[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13095-13096]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                         NATIONAL TOURISM WEEK

  (Mr. PORTER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. PORTER. Mr. Speaker, I stand today with the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Farr) celebrating America, and that's great news. There 
are a lot of things that challenge us as a country, but there are some 
great things

[[Page 13096]]

happening. Mr. Farr and I are cochairmen of the Travel and Tourism 
Caucus, and we are here today to talk about National Tourism Week.
  I represent the great State of Nevada, where we have about 45 million 
visitors a year to our communities. But more importantly, the tour and 
travel industry in this country represents number one, two and three in 
every economy across the United States of America. Seven hundred 
billion dollars annually is spent on tour and travel, and that's about 
$109 billion in tax revenues. That's $22,000 a second, $1.3 million a 
minute, $80 million an hour, and $1.9 billion a day is spent on tour 
and travel in the United States. It is the largest employer in the 
country, with 7.5 million jobs. International spending is $108 billion.
  I would like to recognize, for all those communities, and all those 
folks that represent the tour and travel industry how important it is 
to our economy, but also how important is to the world to share in this 
great America.

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