LETTER: McGovern Offers Final Hour Opposition to Debt Deal

Mr. Speaker, I did not come to Washington to dismantle the New Deal or the Great Society.  I did not come here to force more people into poverty.

I agree that we need to avoid default and to confront our long-term fiscal challenges.  That’s why on Saturday I voted in support of the Reid proposal, which would have reduced our debt by hundreds of billions of dollars.

The bill before us is unfair in so many ways.  It disproportionately places the burden of dealing with our debt issue on the backs of those who can least afford it, while it spares the wealthiest from contributing anything.

There is something fundamentally wrong when a billionaire hedge fund manager pays a lower tax rate than his secretary; when Big Oil can make tens of billions in profits every quarter but still get sweetheart deals from the taxpayer; and when we are slashing funding for roads and bridges but allowing tax breaks for corporate jet owners to continue.

And there are no new revenues in the bill before us today – only massive cuts in what is called “domestic discretionary spending.”

But what does that actually mean?  It means less investment in our transportation and infrastructure, in medical research, in education, in food safety.

To put it simply, it means less jobs and higher unemployment at a time when millions of Americans are struggling to find work.

And despite the rhetoric of its supporters, the bill puts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block.

We all know how we got into this mess: two huge tax cuts – mostly for the wealthy – that weren’t paid for.  Two wars that weren’t paid for.  A massive prescription drug program that wasn’t paid for. 

There are certainly places to cut.  Right now, we are borrowing $10 billion every single month for military operations in Afghanistan to prop up a corrupt and incompetent Karzai regime.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, the spending caps contained in this legislation do not apply to ending that misguided war.  That makes no sense to me.

The truth is that the best way to deal with our long term fiscal situation is to grow our economy.  That means creating jobs and putting people back to work. 

This bill goes in exactly the opposite direction.  I have 2 children, Mr. Speaker, who I love more than anything.  And I don’t want them to grow up in a country where the gap between the very rich and the poor grows wider and wider each year.

We can do better, Mr. Speaker.  We must do better.  And we can do so in a way that does not abandon the principles of economic justice and fairness that have made our Nation so great.  I will vote ‘no’ on this bill.

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