NUNNELEE: Administration Must Quit Playing Politics with Debt Negotiations
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Congressman Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss) made the following statement on the House floor regarding recent unemployment figures, tax hikes, and debt ceiling negotiations.
“Last week, we learned that the economy added a meager 18,000 jobs and our unemployment rate went up to 9.2%, far from the 6.7% President Obama claimed it would be today if the stimulus bill had been signed into law.
Far too many Americans are looking for jobs.
Yet, the President insists that tax increases are the way to fix Washington’s spending problem–tax hikes that will destroy jobs and destroy the confidence our job creators need to hire new employees.
To keep American jobs here, we don’t need to raise taxes. We do need to get our fiscal house in order.
22 million Americans search daily for full-time work in the worst sustained unemployment streak since the Great Depression.
To these Americans, there is no end in sight. For them, unemployment is not a ‘rate’ – it’s a reality.
Our jobs crisis has everything to do with our spending crisis and our debt crisis.
If we hit the August 2nd deadline, the United States government will face what many Americans have felt, too much month left at the end of our money.
We simply won’t have enough money to pay our bills. Americans have had to make that decision time and time again. At the end of the month they have to decide what to pay first: the mortgage, the electric bill, the grocery bill or the car payment.
Now I’ll be very disappointed if in making those decisions the Administration chooses to play politics. We need to make sure we pay Social Security, interest on the debt, Medicare, and our troops that are standing in harm’s way.
American people want real solutions and the House of Representatives has committed to a long term plan. We voted for a budget that would make Washington start living within its means. Even the President’s own Chief of Staff has said that in 5 years, Medicare is going broke.
However, it’s been 800 days since our friends in the Senate have passed a budget – and they have 9 House passed jobs bills sitting in their hands, but they refuse to act on any of them.
A recent poll shows that only 17% of mothers believe that their children will have a better life in the future. At every town hall meeting, I ask participants whether they think their grandchildren will live a better quality of life than they live. The response is slim.
If Congress is going to be asked to raise the debt ceiling, we must have a long term plan to fix Washington’s spending problem.
House Republicans have made our demands clear.
We will not raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts larger than an increase in the debt ceiling. We will not raise the debt ceiling without structural reforms that restrain future spending and guarantee that we don’t get into this mess again. Now I’m not interested in a temporary band-aid. We’ve already voted no on raising our debt limit without significant cuts and reforms.
We will not support a plan that raises taxes on hardworking Americans. We didn’t get into this problem because taxes are too low. We are in this situation because of runaway spending and the failed economic policies of this Administration.
We need to move forward and solve this crisis in a responsible way.”
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7/14/11
Magnolia Tribune
