[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 38 (Tuesday, March 16, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H1488-H1489]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE SENATE MUST PASS THE JOBS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on the United States 
Senate to follow the House's lead and pass the jobs bill. The House 
passed the HIRE Act last week, and now the Senate needs to send it to 
the President for his signature. Americans need jobs and we need them 
now.
  My constituents tell me they want Congress to quit the bickering and 
the partisan posturing and get to work and fix the economy. Wall Street 
may be doing well enough for the bankers to reward themselves with big 
bonuses, but folks on Main Street are still hurting.
  North Carolina's unemployment rate has been above 11 percent for too 
long, and some counties in my congressional district are experiencing 
unemployment as high as 14.6 percent. More than half a million North 
Carolina workers are unemployed according to the new figures released 
by the Employment Security Commission.
  I've said before and I'll say it again, my top priorities of what we 
need to be doing are jobs, jobs, jobs. The jobs bill will provide the 
incentive companies need to put people to work today, giving employers 
a tax credit for every new worker they hire.

[[Page H1489]]

  I recently visited with local business leaders at the Erwin Chamber 
of Commerce as well as the Benson Chamber of Commerce, and they told me 
that this is the kind of Federal assistance that they need to help 
jump-start hiring in their communities. I think that's true not only in 
North Carolina, but across the country, and Congress needs to take 
action on jobs now.
  The centerpiece of the jobs bill that the House passed last week is a 
hiring tax credit, similar to the one I proposed in my HIRING Act of 
H.R. 4437. The bill would encourage business to invest by putting labor 
on sale for a limited time, helping small businesses expand and grow.
  The bill provides a payroll tax holiday to businesses that hire 
unemployed workers that is estimated to support roughly 300,000 jobs 
and encourage employers to keep those workers longer term so they will 
receive a tax credit of $1,000 if they retain them.
  The jobs bill we passed last week also included another proposal of 
mine--to support local school construction building by providing a tax 
credit for Qualified School Construction Bonds that were included in 
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last year. It will allow the 
issuers of Qualified School Construction Bonds to receive a direct 
payment from the Federal Government equal to the amount of the Federal 
tax credit.
  This modification will help North Carolina schools access nearly $500 
million in school construction bonds to address our students' needs and 
support more than 15,000 jobs just in North Carolina. You can imagine 
what it would do for the rest of the country.
  Last week I visited a school in Franklin County that was being built 
in my district from the first piece of these School Construction Bonds, 
and it's amazing to see what it does for a community and how it gives 
them an uplift.
  This provision will create jobs now, building the schools of the 
future. It's a win-win that makes sense, and I urge the Senate to pass 
the HIRE Act now. It'll be like CPR for our economy, and I hope the 
Senate will join the House in getting it done.

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