Republicans are focused on the future that embraces and fights for the potential of the people, not government. That means passing legislation to free businesses to create jobs. It means reforming our Tax Code to put more money in the pockets of American families and to make it easier for American businesses to compete around the globe. It means eliminating the kind of heavy Washington spending that is weakening the economy and piling up debt on the backs of the next generation of Americans. It means getting rid of redtape and regulations that are stifling energy development and the jobs that go along with it and preventing more American businesses from growing and hiring new workers. It means opening new markets abroad for American manufacturing and American farm products.

The past 6 years have not been kind to American families. A recent Reuters story opened by saying, ``Barack Obama enters the final 2 years of his legacy with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue.''

Household income has fallen by more than $2,000 on the President's watch, according to Sentier Research. Meanwhile, prices have gone up. Millions of Americans are unemployed while millions more are stuck with part-time jobs because they cannot find more work. Millions of other Americans are so discouraged with not finding work over the past 6 years that they gave up looking and dropped out of the labor force entirely. Wage growth has remained stagnant during the Obama Presidency. As a CNN headline put it after the President's State of the Union Address, ``Obama says wages are growing. They're not.''

It is no surprise middle-class families aren't feeling an economic recovery or that Americans list lack of money and low wages as one of their top financial concerns.

A New York Times headline from Sunday read ``Middle Class Shrinks Further As More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up.''

It doesn't have to stay this way. Republicans don't believe in a permanent middle-class decline. If we stop government from weighing down our economy with taxes and regulations and start freeing businesses to create new jobs and opportunities for American workers, our economy will rebound and the middle class will feel the effects.

Republicans are already working on legislation to help the middle class and we will be sending our first job-creating bill with legislation to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline and the 42,000 jobs it will support during construction to the President very shortly. We hope the President will sign it.

American families have had to spend 6 years in this economy. They shouldn't have to wait any longer for relief.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source