[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 22, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4663-H4669]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I want to take this opportunity here on the House floor to spend a
few minutes talking about some friends of mine who are celebrating
their 40th wedding anniversary, and I wanted to take a second here to
say what good friends they are, what great Americans they are, and what
great people they are.
Happy 40th Anniversary
Bill and Margie Skeleski will be celebrating their 40th wedding
anniversary this week. They have been not only tremendous supporters of
me, but they have been great people in the community, and I wanted to
take this opportunity to wish them a happy anniversary and many, many
more years.
You have never been to a holiday breakfast unless you have been to
the Skeleskis' house, but I must say there are eggs and quiche and
sausage and all kinds of different desserts, and not a day goes by when
I don't see Margie Skeleski somewhere and she wants to bake me a cherry
pie. So I want to thank her for all of her generosity.
She and her husband are just two of the sweetest, kindest, nicest
people in our community, and they treasure all of the things that, I
think, we as Americans need to spend a little more time thinking about,
which are the importance of family, the importance of community, the
importance of church and faith, and the importance, really, quite
frankly, of a nice piece of pie. They all come together, and they have
been just tremendous influences on my life, so I wanted to say thank
you and congratulations to all of them and to their family as they
celebrate this very special day.
Congratulations
I would also like to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to extend a
hearty congratulations to the president of Youngstown State University,
Dr. David Sweet and his wife, Pat, who are both leaving Youngstown
State University after a long tenure.
Dr. Sweet and his wife came to Youngstown State University when it
was a sleepy university somewhere in the center of the city of
Youngstown. They came in with a vision for the community, and they came
in with a vision of the university. I think history will judge him as
one of the leaders on how a university can have a transformational
effect on a community.
Youngstown State University and the city of Youngstown both have been
recognized for the partnerships that they have created, but Dr. Sweet,
on every account that we would measure his success or failure as a
president, has clearly succeeded. Enrollment is up by 25 percent.
Minority enrollment is up. The university has created the first
science, technology, engineering, and math college. Of all of the
universities in Ohio, he took Youngstown State University and used it
as an engine for not only economic growth and research, but also for
helping to redefine the city of Youngstown. In so many ways, he
provided leadership for our university and for our community.
I wanted here, on the floor of the House of Representatives, to
recognize his leadership, his team--Hunter Morrison, Dr. George McCloud
and all of the leaders that he had in his administration--and their
ability to take this university, to really transform it and, in turn,
to transform our community.
I wanted to say thank you, Mr. Speaker, to Dr. Sweet and to his wife,
Pat, for their passion, for their contributions that they made to our
community and to Youngstown State University. We stand on their
shoulders as we continue this work, but clearly, we would not have been
here today to make the kind strides that the university is making,
doing the kind of research, hosting international energy seminars and
forums and really transforming the role of that university. I want to
say thank you. We clearly wouldn't be in the position we are in today
if it weren't for the leadership of Dr. Sweet and Pat Sweet. With that,
I say thank you.
{time} 2030
The Economy
Also, Mr. Speaker, we'd like to take this opportunity to spend a
little time--and I will be joined by some of my colleagues here in the
next few minutes--to talk about what has been going in our country
economically and really what the plan is and what the plan has been for
President Obama, the Democratic Congress, and pushing forward an agenda
that I think, without dispute, has taken our country from going off a
cliff, which is where we were just a couple of years ago, a year and a
half ago, where the stock market was at 6,000-plus; where the economy
was bleeding 750,000 jobs, almost 800,000 jobs a month; and where there
was a complete collapse of the global economic system.
Because, quite frankly, there has been a debate going on in America
that those of us--and my side, for sure--have been losing. The debate
since 1980 has been how do we cut taxes for the wealthiest people in
the country; how do we therefore raise the tax burden on the middle
class; how do we cut government at every single turn; how do we
deregulate and completely try to remove government out of every aspect
of the financial markets and the role of regulating businesses; and,
quite frankly, our friends on the other side, Mr. Speaker, won that
debate.
Through the 1980s, up until the current President, really with a good
fight put on by President Clinton--and he made great strides in his own
way--but we have been fighting the system. But over the course of the
last couple of years we have seen exactly what happens when this
philosophy, economic and political philosophy are implemented.
It is Milton Friedman and the supply-side economists and the
Republican Party versus the Keynesian demand-side Democrats on our
side. And our Republican friends in the earliest parts of this decade,
up until 2006 and then 2008, controlled every lever of government;
controlled the House, controlled the Senate, controlled the White
House, implemented their economic policies across the board. And in
Ohio, the Republicans controlled every Statewide office, including the
governorship for 16 years, and the State legislature for longer.
Controlled everything and implemented their policies--their energy
policy, their foreign policy, their economic policy. They deregulated
Wall Street. They continued this path, this role of appointing industry
lackeys to critical oversight positions on Wall Street, critical
oversight positions in the oil and gas industry. Even big donors to
oversee FEMA. And over the course of the last few years, we have seen
how this philosophy, when implemented, works. And it works for those
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multinational corporations, it works for Wall Street, it works for the
oil industry. But, quite frankly, it doesn't work for anybody else.
So we saw when an industry lackey is appointed to head FEMA, we saw
what happened with Katrina. You did a good job, Brownie, is what came
of that. We see when the Minerals Management Agency is littered with
industry people, we see that a lot of the approvals of drilling and the
lack of preparation for contingency plans for emergencies was
nonexistent because our friends on the other side said we don't need
any government; we don't need any regulation of the oil industry. We
don't need any regulation. We can just put anybody into FEMA. And we
saw what happened.
But, really, the most significant event has been what happened on
Wall Street, when we completely ignored deregulated Wall Street, said,
Let business police themselves, ignoring decades and decades and
decades of history where we know, when unchecked, businesses get
greedy. It is human nature to get greedy. It is human nature not to be
connected to what happens three or four moves down the line with the
decision that you're making today. And so Wall Street was deregulated.
Warnings were ignored. We saw the worst financial crisis since the
Great Depression hit the United States of America and almost bring down
the entire global economy.
And so having that philosophy implemented on all accounts--energy,
Wall Street, globalization, cut taxes for the wealthiest, push the tax
burden off on the middle class, borrow money and spend money and still
cut taxes and run up huge deficits. In fact, it's important to note who
left the huge deficits. Reagan left a $1.4 trillion deficit. Herbert
Walker Bush, $3 trillion. President Bill Clinton had a $5 trillion,
almost $6 trillion surplus. George W. Bush left us a $11.5 trillion
deficit in this country, with no end in sight.
And, then, not only left us that huge deficit, then we have a
situation where the whole economy collapsed. The stock market tanked.
Banks were going belly up. Unemployment was going through the roof. And
then the first January that Barack Obama took office, we were losing
almost 800,000 jobs in that month. So being left with this horrendous
mess and the implementation of an economic and political philosophy
that decimates government, runs up huge deficits, and here we are left
to deal with it.
So we did take some bold steps with the stimulus package, with TARP,
which was actually under George W. Bush. But we took some bold steps.
And they all weren't very politically popular in many instances. And we
would go home every weekend and have to explain to our constituents
about why we were doing this stuff. But we are now seeing that the
national economy is turning around. We have seen the stock market go up
from a little over 6,000 to 10,000-plus. Up to 11, back down. We have
had some issues with the oil spill, with what's going on in Greece; but
the stock market was back up to 11,000. We are starting the recovery.
We have seen, with the issue of jobs, some level of success. Last week,
we saw industrial production increased 8.1 percent during the past 11
months--the largest 11-month gain since 1997.
Now, I'm not here to say that I'm seeing the world through rose-
colored glasses. I'm not saying that we're even out of the woods yet.
But what I am saying is the policies that we have implemented have
clearly turned the country back in the right direction. It is moving us
towards a more secure future for the business community and for those
people who are out in our community looking for work. Unemployment is
still too high. We still have work to do with police and fire and
helping the States--and teachers, to make sure they don't get laid off.
But before I kick it to my friend from Connecticut, I want to say
that you can't help but look at where we were and to remember where we
were and to say that we have at least shifted directions and at least
changed things to at least move us in a more positive step where we can
secure the future for our children; where we can secure a good economy
for businesses and workers. And that's really what's important here.
And that's why we have made some of these very, very difficult
situations.
With that, I yield to my friend from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thanks to my friend from Ohio for setting
the playing field for us this evening. I think back to when I was
making up my mind about running for Congress some 4, 5 years ago, and I
was in Connecticut--Cheshire, where I live today--sitting and watching
a Federal Government that seemed intent on using the power that it has
accumulated here in Congress and in the administration to essentially
turn over government to their friends. Now, whether their friends were
in the oil industry or their friends were in the health insurance
industry or the pharmaceutical industry or the defense contracting
industry, whatever it was, it seemed as if the reason that some people
had run for office, the reason that some people had sought positions in
the Bush administration was to hand over the reins of government to
corporate interests; to people that, frankly, didn't have the public
interest at heart.
And I think back to the reasons that I decided to run for Congress,
and at the foundation of it was a real belief that we had essentially
begun to privatize all sectors of the United States economy and the
United States Government and that taxpayer dollars were more often
being used not to accrue to the public benefit but to accrue to the
benefit of a small group of people who happened to hold and wield
influence here in Washington.
And so I think about what would have happened back in January and
February of last year as we were setting the economic strategy toward
recovery. I think about what would have happened if the folks who had
been running Congress and running the administration in prior years
were in charge of this economic recovery. I think about the bill we
passed. I think about the fact that one-third of the stimulus bill
passed in the winter of last year went to tax cuts--went to tax cuts
not for the top 1, 2, 3 percent of income earners in this Nation; not
tax cuts for the Fortune 100, 200, 300, but tax cuts for individuals,
for middle-income folks out there, the people that I represent in
Connecticut.
Now, they're not enormous tax breaks. Folks weren't getting thousands
of dollars back, but they were getting a couple hundred--$300, $400,
$500--back in taxes. Small business tax breaks in that stimulus bill to
allow for more incentives for small businesses to expand and invest in
capital to maybe allow them to take some of their losses a little bit
earlier than they might have otherwise been able to do in order to make
the books balance for that one or two really tough years that they
needed to survive.
I think about what would have happened if the Republicans had written
that stimulus bill and where those tax breaks would have gone. Because
I know the statistics from the Bush tax breaks. Not to say there
weren't some deserving people who benefited from that tax break, but I
know that the average millionaire in my district from the last round of
Bush tax cuts got $43,000 back. I know that the average-income family
in New Britain, Connecticut got $19 back from that tax break. Now
things cost a little bit more in Connecticut, but that's just about
enough money to buy a pepperoni pizza in New Britain. That's nothing. I
know that if the Republicans had been writing that stimulus bill that
we would have likely seen more of the same, that we have would have
likely seen the economic recovery and the economic stimulus bill that
they would have written as an excuse to hand out more tax breaks and
more favors to folks that didn't need any more.
And so the reason, Mr. Ryan, that you talk about this recovery as it
is in action, the reason that we see retail sales picking up, the
reason that we see 10 percent growth in our economy in the last 6
months is in part because we invested our recovery strategy in the
right people; we invested our recovery strategy in low-income and
middle-income families who needed a little bit extra money back on
their taxes so that they can pay their bills, that they could stop from
going into bankruptcy themselves, and that maybe they could put a
little bit of their money back into the economy. We invest it in small
businesses because we know that 90 percent of the jobs in this or any
other
[[Page H4665]]
recovery are going to come from small businesses. And we invest in
future businesses as well.
We've got a company in my district called Apollo Solar. I've got to
tell you, this is going to be the next big thing. They are making some
really important technology that will allow individual homeowners to
put solar panels on their roof, generate a whole bunch of power, and
then sell it back to the grid for a profit. This is going to be in
every home in the Nation, we hope, in a matter of to 10 to 15 years.
And the stimulus bill decided to put money into Apollo Solar so that
they can not only add jobs, but point the way forward for the future of
the American economy. Money in the pockets of middle-class families.
Money in the bank accounts of small businesses. An opportunity to point
this economy forward to the next wave of jobs that we're going to enjoy
in this country in the form of renewable-energy jobs.
Mr. Ryan, you're exactly right. I still have unacceptably high levels
of unemployment in the places that I represent. I've still got way too
many people that are laid off. And it's no small consolation--no
consolation at all to them when I, or anybody else, tries to explain
that jobs are always a lagging indicator and listen, we've got to have
big jumps in the production in this country and jumps in retail sales
and jumps in orders for factories before all of those employers start
adding jobs.
{time} 2045
But I think people are coming to understand that the recovery is on
its way. They hear the stories. They hear the stories from Main Street,
as I did in New Milford, Connecticut, a few weeks ago where almost
every retail establishment on Main Street in New Milford reported that
May and June have been among their best retail months in 2 to 3 years.
Factory after factory that I go to are reporting that for the first
time they've seen orders make significant upward increases in the past
several months. They feel that good news.
Now they know that those retail establishments and those factories
need to get a couple more months of good news before they start
actually adding jobs back. And they know that the first thing they're
going to do is take the workers that they had furloughed for a day or
two every week and put them back full time. But the trend is going in
the right direction, and I think it's going in the right direction
because the stimulus, written by the Democrats, championed by President
Obama, was put in the right place. It gave to Main Street. It gave to
middle-class families. It gave to small businesses which--we're only
guessing here. I'm only guessing--but I think that if President Bush
was still here or the Republicans were still in charge of Congress,
that that stimulus and the people and the corporations and the
institutions that it invested in would have been a very different set
of people and businesses than we see today having been invested in.
Mr. Welch, I would be happy to turn it over to you. I'm glad to see
you and Mr. Boccieri joining us on the floor this evening.
Mr. WELCH. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure listening to you
and Mr. Ryan.
We have to acknowledge something, those of us who supported the
stimulus as something that was necessary because of the collapse in the
economy, those of us who decided to assent to the request by President
Bush to stabilize the financial system and to do something we didn't
really want to do but felt it was necessary to do. And that is that
despite the gross domestic product increasing, despite the positive
signs that have been cited by you and Mr. Ryan, this is still a
depression for any American who doesn't have his or her job. And when
you have 10 percent unemployment, which I think is the real measure of
the strength of this economy, you know we have an economy that
continues to struggle. And we have to do a number of things. Yes, we
did have to have a stimulus, and it was focused where it would do the
most good. We did have to stabilize the financial system, but that's
going to add a burden until that is repaid.
But one of the things we have to do is understand what is the proper
role of the private sector and what's the proper role of government.
This has been an ongoing debate. In the United States, people who have
been frustrated that the government has gotten it wrong have come to a
conclusion that it can never get it right. People who have had faith in
the private sector have had a view that they can never get it wrong.
And, in fact, some of both is the case. Unless we have a cop on the
beat, a government that's willing to make rules that give everybody a
shot who play by the rules and work hard, and whose goal in doing it,
running a business, is to provide good service, to provide a good
product at a fair price, then we won't have the economy that we need.
Now I want to just give a couple of examples. The financial crisis
was brought on by the recklessness, largely, of Wall Street banks. Let
me give an example. The famous one, of course, is Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs made a lot of money on subprime mortgages, a lot of money
on buying and selling commodities. They went from an investment bank
that made most of its money by lending money to businesses and to
people who had ideas about how to create jobs and create companies and
create wealth, they transformed from doing that to buying and selling
derivatives, currencies, commodities, and banking money on trading.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's not banking. It's not putting money
into the financial sector.
When they had a client, a hedge fund billionaire, who called them up
and said, Hey, I've got an idea. I think that this explosion in real
estate values is going to collapse. I want you to put together a
package of subprime mortgages that you believe will fail, that I
believe will fail, so that I can then sell those and bet against them,
Goldman Sachs said, fine. It's a client. They are paying money. They
paid big fees, and they had a request. Nothing illegal about it.
Nothing useful about it, but nothing illegal about it. Goldman Sachs
helped put that package together, and then they turned around and sold
this package that was guaranteed--it was designed to fail, literally
designed to fail.
They then went to the rolodex and called up other clients, like
pension funds. Those are people like firefighters, like police
officers, like teachers, and they said, Hey, we have a deal for you:
AAA-rated, high-yielding subprime asset pool--can't go wrong. So
Goldman Sachs literally provided a service to one client. That service
was developing a product to fail. Then they called up their other
clients and sold it to them where it was guaranteed to succeed. Not
guaranteed. But obviously Goldman traded on its reputation. And the
people they called, these pension funds--if Goldman was for it, it must
be vetted, it must be good, it must be secure.
And what happened? Mr. Paulson, the hedge fund billionaire, made $1
billion more. And those pension funds, those municipalities, those
other people who relied on the good reputation of Goldman Sachs lost $1
billion. It destroyed wealth. And what does that do to the American
people? Legitimately and understandably, it erodes their confidence.
So in my view, we have a lot of reason to be justifiably furious at
Wall Street practices where they strayed from what would be done on
Main Street. And I ask as I'm speaking, Any one of you, in your State
of Ohio, in your State, Mr. Murphy, of Connecticut, or anyone out there
from Montana to North Dakota, your local banker, can you imagine your
local banker literally having one neighbor say, I want you to design
something to fail, and then selling it to another neighbor where they
knew they would lose? It wouldn't happen. But that was legal on Wall
Street. It's wrong. It never should have happened.
Now there's a governmental role here where the government failed. The
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve. This explosion
in asset values and real estate values and subprime mortgages, where
people were permitted who had no income, who had no job, who had no
proof of assets, no proof of ability to pay were given loans for
$400,000, $500,000 or $600,000. The regulators had a responsibility to
apply the law of financial gravity and not permit that to occur. So
this is a situation where people who point the finger of responsibility
at government not standing up for right, but those same
[[Page H4666]]
people can't say that all we should do is destroy regulation altogether
and let the private sector do what it wants, because it has led, in
this case, to excess, to explosion, or destruction, of value. And a lot
of individual people have suffered as a result of the loss of their
hard-earned income. So there's a role. There is a role and has to be a
role for government to be the cop on the beat and to help folks who are
working hard and playing by the rules and trying to reinvest in their
own community to be successful.
I would be glad at this time to yield to my good friend from Ohio
(Mr. Boccieri).
Mr. BOCCIERI. Thank you. It's an honor to join my colleagues here on
the House floor to talk about how we got here, where we're going, and
what we're doing to put our country back on track. You know, you bring
up a great point. We hear from the other side that the greatest tools
that the government has is to largely unregulate big business, big
corporations, and provide tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
Virtually every problem that America is facing, that's the solution
that's put on the table.
Now I argue that, look, our philosophy, our broad political
philosophy in this political body--at least I know from our side of the
aisle--is that the government needs to set the out-of-bounds markers,
we need to set the goal posts, let the free market operate in between,
but be a good referee. Be a good referee. Throw the flag when you have
big corporations that want to bet on the price of oil going up on Wall
Street. Throw the flag when you want to bet against people failing to
pay their mortgage. Failing to pay their mortgage--that's what was
happening on Wall Street. That's like betting against America.
I think we can do better. We don't want to take the stripes off the
referee. We want to make sure that the playing field is even and fair
for all Americans, and that's why we're being charged with action.
Because I think all of us here tonight believe that leadership is not
just about position, a political position, but it's about action.
Leadership is about action. And we run for office not just to win
elections but to get things done. And we want to put America back to
work by investing in America and by investing in our greatest asset--
that is our people.
So a lot of talk has been made about the stimulus and the economic
recovery. I mean, the charts don't lie, folks. When we walked on the
job here in the office of the House of Representatives, I'm in my first
term, and just in May of 2009, what was handed to us from the previous
administration were two unfunded, undeclared wars that cost $1
trillion. We had an economy that was in free fall. We didn't know where
we were going to land. Exploding deficits from the war and tax cuts to
the wealthiest Americans. We had unregulated greed on Wall Street, a
banking system in chaos. I mean, it required swift action, not just a
political position but swift action.
In May of 2009, we had lost 345,000 jobs. One year later, after some
of the economic policies that we put in place here in the Congress
under Democratic leadership, we've turned that 180 degrees and actually
had a net job gain of 431,000 jobs by May of 2010. So the facts don't
lie.
Another thing that really disturbs me about our friends on the other
side of the aisle is the whole notion that Democrats are not tough on
deficits. And that is a complete falsehood when you look at this chart
right here. This chart right here shows that deficits have been handed
on by the last three Republican Presidents. We look at President
Reagan, a $1.4 trillion deficit left to the American taxpayer. We look
at President George Bush. We see that he left a $3.3 trillion deficit,
and that didn't begin to turn until President Clinton turned those
deficits into a $5.6 trillion surplus. And what was left to us when we
came in the door in the 111th Congress was nearly a $12 trillion
deficit by two undeclared, unfunded wars, two tax cuts to the
wealthiest Americans who could afford to pay and pay their fair share,
and a prescription drug plan that left huge holes, doughnut holes for
our seniors who couldn't afford to pay the prescription drugs. These
are the facts. And like Joe Friday used to say, ``Only the facts,
please, ma'am.'' Right now we're trying to set the facts straight, and
my colleagues are appropriate in pointing out these deficiencies in the
arguments by our colleagues on the other side.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield, I think it's
important for us to pull specific examples. I represent a district just
to the east of Congressman Boccieri. It is very similar in nature to
Mr. Murphy's district, manufacturing, traditional manufacturing. We've
actually seen in the last couple of months a couple of point decrease
in the unemployment rate. It is still way too high, but this stimulus
plan is coming down the pike.
It has helped in so many different ways, on so many different road
projects, in different infrastructure projects. We got $100 million in
title 1 money for our schools which prevented tens, if not hundreds, of
teachers from being laid off. We've got grants for police and fire,
cops. There are 20-some cops on the beat because of the COPS grant in
the city of Akron. Now if we didn't have the stimulus package, if we
weren't investing Community Development Block Grant money, if we
weren't putting money into roads and bridges and infrastructure, if we
weren't making sure there was State support for our schools and
education funds, we would have lost thousands of teachers, police,
fire, and construction workers who would have never went back to work.
Now we're not saying that we've got all the answers, and we've got a
corner on the marketplace of success. But we've clearly--because years
and years and years of economic philosophy prior to 1980 said, When the
economy goes into a big downturn, someone has got to step up and fill
the hole to prime the pump. We have had projects. We have a General
Motors facility in Lordstown, Ohio, that just put on a third shift, and
all of their suppliers are going to benefit from that. If the
Republicans were in charge, that whole company would have been sold off
piecemeal. We used $20 million in stimulus money that leveraged $650
million for a French company to expand 350 jobs, 500 construction jobs.
This is all happening because we had a stimulus bill, and I don't blame
anybody in this Chamber, Mr. Boccieri, for not believing me that the
stimulus package has had some success.
{time} 2100
But how about Bill Gates? Would anybody in here believe Bill Gates
when he says, ``The incredible measures,'' the Recovery Act and TARP,
``needed to be taken to make sure there wasn't a collapse, both in
terms of stabilizing the financial system and then priming the pump of
the economy, because it had been slowed down so much. Now, we're seeing
the benefits that those things have been done.'' That's Bill Gates
saying it.
And you can go right down the list, Warren Buffett and others, who
have said the stimulus package has worked. And my concern, quite
frankly, is that we've got to do more before we get completely out of
the woods on this economy. But look at the job numbers. Look at the
deficit numbers.
And I want to make one final statement here, because Mr. Boccieri
brought it up, about deficits. You grow your way out of deficits. If
you don't have people working, you're not going to reduce the deficit.
You can't cut your way out of some of this stuff. You've got to grow
your way. And what we have is a pro-growth agenda. Tax cuts for
businesses, lowest taxes for people in America since 1950. So tax cuts
for the middle class, invest in infrastructure, invest in energy, get
people working again. If we want to see the deficits go down, we've got
to get people back to work. And that's what this whole agenda has been
about, and it's working.
You look at what President Bush left us with and look where we are at
now. As jobs go up, the deficit projections go down.
I yield to my friend.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Let me point out this chart. We are
talking about the fact that facts don't lie. Here it is. This isn't
fuzzy numbers. This chart isn't rigged. This is just telling it like it
is. You're looking in this chart at the last year of the Bush
administration and the first year of the Obama administration. The
trend is unmistakable. As the Bush administration ground to a halt, the
economy went
[[Page H4667]]
into the tank, cratering to the point where in January of 2009, the
last month of the Bush administration and first month of the Obama
administration, this economy lost nearly 800,000 jobs, as Mr. Welch and
I were sworn in for our second term, Mr. Boccieri for his first term.
But the trend coming out of January is just as unmistakable. Every
month, almost without exception, less and less jobs being lost, to the
point where in the last 3 months we have added jobs. We've added
700,000 jobs just in the last 2 months. Now, that still leaves way, way
too many people out of work. We still have miles to go.
But you want to talk about what policies didn't work and what
policies have worked? The numbers don't lie. I want to add just one
more thing to the table here. We can talk about the jobs that have been
created through the stimulus bill, the jobs that have been saved
through the policies of this administration, but there are other maybe
not as well covered but just as important successes that are happening
right underneath our feet.
Last week on page 4 or 5 or 6 of a lot of your local papers you might
have noticed a story that the Chinese Government has announced that it
is going to dramatically change the way that it runs its currency, that
it is going to start allowing its currency to float in a way that it
has never before.
That is something the Democrats in this Congress, led by Mr. Ryan,
frankly, have been working on for a very, very long time. The Chinese
have been essentially manipulating their currency so that they, on day
one, can underprice American manufacturers sometimes by 30, 40, 50
percent just on the basis of how they manipulate the value of their
currency. We have lost millions of manufacturing jobs in this country,
and much of it has gone to China. Much of that is because of the funny
business going on with their currency.
Now, they could get away with that under the Bush administration
because that administration asked no questions when it came to trade
policy. They rushed into trade agreement after trade agreement, asking
little, if any, questions about what we could do when we sat across the
table with our trade partners to try to force them to change their
policies so that they couldn't immediately unfairly underbid American
labor and American factories and American manufacturers.
Well, the Chinese can't get away with that under the Obama
administration any longer. The Chinese can't get away with that with a
Democratic Congress. We're not going to give a free pass to China and
other Asian nations, to India and our European partners to allow them
to either subsidize their industries with government dollars, to
manipulate their currencies, or to run roughshod over labor and
environmental policies so as to underprice and outbid American
manufacturers.
The Chinese saw the writing on the wall. Now, they've got a long way
to go to get this thing right, but the fact that they've finally
figured out that they can no longer manipulate their currency so as to
unfairly compete with American manufacturers shows that a new sheriff
is in town. As Mr. Boccieri would say, there is a new referee here. And
the whole world understands that, that when the referee is finally
holding domestic corporations accountable for their actions, that's a
good thing. But when the referee is also on the international playing
field ready to hold our trading partners accountable for their unfair
trading practices, that's transformative as well.
So the story about how we get from a point in January of 2009 when we
were at an absolute disastrous point in our economy to where today we
are headed unmistakably in the right direction has a lot of stories to
it, Mr. Welch. It's about job creation in the stimulus bill, but it's
also about starting to stick up for American manufacturing, which we
are finally doing in this Congress.
Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Murphy.
You know, when you are talking about the Chinese yuan and currency
manipulation, that's far removed from most people on Main Street, but
it has a real impact, especially on our manufacturing economy. And I am
among many in this Chamber who believe that, for America to have strong
long-term economic growth, we have to revive, not abandon,
manufacturing. And in the stimulus there were commitments made to do it
in the energy sector. And we know, I think if we are a confident
Nation, we are not going to pretend that the energy policy that we have
now, relying on a 19th century fuel where we have to send almost $900
billion of our money abroad to bring oil in, that if we take on the
challenge of the new energy economy, we can create jobs.
And on the stimulus, you know, nothing worked, including the
stimulus, for anybody who is still out of work. But there are very
solid, very simple, straightforward examples of how it did make a
difference for many people, and I want to tell one about Barre,
Vermont, a small, hardworking, very proud town with a tradition of work
in the granite quarries. And we are losing jobs and have been losing
them for years to Chinese imports.
But we have a company called Sprague Electric. It's a small company
that's been there for years, and it was really having a hard time
staying ahead with the collapse in the economy. Their product was
something that was used in Tasers. But the engineers there developed a
product called a capacitator that could be used in electric vehicles,
and of course that's all part of what we want in our new energy
economy.
They had an immense amount of interest in this. They were getting
interest from car manufacturers. And they had to decide whether to
build a plant or expand their plant in Barre, Vermont, or to do it in
China to take advantage of the lower labor rates. And these folks
wanted to stay in Barre if they could, but the law of economics means
they've got to be able to sustain themselves.
They were within 2 days of going ahead and making a commitment to
develop this plant in China when the stimulus bill was passed, and it
had in there the opportunity for companies to apply to get energy
grants. They applied, and they put their decision to move to China on
hold. They got the grant, several million dollars. And only a few
months ago, the Republican Governor of Vermont and the Democratic
Congressman from Vermont joined the people of Sprague Electric at a
groundbreaking, where they were opening up the construction of a brand
new factory with great jobs for the people in Barre, Vermont. That's
real, and it took some governmental involvement.
And that's an investment of taxpayer money that's going to come back
with taxpayer revenues, but real strength in that community where
they're going to have a great new factory with great new jobs
developing a product that's going to have ripple effects across
Vermont.
I yield to my good friend, Mr. Boccieri.
Mr. BOCCIERI. Thank you. I thank the gentlemen here today for talking
about how we can get our economy back on track and put America back to
work.
We're beginning to see the signs of economic recovery. Ten successive
months of manufacturing growth has led to an upturn in manufacturing
and our output in Ohio and many Midwestern States.
We've seen the housing sector improve. The housing sector of the
economy is very important to our economy because every recession since
the Great Depression, the housing sector has led us out of any
downturns in the economy we've ever had. And, in fact, when you think
about all that goes into building a new home with steel and wood and
carpeting and drapes--you build a third car garage, you've got to put a
car in it--the appliances, I mean, there is a lot of economic output,
especially with those household products like washers and dryers and
the like that require a great deal of manufacturing output.
{time} 2110
So we're beginning to see upturns in the economy because of that.
Now look, we lost a lot of jobs, millions of jobs under previous
economic policies. It's going to take us a while to get back and grow
the economy and get back to the confidence levels that we all share
that we're in a stronger position, but we're on the right track. We're
on the right track, and according to folks who study the economy daily,
[[Page H4668]]
like Fortune magazine, in April they said the economy has made a sharp
U-turn in the past couple of months and better days for the American
businesses and workers are around the corner.
Newsweek said, America is coming back stronger, better and faster
than nearly anyone had expected and faster than most of its
international rivals. Recovery came quickly because the public and
private sectors reacted with great speed.
From the far left to the far right, economists were saying that we
had to do something. We had to do something. And there's only three
tools that the American Government has to jump-start or kick the
economy.
We can work to manage interest rates with the Federal Reserve. We saw
that interest rates are at near-record lows, zero percent in some
cases.
We saw that the other policy that we have at our fingertips is to
utilize tax policies. Largest tax break in American history to small
businesses and to American middle class families. In fact, USA Today
said tax bills are the lowest in 2009 since 1950 thanks to tax policies
that were enacted through the stimulus and other measures that helped
with respect in 2009.
The other policy that we have is to inject huge amounts of capital
out into the marketplace, and I think it's the right policy to help
those factory workers that were struggling to meet their payments and
their bills and to put bread on the table, with helping them with an
unemployment check or a little bit of COBRA assistance so they could
carry their health care insurance from month to month while they were
looking for a job. I think that was the right investment in 2009. I
think that was an investment in the American people, with jobs training
and skill training, investing in our workforce. Those are real tangible
things that we can take, and that's why we're getting reports like
this.
As a note, we've seen some positive job gains in the 16th
Congressional District. Medline Industries just added 35 jobs and will
be creating quite a few more in the next 3 years with them doing
business. They manufacture and distribute medical products.
We saw Nationwide Insurance add 600 jobs in Ohio, and many of them
are in my congressional district.
Rolls Royce, an international company that makes fuel cells that are
going to add to our electric vehicles, they're using these things in
NASA right now. They just announced they're moving their fuel cell
research headquarters from Singapore to Stark County, Ohio. I know
they're going to be working with my colleague in the 17th District,
working on some research and development; and we want to enhance them.
We're going to add and retain nearly 90 jobs in my congressional
district.
We see ABS company got a National Science Foundation grant, absorbent
materials company in Worcester, Ohio. They have this grant. They're
doing leading-edge research, and they're helping further development of
creating high-tech jobs here in the 16th Congressional District.
We also saw Barbasol add dozens of jobs in Ashland County in my
congressional district.
These are real signs in a real congressional district of how some of
the policies that we've enacted are helping to grow our economy. So I
join my colleagues in saying that leadership is about action, not just
taking a political position because you want to win the next election.
The ``just say no'' crowd here in Washington is not lending itself to
the recovery of our country. We need their help. We need their help. We
need all Americans working together to put our country back on track.
We need the Republicans' help to put the country back on track. We've
seen tough times before, but we've always pulled together as a Nation
and made it through our toughest times.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You mentioned that we need Republicans
here and you mentioned that there's support for the Democratic policies
and Obama's policies across the board. Let me just add two quotes to
that that you mentioned.
First, from Phil Swagel, who was assistant Treasury Secretary for
Economic Policy under George Bush. This is one of Bush's top economic
strategists who said, their economic policies--I think referring to the
Democrats and Obama--their economic policies including the stimulus
have helped move the economy in the right direction.
Mark Zandi, who is the chief economist at Moody's, a former adviser
to a number of Republican candidates, says, It feels like the light
switch went on in many businesses this spring. When you take it all
together the response to the recession was massive, it was
unprecedented, and it was ultimately successful.
You've got a broad spectrum of agreement, as you mentioned, from
conservative economists to progressive economists, who say that the
policies that the President and Congress have put into place have put
us on the right track.
Mr. Altmire.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from Connecticut and I wanted to
reiterate: in the district I represent just across the border from Mr.
Ryan's district and very close to Mr. Boccieri's district, the similar
experiences that they talk about are happening in western Pennsylvania
as well, and we did have a choice to make in the late winter, early
spring of 2009, when we as Members of this House had to make a decision
on what to do when we as a Nation were literally looking off the cliff
into the abyss with an economy that was on the verge of collapse in a
very literal sense.
We could have done nothing. We could have done more of the same.
Those were certainly two of our options, and there were people on the
other side of the aisle who wanted to take that approach, to continue
to pursue the policies that led us being in that position in the first
place; but we chose not to do that. We chose to take action in a very
forceful and a very proactive way. And now, we're nearly a year and a
half later and where are we? It's fair for the American people to ask,
well, what's been the benefit of this?
This was a huge bill. This was a monumental vote, and it was a vote
that many of us took with the knowledge that there were things in the
bill that we could support. There were a lot of things that we knew
moving forward were going to have a tremendous impact on the Nation and
in our districts; and as we've seen from some of the charts that we're
holding today, a year and a half later we've seen an incredible
difference in our economy, both as a Nation and in our districts.
Six of the last 7 months we've had positive job growth; and, yes,
we're at the time of the decade once a decade where you hire census
workers to go out, and some folks on the other side are going to say,
well, those numbers are inflated by census numbers. Yes, there
are census numbers included in that, but private sector job growth has
gone up over that same period of time up by the hundreds of thousands
in the previous 2 months, and we expect a strong number again for the
month of June.
Also, at the end of June we're going to have our fourth straight
quarter, a full year of positive GDP growth, and this is to be compared
with where we were at the beginning of 2009 when we had a negative six
GDP number, and by the end of 2009, the end of that very same calendar
year, the end of the year that we passed the Recovery Act, we had plus
six GDP growth, almost plus six. And it was the largest calendar year
increase in more than 30 years in the gross domestic product from
negative six to nearly plus six.
We saw the jobs go from negative 700,000 a month on average every
month leading up to the time we passed that stimulus, the Recovery Act
bill, to at the end of the year starting to see the numbers turn
around. And again, where we are today, six out of the past seven
months, positive job growth 5 months in a row. We expect that to
continue.
The stock market that bottomed out at 6,500 almost precisely at the
time the Recovery Act began to take effect is now up over 10,000.
These things didn't happen by accident. And we talk about
manufacturing. In the district that I represent in western Pennsylvania
as in the Ohio districts and I presume Mr. Murphy's district in
Connecticut as well, we have a legacy of manufacturing and we have
[[Page H4669]]
a lot of folks who, because of the recovery, are doing better today
than they were a year ago, much better.
The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boccieri) listed some companies. I have
some in my district. I can think of Ellwood Forge and Ellwood Quality
Steel. Both are doing a lot better this year than they did last year,
not only because their companies are doing better but because as a
country we're doing better. That's what it means when manufacturers see
an increase in orders. It means that we're stimulating our economy,
we're growing, we're moving again, and that's what that symbolizes.
That's the first thing that turns around is that manufacturing sector,
and in western Pennsylvania we're seeing that impact very directly.
We've seen it in some of the infrastructure projects in all of our
districts across the country to have something of lasting significance
that's going to be there in the decades after we've recovered.
Now, is everything in the economy where we want it to be? No, of
course not. It hasn't fully recovered. We're not out of the woods yet.
We're not completely out of the hole that it took us decades to dig,
but we're getting better. Again, GDP growth is strong, stock market has
recovered to some extent, jobs are much better, and we're moving in the
right direction. And that would not have happened were it not for the
actions that this Congress took.
{time} 2120
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Before I yield to the gentleman from New York, I
think it's important again to reiterate, these are two separate
philosophies. We did not have one vote in the House of Representatives
from the Republican side. They, in many instances, continue to argue
for cutting taxes for the top 1 percent--hopefully that will trickle
down to the middle class, hopefully that will trickle down to
manufacturing. And we saw from the 1980s on, people took that money and
they invested it in China, manufacturing in Mexico and China and other
places. What we're saying is, reinvest back in the United States--
transportation, energy, infrastructure. Rebuild the country. A pro-
growth agenda from Democrats--cutting taxes for businesses, cutting
taxes for the middle class, and jump-starting the economy, making sure
that we have fair regulation, referees on the field, and making sure we
don't let corporations run the country, whether it's Wall Street and
the financial markets, or whether it's the oil industry saying approve
this permit even though I don't have a plan; in case we have a
catastrophe, let it all go. We're the corporations, we run the show.
We're reigning that back in, trying to jump-start small businesses
with the fund we provided last week, $30 billion to loan $300 billion
for community banks. Get the local banks loaning money again and stop
relying on these globalized banks who are in it to make a profit and
have no connection, no tie to the community.
So I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Ryan.
You know, the talk about the contrasts, the sharp contrasts between
the party in control now in the House, with the Democrats advancing
dollars that invest in small business, invest in innovation as an
economy, clean energy. You think of all those strategies compared to
the catering to Big Oil, big banks, Wall Street, making certain the
biggest amongst us are taken care of. I contrast that with all of the
work being done in my district, in the 21st Congressional District in
New York, in the Capital Region, it has always had a spirit of pioneer.
It's in our DNA. We have within the confines of that district an energy
revolution of sorts, it's the birthplace of electricity. So we're
continuing on with a global center for renewable energy at GE,
nanoscience in the district, the semiconductor industry,
superconductive cable, talking about advanced battery manufacturing.
When we looked at the Recovery Act and how the President wanted to
bring us into the new ages, allow for transitioning, a transformation
of the energy economy, that's what this is all about. What we have had
expressed in this Recovery Act are opportunities to grow new
opportunities with advanced battery manufacturing. The battery looked
at by GE, as they're soon to establish their plant, not only provides,
in its concept of an alternative battery, not only for generation of
electricity, not only for powering heavy vehicles, but also it is there
for energy storage, so that with the transmittent energy of renewables,
that transmittent nature, the opportunities to provide for storage
there creates all new opportunities, the battery as a linchpin. The
same is true with superconductive cable, where you can transmit far
more electrons per inch of cable compared to the traditional cable,
where renewables are being developed and new opportunities with
nanoscience to create lighter blades, more efficient outcomes, more
power per dollar invested. All of this is what holds great promise for
our economy, for jobs, for small business innovation, for the emerging
technologies. That's what this investment is all about.
And finally, you see a commitment to small business, to the pioneer
spirit, to the invention and creative genius that has always been part
of the American culture. So I'm really proud of the efforts that we're
making to grow back this economy, to grow back the investments in basic
research and R&D. That's what this is all about with the Recovery Act.
I think that people are now looking at this contrast, Representative
Ryan, they're looking at the slow, steady progress, that climb upward
from what was a precipitous drop in that left-handed side of the V
formation. The precipitous drop in jobs, in the growth in unemployment,
the lack of investment, the household income loss, now has taken a
sharp u-turn, and we see the road to recovery, the progress because of
the wisdom of the types of investments made in the Recovery Act
promoted by the White House and very much supported by Speaker Pelosi
here.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I totally agree with the gentleman. Here you have
tax cuts for businesses, you have $30 billion for community banks to
loan out up to $300 billion, you have tax cuts for individuals, you
have the extension of unemployment benefits and health care through
COBRA, you have infrastructure projects, billions of dollars, you have
billions of dollars for Pell Grants so people can go to school. We've
taken the banks out of the student loan business so people get a better
deal when they take out a loan to go to school. And as you said, we're
taking $1 billion a day that's leaving this country to go to oil-
producing countries and driving that back into the United States, the
kind of technology that you have, the kind of nuclear technology and
production that Mr. Altmire has in western Pennsylvania, fuel cells in
Mr. Boccieri's district, manufacturing and engineering in my district,
and all of the above in Mr. Murphy's district.
Mr. TONKO. Well, simply said, the policies of the past gave us the
catastrophe in the gulf; the policies of the present give us
opportunities at home.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Murphy, would you like to wrap up? We've got
about 1 minute left. Because I know you can, of all of us, you can put
it all together in 1 minute.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. When it comes down to it, of all the
things that drive the recovery in this economy, it's people spending
again. And the fact is we'll go back to where we started. At the heart
of our economic recovery legislation is putting power in the hands of
average, everyday working-class families. That's what drives this
economic recovery, and that's what the Democrats have invested in.
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