 Durbin had originally been scheduled to come to a Democratic
fundraising dinner two weeks ago but was detained in Washington as
the debt-ceiling crisis prevailed.Before a packed meeting room of
Democrats, independents and a few Republicans, Durbin spoke for 45
minutes on what he sees going on in Washington.
Durbin said that the strength of the country is in having a
two-party system bringing out good candidates to run for office. He
was less kind to the tea party faction of the conservatives.
Throwing some barbs he said, "They don't believe in facts, evidence
or science and they are trying to rewrite history."
The senator also told of a time when tea party protestors were
outside his Springfield office, not realizing he was there.
"When I came out, I told them to choose someone to ask me the
questions they had. I would not interrupt their questions and asked
that they not interrupt my answers. After a half-hour many started
to walk away. They like confrontation and there wasn't any," he
said.
Durbin took a softer stance toward the Republican Party and noted
county board member Dave Helper, a Republican in attendance, was a
friend, although they don't see eye to eye on everything.
Durbin said he has been to lots of funerals and written many
letters to families who have lost loved ones overseas in Afghanistan
and Iraq and that those soldiers gave the ultimate sacrifice, not
for the Democrats or the Republicans, but for the country, for all
of us.
"It is not sinful or immoral to compromise," he said. "Sometimes
when a bill passes, I love half of it and hate the other half. But
that is the story of our country. That is the story of democracy."
Durbin spent time discussing the national debt and making a point
to bring out that the current debt crisis is hardly a Democratic
creation. Durbin said the need for creating a debt ceiling, the
right to borrow, began in 1939 under the Roosevelt administration.
In effect it allows the country to borrow money up to a certain
amount to pay for what Congress has asked for that the president
doesn't have the funds available to pay.
"The debt ceiling has been increased now for the 90th time. Of
those increases before this time, the president was a Republican 55
of those times and a Democrat 34 of those times," Durbin said. He
noted that under President Reagan, a Republican, the national debt
tripled, and it doubled under Republican President George W. Bush.
"The last president to balance the budget was President Clinton.
When President Clinton left office, there was a $5 trillion debt
with a $120 billion budget surplus. By the time President Bush left
office, the national debt was $10 trillion with a $1.2 trillion
budget deficit, the largest in history. That is what was turned over
to President Obama."
Durbin said President Obama has had a difficult job and is
clawing his way back up from the legacy President Bush left him.
"President Bush cut taxes to the wealthy, an old way that doesn't
work. Under President Bush we lost 7 million jobs. We need to focus
on our goals: getting Americans back to work."
Durbin said education was a key to turning the country around,
including federal training programs to help retrain out-of-work
Americans for new careers. "We need them to be able to get a job and
become a taxpayer again."
Durbin also said Americans need a safety net in the field of
health care, stating current statistics that show that half the
children born in Illinois are under Medicaid, plus the number of
seniors nationally becoming eligible for Medicare continues to grow.
Durbin took a few questions before he left for the next
engagement. One was his take on President Bush's often criticized No
Child Left Behind. The senator said the portion of the program that
kept track of individual students' test scores was an important
concept. But mandating programs to schools without any funding was a
key issue among many flaws in the law.
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Asked about trickle-down economics, Durbin said tax breaks to the
wealthy are of little use to the economy.
"If you give Donald Trump a dollar, he isn't going to run out and
buy something with it. If you give it to a lower or middle-class
working family, they will. They will buy food or pay their utility
or do something else that will immediately affect the economy. Give
extra money to the unemployed and they will head straight for the
store."
Durbin went on: "The American working family has seen a 1 percent
gain in income growth in the last 20 years. We also need to help
small-business people because they create the first jobs in the
community."
A question was raised about American companies moving their
corporations overseas, and Durbin responded.
"We should not reward companies that move their companies
overseas with tax-deductible tax breaks," the senator said.
He added that some companies are leaving their profits overseas
because if they bring them back to the U.S., they will be subject to
taxes.
"If a corporation wants to talk about bringing their profits back
home and will use those profits to build factories and create
American jobs, I am ready to sit down and talk about tax breaks,"
Durbin said. "Otherwise, they should have to pay taxes on those
profits just as American companies who are here have to pay taxes."
One question dealt with Social Security and the fact there has
been no cost-of-living raise in Social Security in three years. The
gentleman who asked the question noted that in the last three years
his utilities have doubled, as well as the price of gasoline, and
that even the price on a jar of mayonnaise has doubled, while his
Social Security income has not.
Durbin went back to the beginning on Social Security to bring up
more points than just the question asked.
In 1983, his first year in Congress, he was involved in the
bipartisan bill that made Social Security solvent for 53 years. "We
have 25 more years and then there will need to be 22 percent cuts in
benefits," he said, "and no one is doing anything about that. Every
day 10,000 Americans are reaching the age of 65. Each day, every
day."
One proposal Durbin made was to increase the income threshold
where FICA deductions are taken from 84 percent of wages to 90
percent.
Durbin then directed his answer to the gentleman concerned about
his Social Security not keeping up with inflation. "Right now the
lowest benefits do not reach the poverty level. We can do better
than that: to at least 125 percent of the poverty level."
Durbin received a rousing applause when he said he was against
the privatization of the system. "Did you see the stock market this
past week? Imagine having 22 percent of your Social Security wiped
out just that fast."
Durbin's final comments were another warning: "Medicare needs to
be fixed; do nothing and in 12 years it's (financially) broke."
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