Time to pass a Middle Class Tax Cut

It is time for the House of Representatives to step up and pass the bipartisan Senate bill that will extend the middle class tax cut for millions of working American families. This morning, I spoke on with KGO radio and on the House floor, urging my colleagues to pass this bill.

From the KGO Interview:

Listen to the interview on KGO this morning.

These guys would move heaven and earth, to give the richest people in the country a tax cut, but they don’t want to pay for it, they don’t think that’s necessary. But the minute you say you’re going to have a middle class tax cut, they want to pay for it by throwing people off unemployment, taking away benefits and Medicare and they just want to go over it and over it again.

On the House Floor:

We can come together and in this holiday season give American middle class families the security that they will have a continuation of the tax cut on January 1st. But that's not what the Republicans are going to do - they are going to throw families and our economy into chaos for the sake, for the sake, of trying to make political points.

Speaking on the Rule providing for consideration of the bill:

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately with the procedure that the Republicans are using today, we miss an opportunity for the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats to come together around an extension of the middle-class tax cut for the next two months.

It's unfortunate that it's for two months, but the Republicans in this House sent to the Senate a very extreme bill for one year by slashing people's unemployment benefits, ruining those families' ability the survive in this period of economic downturn.

And the Senate rejected that on a bipartisan basis.

The Senate was then encouraged by the Speaker of the House to negotiate a deal.

Senate leaders Harry Reid and McConnell negotiated a deal. The Speaker of the House thought it was a good deal. In fact, he used the word ‘victory’.

Then when the suggestion was why we didn’t vote last week, it was, well maybe when it came back from the Senate we could do it on some kind of unanimous consent procedure.

Then, there were rumbles in the House that there was going to be Republicans and in the Republican caucus that wanted to join the 39 Republicans in the Senate that voted for this procedure.

And all of a sudden what we see is the emergence of the Tea Party Republicans slapping down that idea. Slapping down the idea there would be independent judgments made in the Republican caucus.

And they pulled it to a grinding halt. We will not be allowed to vote on that bipartisan agreement. We will not be allowed to vote on an agreement that brought the Republicans and the Democrats together in the Senate.

We will not be able to vote on a bipartisan agreement that has the opportunity to bring Democrats and Republicans together in the House.

That's because the Tea Party insists upon this radical agenda where they are going to throw millions of people off unemployment insurance who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

That's how they'll pay for the middle class tax cuts – by injuring middle class families, who have been thrown into economic chaos because of the economic downturn caused by their friends on Wall Street and the scandals that they perpetrated on the American people.

Let's bring people together.

Let's pass the Senate bill. And let's get on with taking care of the problems of this nation