Following are excerpts from remarks Sen. Chuck Grassley made Wednesday on the status of the economic stimulus package. The legislation will help displaced workers and give a boost to the economy. The House passed economic stimulus legislation early this morning. Senators will try to bring up the legislation today:
Mr. President, the session is about to end. I would like to call to the attention of colleagues one proposition that I hope comes before the Senate before we adjourn. That is the so-called economic stimulus package. You might call it an economic security package. Nothing I say is going to in any way detract from the working relationship that I have with Senator Baucus as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee...
...Probably what we are ending up with here, instead of what might come out of the conference committee which I was referring to in my work with Senator Baucus, is kind of a hybrid that involves some individual negotiations and some people who aren't even on the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over most of the product. But this is a bill that is going to be introduced in the House. It is my understanding that it is a bill in which I will have some input, and the White House, and a group in the Senate called the centrists, a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans who might call themselves kind of middle-of-the-road types. It is an economic stimulus package presumably passing the House and coming to the Senate. I hope people will see it as a very rich proposal that will help displaced workers and give a boost to the economy.
Since September 11, we have focused on dislocated workers and unemployed people who have been hurt. But there are also a lot of people who are working and who are in anguish over what the future holds for them. Even if they have very good jobs, that might be the case because things aren't the same since September 11.
When we talk about an economic security package, even though we might tend to concentrate on the dislocated workers, we are concerned about all workers because people have some questions about the future. Because of what happened on September 11, they see the future a little differently with a little less security than they did prior to that time.
An economic security package addresses the needs of people who are working as well as people who are dislocated. It does what we can to help those who are dislocated through troubled times. But it also is meant to give some confidence to those who are working and to beef up the economy so we will be able to find jobs for people who are dislocated.
We are in a state of war. We don't know how long that state of war will be there. But it is not going to end when we find the last Taliban in Afghanistan, or the last al-Qaida member. It isn't going to end when we find bin Laden and other leaders responsible for what happened on September 11. How long the war is going to go on I do not know. But it is not over...We need to remember that we are in a state of war and that things aren't the same. The Senate ought to respond as if we were in a state of war.
I think one of the ways to responsibly respond is for the Senate to vote on the economic security or economic stimulus package. I hope the Senate majority leader will let his caucus vote the conscience of the individual Member. I hope there isn't any attempt to put the position of the party ahead of the good of the country in the closing hours of this session so we can pass this bill.
It is time to finish our work, but it is also time to do the people's business. There is nothing more important right now than responding to the needs of the people of our country in a time of war when there is a great deal of anxiety and anguish about the future, not only among the dislocated but among those who are even working.
We are in the position of finishing the last of the appropriations bills. It is time to help the dislocated workers and those who are working and create jobs for the employed to give a shot in the arm to the economy. I believe the White House centrist agreement is bipartisan and bicameral and is a product that ought to be brought before the Senate after it passes the House.
Remember that this isn't something coming to the Senate just on the spur of the moment in the sense that there is a rude awakening and we ought to do something about the economic situation and pass some stimulus. The President recommended it in early October when he proposed a program of accelerated depreciation, tax reduction, tax rebates for low-income people, enhancement of unemployment compensation, and help for the health care needs of the unemployed. The President did that. It wasn't the President who started it. There were lots of meetings held by Senator Baucus with Democrats and Republicans, and maybe meetings with only Democrats. We held separate Republican meetings in early October on whether or not we ought to have a stimulus package. We sought the advice of Chairman Greenspan...So we have been working in this direction for a long period of time.
There is a product before us now that is bicameral and bipartisan. Partisanship has been evident in this body, by the Senate Finance Committee voting out a bill on party-line votes, bringing it to the Senate, and finally coming to the determination that that partisan bill could not pass. It is not because everything in it was wrong but just because partisan legislation does not get through this body. You have to have some bipartisanship in order for a product to successfully clear this body.
So we have now a further compromise. It is not the President's proposal. We have gone way beyond what the President wanted to do in some of these areas. It does not have some of the baggage of a bill that previously passed the House of Representatives had, such as, for instance, the retroactive alternative minimum tax, where there is a lot of money just coming out of the Federal Treasury back to corporate America. It has many of the things the Democrats wanted and many of the things the Republicans wanted. But it is going down the same road now because it is bipartisan, bicameral, and it is coming to the Senate...
...We recognize the needs of stimulating the consumer demand by tax rebates to low-income Americans. We increase unemployment compensation by 13 weeks. We have, for the first time in 70 years, a very dramatic change in the social policy of this country for unemployed people by providing health insurance for unemployed people. That is welcomed by a lot of Republicans. And it ought to be welcomed by a lot of Democrats. So I want to describe that.
I would also like to take an opportunity to clear up the record on press conferences that are being held by my friends in the Democrat leadership. Too often it is said, in a disinformation way, that what is really holding this up is that Republicans do not want health benefits for dislocated workers.
I think I have just now said, in this new policy--the first in 70 years; the biggest social change in the policy for dislocated workers in 70 years--that we support this. It is part of this package. So why would anyone say that Republicans do not care anything about health benefits for dislocated workers?...We have a package that has $23 billion of such benefit in it. In fact, it is a package with $2 billion less which helps more people than what some of the Democratic proposals would do.
So if you can help more people for less of the taxpayers' money, isn't that good? And isn't it good, too, that there is agreement that it needs to be done? I do not think it is fair for people in the Democratic leadership to say Republicans are against helping with the health benefits for unemployed workers when it has been in every one of our plans and even the President was the first to propose it.
I think the bipartisan, bicameral provisions that are coming before the House and Senate within the next 48 hours represent a genuine compromise...We give more money to the States if they want to improve even more their unemployment benefits. We are giving a 60-percent tax credit for health care tax for unemployed workers, including people who can use it to extend COBRA insurance benefits.
Let's get the record straight. Let's have a good debate. Let the votes fall where they may. I can't help but ask our distinguished majority leader, Senator Daschle, to give the people what they want--a bipartisan economic stimulus bill with the largest aid going to dislocated workers in a generation...