[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18488]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

  (Mr. BISHOP of Utah asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I want to introduce you to Mr. 
Pitchford. He is a young and exciting teacher who gets 12-, 13- and 14-
year-olds to enjoy geography and history. But this September, he is not 
going to be back in the classroom because his district relies upon 
resource jobs and royalties and development to fund schools. And this 
administration, through the arbitrary and unilateral decisions of the 
Secretary of the Interior, has cut this funding. This is the 
administration that stopped new uranium development for 2 years, has 
postponed offshore drilling decisions, and has postponed oil shale 
development projects. And for Mr. Pitchford, has taken 77 oil and gas 
leases and suspended them because they don't think 7 years of study was 
enough time.
  If we do not develop the resources on our public lands, jobs are 
lost. If we don't have cheap forms of affordable energy, jobs are lost. 
And those jobs aren't simply a number. They are a face of a real person 
like Mr. Pitchford, who is no longer a teacher not because of his 
choice, but because of government decisions. And the collateral damage 
of these government decisions are the 13- and 14-year-olds in his 
classroom. Where are the jobs? They're not in Mr. Pitchford's 
classroom.

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