Press Release

Instead of spending time working with Democrats to pass a comprehensive jobs plan, extend middle class tax cuts, or find a solution to our deficit problem, Republicans have wasted time on these two process bills.  Not only do they fail to bring us closer to finding a solution, but they only serve to tamper with the non-partisan judges we rely on at the Congressional Budget Office to provide unbiased budget analysis. 

We ought to have a bill, we ought to pass Mr. Van Hollen's bill, we ought to take this out of the politics and then I tell my friends what we ought to do is pass the big deal. We ought to pass a $4 trillion to $6 trillion big deal to get the fiscal house in order of the United States of America. And it ought to include all things on the table, including federal employee pay and benefits, including the military pay and benefits and expenditures, and domestic expenditures as well as entitlements. I've said that. We ought not to do it piecemeal as this bill reflects.

A key component of House Democrats’ Make It In America jobs plan is taking action to ensure that our trading partners are playing fair.  President Obama has made this an important part of our trade policy and approach to economic competitiveness, and I applaud the diligence with which his Administration, including U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, has successfully pursued this case before the World Trade Organization.  This ruling will discourage companies from relocating to China to take advantage of artificially-cheap raw materials, and it will help American manufacturers compete with China’s producers and create jobs here at home.

CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook released today reveals what Americans already know: we have to get Americans back to work, and we have to get our fiscal house in order by reaching a big and balanced deficit reduction plan this year.  Such a plan requires both getting a handle on spending and raising revenue.  It is clear from the CBO’s forecast that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans can be a part of that solution.  Real and effective deficit reduction should be based on the principle that everyone should pay their fair share.  I hope Republicans work with Democrats to take the steps we need as a nation to get us back on a sound fiscal path.

In 1926, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson launched the weeklong celebration that later became Black History Month, so much history was yet to be written.  The African American story had yet to be seen as an integral part of our shared American history, reflecting African Americans’ exclusion then from so many facets of national life.  In the decades since, through struggle and triumph, through tragedy and perseverance, by the hands of bold leaders and everyday citizens, we have seen the arc of history bend toward the justice and equality so many have long sought.  In Maryland and across our nation, we are enriched by the participation of African Americans in every part of American life – from government to business, from the arts to the law, in science, in education, and in national service.  Each milestone carries us all forward. 

While I was saddened to learn that Rep. Brad Miller will be retiring from Congress, I am thankful for the chance to have served alongside him these past nine years.  Over the course of his time in Congress, Rep. Miller has fought for the well-being of North Carolina families, and he has worked tirelessly as a member of the Financial Services Committee to combat predatory lending practices and help those facing foreclosure stay in their homes.  Believing strongly in creating opportunities for more Americans to reach the middle class, Rep. Miller  has been a strong advocate for education and access to health care, and he has been a defender of North Carolina service members, veterans, and their families.  He will be missed in this House, and I join in wishing him the best as he moves on to the next step in his career.

None of us on this Floor are talented enough to summon the rhetoric that all of us feel in our hearts. We have young men and women, arrayed on the fields in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other troubled spots in the world. They are fighting for freedom and democracy and too many of them are injured on those fields. Our beloved colleague, Gabrielle Giffords, was injured on the field in the exercise of that democracy. And in being injured, she has become an example for us, for all Americans, indeed all the world, of courage, of clarity of purpose, of grace, of responsibility, of a sense of duty which she exercises this day.

I thought it was an excellent speech. I thought it was a serious speech. We have a lot of challenges. The President obviously focused on what I think is critical to the American people - that's jobs…[House Democrats] have had an agenda, we call it “Make It In America,” in the Congress of the United States for the last two years. We’ve talked to the President about it. His manufacturing focus we think was absolutely right. We’ve lost 9 million manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. We need to expand our manufacturing sector. We need to make things here in America. We need to provide the kind of middle class jobs paying good wages and having good benefits that the America middle class needs to grow, not shrink.