[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 21]
[House]
[Pages 28251-28252]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the House to ask 
the question that many Americans are asking, and that is, Where are the 
jobs?
  Over the last few months, the American people have been saying very 
vocally that they want this Congress to address the big problems that 
are affecting them today--and there are a number of problems. But the 
top problem I hear from my constituents--and I am hearing from so many 
of my other colleagues that their constituents are saying the same 
thing--is that they want this Congress to be focused on creating jobs. 
Unfortunately, we're seeing just the opposite happen in terms of the 
policies that are being brought forth by the liberal leadership of this 
Democratically controlled Congress.
  It started back with the first bill that came out, the so-called 
stimulus bill. This was a bill that added $787 billion of debt that our 
children and grandchildren have to pay--money we didn't have--but the 
White House said, Don't worry. We've got to roll this thing through 
quickly, ram it through. Don't let anybody have the opportunity to read 
it, and it's got to go quickly because we need to stop unemployment 
from breaking 8 percent, and this bill's going to do it.
  And then they said, When this bill passes, there's going to be so 
much transparency, you'll be able to track every dime, there won't be 
any waste, fraud, and abuse; and you can even go to a Web site and 
track where that money is going.
  So, of course, after that bill passed, a bill that many of us opposed 
because we knew it wouldn't create jobs--in fact, it would actually 
make our economy worse because it was all borrowed money, money that 
our children and grandchildren have to pay. But what was worse is now 
that we're starting to try to find out where that money is, where is 
that money? We know when we're asking where are the jobs, we can't find 
the jobs because millions more Americans have lost their job since that 
bill passed. So it actually had the opposite effect that the American 
people were promised when the President stood right here on this 
podium.
  But now as people across the country are trying to track down and 
say, Where is that transparency? Where are those billions and billions 
of dollars that have been spent going to?, we just find out the other 
day when you go to the White House's own Web site, Recovery.gov, you 
can't actually track those jobs. You can't track where that money's 
gone because there's an incredible amount of fraudulent information on 
that Web site.
  Now, those of us in Louisiana were waking up on Tuesday going to that 
Web site, and maybe some people would think it would be good news that 
we found out that we had 15 congressional districts, according to the 
White House's own Web site. They actually tracked districts that don't 
exist.

                              {time}  1700

  Of course, in Louisiana, we only have seven congressional districts. 
So a reporter from our local newspaper called the White House. And 
first of all, they said, How can you possibly have all this accurate 
data on your Web site? You're telling the American people that jobs 
were created in congressional districts that don't even exist. And the 
first response from the White House was, ``We are not certifying the 
accuracy of the information.'' Now, these are the people who said this 
would be the most transparent administration in history. Now they are 
not certifying the accuracy of the information now that they have got 
their hands on the money.
  So then they followed it up, and they said, Well, how can you 
actually have mistakes made that are this big where you have a State 
that only has seven congressional districts, and when we go to your Web 
site, there is a District 45, and it actually says how many jobs were 
created in that district that doesn't exist? How can you actually have 
a system that is set up that allows that kind of inaccurate information 
to be reported? And the White House's spokesperson actually said, ``Who 
knows, man? Who really knows?''
  Mr. Speaker, this is unbelievable and an insult to the American 
people who are still asking, Where are the jobs? Now, maybe it's 
fitting that the White House is showing jobs created in districts that 
don't exist because their stimulus bill was passed using money that 
doesn't exist. It is all money that is borrowed from our children and 
grandchildren, not a dime that was paid for.
  And, of course, the latest that the President was talking about just 
2 days ago, he said, if we keep on adding to this debt, even in the 
midst of this recovery, at some point, people could lose confidence in 
the United States' economy in a way that could actually lead to a 
double-dip recession.
  So here you have the President of the United States admitting that 
all of this debt spending, this deficit spending that they are on this 
road to continue going down, is a bad thing and actually could lead to 
a double-dip recession, and yet their answer from day one has been a 
stimulus bill that adds another $787 billion of debt. Then he came back 
right behind there with another bill, his budget, his budget that 
doubles the national debt. And then they went on with the bill called 
``cap-and-trade,'' a national energy tax, a bill that adds hundreds of 
billions of dollars.
  You wonder why people are still asking, Where are the jobs? We need 
to get back to fiscal sanity. We need to actually have real 
transparency.

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