with them. But you know what. We have a job to do, and if it means staying here through Christmas Eve, through New Year's, that is our job. And let's pass a proposal that works well for ordinary families and not just for the wealthiest people in this country.
I wanted to thank Senator Sherrod Brown for coming down.
What I want to say now is, when you look at this agreement, we have talked now about the absurdity, in the middle of a time when we have a $13.7 trillion national debt, of giving tax breaks to people who do not need it. Senator Brown and I have talked about the dangers inherent in this payroll tax holiday and what it might mean for the future of Social Security. But I also wanted to make another point; that is, that there are many billions of dollars in this proposal going to a variety of business tax cuts. Some of them, in fact, might work; some of them, in fact, might not work. But what is very clear is, if your goal is to create as many jobs as possible for every dollar of investment, this particular approach is not very effective.
When we talk about tax breaks for corporations and companies, what we should be aware of is that corporate America today—today—is sitting on close to $2 trillion in cash. They have that cash on hand. The problem is not that they do not have the money, the problem is that working people do not have the money to buy the products these guys are producing. I believe, and not just me but I think a variety of economists from across the board, it makes a lot more sense if we are serious about creating jobs to invest in our infrastructure.
I say that for a number of reasons. When you put money into roads and bridges and public transportation, you are creating, for every dollar you spend, far more jobs than giving a variety of tax breaks. That is an economic fact.
Second of all, when you are investing in our infrastructure, not only are you creating jobs short term, you are leaving the country with long-term improvement that increases our competitiveness in a very tough global economy. I mentioned a moment ago, and we will get back to it later, China is investing huge amounts of money into high-speed rail, into their roads, into their bridges. Yet if you drive around certain parts of America, you think we are a Third World nation. You have roads with all kinds of potholes. You have bridges which you cannot go across. You have rail systems where trains are going slower—there is a study out there that I am going to get to later—where somebody said that decades and decades ago, it took less time to go from various parts of this country to the other on trains than it does today because our rail beds are in such bad shape.
So if we are going to make our country competitive, we have to invest in infrastructure. It creates jobs. It adds long-term value to this country. Unfortunately, in this agreement, there is, to the best of my knowledge, not one nickel going into infrastructure. It is important that we, in fact, add provisions which do invest in our infrastructure and create jobs.
Another point that should be made when we look at this so-called compromise agreement established by the President and the Republican leadership is that in the agreement there is an extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months. Now, there is zero question, in my mind; that is something that absolutely has to be done. Right now—Senator Brown made this point— we have millions of Americans who have, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs. Maybe their plants went to China. Maybe their companies could not get the loans they needed to stay in business. Small businesses are going under, big businesses are shutting plants. No question we have to extend unemployment benefits.
But what bothers me is that this provision in this agreement, which is a good provision, suggests that this is a hard-won compromise; that the Republicans conceded something and they agreed to a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits. But here is the fact. The fact is, for the last 40 years, when unemployment rates have gone above 7.2 percent, Republicans and Democrats, in a nonpartisan way, have come together to say, of course, we are going to extend unemployment. This is America. We are not going to let working families who are suffering hard times because, through no fault of their own, they have lost their jobs, we are not going to let them lose their homes or not enable them to feed their families. This is America. We are not going to do that.
Republicans have said that for 40 years. Democrats have said that for 40 years. Democratic and Republican Presidents, leaders in the House and Senate, have said that. So to say: Oh, my goodness, the Republicans made a major concession; they are going to allow the extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months, that is not a concession. That has been bipartisan public policy for the last 40 years.
Now, I have been expressing to you and to the American people why I think this is not a good agreement, why I think this agreement should be defeated and why I believe we can put together a much better agreement.
I do want to be clear. There are positive aspects to this agreement which should be maintained in an improved proposal. Let me mention some of them. This proposal, in addition to extending unemployment benefits for 13 months, extends the middle-class tax cuts. That is obviously something we have to do. The reality is that the middle class is collapsing. During the Bush years we saw a $2,200 decline per year in median family income. Working families are hurting. There is no question. To not extend that tax cut for 98 percent of America would be a travesty. So we have to maintain those tax cuts, and that is a positive thing in the agreement which obviously any future agreement must maintain.
Also in this agreement is the earned-income tax credit for working Americans, a very important provision, and the child and college tax credits are also in this agreement. These proposals will keep millions of Americans from slipping out of the middle class and into poverty, and they will allow millions of Americans to send their kids to college. I am not here to say to the President or the Vice President that there are not any good proposals and parts of this agreement. There are. But we can do much better.
What the President says—and he makes a valid point—show me the votes; he is good at counting. We tried a proposal here, where we only got 53 votes, which said we are going to extend the tax breaks for the middle class and not the very rich. The President knows, as everybody else knows, that around here Republicans filibuster everything. We need 60 votes, and he said: Show me the votes. This is what I would say: What our job right now is about is reaching out to the American people from one end of the country to the other, from California to Vermont, including a lot of our very conservative States. Frankly, it is not a conservative approach to substantially increase the national debt by giving tax breaks to billionaires. How many times have we been here on the floor hearing our Republican colleagues give long speeches about the danger and the unsustainability of a $13.7 trillion national debt and a $1.4 trillion deficit? We have heard it day after day. That is their mantra. If they believe that, why are they voting for a proposal that substantially increases the national debt for the very unproductive reason of giving tax breaks to the richest people who don't need it?
The reason we have to defeat this proposal and fight for a much better one is, I would hope that people throughout this country, from Vermont and Colorado, and many of our conservative States, would come forward and say: Wait a second. I do not want to see my kids and grandchildren pay more in taxes because we have borrowed money from China to increase the national debt in order to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who have done extraordinarily well in recent years and, by the way, have seen a significant decline in their effective tax rate.
I know the Chair has heard wealthy people such as Warren Buffett make the point over and over again that what he really pays in taxes, his effective tax rate, is lower than his secretary's. All over this country we have examples where very rich people are able to stash money in the Cayman Islands, take advantage of all types of loopholes, and are paying rather low effective tax rates, in many cases lower
