[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 26, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H361-H368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         REBUILDING THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Perriello) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Madam Speaker, I rise today as one of many freshmen 
who will be speaking during this hour because a little over a year ago, 
we came in on a wave of change. Many of us came into politics for the 
first time, certainly to the Federal Government for the first time, 
because we believed this country needed a new kind of politics, not 
just a politics of right or left, but a politics of right and wrong. 
For too long, both parties had failed to rise to the challenges of our 
time. Energy independence, redefining our competitive advantage--there 
were so many challenges to take on. And a year later, we are not 
satisfied.
  Tomorrow night, the President of the United States will come and join 
us here in this body to speak and give us a report on the state of the 
Nation. Well, the Nation is in pain. Working and middle class families 
are in pain, and we haven't done nearly enough to show people the 
results of standing up for the working and middle class.

                              {time}  2015

  There are many things that the change was about, but certainly at the 
heart of it was a desire for a new era of accountability, 
accountability for the private sector, accountability for government, 
and even accountability for consumers and bad decisions that had been 
made.
  But most importantly to this was a need to shift our economic 
policies from speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main 
Street. Changing the name plate on the door from Hank Paulson to Tim 
Geithner does not represent a change of economic policy. We need to 
understand what it will take to have actual economic accountability and 
job growth in this country.
  We believe in this House, the people's House, we have taken dramatic 
steps to put working class and middle class people ahead of the most 
powerful among us. But the pain continues. In my district over the last 
5 years we have seen people's utility rates go up 93 percent by 
Appalachian Power and others. We get calls every day, 20 percent 
increases in their health insurance premiums, bank fees, credit card 
fees, Comcast fees, all going through the roof while the working and 
middle class pay the price.
  We have taken steps here to stand up and say someone is going to 
stand up for Main Street, demand that accountability and that economic 
relief that we thought was part of the change. We hope tomorrow night 
to hear more about your willingness to lead in these areas.
  But we also must switch this focus to Main Street because we are in a 
jobs crisis. We need a wartime-like mentality of how serious this job 
crisis is. And we took dramatic efforts a year ago that have helped to 
stop the bleeding, to help turn from some of the most dramatic job 
losses in American history, certainly modern American history under the 
last administration, to stopping that bleeding so that we could begin 
the recovery. But we know much more needs to be done. We are not 
satisfied.
  I hear time and time again the banks are still not lending. If we 
need to do direct lending, if we need to do more to get the lending 
going to small and medium-sized businesses, we have to understand that 
in America's economy today two-thirds of job creation comes from small- 
and medium-sized business. They may not have the political power and 
control over both parties in this town, but small- and medium-sized 
businesses create that job growth. We need to get job creation on Main 
Street

[[Page H362]]

through direct lending. We also need to see the kind of investment in 
our infrastructure not only because it puts people to work today, but 
because it rebuilds America's competitive advantage.
  The hardworking, proud people of my district would rather collect a 
paycheck for building something than an unemployment check for sitting 
home. People want to work. They don't want those holes in their resume. 
And we know we are being outcompeted. So this is a jobs crisis. But it 
also goes to the heart of restoring the capitalistic innovation in this 
country.
  We saw a policy under the last administration of rewarding failure 
with bailouts. Many of us wanted a change in that policy. We are not 
satisfied with what we have seen. We cannot have the strength of our 
private sector when we continue to reward failure instead of 
innovation. The people's House has taken bold moves to ensure the kind 
of accountability that will restore the very heart of our capitalism.
  We know that the other side put in place many of the policies that 
created this problem, but it is not enough to point the finger. Let us 
be judged not by what the other side did to get us here, but by what we 
did to get us out of this economic mess. Many of us came here, we are 
working a double shift every day and will not rest until we see the 
kind of job creation and rewards for innovation that the American 
people deserve. That is why many of us came here. And we are not 
satisfied. We want to continue being that change, demanding that kind 
of shift from speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main 
Street.
  With that, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. DRIEHAUS. I would thank, Madam Chair, the gentleman from Virginia 
for leading this hour on our recovery. We talk so much about the job 
loss that has been created by this Great Recession. But far too often 
we don't discuss the causes of that job loss, and we don't discuss the 
direction we are heading in. And so I think it is important to remind 
the viewers and remind all Americans just where we are.
  I was at a luncheon today in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Johnson 
Investment Counsel. They refer to this as the Great Recession. And they 
refer to it as the Great Recession because it is the most significant 
recession that has taken place since the 1930s in the United States.
  This recession has lasted for 18 months, longer than any other 
recession since the Great Depression. This recession has caused a loss 
of 3.8 percent of the gross domestic product here in the United States, 
a greater loss than any recession since the Great Depression. This 
recession has caused the loss of 7.2 million jobs. 7.2 million jobs. 
The greatest job loss since the Great Depression.
  But I think it is important to understand when this recession 
started. This recession started in 2007, under the policies of the Bush 
administration. And I know the other side doesn't like us to go back. 
They want to believe that the world began, that this recession began, 
in January of 2009. But the facts just don't bear that out.
  So I brought this chart. And I brought this chart to explain the job 
loss that has occurred during this recession. And you can see that in 
the last 3 months of the Bush administration, this economy lost nearly 
2 million jobs. In the last 3 months of the Bush administration alone. 
As a matter of fact, it is after President Obama took the oath of 
office that we started turning things around. We are still losing jobs. 
And I think we all hope that next quarter we will turn this around and 
see positive growth. We saw growth last quarter. But we are heading in 
the right direction. And that is the important thing.
  Also at the luncheon today, I was struck by the analysis given. And I 
will just mention the first few points. First of all, the Great 
Recession is over. The recovery has begun. And I think this is 
important. Near-term growth has been bolstered by the stimulus and 
inventory building. There is no question in the minds of economists 
around the country that the stimulus is working.

  I would point you, Mr. Perriello, to just one comment made in the 
Cincinnati Enquirer this week. It was by the Realtors of Cincinnati. 
And the Realtors of Cincinnati were praising the stimulus. The headline 
reads this: ``Realtors, Builders Laud Tax Credit.'' They are praising 
the tax credit that we passed as a part of the stimulus. Because 
oftentimes when we talk about the stimulus, this $800 billion package, 
we forget that $300 billion of it was tax credits. It was tax credits 
and tax breaks for moderate-income families. And an important credit 
was to stimulate first-time homebuyers and to help people get back in 
the housing market. We have achieved that. Realtors understand that, 
people around the country understand it, because homes are starting to 
sell. And it is thanks to the efforts of this Democratic Caucus.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Let me yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you.
  Madam Speaker, it is a great honor to be here with the other 
freshmen. We are new to this system, but we are not new to the problems 
in our districts or in our Nation. We often go home on weekends to 
spend time in our districts. And what I have found in the district that 
I represent and the East Bay of California is a lot of pain, a lot of 
people that are suffering, but are filled with hope with the 
possibility that things are indeed turning around.
  I met a carpenter 2 weekends ago. He is a member of the carpenters 
union, and he had been out of work for about 8 months. The housing 
industry had literally shut down, and he had been thrown aside. And he 
said to me, ``Why can't those bankers make loans to my company? Why 
can't they do that? They have been given hundreds of billions of 
dollars, and yet they cannot make a loan.'' One of the things that we 
have been working on here is to force those bankers to make loans, to 
use our tax money not for the great bonuses that they are giving 
themselves this month, but rather to use that tax money to put people 
to work with loans to this home construction company that this 
carpenter was once employed by.
  Another person that I met in the City of Antioch about 8 months ago 
was protesting the fact that the loan modification program that had 
been put through was stalled once again by the bankers. We all know the 
statistics. A lot of talk, but very few loan modifications. This person 
had worked as a painter painting houses, had two jobs to support their 
family, and yet was unable to continue their mortgage when the Great 
Recession began.
  A third person just this last weekend was a heavy equipment operator 
at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Caldecott Tunnel in Contra Costa 
County. The heavy equipment operator said, ``Thank God the stimulus is 
working for me.'' In that project alone, over a $300 million project, 
the State of California was unable to pay its share because of the 
downturn in the California economy. So it was the action of my 
colleagues here, the freshman class plus the other Democrats in this 
House that voted to pass the stimulus bill, and $197 million of direct 
stimulus money went into that project, and 6,000 men and women will be 
employed, and a major commuting backlog will cease.
  It is working. The statistics we saw just a moment ago clearly show 
that with the new administration coming into place, with the stimulus 
money that was put in place last January, the first vote, supported 
unanimously by our caucus and opposed unanimously by the other side, 
that is working. The statistics are clear. We are seeing job declines 
slowing down, and we will soon see it turn around.
  Tomorrow the President will be here speaking to all of us about what 
we need to do in the months ahead. We need that Jobs for Main Street 
bill that passed here in December. Get it out there, get it passed, get 
people to work. We also need to make sure that Wall Street is properly 
disciplined. If they are going to get those big fat bonuses using our 
tax money, then we ought to tax those bonuses and put that money back 
to work with small businesses.
  We can do these things. And much has been done. We have seen the 
turnaround. We have seen the statistics showing that we are on the 
right track. We will continue that. And for all of us, we have a 
choice. We can do nothing, and people will be on welfare, people will 
get the unemployment checks, people will lose their insurance, and we 
will try to keep them going with COBRA support. Or we can do the jobs

[[Page H363]]

program, the stimulus programs, the Jobs for Main Street program. And 
in doing that, we will put people to work. They will not be tax takers, 
they will become taxpayers.

  I yield my time.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you very much.
  I think it is important to remember we have got to rebuild jobs in 
this country that are between $6 an hour and six figures. There still 
has to be a middle class, a working class in this country. We have to 
respect those jobs, remember that we have lost jobs in construction, we 
have lost jobs in places where people want to go back to work.
  The jobs bill we passed here was a good start. We need to be bold in 
our willingness to both put people to work and recreate our competitive 
advantage. Even before the Great Recession, even before some of the 
horrible fiscal decisions of the last administration we had been 
getting outcompeted around the world. We have got to make the 
investments in our infrastructure, in our small-and medium-sized 
businesses, and education and workforce development so that we can 
outcompete any country.
  We are more innovative than any country on earth. We will continue to 
do that. But we cannot do it when we have a corporate capture of this 
body that means we reward failure instead of rewarding innovation. That 
must be the key.
  With that, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.
  Mr. WELCH. I thank my colleagues, and appreciate the opportunity to 
participate with you in the freshman hour.
  I want to speak about two things. One is how do we get lending going 
for small businesses. And two, what is a practical thing we can do to 
create 600,000 to 850,000 jobs. You have recited very well how we got 
here, why we needed the stimulus. But on lending, let's address that. 
What happened? Wall Street went on strike. After they made record 
profits and record bonuses by making record bets with taxpayer money, 
they put a gun to the head of the American economy and lost billions 
and billions of dollars. And it was so threatening to the American 
economy.
  Henry Paulson, then the Treasury Secretary under a conservative 
President, George Bush, came to Congress hat in hand, acknowledged that 
he was embarrassed, and asked for a $750 billion bailout.

                              {time}  2030

  Now, I was on that conference call with Mr. Paulson, and many of us 
were shocked that this former Goldman Sachs head was acknowledging 
failure but saying, If you don't help us out on the bets we made, we 
will have an implosion that will have collateral consequences that are 
absolutely catastrophic for Main Street.
  Congress gave him the money, but it was after an assurance on his 
part that Wall Street had learned its ways and they wouldn't do the 
same thing. It is 15 months later, and what has happened? Wall Street 
is back to its old ways. In this past year, Wall Street has made so 
much money that they have set aside a bonus pool of $140 billion to 
$160 billion.
  Now, how did they make that money? They had the TARP money, the 
taxpayer bailout money, number one. Number two, they had zero interest 
rate money from the Federal open window, and they did what they did 
before to get us there: they went and started trading in currencies, 
derivatives, and commodities.
  Now, with those profits they had three options. One, they could have 
lent that money out to our small businesses. And they need it. By the 
way, I have a lot of folks in Vermont, I am sure this is true in 
California, saying, If they are making so much money, how come they 
won't give me a loan?
  Number two, they could have added it to their bottom line to have a 
stronger balance sheet in the event of a downturn later. Or, three, 
they could have put it in their pocket. And that is what they did. 
Fifteen months after they stuck a gun to the head of the American 
economy, they went back to their old ways and made a ton of money. They 
are very good at what they do. But what they do is not good for 
America, it is not good for building an economy and sustainable jobs, 
and they are going to rake that in.
  So we have legislation, many of us are on it, that would say to Wall 
Street: look, if you are not going to lend that money out, we are going 
to tax those bonuses. Anything above $50,000, we are going to tax at 50 
percent, and we are going to put it into lending for small businesses.
  Second, we can create 600,000 to 850,000 jobs by engaging in energy 
home retrofit programs. In every single community, we have got 
carpenters, plumbers, masons, electricians out of work because we have 
got a stagnant home industry. But we have got homeowners who need to 
save money and need a little help doing it.
  If we put $20 billion into that, we can create 600,000 to 850,000 
jobs, all local. We can use materials that have to be made in the 
United States. Ninety percent of all the retrofit materials are 
manufactured right here. We can save $3.3 billion for homeowners by 
lowering their energy bills. And we can take 3 million cars, the 
equivalent of 3 million cars, off the road. These are the things we can 
do, get lending going, and get jobs created. Thank you.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. One thing I just want to add on that before I move to 
the gentleman from Colorado is to say anyone who has run a business or 
a household knows the difference between an expenditure and an 
investment. Going out to the movies is different than investing in a 
solar panel or retrofitting your home.
  Now is the time where we need to be investing. We can do that through 
some of the retrofitting of both our commercial and residential stock. 
We can do that by investing in our workforce development and by getting 
that lending, again, to small and medium-size business.
  There has been a thought among some of the elites in this country 
that we can continue to prosper without building anything, without 
growing anything. At some point, we have to be creating value in the 
system. Our financial sector is extremely important, and it will be 
strong if there are good rules in place that allow for predictability.
  But we also must remember the industrial and agricultural sectors. 
These are not things of a bygone past, though sometimes in this city 
and on Wall Street that is forgotten. These remain major drivers of 
economic growth, major drivers of employment; and we must have an 
economic development strategy in addition to a financial sector 
strategy.
  Some of the things that continue to change and set us back, I believe 
the gentleman from Colorado wants to address, are not just in this 
building but perhaps across the street. With that, I yield.
  Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.
  Following on the gentleman from Vermont, as well as the gentleman 
from Ohio, taking us back to where we were before I was in this body, 
my colleague from Vermont was here, when President Bush, Secretary 
Paulson said we need a blank check for a whole lot of money, $700 
billion.
  Well, what are you going to do with it? Well, we are going to buy 
toxic assets. We are going to take some of the bad debt off the books 
of banks and we are going to then relieve them of that, and that will 
improve their balance sheets, and they will be able to loan again. 
Well, okay.
  At that point the Congress said, well, not one dollar of that TARP 
money has gone to buying bad debt. Instead, the Bush administration 
started nationalizing companies left and right. They bought up banks. 
They are now owned by the government. They bought up automobile 
companies now owned by the government. They bought insurance companies. 
They went on a shopping spree and nationalized the means of production 
in this country.
  Now we are at a place where you have Big Government in league with 
Big Business, the worst of both worlds for the people of this country. 
This is made worse by a recent Supreme Court decision that opened the 
channels for unregulated use of corporate funds to influence political 
elections. That is right. Congress, in its wisdom, had previously 
established regulations around this that they advertised, they could 
say call so and so to lobby them but not vote for, vote against, not 
within 30 days of an election. The Supreme Court threw that all out.
  What you now have is a very, very dangerous situation where, let's 
say

[[Page H364]]

that the Bush administration nationalized a big bank, and let's say 
there was a Member of Congress didn't think they should. Well, now you 
have that bank can spend an enormous amount of money trying to stop the 
reelection of people they don't like and trying to elect people they 
like. You have Big Government and Big Business working together in the 
Bush socialist economy to the detriment of the American people.

  We will be looking at solutions of campaign finance reform in 
Congress. A lot of it needs to start with that, for Congress to take 
action and be willing to take on this nexus where Big Business and Big 
Government operated in unholy alliance. We need to make sure that the 
system is influenced by the people of the country, rather than the 
corporations with their dollars, using them to confuse and trick people 
with their massive and misleading public relations attacks. I am 
hopeful.
  I am a sponsor of the fair elections bill, a campaign finance reform 
bill; many of my colleagues are as well. We also need to look at 
disclosure requirements, shareholder approval requirements. We need to 
make it more difficult, not easier, for corporations to influence the 
United States Congress.
  I yield back to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. I thank you for those comments. We can't say enough 
about how disastrous this decision is, not just for the political 
system in terms of corruption of the political system, but really a 
threat to the private sector itself, when the biggest corporations are 
able to capture government, as we have seen in the years past.
  What they do is they try to lock in the status quo that is the very 
antithesis of capitalism, which is about innovation and competition. 
When you are able to buy the referees on the field, you no longer have 
a decent game. We will outcompete and win on that fair battlefield, on 
that fair sports field, but you cannot do it when they are buying the 
referees. And anyone who thinks that money has no influence in politics 
may need to have a little wake-up call.
  This is a disastrous decision that goes against decades of precedent. 
Many out there who decry judicial activism, this is not only 
overthrowing decades of precedent but a decision just 6 years earlier 
that had come down the opposite way which looks dangerous in terms of 
what it means for our Supreme Court. But, again, I think you do a good 
job of pointing out exactly what it means for the private sector.
  I will go to the gentleman from New York and then the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Perriello, for bringing us 
together this evening for conversation and dialogue on what is an 
important part of the work we are doing right now. There can be no more 
important issue than jobs, job creation, job retention, and dealing 
with the Nation's economy.
  I am glad that we are talking about a bit of a reality check this 
evening, too, to review history, what brought us here.
  There is no mistaking that this administration and we in Congress 
this year have inherited, as freshmen, a very difficult task because 
some irresponsible behavior guided the decisionmaking; and where we 
found that we grew a deficit to record proportions, historically 
largest deficit, handed to this administration. That was just a year 
ago.
  So when we look at some of the stats that the stimulus package was 
responsible for, minimally, 2 million jobs, looking at a number of 
projections and assessments that have been done out there, I think it 
is reassuring to know that we have been able to speak to that gross 
number of at least, minimally, 2 million jobs that came about through 
sound stewardship and through investment at a time when our recession 
was bleeding this economy. And all telltale indicators suggest that 
that bleeding has stopped. But we have only placed a down payment upon 
the economy with the stimulus package.
  In the pipeline are tremendous investments to come, areas that deal 
with communications, with broadband, opportunities for our 
neighborhoods, for our communities dealing with transportation projects 
that are coming, with the smart grid, investment in smart meters, and 
all of the delivery system that brings the energy supplies to our 
doorstep, be it a workplace or a home place.
  So these are sound investments, so much so that the news we received 
just recently last month about the third quarter showed 2.2 percent 
growth. That came about because of a change in thinking, a change of 
behavior. As witnessed over the last several months and years, we were 
dealing with what was a draining situation. In fact, I have to look at 
the fact that we provided within the stimulus package a middle class 
tax cut, largest in its nature, in its history. And what benefited our 
communities was that 95 percent of working families in this country 
realized the benefit that amounted to some $37 billion in tax relief 
that came through their paychecks during the calendar year of 2009. 
That was important work. That was a way to help stretch the budgets for 
our American households.

  Contrast that with the fact that tax cuts under the Bush 
administration were provided by borrowing from China. Now, isn't it 
interesting that China was made strong with our kind of irresponsible 
behavior. We look now at the fact that China's clean energy budget 
surpasses her defense budget. And we, in this Nation, have an 
opportunity to enter into that clean energy global race in a sound and 
practical manner, to prepare ourselves and to invest in the American 
economy and in the American race in that global measure that will find 
us a leader, an innovator, one that will become the ultimate go-to 
nation for energy intellect. And that is the juncture we find ourselves 
in today.
  Representative Perriello, I would suggest that this clean energy 
economy that we try to create, and Representative Welch touched upon it 
just a moment ago, there is an awful lot of opportunity for us to 
invest.
  The banking community has shied away from energy efficiency, from 
some of the retrofits we can do for businesses and residents. We know 
that in this economy it is much easier for them to grant a 20-year plan 
for a coal plant or a 30-year plan for a nuclear plant, but we can't 
get the investment in energy efficiency seen as our fuel of choice.
  It has been stated that we are writing annually about a $900 billion 
check to our competitors simply because of our energy, our gluttonous 
energy behavior and the price tag on our energy bills. If we could move 
forward and provide for ESCOs, energy service companies, to go out into 
this company and retrofit our residential parcels and allow for us to 
reduce that demand that is worldwide gluttonous in nature, if we could 
invest in the infrastructure, the human infrastructure, the workforce, 
it is said that for every billion dollars of investment in retrofitting 
our residential parcels, some 8,000 jobs are created. That is how we 
bring back this economy. And it has been happening.
  We have been doing installments. We have been great stewards of that 
stimulus package. We have made certain they go to vital projects. I can 
see it happening. I can see the pipeline activities coming in the next 
few months with high-speed rail, with communications opportunities. I 
think we are on the right course. We need to invest heavily now in a 
green energy, clean energy economy. That is our way in one sector of 
activity that can really produce a multitude of wins, with reducing 
energy demand, enhancing job creation, and reducing the carbon 
footprint of this Nation and the globe.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. What the gentleman talks about here is so important. 
We have to have the courage at this moment not just to think about how 
we survive the next quarter, but how do we thrive in the next quarter 
of a century, How do we compete again. And spending $1 billion every 
day on oil that goes overseas to some of the countries that hate us the 
most is one of the dumbest strategies imaginable, $1 billion every day 
out of this country.
  Let me brag on Southside, Virginia for a moment before I go on, 
because we are at the cutting edge of the new energy economy. Just last 
week, we worked with one of the biggest dairy farmers in the State, and 
we are going to turn cow manure into power. So instead of having all 
the effluence go off into the Chesapeake Bay and annoy

[[Page H365]]

neighbors with the smell and be a costly thing that makes milk more 
expensive, we are going to invest in an anaerobic digester that is 
going to turn that into power, not only fuel the entire farm, but also 
much of the town around it.

                              {time}  2030

  I say to farmers who say, How are my kids going to make it with the 
utility bills that these monopoly utilities are jacking up on us--a 93 
percent increase in my area in the last 5 years--I'd say, I don't want 
you to have a power bill at all. In 5 years, I hope you're selling 
power in the same way that you're selling milk today.
  We have a truck stop owner in my district who's figured out a way. 
After 9/11, he said, You know, I'm nothing but a front man for al 
Qaeda. I'm selling their product. Instead, I want to sell an American 
product. He's worked with farmers in our area to use canola oil to sell 
a premium diesel fuel--a premium fuel, not a low-grade fuel--and 
instead of 3 cents on every dollar staying in the county, which is what 
happens in a normal truck stop, 93 cents on every dollar is staying in 
our community supporting farmers, supporting the refining.
  One of the poorest communities in Virginia, highest unemployment, 
we're working in their landfill to capture the methane, turn it into 
power so we can reduce power bills for low-income residents and make it 
more attractive to business. This is what other countries are daring to 
do, and we've always been better at it. We've got to dare to be better 
at it if we're going to be ahead.
  With that, I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, the gentleman from Virginia couldn't be more 
correct. I'm a cattle rancher, so you're getting very close to home 
with the discussion about methane and cow power. It's a reality. It 
actually is happening in large parts of California. Keep in mind that 
methane is a greenhouse gas that's over 20 times more powerful that 
carbon dioxide, so you're getting a twofer here. You're getting an 
energy source. And methane actually is very similar in chemistry to 
natural gas, so it is a very, very important thing. It has all of the 
win-win that you just talked about and it takes care of a small 
environmental problem when you do this methane production.
  So this is another example of the way in which this Congress last 
year in the American Recovery Act instituted public policies that are a 
win-win for America. These are long-term investments. More than a 
hundred, almost $200 million of that stimulus money goes into energy 
research. We're talking about jobs, researchers in laboratories and the 
university campuses that are figuring out how to do these things in an 
efficient and an effective way. In California, we have major research 
underway in laboratories at the universities that are figuring out how 
can you use algae to produce fuel. And it's actually happening. Some of 
that fuel is now being used in jet airplanes, and the Department of 
Defense is testing the use of that fuel, biofuels of all kinds.
  The other thing that's happening here is the notion that energy is a 
fundamental national security issue. My colleagues, you've already 
talked about the enormous expense that the energy consumption is 
bringing to us and the risk that it puts us in when we get the energy 
from the most dangerous places in the world. Every step we take to 
conserve and every step we take to use alternate and renewable energy 
is a step that enhances our national security.
  I want us all to keep in mind who was it that voted in the stimulus 
bill of last year, the American of Recovery Act, for these critical 
investments. It was our side, the Democratic side, that voted for it. 
And who voted against it, voted no? It was our colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle. There is a very clear dichotomy here on philosophy 
on how to deal with this. Yes, there is a deficit. More than half of 
that deficit actually occurred during the George W. Bush era in which 
this Congress was controlled by the other party. I'm being a bit 
partisan here, but these are the facts.
  Now, what was left to us to clean up when President Obama came in? 
The greatest recession since the Great Depression. The statistics are 
clear. Look at the job losses, the way they accelerated during the Bush 
era. And look what happened when Obama and the stimulus package came 
into place. We saw a reversal of that. We're now building the American 
economy once again.
  One final point, and this was brought up by our colleagues here, and 
that is the investment in education. This is a long-term investment. 
Before I took this job, I was a regent at the University of California, 
and I watched the enormous decline in support to that university. Forty 
thousand students are not at the State University and the University of 
California this year. Those are the people that will lead us in the 
future. They're not there. They will not be available to us. The 
stimulus package also put a lot of money into the education system and 
kept the schools open, kept the teachers working.
  Thank you so very, very much. I yield my time.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you.
  And before I go to the gentleman from Ohio, I think it is important 
to note how serious fiscal responsibility is and how serious it is for 
those of us, frankly, who are some of the younger Members of this body 
who understand that this threat of fiscal irresponsibility is not 
coming due for our children or our grandchildren. It's not that far 
off. It's going to be within our lifetime that we see this. And in 
order to fix a problem, sometimes you have to understand the root cause 
of that problem.
  With that, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. DRIEHAUS. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia.
  Madam Speaker, I think it's important to look back and to determine 
where this deficit started. And when you look back, it's back in the 
Clinton administration when we began to turn around the budget here in 
the United States, where we began to go from deficits to surpluses and 
we were actually paying down on the debt.
  At the beginning of the Bush administration, they had a choice. They 
had a choice: Should we continue paying off that debt, should we 
continue paying down the debt in order to support future generations, 
or, do we want to gain short-term political gain? I think Republicans 
in Congress and the Bush administration chose that short-term political 
gain, because we know what they did. They decided to pursue tax cuts 
for the wealthiest Americans, we engaged in two different wars that 
were not paid for, and we engaged in reckless spending. And that led to 
what? The greatest deficits that we have ever seen in the United 
States.

  When we came in the numbers were off the charts, literally off the 
charts. Americans had never seen deficits like this. They could have 
chosen a different course. They could have said it's not the fiscally 
responsible thing to do right now, to pursue these massive tax cuts for 
the wealthy. They could have said if we're going to engage in war, 
we're actually going to pay for it as we go. But they decided not to, 
and they engaged in reckless spending.
  So where has that left us? It required us to make an investment and 
to continue to spend in order to end this recession, because if we 
didn't make expenditures in the stimulus, the recession would have gone 
longer and the recession would have been deeper. I already mentioned 
that this was the longest recession that we have experienced since the 
Great Depression. It would have been significantly longer were it not 
for the stimulus. We know this to be true.
  I gave an example earlier of the Realtors. Just this weekend, the 
Realtors and homebuilders were praising the tax credits in the stimulus 
for finally getting first-time home buyers back into the market. But we 
spent a lot of time here tonight talking about new energy technology 
and how we're going to build this economy in the future, and it is 
through investment in energy and manufacturing and clean technologies 
that we're going to move forward.
  Just today, Ted Strickland, the Governor of the State of Ohio, gave 
his State of the State address. In that, the Governor said, I believe 
in Ohio because Ohio will power the future.
  So I want to challenge the gentleman from Virginia, because Ohio is 
poised. Ohio is poised to lead this Nation in manufacturing, in clean 
energy technology.
  And I'll just give you one more story because it's a good one. 
Several months

[[Page H366]]

ago, I went out to a business in my district called XTech. Now this was 
a business that was really reliant upon the steel industry. They make 
steel rollers for the steel industry. They're made from steel. They 
sell to the steel industry. I went there thinking, Wow, they're not 
going to particularly like the investments that we're making in the 
stimulus in new energy technology. They're not going to like the 
direction that we're heading in terms of greenhouse gasses. Instead, 
when I walked in, they said, Thanks. Thanks for your support and thanks 
for the Congress. Because we get it. You get it. They realized that 
they were one of the few manufacturers in all of the United States that 
has the ability to make the steel gears for windmills, windmills that 
are being built and going up across the country.
  Now, we could allow European countries to build these parts. We could 
allow European countries to sell into the United States. But because of 
the investments we're making in new energy technology, because of the 
investments this Congress is making to get us out of this recession, 
businesses like XTech see a future where there was no future before. 
That's what the stimulus has meant. Has it required additional 
spending? Yes. But that additional spending has allowed us to reduce 
the size of the recession, the duration of the recession, and put 
Americans back to work.
  With that, I yield back.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. I will take the challenge from the gentleman from Ohio 
and remind him of the recent NCAA soccer championship in which I 
believe the University of Virginia beat a team from your State, a very 
good team from your State.
  Mr. DRIEHAUS. It was a good team.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. I do just want you to be warned that that challenge 
may not work out well for your State. I think what we're talking about 
here is this issue: We cannot speculate our way to economic recovery.
  Sometimes when I'm meeting with the folks in my district--just a 
couple of days ago I was down in a town that has seen several plants 
close. The big plants closed back in the nineties after NAFTA. A recent 
set have closed that had managed to cling on a lot longer. They turned 
to me and said, Do people up there know we exist, those of us that are 
making 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour? Do they know we're out there?
  And they know that I'm fighting through the Jobs Caucus, through the 
jobs bill, by being a broken record about jobs, jobs, jobs. But there's 
a sense that sometimes those on Wall Street and, as Mr. Poe mentioned, 
that Wall Street-Washington collusion, only think about the folks that 
are already doing really well in the economy and forget about that 
working middle class, forget about advanced manufacturing, forget about 
the next generation of farming and ag products and forestry, forget 
about the fact that two-thirds of job growth in this country comes from 
small and medium-sized businesses. They may not get the same headlines 
as the Goldman Sachs, but they employ America. They treat their workers 
well. They're accountable, and they produce real value in our 
community. Those are the folks we have to remember. Those are the 
people that are taking it on the chin from getting nickel-and-dimed by 
credit card companies and bank fees and utility rate increases and 
everything across the board. Those working- and middle-class folks need 
a voice. We need to be that voice.

  I've given the President a little grief tonight and certainly his 
Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, for not being the change that 
I expected to see and not doing enough for Main Street, but when the 
President last came here, he did say something that's so important for 
us to remember. He was talking about how big the challenges are that we 
face, whether it's health reform or energy independence or the great 
recession. And he said, We're going to step up and face this because 
that's what Americans do. We don't back down. We don't back away from a 
challenge.
  Every generation of Americans are faced with a challenge. Some have 
to storm the beaches of Normandy, some have had to fight great wars. We 
are being asked to figure out how to compete again in the 21st century 
and have a strong middle class. And part of that is being willing to do 
the tough decisions on energy independence and other areas that are 
going to be the job creators. When we worry about something like the 
Supreme Court decision saying that if corporations can spend unlimited 
money, that means the corporations that are competitive today will be 
able to lock in their monopolies through the Washington-Wall Street 
collusion. What we have to have is the innovation, even the creative 
destruction, to create the jobs and the competitive advantage of the 
future.
  The President asked us to have that courage that every generation of 
Americans has, to not back down from the challenge. This is our 
challenge, whether it's how to get the budget balanced, how to shore up 
the middle class, how to be economically competitive in a global 
economy, how to create competitiveness in energy and health care and 
other sectors. This is our time, and we will step up and we will try to 
be worthy of the American people. We will not forget those working- and 
middle-class folks.
  With that, I yield the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Perriello. Thank you again for 
bringing us together this evening.
  The gentleman from Ohio charted for us the recession, and to use his 
phrase, it went off the charts, literally. I think what is important to 
recognize is that we stopped the bleeding. We stopped that drop off the 
charts with this stimulus package. And the experts, economists are 
suggesting that perhaps it would have been another one or two points 
higher, percentagewise, the unemployment rate.

                              {time}  2100

  Well, that translates into millions of people, millions of people who 
would have lost a job had it not been for this stimulus and stopping 
the bleeding. So I think this investment is wise. And it also tells 
us--we've heard here this evening--that we're investing in a way that 
allows America's business community and the manufacturing base to do it 
smarter. We give them the tools to do it smarter. I believe that that's 
how we sharpen the competitive edge for our business community. They 
compete in the global marketplace. If we give them a smarter outcome, 
we will be victorious at that global marketplace. We may not even do it 
cheaper, but we'll do it smarter. And that will be a thumbs up for the 
American worker.
  So this evening, it was a pleasure to join with you to talk about 
what we can do with the clean energy economy, what we are doing with 
the stimulus, the investment in the future of this country in a way 
that uses cutting-edge tools, which is the important strategy here. And 
I am proud of the opportunities to be able to think outside the barrel 
when it comes to energy policy so that we can lift this Nation to a new 
era of accomplishment and competitiveness. It starts with the stimulus, 
and it will continue with legislation on jobs, job reform, health care 
reform, and certainly with energy independence. We need to multitask. 
Every American worker I know multitasks. We, here in this Chamber, need 
to multitask and get a host of legislative pieces done. These bills are 
essential to the rise of the American worker.
  Mr. DRIEHAUS. I thank the gentleman from New York. Picking up on the 
point about multitasking and getting a host of things done. We haven't 
talked much tonight, and I think it's important. I have the honor of 
serving on the Financial Services Committee, and I think one of the 
most important things that we have done for the American people since 
we have been here is to make sure that we don't go back from where we 
came. And that is, we don't re-create what created this recession in 
the first place.
  Recently we passed regulatory reform here in the House. The Senate 
now has that bill in front of them, in front of Senator Dodd's 
committee, and I hope they take it up. And I hope they take it up in 
short order because what we were able to do in the House version of 
regulatory reform was to say, you know, these mortgage-backed 
securities, these credit default swaps, these crazy derivative products 
that no one was paying any attention to, that the Republicans in 
Congress said we didn't need to regulate but we know led to the great 
recession, what we did for the first time, we actually addressed it.

[[Page H367]]

And we said, We're not going to allow the systemic risk in the system 
any longer. We're going to protect the American people because it's the 
folks in our neighborhoods, it's the folks in our communities that we 
represent that continue to pay the price.
  So while the Wall Street barons are doling out bonuses left and right 
on Wall Street, the folks back in my neighborhood are still dealing 
with the foreclosure crisis. We still have hundreds, if not thousands, 
of homes in Cincinnati that have been foreclosed on. It's the 
neighborhoods that are paying the price. I haven't seen the investment 
banks step up and say that they're creating a community fund for 
communities across the United States to help alleviate some of the 
damage that was caused. Instead, they're patting themselves on the 
back. They're doling out bonuses.
  Well, the school systems in our urban core, the small businesses in 
our urban core, the neighborhoods themselves and families still 
continue to struggle. They continue to struggle because of the 
unregulated activity of Wall Street. So we stepped up, and we took 
responsibility. We passed regulatory reform, and we're going to hold 
them accountable so that this doesn't happen again in the future.
  With that, I'll pass it back to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Well, it is interesting that you mention the 
importance of this because really, again, what we're doing is voting 
referees back on the field. We shouldn't be choosing sides as a 
government, but we should make sure the rules are there. Now no one 
ever leaves the ball game and says, Wow, I really liked the referees in 
that game. No one ever says, Oh, the referees did a good job. You 
notice the referees when things go wrong and when a bad call is made. 
Government certainly makes errors. But what is important is that we 
have referees on the field.
  I talk to friends of mine all the time who are investors and business 
leaders, and they say, We want predictability and accountability in the 
market so we can then adjust to that. It's frustrating not just, I 
think, for many working and middle class folks who have been asked to 
pay for the mistakes that were made on Wall Street, in part because of 
mistakes that were made in Washington, to ask hardworking people in my 
district making $30,000 a year to pay for people that were making 
millions every year. But it has also been frustrating for some 
investors to say, Look, I made the smart investment. I didn't go for 
the crazy, exotic mortgage-backed securities and derivatives. I made 
smart, reasonable hedged risks, and it was fine. Yet the people who did 
make those high-risk, high-return investments not only got to see the 
upsides in the good years but then got bailed out in the bad years. I 
mean, if you go to Vegas, and you bet 13 on the roulette wheel, it's a 
sucker's bet. But if you know that every time you lose on 13, someone 
is going to make you money to make the next bet, and when you win, 
you're going to get to keep it all, of course you are going to keep 
betting on 13.
  So with this, we must understand that the rules must be clear on the 
field. That's what this is. It's not about being anti-Wall Street. It's 
about being pro-accountability and having rules that are there. So 
let's get down to some brass tacks on Main Street job creation, that 
moves us from speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main 
Street, and these are some good, commonsense ideas that should be able 
to be pursued on a bipartisan basis. We need to figure out a way to 
get lending going to small- and medium-sized business. If we need to do 
it through incentives, we can do it through incentives. If we need to 
do direct lending because the banks just won't do it, we need to do 
that.

  We need to get creative. That is what I hear in my district. People 
want to expand. They want to hire. They can't get the lending. Consider 
a capital gains freeze for 2 years for small business. Infrastructure 
investment, particularly smart grid technology, water infrastructure, 
broadband infrastructure that we know creates competitive advantage. 
We've talked about retrofits that already make win-win sense in the 
economy. We can do this in the commercial sector, the industrial 
sector. Not at the scale of 100 homes here and 100 homes there. The 
market incentives are there to do this more broadly than that and put 
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people to work in retrofits.
  These are concrete areas that will not only help us in these dramatic 
downtimes in our economy, but do it in a way that creates value on the 
upside because we know that the cheapest electricity is the electricity 
you never have to buy in the first place. These are ways to invest in 
our competitiveness. And with that, I yield to another member of our 
class.
  Mrs. DAHLKEMPER. Thank you very much. I appreciate the gentleman from 
Virginia bringing us together tonight. I just wanted to come and join 
you in the sentiments that you have expressed.
  As we look at our country and look where we have been and how we got 
to where we are not just today but in the 200-plus years, it's our 
ingenuity, it's our resourcefulness, and it's our strong work ethic 
that really has always propelled the United States to success. Our 
prosperity, as we know, is built on the American dream and the belief 
that we can achieve extraordinary things in the future, regardless of 
all the challenges of the present. And this is the vision of Main 
Street Americans. Work hard, set high goals, and be optimistic about 
the future.
  In the face of this economic crisis, it's all too easy I think to 
choose cynicism, but I think if we abandon the optimism, and the 
American dream, we'll do nothing but delay our return to prosperity. I 
have certainly seen small businesses on my Main Streets throughout my 
district who have really taken these difficult times and really made 
changes in their business, and we need to be here in Washington 
supporting those businesses.
  I have had people like John Hall, who lost his job in the textile 
industry, but then that didn't deter him from a new path to success. In 
fact, he invented a new piece of fishing equipment. With the help of 
Penn State Behrend and the Northwest Pennsylvania Industrial Resource 
Center, he has brought his invention to the marketplace. In Butler 
County, BeamOne, a company which produces electric beam medical 
sterilization equipment, has announced plans to build a service center 
in a local industrial park that is going to create at least 20 new 
jobs.
  I find great hope in all of these success stories around my district, 
and it kind of ties into what everyone's been saying. We cannot listen 
to the skeptics. The proof is back with the Americans, the Americans on 
Main Street. They have not lost their optimism. Many of them drive to 
really define our Nation's character.
  It was mentioned earlier on that our decisions need not be about next 
week, next month or even next year, or even the election this year. The 
decisions that we make have to be about our future, the future for our 
children, the future for our grandchildren. We need to invest in that 
future, and I think we were doing that last year. We are going to 
continue to do that this year. It's the innovation that's going to take 
us to the future to make things I think more positive. We've got to be 
here in Washington, helping them along with that investment. 
Innovation, innovation, innovation which will lead to jobs, jobs, jobs. 
So I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. DRIEHAUS. I want to thank the gentlelady from Pennsylvania for 
her comments. And I think tomorrow we're going to hear from the 
President, and the President is going to challenge us. Because while we 
know we've seen a 60 percent increase in the stock market over the last 
year, we also know that we're not to the point yet where we're creating 
jobs. I think all of us are very worried that while we are entering 
into a recovery, we're fearful that it's going to be a jobless 
recovery. We need to focus on creating jobs.
  The President is going to challenge us tomorrow night to control 
spending while at the same time making strategic investments in jobs 
and job growth across the United States. That's what we're trying to do 
in infrastructure. That's what we're doing in clean-energy technology. 
That's what we're doing through our access to education, higher 
education, in the bills that we've passed earlier in the year. That's 
the challenge before us.

[[Page H368]]

  I think the American people are really sick and tired, quite frankly, 
of seeing Democrats and Republicans fight against each other because 
they feel that they are the ones that pay the price for that, and I 
think they're right. We need to come together. We need to come 
together, accept the President's challenge, and move forward to create 
jobs in the United States. So with that, I'll hand it back to the 
gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. We stand here in the midst of a tremendous economic 
crisis. What we hear when we go home every weekend is the pain of 
people who have lost their jobs, the fear of those who think they might 
be next, the confusion and frustration of having seen one 
administration seem to wreck the economy and the next not doing enough 
to fix it.
  Well, like many Americans, I am not satisfied. We can sit here 
tonight and blame the other side for letting the deficit go off the 
rails or helping to wreck the economy. I am not satisfied being judged 
by what the other side did. I want us to be judged by whether we get 
this economy back on track. I want us to be judged by whether we have 
stepped up to the generational challenges that both parties have failed 
to address in the decades past.
  It's too easy in this town to focus on winning a debate or a 
legislative fight or a campaign by convincing people that the other 
side is even worse. That's not a politics worthy of the American 
people. We've done a lot to stop the bleeding in the economy in the 
last year, but I'm not satisfied with us merely stopping the bleeding. 
We must have the healing and the rehabilitation, not just to get us 
back to where we were, but to an even stronger working and middle class 
that we've seen in the last few years, a more competitive American 
economy. A politics that doesn't just reward and lock in the status quo 
through corporate campaign contributions and ads, but rewards 
innovation and dares to think of what the next big thing can be, that 
can unleash again the American competitiveness that is being choked out 
by so much of the Washington-Wall Street collusion that seems to reward 
what has been, instead of what needs to be in this country.
  It's good to see that Wall Street has recovered and is above 10,000, 
but I am not satisfied until we see that growth on Main Street, we see 
the job creation, we see jobs that are somewhere between $6 an hour and 
six figures for that vibrant middle class that's always been at the 
heart of this country. I'm a big believer in this President, and I am a 
big believer in hope, but hope doesn't pay the mortgage. We have to 
deal with the banking crisis, the housing crisis. We have to look at 
the construction sector, education, and workforce development. I am not 
satisfied with solutions that simply stabilize where we are or offer 
something a little bit better than what came before. We promised 
something better than that.
  I believe tomorrow night the President has an opportunity to give an 
address to this Nation that gives an honest reading of the state of 
this Union, both its unbelievable strengths, its unprecedented hunger 
for innovation, but also the reality of its economic suffering, 
particularly with our middle class and working class families who 
continue to suffer under monopolies of electric utilities, of the 
credit card companies, of the joblessness; that we will see a President 
who steps up and continues to say, We are not going to shirk away from 
the challenges of our time because that's not what Americans do. We 
step up. We figure out a way to innovate, to out-compete, and to give 
the American people a kind of politics that they deserve.
  That's what brought many of us into politics for the first time, like 
many of the freshmen who have been speaking tonight. And we are not 
satisfied yet with the change, but we still believe it is possible. We 
are looking for everyone to come together, Congress and White House, 
Republican and Democrat, and all the American people throughout this 
country, to dare to believe that that hunger we have for change and for 
hope can translate into real results, including a reinvention of 
America's competitive advantage that helps restore the strength of that 
middle class, that understands that two-thirds of our job growth comes 
from small- and medium-sized business, that gets lending going again, 
that gets job creation going again and moves us from rewarding 
speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main Street.
  I thank my colleagues tonight for joining with us on the eve of the 
State of the Union address.

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