(Washington, DC) Congresswoman Brown made the following statement:
“Although I have voted seven times in the past under President Bush to raise the debt ceiling, all of those votes in the past were clean debt ceiling bills, unlike the bill before the House today, which imposes $1 trillion in spending cuts on the working people and the poor, and decimates our social safety net.
In this round of debt ceiling discussions, the Tea Party Republicans have tied the President’s hands to couple a raise in the debt ceiling with billions of billions of dollars in cuts to our nation’s safety net programs, bringing cuts across the board to WIC (Women, Infant and Children), programs to protect our nation’s senior citizens, Pell Grants, education programs, community health care, and numerous other federal programs that assist middle and working class Americans. It is also important to take note of what isn’t in this agreement: funding directed towards job creation. Indisputably, job production is essential to lifting our nation out of the economic downturn since consumer spending is the key driver of our economy.
Just last December, the Republicans forced a vote on extending the Bush Tax Cuts for millionaires and billionaires, adding $70 billion to our nation’s deficit. And this suicidal economic plan came right after eight years of horribly reckless spending and excessive tax cuts for the rich under President Bush and the Republican Congress, who left America trillions of dollars in debt. What was particularly troubling about this situation is that President Clinton had left the White House not only with a balanced budget but with a surplus!
Yet the Republican Party has remained steadfast in implementing Reverse Robin Hood economic policies: cutting programs and services for the working and middle class, while maintaining tax cuts for the millionaires, billionaires and the Big Oil companies like EXXON Mobil, who just reported last week that their second quarter profits rose 41%!
Indeed, the Republicans Party has shown they will stop at nothing to pursue deficit reduction exclusively through deep spending cuts to critical social services, while taking our nation to the brink of economic default. And again, while cutting this safety net, they have successfully fought to preserve tax breaks for Big Oil (even though the big five oil companies earned nearly $1 trillion in profits during the last decade), corporations that ship American jobs overseas, and tax breaks for the wealthiest .5% of Americans, while leaving what’s left over in available resources to be divided among the rest of us.
Beyond a doubt, job production is essential to lifting our nation out of the dire economic situation we’re in, and one way to create jobs is through transportation and infrastructure investment: in fact, for every $1 billion in transportation funding, approximately 34,000 jobs are created. Yet the Republican leadership remains inflexible, unwilling to compromise on even reauthorizing the FAA! And what has this led to?
4000 Americans throughout the nation who are paid out of the FAA trust fund that will not be paid, and nearly 90,000 others are affected by the cancellation of airport construction projects: and for my state of Florida, this includes over 3000 airport construction jobs lost, and 27 FAA employee jobs, 19 of them at Orlando International Airport, 3 in Miami, 4 in Melbourne and 1 in Hilliard.
Just like the Republican Party’s lack of leadership over the debt ceiling debate, they absolutely refuse to compromise to extend funding for the FAA. So yes, this yet another example of the Republican Party being entirely ill prepared and completely irresponsible in their attempt to act as House leaders.”