WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Senate voted on the Jobs Through Growth Act, introduced last month by Sens. Rand Paul, John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). It was defeated 40-56.
“Massive government spending, higher taxes, and hundreds of costly regulations have stagnated our economy. Rather than creating much-needed jobs here in America, the President and Senate Democrats proposed more taxes, more deficits, more debt, and more record spending,” Sen. Paul said following the vote.
“It has been an abysmal failure in moving our country forward. That is why I urged my Senate colleagues to support an alternative solution called the Jobs Through Growth Act. This proposal would create much needed jobs, without adding one penny to the federal debt. Passage of this plan would unleash a decade of increased growth, and a new path forward for our struggling economy.”
Prior to the vote, Sen. Paul took to the Senate floor to speak about the Republican jobs plan.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH SEN. PAUL SPEAK ABOUT THE REPUBLICAN JOBS PLAN
TRANSCRIPT:
I rise in support of the Republican jobs plan. I think it’s very important that the American public know there are different visions about how we would create jobs in this country, whether the jobs should be created by the private sector or the jobs should be created by borrowing money from China, taxing you more, and then redistributing that money into government-created jobs.
There are different visions in this country about how we create jobs. The one thing we know is that we need millions of jobs – not tens of thousands of jobs – but millions of jobs. So what I would ask the President to do is to come in from the campaign trail and talk to us. I think he needs to be here, not raising money, not out fundraising for his campaign, not bashing Republican s on the campaign trail. He needs to be in Washington. He needs to be engaged with the committee, the supercommittee. He needs to be engaged with Republican counterparts.
I’ve told the President personally that I will work with him, that I will come from the Republican side of the aisle and we could figure out areas in which we agree. There are many aspects of the Republican jobs plan the Democrats, some Democrats, have said they might support: reducing the corporate income tax, lowering the rates and eliminating loopholes.
See, the thing is, on the campaign trail you’re told that Republicans are unwilling to eliminate loopholes for millionaires who don’t pay taxes. The truth of the matter is we are very willing. This has been offered in the supercommittee. It’s been offered by our side. It’s offered in the Republican jobs plan. We are willing to eliminate loopholes that make the tax code unfair, that allow either millionaires or corporations to pay no taxes. But we want to do it in the context of tax reform.
There are a couple of things historically that government has done that created jobs. In the 1960s, President Kennedy reduced the top rate from 90 to 70. Unemployment was cut in half. In the 1980s, Reagan lowered the top rate from 70 to 50. Unemployment was cut in half. Reagan again lowered the top rate from 50 to 28 and unemployment was cut in half. Interestingly, through all of these rate cuts of the top taxpayers, as we cut the rates, tax revenue didn’t go down. Tax revenue has stayed about 18 percent of GDP no matter what the rates are. But what lowering the top rates does, is it spawns economic activity.
So I would ask the President to come in from the campaign trail, to come in from his Canadian bus tour and talk to us on the Hill. Talk to us about ways we could create jobs again. We need millions of jobs; 14 million Americans are out of work. Two million Americans have lost their jobs since this President came into the White House.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We need conversation on Capitol Hill between Republicans and Democrats, but we also need leadership from the White House. Continuing to bash us on the trail on the campaign trail is getting us nowhere as a country. Some of things I’ve heard from the President as he’s campaigned around the country. One, he said that Republicans are too stupid to understand his plan so he’s going to break up his jobs plan and give it to us in pieces because we can’t understand the whole thing.
Now, in diplomacy they sometimes talk about the stick and the carrot. I’m sure feeling the stick from the President, but I’m not seeing any carrot.
What we need to have is conversation in this country where we can bridge some differences, find our common ground. We have a corporate income tax higher than anybody in the world. We keep heaping on new regulations on to our businesses. We need to lower our corporate income tax. How can you compete? We worry about jobs going overseas.
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