[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 156 (Tuesday, October 18, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6624-S6625]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        SOLVING THE JOBS CRISIS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it is no secret that the vast 
majority of Americans are not happy with Washington right now. They say 
13 percent of the public approves of Congress, and I have not met any 
of those people.
  It is also no secret that the President of the United States is 
trying to use the displeasure of Washington for political gain. I think 
that is a pretty sad commentary on the state of affairs over at the 
White House lately. As the only person elected to represent every 
American, the President should speak for all Americans, especially in 
times of crisis, not divide them for short-term partisan political 
gain.
  But it is perfectly obvious why the President would find the path of 
division appealing, because on the No. 1 issue we face, jobs and the 
economy, the President's policies have not worked as advertised. After 
nearly 3 years in office, he has failed to make any progress on his 
promises to turn the jobs crisis around. I think we can pretty much sum 
up that failure with a single number, 1.5 million. That is how many 
fewer jobs there are right now in America since the President signed 
his first stimulus, according to the Obama administration's own Labor 
Department--1.5 million.
  So what is the President trying to do? Well, he is trying to change 
the topic. He wants to deflect attention from that 1.5 million job 
loss. He wants to think the problem is not his policies, it is those 
mean Republicans in Congress who oppose them. But the President leaves 
a few things out of the reelection script he brought along on his bus 
tour.
  First of all, it was not just the Republicans who defeated his latest 
stimulus bill last week. The only reason a majority of Democrats voted 
to debate it is they knew they would not have to vote on it. That is 
why the majority leader repeatedly moved to block a vote on the measure 
itself, the actual proposal.
  Second, we are now living under economic policies that President 
Obama himself put in place. This is not something you will hear on the 
bus tour, but let's be clear. The President got everything he wanted 
from a Democratic-controlled Congress during the first 2 years of his 
presidency. He owned the place.
  Now we are living with the hard realities that those policies have 
brought to bear on the American worker. So at this point, anytime the 
President says ``pass this bill,'' people have a very good reason to be 
skeptical, because this is not the first time President Obama demanded 
that Congress pass what he calls a jobs bill. But if this one were to 
pass and it worked as advertised, then it would be the first one that 
did.
  Again and again, the President's response to America's ongoing jobs 
crisis has been to insist that Congress pass some urgent piece of 
legislation right away or an even worse calamity would result. Those 
bills were supposed to create jobs and prevent layoffs as well.
  But he keeps coming back for more. I guess the President is counting 
on the American people to forget that part. He is counting on us to 
forget about the other stimulus legislation he has already signed into 
law and that has failed to live up to its hype every single time.
  Again and again the President has demanded that Congress do something 
to create jobs, and the only thing we seem to end up with at the end of 
the day is more debt, more government, and fewer jobs. So let's review 
the record for a while.
  Two and a half years ago, President Obama went down to Florida and 
said the first stimulus--the nearly $1 trillion government spending 
bill he signed shortly after taking office--would save or create 
millions of jobs, including jobs for firefighters, nurses, police 
officers, and teachers.
  Well, what happened? The States got their bailout, the national 
unemployment rate didn't budge, and a year and a half later the 
President was back asking for another one. That is right, a year and a 
half after the first stimulus,

[[Page S6625]]

the White House was back last August saying they needed another $26 
billion right away or else 160,000 teachers would get pink slips and 
police and firefighters across the country would literally be off the 
job. What happened then? Well, the States got another bailout. The 
unemployment rate didn't budge. And now the President is riding around 
on a bus saying that if they don't get another one, teachers, police, 
and firefighters will lose their jobs again.
  Does anybody notice a pattern? We have been doing this for nearly 3 
years now--3 years. It doesn't work as advertised. Bailouts don't solve 
the problem. In fact, they perpetuate it. Yet all we get from the 
President and Democrats in Congress is do it again, do it again, or 
else.
  We have been mired in a jobs crisis for 3 long years now, and all the 
Democrats ever want to do is throw more taxpayer money at it. It never 
works the way they claim it will. Yet they want to keep on doing it--
with other people's money. Just throw another bailout together, slap 
the word ``jobs'' on the cover page, and dare people to vote against 
it. That is, apparently, the Democrats' governing philosophy--3 years 
into this jobs crisis. It would not be irresponsible to oppose an 
approach such as this; it would be irresponsible to consider it. It 
didn't work the first time. It didn't work the second time. The third 
time won't be a charm. That is why Republicans and a growing number of 
our Democratic friends want a different approach. There is a growing 
bipartisan opposition to trying the same failed policies again.
  There is bipartisan opposition to raising taxes, especially at a time 
when 14 million Americans are out of work. If there is one thing we 
should agree on now, it is that we should be making it easier for 
businesses to hire, not harder. So the President should drop his 
obsession with raising taxes, and if he really wants to create jobs, 
maybe he should consider doing something different.
  We have tried the bailout approach. We have tried more regulations, 
more debt, and more taxes. Why don't we try a new idea for a change, 
one that has bipartisan support, one that isn't a two-time proven 
failure? Let's try something that might actually work because the 
American people didn't send us here to kick our problems down the road. 
They certainly didn't send us here to repeat the same mistakes over and 
over and then stick them and their children with the tab. That might be 
how you maintain a sense of urgency--by failing to solve the problem 
the first two times around--but it is not how you solve a jobs crisis. 
The American people simply deserve better than this. They deserve 
better than the false promises they have been getting.
  The President got everything he wanted from a Democratic Congress for 
2 years--everything he wanted: a health care law designed to take over 
one-sixth of the entire economy; a financial reform bill that punishes 
businesses that had nothing to do with the financial crisis; out-of-
control regulations that are forcing otherwise healthy businesses to 
shut down, businesses such as Smart Papers in Hamilton, OH, a paper 
mill that said last week it is shutting down because of onerous new 
Federal regulations that make it too costly to do business; and a 
trillion-dollar stimulus that was supposed to solve the jobs crisis 
2\1/2\ years ago.
  For 2 years, when the President said: Pass this bill right away, 
Democrats did it. Here is what they got, despite all that: trillions in 
debt and more than 1\1/2\ million fewer jobs. And that is after the 
President got everything he wanted for 2 whole years. We don't need any 
more of that. We can't afford more of the same.
  I yield the floor.

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