[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 26430]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  (Mr. TONKO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, in January, President Obama took office while 
facing the worst economic crisis in generations.
  Faced with that tremendous challenge, President Obama and the 
Democratic Congress responded with the American Recovery and 
Reinvestment Act, an aggressive plan to jump-start our economy and to 
create jobs.
  As we look back on the Recovery Act's first 8 months, its success in 
averting catastrophe is clear. We are not out of the woods yet, and 
much more work remains to create good jobs and to lower unemployment; 
but there are positive signs that the recession is over and that the 
economic policies pursued by the Democrats are starting to work.
  Just last week, the Obama administration made important announcements 
to invest $3.4 billion into the smart energy grid and into the first 
round of awards under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, 
or the ARPA-E program. These announcements by the administration show 
that the Recovery Act is working, giving investors the confidence they 
need to leverage private funds to create new clean-energy jobs to put 
people back to work and to revolutionize the way we power our economy 
and drive American innovation.

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