It is unfortunate that Congress missed an opportunity today to seriously take on debt reduction with a balanced approach. While I strongly believe America must reduce its debt and rein in federal spending, the proposal we voted on today was not fair, well thought out, or a balanced deal for our fragile economy or the millions of middle class families struggling to make ends meet.
Earlier this week, I supported over $2 trillion in spending cuts without additional revenues, and last December I voted to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that are blowing a hole in the deficit. I was willing to vote for a real compromise. But the fact is, there is nothing in this deal that will address the significant jobs crisis we are facing. This deal, cut behind closed doors with zero transparency, is an unbalanced approach that cuts deeply into discretionary spending while being overwhelmingly stacked in favor of large corporations who exploit loopholes and the wealthiest among us. It is simply not in the best interests of the middle class and the larger economic recovery so I could not support it.
I have not been in Washington long, but long enough to know it is broken. As I travel across New York, the people I meet are focused entirely on jobs and economic security for their families. Congress should take this charge as its own. I will continue to look for bipartisan ways to reduce the debt in a responsible way and create jobs in this struggling economy. The truth is, today we could have gone further in reducing America's debt with a sensible compromise that both cut discretionary spending and raised revenues. It is unfortunate Congress missed that opportunity.
Follow Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SenGillibrand
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Oh no she didn't say this. It isn't about jobs it was about the debt.
Do you see a pattern here Overdog??? there is NO balance...
The deal that you believe was a better way may have been . . . but it was still a complete joke. We're on pace to rack up another $10 trillion in debt by 2020 . . . nobody offered a plan to change that.
And while you play to your base with the BTC for the wealthy, you know that they only would generate $70 billion annually . . . we need 1600+ billion this year alone to break even.
Instead, you "representatives" will debase the currency further to fund your proclivities towards excessive spending because giving the public $120 when it only earned $100 is how politics works. And then one day we are broke, cannot debase any further and can only borrow at insanely high rates. That day is coming unless the public figures it out before it is too late.
For a lot of Americans, it "is" too late. Now they are just helplessly & hopelessly waiting for a night in shining armor with a mgic sword.
Thank for your post; direct and to the point.
Did any of you listen to your colleague, Bernie Sanders as has valiantly filibustered several months ago?
If you didn't, you can buy the book. A whole lot could be solved by backing what he laid out that day.
So why is nothing being proposed to fix it?
One of the first things a Doctor learns is that it does little good in the long run to treat symptoms, if you don't address the underlying disease.
Why is no one in Congress asking the fundamental question. WHY is congress broken?
IMPO it is because "no man can serve two masters". Congress does not work for "we the people" because they spend too much time, and make too many concessions to their corporate and wealthy patrons in their efforts to raise campaign cash.
The average campaign now costs over a million dollars. Where does that money come from? The answer is special interests groups. So who do our elected officials REALLY work for, us, or those they depend on for campaign money?
I submit that history tells us it is the latter.
The only group in the US that has seen their net worth increase in the last 30 years are the wealthy, everyone else is falling behind. The wealthy are the same ones who finance politicians campaigns. I personally don't believe this is coincidental.
The wealthy did not get that way by being poor businessmen, they want and get the maximum returns on their investments. Buying our government out from under us has been one of the best "investments" they ever made.
Time to get the dirty money out of politics.
It’s hard to think of a better example of military waste: Spending billions of dollars for two separate manufacturing systems in two separate companies to make two versions of an engine, with identical performance, for the same airplane – the F-35, an airplane that only requires one engine in the first place. Yet that’s just what the House of Representatives voted in favor of on May 27, 2010. Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine introduced an amendment to cut funding for the second redundant F-35 engine, but a majority of contractor-funded legislators voted the Pingree Amendment down. A yes vote is a vote to cut military pork spending. A no vote is a vote to preserve the pork.
Representative Boehner voted AGAINST this progressive measure.
On March 12, 2009, the House of Representatives voted on the Mack Amendment, which if passed would have slapped aside the usual rule for federally-funded projects that construction workers be paid at least the prevailing wage of the area in compensation for their labor. That prevailing wage standard is not high to begin with, at poverty-level compensation in many places. But for 140 members of the House of Representatives, poverty-level pay for wasn’t low enough. In the middle of the worst economic recession in over a generation, those who voted for the Mack Amendment acted to slash the wages of working-class Americans. They tried to push construction workers’ wages further down at the historical moment when their economic security was at its lowest.
Representative Boehner voted YES to pass this regressive measure.