[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 81 (Tuesday, June 7, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3512-S3513]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              JOB CREATION

  Mr. REID. Madam President, as I was doing my exercise this morning, I 
heard on the news the announcement that 10 years ago today, when 
President Bush--I could hear his voice celebrating the tax cuts for the 
wealthy--said: I know we have these huge surpluses, but these moneys 
are the people's money and, therefore, he was going to do something 
about it. He did that big time.
  He certainly did away with those huge surpluses we had, which 
amounted to trillions of dollars. He did it in a number of different 
ways. We had a program developed during the Clinton years called pay-
go. That meant if someone had a new program they wanted to initiate, 
they had to pay for it either with new revenue or take money from an 
existing program. It worked extremely well. That is one reason, and one 
of the main reasons, we were able to develop the huge surpluses we did 
during the Clinton years. We were paying down the debt in the Clinton 
years. Some said it was too quickly.
  Well, another way that the President got rid of that huge surplus was 
the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq alone now 
is estimated to be about a $1\1/2\ trillion--all borrowed money.
  We also know how important it is to create jobs. Now, as a result of 
the President finding himself in a huge hole as a result of the 
policies of the Bush administration, he decided that something had to 
be done. We passed the Economic Recovery Act. It created millions of 
jobs and saved millions of jobs. Was it enough? No, but it was the best 
we could do. We could only get three Republicans to help us on that. I 
appreciated their support, and I always will. They were Senators Snowe, 
Collins, and Specter. They determined what we could spend and not spend 
within certain parameters, and we believed there should be more 
infrastructure spending. I wish we could have done more. So we have 
done some things to help significantly the hole that President Bush 
created for us.
  Now this Congress has also done some things. We focused on jobs. We 
know how important jobs are. Regarding the FAA bill--Federal Aviation 
Administration reauthorization--we extended that short term 19 times. I 
talked to Randy Walker, head of McCarran Airport, the sixth busiest 
airport in America. They can't let contracts for runway repairs because 
they only have 1 month to do it a lot of times. They cannot do that.
  All kinds of projects that would create thousands of jobs around 
American airports would happen if we could have an FAA bill. We passed 
it here. It has been held up in the big dark hole of the House of 
Representatives. Nothing has been done. We haven't been able to 
complete the conference on that, and the 280,000 jobs either created or 
saved haven't been completed. That has been months and months.
  We have an antiquated air traffic control system in America. We want 
to improve it. That is what it is about--saving and creating jobs.
  We believed it was important to do something about patents. Senator 
Leahy has been faithful in reporting bills out of his committee, and we 
finally said bring it to the floor. After a lot of work, we got it 
done. More than six decades have lapsed, and we haven't done anything 
with one of the most important things we can do, which is protect our 
patent system and make it better. We passed it here and sent it to the 
House. Nothing has happened. They have not voted on that bill.
  That is very unfortunate, that we have not been able to get those two 
bills. The patent bill is 300,000 jobs and the FAA bill 280,000 jobs. 
The math is pretty simple. That is a lot of jobs, and that has been 
held up.
  We believed it was extremely important that we do something about 
jobs, and we did that with something that has worked so successfully in 
the past. So that is the bill we brought to the floor to help small 
businesses innovate, invent, and invest in new jobs. What a wonderful 
program it has been. We tried to get that reauthorized. It was killed 
here in the Senate by many amendments--amendments that had nothing to 
do with the underlying bill. So we had to take that bill off the floor 
after spending I think 6 weeks on the bill and not being able to get 
that accomplished.
  We brought this bill to the floor that would help small businesses 
innovate, as I say, invent, and invest in new jobs, but the Republicans 
simply said: No, we are not going to do that. That jobs bill was so 
important. The electric toothbrush was invented with a small innovation 
grant, and there are many other examples. That is just one of hundreds. 
So it is really too bad we haven't been able to do something about 
that.
  The only thing we hear from the House of Representatives, rather than 
creating jobs, is destroying Medicare as we know it. The American 
people don't like that, Republicans don't like it, Independents don't 
like it, Democrats don't like it, young people don't like it, and old 
people don't like it. It is not a good piece of legislation. 
Overwhelmingly, it has been just a big zero. But that is what we have 
from the House of Representatives. That is their main accomplishment 
this year.
  My friend talked about free-trade agreements. I am not a big fan of 
free-trade agreements. My voting record is

[[Page S3513]]

in accordance with that. I think if you asked people in Nevada: Boy, 
hasn't NAFTA helped us a lot, they would just sneer and walk away. We 
keep talking about free-trade agreements, but where is the fair part of 
those trade agreements? Shouldn't we be more worried about our American 
workers than workers in other places? I think that certainly is the 
case.
  In keeping with the theme of jobs, I thought it was important we do 
something about creating jobs. I have talked about patents, I have 
talked about, of course, what we did with the FAA bill, and I talked 
about what we tried to do with the small jobs innovation bill. What we 
have decided to bring up now is the EDA, the Economic Development 
Administration. This has been something that has been in effect since 
1965. It has been a wonderful program. In the last 5 years, we have 
invested $1.2 billion, creating more than 300,000 jobs. For every 
dollar invested, we get $7 of private capital. That is a pretty good 
deal. We want to bring that to the floor and have a debate on it, pass 
it, and put more money in the stream of creating jobs. As I said, for 
every dollar we invest, we get $7 that comes from the private sector. 
We plan to work this week on debating and reauthorizing this Economic 
Development Administration bill, which for more than 45 years has 
created jobs for the most needy and economically distressed 
communities--as I have said, in just the last 5 years, more than 
300,000 jobs.
  This is our first bill of this new work period because creating jobs 
is our first priority. But Republicans are stopping us from moving to 
it because creating jobs, it appears, is the last thing they care to 
do. They are more concerned about what jobs are being created in 
Colombia or Panama or Korea than what jobs are being created here in 
America.
  The merits of reauthorizing this job-creating administration bill are 
very clear: EDA works with businesses, universities, and leaders at 
local levels, so it creates jobs from the bottom up, and it helps 
manufacturing producers compete in the global marketplace. I repeat, it 
is a great investment. Seven-to-one is an incredible return rate.
  Last night, I had to file cloture on this bill. I hope we don't have 
to invoke cloture. We have it set up now so we will have the vote in 
the morning, an hour after we come in. Maybe during the recess we have 
for our caucus meetings the Republicans will be able to bring in these 
people who are stopping us from doing this and we will be able to move 
to it and do something meaningful here on the Senate floor for the rest 
of this day and tomorrow rather than invoking cloture, waiting 30 
hours, and doing nothing. We need to start creating jobs.
  Let me repeat. The FAA bill, the House has killed it. On patents, we 
have done it, and the House has killed it. We tried to do small jobs 
innovation, but it was killed here in the Senate. We are now trying to 
do EDA. At this stage, we are not able to move forward.
  We are ready to create jobs--we Democrats. We have done it before 
with programs such as the Economic Development Administration, and we 
are ready to do it again. The American people are desperate for stable 
and secure jobs. All they ask of us is that we do our job, and we 
haven't been doing that because we have been prevented from doing it. 
Why haven't we passed the FAA bill? Why haven't we completed work on 
the patent bill? Why were we stopped from moving forward on the small 
jobs innovation bill? Why are we unable to move on the EDA bill?
  Would the Chair announce morning business?

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