[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 142 (Thursday, September 22, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S5850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE JOBS BILL

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, over the past week, President Obama has 
been traveling around the country, trying to set a record for the 
number of times he can say the words ``pass this bill right away''--the 
number of times he can say it, actually in a 5-minute speech. Today he 
will bring his act to a 50-year-old bridge that connects my own State 
of Kentucky with Ohio. The purpose of this visit is perfectly clear. 
The President's plan is to go out to this bridge and say that if only 
lawmakers in Washington would pass his second stimulus bill right away, 
then bridges such as this one would get fixed and that the only thing 
standing in the way of repairing them is people like me.
  I would like to make a couple points about all this. First, I find it 
hard to take the President's message all that seriously when his own 
communications director is over at the White House telling people he is 
no longer interested in legislative compromise when the leaders of the 
President's own party in Congress are treating this bill like an 
afterthought.
  We would be more inclined to look at this so-called jobs bill if the 
President's own staff and members of his own party in Congress started 
taking it a little more seriously themselves.
  Second, I remind the President that the people of Kentucky and Ohio 
have heard this kind of thing before. Don't forget, the President made 
the same promises when he was selling his first stimulus. It is a 
message he brought to Ohio repeatedly. Here is what he said 2 years ago 
this week at a stop in Warren, OH.

       All across Ohio and all across the country, rebuilding our 
     roads and our bridges . . . that's what the Recovery Act has 
     been all about.

  The Recovery Act is the stimulus bill, the first one. Yet 2\1/2\ 
years later, what do we have to show for it? Politically connected 
companies such as Solyndra ended up with hundreds of millions of 
dollars, provided by the taxpayers, and bridges such as the one the 
President is attending today still need to be fixed.
  It is worth noting, in fact, this one company blew through more 
taxpayer money than the first stimulus allocated for every road and 
bridge in the entire State of Kentucky combined.
  The President told Ohioans and Kentuckians, the first stimulus would 
keep unemployment below 8 percent as well. Yet 2\1/2\ years later 
unemployment in both States is still above 9 percent.
  We have heard these promises before, and I don't think the President 
should expect anybody to fall for them again. I mean, how many stimulus 
bills do we have to pass before these bridges get fixed? How many? How 
many Solyndras do we have to finance? How much money do we have to 
waste before the President makes good on the promises he has already 
made? If a bridge needs fixing, by all means let's fix it. But don't 
tell us we need to pass a $\1/2\ trillion stimulus bill and accept job-
killing tax hikes to do it. Don't tell the people of Kentucky they need 
to finance every turtle tunnel and solar panel company on some 
bureaucrat's wish list in order to get their bridges fixed. Don't 
patronize us by implying that if we pass the second stimulus, bridges 
will get fixed right away. The American people heard the same thing 
when the administration was selling the first stimulus, only to turn on 
their television sets 2\1/2\ years later to see the President having a 
big laugh over the fact that all these shovel-ready projects weren't 
quite as shovel-ready as they thought they were.
  So I suggest, Mr. President, that you think about ways to actually 
help the people of Kentucky and Ohio, instead of how you can use their 
roads and bridges as a backdrop for making a political point. If you 
are truly interested in helping our State, if you truly want to help 
our State, then come back to Washington and work with Republicans on 
legislation that will actually do something to revive our economy and 
create jobs and forget the political theater.
  I yield the floor.

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