[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 23, 2010)]
[House]
[Page H657]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1230
                  WORKING TOGETHER FOR JOBS IN AMERICA

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, indeed, it's been 1 year since the American 
Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed without a Republican vote in this 
House and maybe only one in the Senate, and we've heard a lot of 
vitriol here today about it. The fact is almost every economist, 
including Mark Zandy who advised the Republican candidate for 
President, have said it helped. It helped in a major way our country 
from falling off a precipice into another Great Depression. A difficult 
vote, but a needed vote. And 95 percent of Americans received tax 
breaks, things that the other side of the aisle normally is much in 
favor of, but for 95 percent of America they didn't care and they 
didn't vote for it.
  The fact is there were three-quarters of a million jobs lost in the 
last quarter of President Bush's administration; in the last quarter of 
President Obama, there were just 35,000. The stock market has gone up 
by 50 percent since President Obama came into office and the jobs 
stimulus program was passed. There has been improvement.
  We had a great crisis, and we were in a ditch, and we are digging our 
way out, but we are only doing it in one part of the House. We need to 
work together in a bipartisan measure for jobs.

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