Bill Delahunt

Mr. DELAHUNT

Mr. DELAHUNT. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, please just don't say it is the poor. It is not the poor. It is the middle class.

Mr. DELAHUNT. And they are paying 16 percent on that credit card bill.

Mr. DELAHUNT. It is even the relatively affluent. They are not doing anywhere near as well as the top 1 percent.

Mr. DELAHUNT. You forgot one thing, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. DELAHUNT. And by the way, Mr. Ryan, it was interesting tonight on ABC News, for the 16th straight meeting of the Federal Reserve, interest rates were raised. You know what that means, Mr. Speaker? That means that if you have an adjustable rate mortgage on your home, you are paying more money. You are paying more than that $30 that this Republican Congress refunded to 77 percent of American families today. You are paying a lot more. And the reason is that because of the reckless spending that Pat Toomey refers to here, because of the reckless spending, you are jacking up interest rates, Mr. Speaker. The majority party in this House, in this Senate, is complicit with the White House in terms of hidden costs like mortgage interest, like credit card interest. A while back it was 11 percent on your credit card. You know what it is today, Mr. Speaker? Today, the average interest rate on your credit card, it is 16 percent. You think that is a savings for the American people? You wonder what's wrong. And Ms. Wasserman Schultz tells us that the median income for a family in this country has actually declined. And you think the economy is good?

Mr. DELAHUNT. What do we get? Do you know what we get? We get a price of gasoline per gallon that cost $1.45 4 years ago. We now can buy it for $3.25. That is what we get.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think it is very important. I think that Number 9 explains the reason why the majority whip is perplexed, because what is clear to me is that the economy, if you were a student of economics and took a look at the macro view and saw growth, why the people aren't responding appropriately. The reality is that the economy, Mr. Speaker, is superb. It is outstanding. It is phenomenal, if you are in the top 1 percent of the American population, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Just like that.

Mr. DELAHUNT. The economy grew.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if I can, I ran across a column in one of the publications that circulates throughout here on Capitol Hill. It was actually in the Roll Call newspaper. It was this past Monday when it was published. The headline is entitled, ``GOP Banking on Economy.'' You know, it is no secret that a growing majority of the American people believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction. The last poll that I saw just recently exceeded 70 percent of the American people believe that the country is going in the wrong direction. I happen to share that particular view. It seems to perplex some of our friends and colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle that while the economy in terms of macro statistics is growing, that they are receiving no political benefit. I noted that the House majority whip from Missouri, who happens to be a friend of mine and someone for whom I have great respect, had this to say, ``I spend a lot of time wondering about this myself. Why is it that with this incredibly strong economy people do not embrace the economy with the same kind of confidence that everything indicates that they should.'' That is what the House majority whip Roy Blunt said in an interviewed taped by C-SPAN this past weekend. Let me offer my own explanation. It is because the benefit of the booming economy is extremely limited. The vast majority of Americans are not benefiting from the economic growth that is occurring in our country. I think that is reflected in what happened here today in terms of the debate about the new tax cuts that are being proposed, Mr. Speaker, by our Republican colleagues and friends. Let me just cite some interesting statistics. If you earn between $20,000 and $30,000, the benefit that you will receive from the tax cut that applies to dividends and capital gains amounts to $9 on the average. So as a result of today's work by this Bush Congress, if you earn between $20,000 and $30,000 you received a tax break of $9. If you earn between $50,000 and $75,000, you got a tax break of $110. But, Mr. Speaker, if you earned more than $1 million, you get a check from Uncle Sam as a tax refund of $42,000. Let us just reflect on that for a moment. Who is benefiting from the policies of the Bush administration and the Bush administration Congress? Let me put this in other words, in different terms. If you took what happened here today, what this Congress did today, 77 percent of American families, families now, had their taxes reduced by $30. That is 77 percent of American families had their tax bill reduced by $30 at the same time, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Meek, Mr. Speaker, 0.02 percent of American families got a tax break of $42,000. So what is happening? What we are doing is we are creating an America that is beginning to look like a banana republic. It would appear that those that have and really have, not just have a lot but have a stupendous amount of wealth, are receiving a totally disproportionate share of the prosperity that the country seems to be enjoying. But 77 percent are getting $30. And to stop and think today, that tax cut, Mr. Speaker, amounted to $70 billion. And you know what, Mr. Speaker, to give that 0.02 percent $42,000, we are going to borrow, we are going to borrow that $70 billion and we are going to borrow it from China, from OPEC, from Japan, from Korea, and from Canada. We are going to borrow, and you know what, Mr. Speaker? We are going to add to that deficit, and that is why people who are Republicans and conservative Republicans, like our former colleague Pat Toomey, who is the President of the Club for Growth, is saying things like this in the Philadelphia Inquirer, ``There is a very high level of frustration and disappointment among rank-and-file Republicans when they see a Republican-controlled Congress engaging in an obscene level of wasteful spending, and it is really coming home to roost.''

Mr. DELAHUNT. Yes. That is not all he said, Mr. Speaker. Again, this is Mr. Toomey, President of Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group, who served in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and this is what he is saying about the Republican Congress: ``Republicans have abandoned the principles of limited government and fiscal discipline that historically have united Republicans and energized the Republican base. Too many Republicans have gotten too comfortable in office.'' That is what Pat Toomey, a former colleague, a member of this Congress a short time ago, is now saying about the Bush Congress.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Give me just a minute. Back in 1991, the top 1 percent of the American people, the population, top 1 percent, owned 38 percent of the corporate wealth in this country. One percent in 1991 owned 38 percent of the corporate wealth in this country. Today, today, the top 1 percent of the American population in terms of wealth owns 58 percent of the corporate wealth. Let me suggest it is more than just an economic policy that is creating this economic divide in this country that is truly making us a class society that is dangerous for democracy. It is more than that. It has, I would submit, no moral underpinning. There is no basis in morality for this level of disparity of wealth and income among Americans. This is economic Darwinism. This is, as you said so eloquently, Mr. Ryan, not what America is about. This doesn't reflect the social compact that we all adhere to as Americans, where we encourage individual initiative, but at the same time, recognize mutual responsibilities and a willingness to share. This is not sharing. This is just, I don't want to use the word ``immoral,'' but it doesn't have, I would suggest, the kind of moral underpinning that reflects American values.

Mr. DELAHUNT. We are saying let us be fair. Fairness here.

Mr. DELAHUNT. But the economy is growing. But the economy has grown.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of this House.

Mr. DELAHUNT. But the economy is growing, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, the economy is growing.

Mr. DELAHUNT. But the economy is growing.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think just to underscore, Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about here tonight is the overall Republican economic policy that favors the top 1 percent of the American people.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think this is fascinating, as you go through this litany of consequences of, you know, Bush, Republican, neoconservative economic policies. I think what we see here, the cumulative effect in the aggregate of all of these policies is the erosion of the middle class in this country. Debbie, you are correct. More and more people are getting closer to falling into that poverty. The middle class, if this reckless spending, policies that advantage only the extremely wealthy continue in this country, we won't have a middle class. We will look like some banana republic in Central America. This is the reality that we face. I think we can all agree that without a healthy vibrant middle class our very democracy is at risk.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Back in 1991.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I think we have made our case. Can I just give you one more statistic?

Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I asked this today in a hearing in the International Relations Committee of Secretary Zoellick, and he indicated that now the debt is $262 billion that is owed by the United States Government to the Chinese.

Mr. DELAHUNT

Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, towards the end of the hour this past hour, my good friend from Iowa spoke about a variety of different subjects; and he made mention of what we ought to have done in terms of immigration and other issues. In part I agree, and in part I disagree. But I think what is important and it cannot be stated often enough, whatever the problem is, whether it be the mismanagement of the reconstruction phase in Iraq, whether it be the price of gas at the pump, whether it be illegal immigration into this country, it comes back to one basic fact: that over the course of the past 6 years, 6 years now, this country has been presided over by a Republican administration. President George W. Bush was elected in the year 2000. It is now 2006. Back in 1994, Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan, this House saw for the first time in 40 years a Republican majority. Across this Capitol building, the Senate has been controlled for most of the past 10 years and is currently controlled by the Republican Party. So what I really cannot understand is why have all these things not been addressed? What has happened to our borders? There are laws on the books now. We have had waves of illegal immigration coming across our borders for the past 6 years. My friend from Iowa was talking about how many come across daily. Where has this administration been? Where has this Congress been? Are they just waking up? This is not a recent problem. Because the truth is, they can talk about Democrats. They can talk about problems that are out there that are real and that are serious. But they are Washington. They own this town. They run this institution. They run this government. If there is a problem with the price of oil, or if there is a problem with immigration, or if there is a problem with health care or the environment, they had the power to address it. What I would suggest is that they have failed. They have failed. They have been unable to get their act together. They could build fences. They could have kept the price of gas down. They didn't have to get us into this mess in Iraq. But that is what they have done. That is the legacy of this White House, confirmed with the stamp of approval by this Congress.

Mr. DELAHUNT. That is a $10 billion bill. And we do not have the money, Mr. Speaker, to do that. We do not have the revenue to do it. We have to go into the financial markets and borrow that money. And this administration has established another record which is that more than 80 percent of the money that we have borrowed comes from overseas, Mr. Speaker, from the Chinese, from OPEC nations. And you have the chart right there, Mr. Meek. So we go and we borrow the money from foreign central banks, from foreign investors, to buy off the American voter at $100 per, because the American people are angry as a result of the Republican energy policy that has created a potential disaster for our economy.

Mr. DELAHUNT. But, Mr. Ryan, they are in charge here. They have to muster up the votes. Where were they? With all due respect to my friend from Ohio, they are in charge of the border. They are in charge of immigration. They are in charge, period. And what have they done? They have failed.