[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 19, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3633-H3637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REBUILDING THE ECONOMY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Maffei). 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. Mr. Speaker, Americans are sick of it. They are sick
and tired of hearing excuses and finger-pointing. They are sick and
tired of other people not having to play by basic rules of decency and
fairness. They are sick of it, and they should be. They want Wall
Street to play by the rules. They want Washington to play by the rules.
One of the most important moves we can make right now is for the
Senate to see through to completion their efforts to clean up the
financial system so that those who work hard and play by the rules,
save up a little, put it into their home values, put it into their
401(k), know that other people aren't able to gamble away their
retirement security and their future. Basic rules of decency and
fairness.
We need those similar rules in Washington. That is why many of us
have fought hard to make sure that we reinstate PAYGO legislation that
the other side of the aisle let die a few years ago that simply says,
anything you do, you've got to pay for it. These are the rules of
everyday Americans back home on Main Street, and it is time for those
Main Street values to apply to Washington and to Wall Street.
But Americans are also sick and tired of those who put slogans ahead
of solutions. They want us to solve problems, and none is greater than
that of the jobs crisis we face in this country.
On Wall Street, and maybe with our friends in the Senate, there is a
sense that this recession has passed and the urgency is gone. But every
weekend we go home and we talk to business owners who can't get credit.
We talk to people who have been looking for job after job after job
just so that they have the dignity of knowing that they can support
their family; hardworking people who are willing to go back and get
that additional degree or certificate but need to know that there is
going to be a job on the other side. What they ask us to do is to come
here, play by rules of decency and fairness, and focus on solving
problems.
We have an opportunity here before Memorial Day to make the most of
the summer construction season, to make this an opportunity to rebuild
America, but specifically, to rebuild America's competitive advantage
in the world.
This crisis didn't begin a couple of years ago. It began a couple of
decades ago, as we saw more and more borrowing from the financial
institutions, overleveraging, and the consumer market with consumer
credit to cover for falling wage rates, and in the government sector.
That cannot go on forever. But at its core was an issue of whether we
can continue to compete in the world with a living wage and middle
class incomes and jobs.
The answer is to reward innovation and stop bailing out failure. This
solution that both parties have had at times of bailing out failure
will not succeed. We must begin again to reward innovation, research
and development, and creativity so that we can be building the jobs of
the future here in the United States.
Many of us have worked hard day and night here to focus on pragmatic
solutions, like the HOME STAR program that will help thousands,
hundreds of thousands of people renovate their homes and their offices.
It will help reduce pressure on an electric grid that is way out of
date, and it helps put people back to work in construction and in
manufacturing, the insulation, the double-paned glass, the window films
that are manufactured right here in the United States.
But we also know that the key of this new job creation, this new
competitiveness revolution that we must have in this country, is an
understanding that two out of every three new jobs created in this
country are created by small business. Small business is the engine of
job growth even as big business is too often the engine of our
politics.
We must make sure that we are getting those Main Street values and
those Main Street businesses back into the equation that have too often
been choked out, rolled out by big business for photo ops and by
politicians for photo ops, but forgotten when it gets down to policy.
Well, we have been hard at work on programs to get direct lending to
small business, get support to our community banks that still tend to
support those small businesses, the homegrown businesses that stay in
our community, where the CEO still knows the name of every worker, the
name of their spouse and their kids, wants to give them a decent wage
and help them be able to support their family. These are concrete
solutions that make sense back on Main Street instead of the kind of
bomb-throwing that goes on here.
And one of the great freshmen in our class who is also focused on the
solutions-oriented approach, this pragmatic approach, what I would call
a postpartisan approach that doesn't focus on how we can bring everyone
together by watering things down but how we can leave our partisan
divisions behind by getting better ideas that help create that
competitiveness revolution, Jared Polis, who has been successful in the
private sector, in the nonprofit sector, as well as the government, to
talk some about these solutions-oriented approaches that we have.
Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.
Like many Members of Congress, I listen to, I visit the small
businesses in my community in Colorado. Small businesses are really the
backbone of our country. When I visited one of our
[[Page H3634]]
small towns like Lyons, Colorado, last month, I did what I call a Main
Street tour where I stop and introduce myself at many of the local
businesses. I have a small business advisory council.
I am not alone as a Member of Congress in hearing from the businesses
in our district that one of the biggest impediments to their growth and
allowing them to hire people is the lack of credit that they have from
their banks. Their traditional borrowing that they have been able to do
to fund their activities, whether it is against accounts receivable or
future revenue flows, they find themselves cut off and unable to access
those credit lines because of the tightening of credit.
There is a swing in the pendulum. Credit was, in all honesty, too
loose 3 years or 4 years ago. It has now swung to the other extreme, as
it tends to do, and has become too tight. That has become an impediment
to job growth. There are businesses in my district that, if they had
access to credit, they would be able to grow and expand and hire more
people.
Now, when you talk to the banks, the banks in my district and
everywhere, they say there is a number of reasons for this. One is
increasing capital requirements that the Federal Government is imposing
to reduce the rate of bank failures, a very legitimate policy interest.
Others include other regulatory reasons that the banks feel that they
are having to reduce the amount of money they are effectively able to
lend out. But it is something that we need to solve, Mr. Speaker,
because it will create jobs for Americans, small and midsize businesses
across our country.
There are a number of solutions that people are talking about in this
body. It includes the Federal credit facility to small businesses
through the banks, includes some actions on the regulatory front, and
it includes an idea, a bipartisan idea that I have introduced, H.R.
4877, which would provide an incentive for private money to flow into
the equity line of these community banks to get them lending again.
Now, a bank, like any business, has many kinds of capital. So when
you deposit your money with a bank, they can certainly loan against
that money, but it is not as leverageable as equity capital. If a bank
actually sells its shares, they get money in that they can lend against
with much higher leverage.
So what we can do is provide an incentive for people to invest in
community banks; for community banks to go back out to their
communities, to their boards, to say, You know what? We need to sell
some more shares of our community bank to raise some more capital. And
that capital can be deployed in a very powerful way in lending to our
small businesses.
So for any investment in the community bank under H.R. 4877 during an
18-month period when we want to incentivize this investment--and much
of it will occur very quickly, I might add, 1 month, 2 months, 3
months, and held for 5 years, then the investors would not have a
capital gains tax. There would be an exemption from capital gains on
that investment in the community bank.
What will this do? It will get the attention of the people that we
want to get the attention of, existing investors at banks, private
equity funds, and others who could be doing anything with their money.
They could be sitting on the sideline with their money. They could be
investing in businesses of any sort. This will get their attention to
say, Hey, there is a special incentive, because of the public good that
comes from a robust community banking sector and the lending that will
help stimulate the demand for a whole host of businesses and help
businesses grow, to put your money into community banks.
{time} 1830
Many community banks will recapitalize. By the way, this might even
prevent some bank failures by allowing community banks on the margin to
recapitalize within the bounds of solvency rather than becoming
insolvent or having to be bailed out.
There is, rightfully so, great frustration with what has been seen as
collusion between the government and big banks; what has been seen as a
bailout and what is a bailout of bad behavior. Why not incent a private
investment in these banks before we start talking about using taxpayer
money for this or that or the other? Let's see what investors out there
are willing to do when given the chance to invest in our communities,
invest in our banks, and help them extend credit widely to the small
businesses.
This is truly one of the highest leverage areas that small businesses
have come to me and other Members of Congress and said, If only we can
get the banks lending again. Well, we can, Mr. Speaker. With H.R. 4877,
we have the opportunity without the use of taxpayer money to get an
infusion into our community banks and get them lending to our small and
medium businesses, commercial property across this country, to help get
the economy going and create good jobs for Americans.
I yield back to my friend from Virginia.
Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you so much for your work in this area. We do
understand that small business is a lifeline for our communities, a
huge job creator, huge engine of that, but it's also an area where we
have not seen the kind of behavior that got us into this mess. Our
community banks, our credit unions, have often been more solvent
through these situations. Didn't see the huge upside, but also
continued the old-fashioned tradition of looking someone in the eye and
doing their due diligence. In fact, if you look at the people who saw
the crash coming within the markets, it was actually people who went
out and did old-fashioned due diligence. Going and looking at where
these subprime mortgages actually were. Sometimes there's no
replacement for old-fashioned hard work, due diligence. And we know
that community banks do this.
So a program like this tries to get private-sector solutions to this
problem. Help incent that investment in our community banks. Our
community banks in turn can invest in our small businesses and our
small businesses in turn invest in our families--our working families--
and in our communities. This is the sort of thing that can move us
forward, as has another thing that we worked on in the House, which was
a 1-year freeze on capital gains taxes for small business. Again,
something that doesn't say we're giving you free money. It just says we
are going to encourage this kind of small business innovation. We know
this tends to lead to job creation. It's a good thing. So these
pragmatic, private-public partnerships like the Home Star program, like
Rural Star, where we're helping to make our country safer, more
efficient, and rebuild manufacturing.
The gentlemen on the other side were talking about all the post
offices we've renamed today. And we did some of that. They failed to
mention that we also had the America COMPETES Act up today, which is
actually to support research and development and rebuilding some of the
manufacturing base and investment in efficiency technologies and job
creation that, too often, they've tried to take down with poison pills
about child pornography and this sort of thing. And the American people
look at that and say, You've got to be kidding me. We're in the worst
job crisis in two generations, and you're up there scoring cheap
political points when you have an opportunity to do something both
sides of the aisle know we need to do, which is figure out how to
reinvent America's competitive advantage. When we can do that,
particularly with these public-private partnerships, like your efforts
with the community banks, like the capital gains, these are engines not
just of short-term job growth, but of rebuilding America's
competitiveness and getting us back to work.
With that, I want to yield to one of our newest Members from
California.
Ms. CHU. I rise today to urge the quick passage of H.R. 4213, the
American Jobs, Closing Tax Loopholes and Preventing Outsourcing Act.
This bill is such a comprehensive approach to improving our economy by
providing important tax breaks and to spur innovation and create jobs.
But one reason I'm extremely enthusiastic about it is that it extends
and expands an extremely successful employment program that is called
Jobs NOW, which has created over 156,000 jobs, and in my district
alone, 400 jobs.
In Palmdale, California, Jobs NOW helped Jody, a single mother of
two,
[[Page H3635]]
find a job at a local coffeehouse working as a barista. The regular
paycheck puts food on the table and is helping her get through a rough
patch. Her boss is extremely impressed with her work and plans to
permanently hire her and three other subsidized employees that they
brought on. It's this kind of success story that makes Jobs NOW such a
good model for job creation. Without it, the coffeehouse would not have
been able to grow its business or take on new employees. Jody would not
have had a chance to learn these new skills and support her family.
Now I came across this innovative program because it's in my
district, Los Angeles County. One of the Los Angeles County
supervisors, Don Knabe, created a program which provided over 11,000
jobs, all in 1 year, using stimulus funds to create these subsidized
jobs. How does it work? Eligible participants are placed into
subsidized jobs in all sectors of the economy, from small business to
nonprofits to the government sector, and they're matched with jobs that
complement their employment goals. The employer must provide
supervision equal to 20 percent of the cost of this job and they must
ensure that the job will not displace an existing employee or someone
who is to be promoted.
What this means is that the county then is paying for 80 percent or
more of the payroll costs through Recovery Act funds. Some examples of
these jobs are park rangers, receptionists, teachers' assistants,
dental assistant trainees, customer service clerks, and child care
workers. Workers get paid $10 per hour for up to 40 hours per week.
Jobs NOW allow small businesses to succeed and the employee to
succeed. I've spoken to countless people in my district about this
program and I keep on hearing about how this program is truly a win-win
for businesses and workers. This program works because they do both
benefit. Workers benefit beyond the paycheck by getting hands-on
experience in a setting where they can earn wages and make sure that
they put food on the table. They are also developing their skills.
Small businesses benefit by getting the help they need to grow or
expand while temporarily reducing payroll costs. Companies may
ultimately desire to hire these subsidized workers permanently as the
economy improves. The jobs generated by the program can help businesses
expand in these difficult times by reducing their economic risk and the
need for expensive loans.
In April of this year, over 7,000 people were enrolled in the program
in Los Angeles County, and 1,100 employers were improving their
productivity and putting someone to work with this extra help. These
are companies like Punch Television Network in Carson, California.
Punch TV is a fledgling channel that is trying to build a new
nationwide television network, and they needed quality employees to
truly expand. They hired six subsidized employees using Jobs NOW and
they recently moved into a new large production center to handle all
their new work. They even want to hire these new, highly motivated
workers permanently. So now, not only do these employees have hands-on
experience, they are going to have a permanent job.
But this great program isn't just putting people to work in my area.
It's employing people all across the Nation in 29 States across the
Nation. They are using Jobs NOW to keep their residents working, paying
taxes, and purchasing groceries that's fueling local economies. In
Tennessee, the State focused on rural Perry County, which was hard hit
by a plant closure. The unemployment rate had risen to 27.3 percent.
Tennessee brought local workforce development and human service
agencies and the business community together and developed a subsidized
employment program for over 500 individuals. The effort cut local
unemployment down to 18.6 percent. Because of successes like this, more
States want to join. And if we pass H.R. 4213, Jobs NOW can expand and
help thousands more people.
But we can't delay. Already, States are stopping their subsidized
jobs programs because the funding will expire at the end of September.
Companies aren't as interested in taking on new employees and training
them, just to lose them again in 4 months. In my district, Los Angeles
County will stop placing participants in new jobs in June, and soon
many more counties and States will do the same. Yet, the full amount of
funding has yet to be claimed by the States. The Recovery Act
authorized $5 billion for Jobs NOW's employment program, but less than
$1.5 billion has been accessed by the States, and the program really
actually can still expand across the country. That's why H.R. 4213 is
so crucial. It not only extends Jobs NOW for another year, it lets the
unspent funds for this year pay for next year's salaries for workers
hired in 2010.
If we don't act now, 60,000 Americans across the Nation will lose
their jobs when this program ends and endless more will not have the
opportunity to get the jobs that they need. This bill will keep
Americans employed and will create thousands of necessary jobs.
I yield back.
Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you so much for those remarks and bringing back
to the kitchen table those individuals that are involved in this.
With that, I will yield to Mr. Polis of Colorado.
Mr. POLIS. There are many issues before Congress, both great and
small--all of tremendous importance. One of the issues that there's an
outcry among the American people for us to deal with is immigration
reform. Whether people are conservative or liberal, left or right,
Republican or Democrat, we agree that what we are doing now does not
work. We have a large population living, working here illegally. We
don't have adequate enforcement of our borders, verification of who can
work.
Now, within our efforts to solve immigration, to replace our broken
immigration system with one that works and reflects our basic American
values of, if you follow the law and learn English, you're welcome
here, within the comprehensive House immigration reform bill that I'm a
cosponsor of there's a provision to create jobs for Americans to help
make immigration work for us rather than immigration be a cost for us.
Today, there are investors and foreign entrepreneurs who raise
venture capital, ready to start their companies, who can't get the
visas to come to this country and start their companies here. And then
we wonder why these businesses in China and England and India are so
successful. Well, some of them actually wanted to set up shop in this
country. The House comprehensive immigration reform bill contains a
startup visa provision that would allow an entrepreneur, be they a
French entrepreneur, an Indian entrepreneur, that is backed by an
investment that has raised several hundred thousand dollars, we would
allow them to come here and start their company here as long as they
hire five American citizens. This bill will likely create at least
50,000 jobs. And that's just a start. Because, you know what? Some of
those companies hiring five people today could be the next Google,
could be the next Yahoo of tomorrow, and employ tens of thousands of
Americans.
Yes, America has an immigration challenge on a whole host of issues,
but we also have an immigration opportunity--the opportunity to attract
the best and brightest from around the world to help make America more
competitive and provide jobs for America here at home. It's insourcing
instead of outsourcing. Our current immigration code works against us
and forces companies that want to hire Americans and be based here to
instead set up shop overseas. Through comprehensive immigration reform
we have the opportunity to change that. In the House bill there's a
startup visa provision. Senator Kerry has introduced that as well in
the Senate.
We need to encourage not only financial capital to flow into our
country, but also human capital to create jobs for American citizens
here at home. And that's an important lens to look at any piece of
legislation through. I, for one, am thrilled that the House
comprehensive immigration reform bill will create tens of thousands of
jobs for American families. And that's one of the reasons that I'm a
proud cosponsor.
I yield back to the gentleman from Virginia.
{time} 1845
Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you.
The gentleman talked some about the next Yahoo! or the next Google. I
[[Page H3636]]
just want to talk for a minute about something that's a little more old
fashioned than that--construction. We actually do still need to build
things in this country. We need to put down asphalt and concrete. We
need to build roads and bridges. The infrastructure of the last century
needs to be rebuilt. But we also need to be thinking in terms of
leapfrogs in infrastructure. We need to be laying the broadband that is
the highway system of the future. We need to be looking at a modern
electric grid because our current one is not only so vulnerable to
attack, but it's full of inefficiencies. The amount of energy we lose
between where we produce the energy and where we consume it is
astronomical. It is incredible how inefficient.
So here we have businesses that are trying to compete against very
low-cost countries around the world who are still using an electric
grid essentially from the 1930s. This is a moment where we need to have
the boldness to rebuild our competitive advantage by doing some
building again. And construction should certainly not be a Republican
or a Democratic issue. We all have construction needs in our districts.
We have construction companies in our districts. Ninety percent of
construction companies are small businesses, and we are already into
the summer building season for many parts of this country. But from
Memorial Day to Thanksgiving, it's going to be an important moment.
We've lost 1.6 million construction jobs since this recession began.
We have a 25 percent unemployment rate among skilled construction
workers, 1.6 million in losses in construction jobs, 25 percent
unemployment, yet we cannot get bipartisan support for the investments
in our 21st century infrastructure that could put people back to work
in construction, so that instead of receiving an unemployment benefit,
they're receiving a paycheck; and we are getting a more efficient,
modern infrastructure system. This is common sense. This makes sense
back on Main Street. It just doesn't make sense in Washington, where we
score points by preventing the other side from doing something smart
instead of by solving the problem. We know we need these construction
jobs. We know it's where some of the biggest losses have been. We know
it's something that exists in every one of our communities, and we know
we are well nigh at the beginning of that construction season.
We passed in December through this House a plus-up of some of the
infrastructure that's needed. It's desperately needed here in this
area. Just try to drive from D.C. to Richmond sometime and see whether
we have an infrastructure worthy of the year 2010, worthy of the kind
of growth and competitiveness of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Head out
66 and down 29. We need it on the roads and the bridges; we need it on
the freight; we need it on the passenger rail, the energy and electric
grid as well as the broadband technology. These are important leaps,
and we have made some leaps. We are going to be able to wire every
public school in central and southern Virginia through some of the
stimulus grants. That's going to put people to work now, putting that
in place; but it's also going to be creating businesses of the future
that people can run out of their homes, out of a small business hub,
making sure that the children going to through our school system have
the education to be able to compete in the 21st century.
Construction. It may not be the most dramatic thing to talk about,
but it is vital. It's where an enormous amount of the job losses have
been, and many of us have been trying to get that construction going
again in time for the summer building season.
We have bills sitting in the Senate, ready to move as soon as they're
done with this Wall Street reform. I hope they will pick up the job
initiatives that we have passed here because they are pragmatic; they
are powerful; they are effective; and they can put people back to work
in areas like construction where we have had some of the biggest
losses. I mentioned the Home Star program where we can put people to
work immediately, retrofitting and renovating the building stock of
this country. The payback, 12 months, 18 months before you're
immediately saving money for decades to come, increasing the home value
and value of that commercial building stock, putting Americans to work
manufacturing the insulation, the double-paned glass, the wiring and
other things that are part of that. It's just common sense. It saves
the consumer money. It makes the business more efficient. It's being
manufactured here. It's something that makes us more competitive. It
protects our environment, and it makes our country safer because we're
less dependent on foreign oil--and even domestic oil, as we've seen the
costs of that recently.
The Home Star program could put 168,000 people to work. Even before
home construction starts to pick back up again, which will vary
regionally around the country, we know we can renovate the building
stock that we have. Concrete, pragmatic ideas, public-private
partnerships. We have the Rural Star program which is going to help
rural electric co-ops to forward-fund those sorts of renovations in
some of our hardest hit rural communities that are much more likely to
have inefficient housing stock, where people are paying a much higher
percentage of their very low income sometimes on that electric bill
because that housing stock is so inefficient. But it's also costing our
electric co-ops and others because there's so much power on our
electric grid that we can't even meet that challenge.
This is a moment where we need to look not just at what got us into
this mess for the last 2 years but the last two decades. How do we
rebuild America's competitiveness? And we must do it by joining forces
across the aisle. We must do it by looking for ideas that are pragmatic
but bold. The answer can't be to water it down to be so small that it
has no chance of making a difference. When you go to Main Street in
this country, they're furious at us, they're furious at Wall Street
because no one's playing by the same rules they have to play by. We
have to get that sense of decency and fairness back into play. We need
to play by those rules. That's why we've put PAYGO back into place.
That's why we're increasing transparency. But they also want us to
focus on pragmatic solutions, Home Star, Rural Star, efforts to get
equity and investment going into our community banks. Why would we put
all this emphasis into the five or six huge banks that helped get us
into this mess in the first place? It makes no sense.
We have to stop bailing out failure and start rewarding innovation,
research and development. That's how we get out of this. We can still
out-innovate and, therefore, out-compete any country in the world. But
we can't do it by looking backwards, and we can't do it by rewarding
and bailing out failure. We have to do it based on innovation. We have
concrete, pragmatic things right now that the Senate can move on and,
in some cases, that we need to move on here. Home Star, Rural Star,
green energy jobs, getting that capital gains tax cut to our small
businesses, getting the incentive to invest in our community banks.
If two out of every three jobs come out of small business, this is an
area where we can and must put more emphasis, and construction is part
of that. Here people may not think it's a big deal to go out and have a
small construction company working a couple of crews. Here maybe too
many people are focused on the Goldman Sachs of the world. But for
those construction companies, for those crews, going out and working is
rebuilding America, and it's putting food on the table and knowing they
can support their family. And all of us benefit from the efficiencies
and quality of that infrastructure investment. We have a building
season right now. This town is way too insulated from the urgency of
this job crisis back home.
We, just last week, had the announcement of over 500 jobs lost in the
town of Martinsville at the Stanley Furniture factory. Tens of
thousands of furniture and textile jobs have been lost in southern
Virginia over the last 20 years. This was really one of the last, down
to a few jobs that have been kept. The unemployment rate in the city
already I think is at 22 percent. It could pop up to 25 percent or
above. And each one of I think 535 jobs lost represents not just an
individual and not just an income but a family and its economic
security.
At this time when millions have lost their jobs, when millions feel
that they
[[Page H3637]]
might be next, the American people are sick and tired of us playing
games up here. We have concrete solutions on the table that will create
real jobs in the construction sector, the manufacturing sector, and the
agriculture and forestry sectors. These are things we can still do and
do better than anyone in the world, but we are being choked off by the
kinds of games being played in Washington and on Wall Street. It is
long past time for people in this town to understand the urgency of
this job crisis for working-class and middle-class Americans who not
only live in fear of losing that job but are getting nickeled and dimed
by the credit card companies, the electric utilities and others as they
try to make ends meet day after day, week after week.
We have to be bold right now in rethinking America's competitive
advantage. There is no quick fix. We must in the immediate term not
miss the summer construction season. I see too many trucks parked in
the driveways, in the parking lots of our construction companies at a
time that we need to be rebuilding. Not overbuilding in some of the
housing and speculative areas that helped get us into this mess, but
building in the areas that reinvent and reinforce America's competitive
advantage. Whether that's on the high-end R&D and intellectual property
of those areas or whether it's old-fashioned infrastructure, these are
areas that mean real business for real working families. Part of how we
do that is by putting a solutions-oriented approach over a slogans-
oriented approach, and the way we do that is to come together.
In this town, too often bipartisanship means cutting a good idea into
half to the point that it means nothing at all, or simply adding one
side's support to the other side's support. What Americans want is
post-partisanship. They want us to answer the question, What solves the
problem, and not, What is the halfway point between the Democrats and
the Republicans? Start with the question, What solves America's energy
independence? What rebuilds America's middle class? What makes sure
that we have basic stability in our financial institutions so that
people who have worked their whole lives, saving up money in the value
of their home, in their 401(k), know that someone isn't off gambling
with that money in ways that are unthinkable and unimaginable.
There is 25 percent unemployment in our skilled construction.
Americans are ready to build. They are ready to go to work rebuilding,
whether that's housing or infrastructure or building stock, whether
it's renovating, whether it's manufacturing here in America the
materials that go into that. We need to put that sense, the urgency of
the American economy first. We need to remember that small business is
the engine. We need to understand that our community banks played by
the rules through this crisis, stayed solvent, and still continue to
get that lending out to so many of those in our communities.
I look forward to continuing to fight for a jobs agenda and an agenda
of decency and accountability. I hope that those in the Senate on the
other side of this building will complete a solid reform in the
financial sector and turn to these jobs bills we've produced. There are
five, six of them now, pragmatic, often private-public partnerships to
reward innovation, to get us building again, to get the lending going
through our community banks again, through a smart combination of
investments and tax credits. I hope the Senate will turn to that and
understand that back home, people are desperate for jobs, for economic
security, for growth and that they will get some taste of that urgency
and move from restoring those basic rules of decency and accountability
to Washington and Wall Street and get these jobs bills passed so that
we can get America working again, rebuilding America's competitive
advantage again, and that is a fight I look forward to.
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