Leader Nancy Pelosi and the republican plan to "payfor" disaster relief

“All of the disasters that are happening at once—we don’t know when the next one will come—but what is frightening also is that we don’t know where this Majority wants to go to pay for it.  I have serious objection to the payfor in this legislation. 

“I have a bigger objection that we would have to pay for disaster.  We never paid for the tax cuts for the rich.  They never were paid for.  We never paid for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  They were never paid for.  But all of a sudden we have to pay, to try to make whole these people who have been affected, who’ve lost everything.  I’ve visited there.   I wish you would and maybe you have, maybe you have. 

“It’s not that Joplin, Missouri is finished.  It’s not that as we go to a new disaster we are finished with the old one.  It is just compounded. 

“Someone mentioned earlier in the election people talk about this, that and the other.  And the American people want—whether it is in an election or out of election—they want jobs.  And exactly what this bill does is cut jobs.    

“Instead of creating jobs, the number one priority of the American people, this Republican bill will cost good-paying jobs.  It’s amazing because the bill that we are debating here will cost at least 10 [thousand] good-paying jobs under, American manufacturing jobs.  ‘Make It In America.’  And perhaps tens of thousands more by cutting the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program.

“I am not even going to speak too much about it because our colleagues already have.  They have talked about how this takes us to the next place in innovation, in competitiveness for our country, the next place in technology for cars that will reduce emissions, which will help to stop some of the natural disasters.  These loans have proven to be effective.  They have already created 42,000 jobs, putting America to work making cleaner, more efficient American cars. 

“We shouldn’t have to choose between creating jobs and caring for those struggling in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Irene and the earthquake that preceded it and the floods that continue.