[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 22]
[House]
[Pages 29275-29282]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1615
                          WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, Republicans come to you today to talk about 
some of the same things that my colleague who just finished was talking 
about, but we are going to try and liven it up a little bit. Because, 
you see, the Democrats have controlled the Congress for the last 3 
years, not the last 10 months or 11 months, but the last 3 years. But 
in the last 11 months, Americans have lost 2.9 million jobs.
  You see, they passed this so-called stimulus, and they rammed it 
through in record time. It is one of those thousand-page bills that 
probably nobody had a chance to read before it got voted on, and then 
they passed it. The theory was that if they passed it into law, that 
unemployment wouldn't top out over 8 percent. That was their promise. 
That's what the Democrats promised, was pass the stimulus and it will 
solve unemployment. It will be no more than 8 percent. In fact, that's 
what their Department of Labor, the Obama Department of Labor, said 
right here, you can see it, Obama forecast with stimulus, right here is 
where unemployment would be. This is without the stimulus where 
unemployment would be at this point. These were their numbers. This is 
what they promised the American people. This is what they said.
  Now, let's look at what really happened, however. Unemployment 
started out here in January of this year, 2009, whoa, up it goes. How 
high, nobody knows, but it goes on up and up and up over 10 percent, 
over 10 percent. Now who is benefiting from that? Well, let's, first of 
all, look at The Washington Post today. And right here on The 
Washington Post newspaper here in the Nation's Capital the top story 
is: ``Stimulus is Boon for D.C. Area Contractors.'' Federal Departments 
are paying firms to help spend the money.
  And let me read Alec MacGillis' story here. It says: ``As struggling 
communities throughout the country wait for more help from the $787 
billion stimulus package, one region is already basking in its largess: 
the government-contractor nexus that is metropolitan Washington, D.C.'' 
That's right. Come on down. You are the winner, Washington, D.C. Once 
again, the Federal Government is the winner.
  ``Reports from stimulus recipients show that a sizable sum has gone 
to Federal contractors in the Washington area who are helping implement 
the initiative--in effect, they are being paid a hefty slice of the 
money to help spend the rest of it.''
  Now, if you want jobs for Washington, D.C.-based government 
contractors, I don't see how that is sustainable, helpful or even what 
was promised. And for heaven's sakes, we can see the red line here is 
not getting lower; it's getting higher. In fact, as I look at this, we 
would have been better off under the President's proposal, the 
Democrats' plan on the stimulus to have had no stimulus at all if you 
look at what they predicted versus what reality is.
  But here is the best part. If you want to talk about helping rural 
areas, one of these people that has been involved in the government 
here tells The Post the reason all this money is being spent back here 
in the Washington, D.C. area is, she says, I'm not sure I ever heard of 
a government support contractor in Michigan.
  Well, maybe that is part of the problem. Maybe if we had some of this 
actually flowing out to people who need the help and not into more 
government, things would be better.
  So where is the money going? And where are the jobs? Now, we know 
that on February 25 in an interview with ABC's ``Good Morning 
America'''s Robin Roberts, our Vice President of the United States, Joe 
Biden, said: ``We've got to make sure this is done by the numbers, man. 
We've got to make sure people know where the money is going. This 
cannot be squandered. We have an opportunity to get the Nation back to 
work and back on its feet, and the first piece of that is generating 
some economic growth here, and we have to do it right.''
  Now that was February 25. Now, again, here is where they said we 
would be without the stimulus. Here is where they said we would be with 
the stimulus. Here's where we are. Here's where we are. And my 
colleague who spoke earlier about the horrible problem of 
unemployment--and it is--my home State of Oregon has suffered mightily. 
But this stimulus hasn't produced jobs out there. It may have produced 
them to contractors back here, but not out there.
  So where are the jobs? And where is the money going? We were 
promised, the American taxpayers, when we borrowed all this money from 
China, we were promised that we would know, by golly, this is going to 
be accounted for. Everybody is going to know. Everybody is going to 
know. In fact, in a speech on the stimulus at the Brookings Institution 
on September 3 of this year, the Vice President, Joe Biden, said: 
``Everybody has to account for the money they got beginning October 1. 
It's going to go up on a big old Web site. We've got a new modern Web 
site that is going to blow you away in terms of how detailed it is. ``
  So, here is the Vice President. He says, first of all, we've got to 
make sure this is done by the numbers, man. We've got to make sure 
people know where the money is going. It can't be squandered. We have 
an opportunity to get the Nation back to work and on its feet, and the 
first piece of that is generating some economic growth here, and we 
have to do it right. And then he said, we're going to track it all. We 
have a new modern Web site that is going to blow you away. Everybody 
has to account for the money. They have got to get that, beginning 
October 1, going to go up on a big old Web site.

[[Page 29276]]

We've got a new modern Web site that's going to blow you away in terms 
of how detailed it is.
  Well, now, here is a guy who knows what happens with Federal money. 
You all know Lesko. You've seen him on TV. He says, free government 
money. Buy my CD. Buy my book. Get the free government money. You would 
think that even Lesko could track where the money goes.
  So, let's look at what happened to some of the money, because I think 
Americans are asking, where's all this money going, $787 billion? Where 
did the money go?
  Let's see, in Louisiana, the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper 
says Louisiana has seven congressional districts. So Louisianans 
visiting recovery.gov, that's the Web site that the Vice President said 
will blow you away with its detail, might find themselves not just a 
little skeptical, but truly puzzled to see that nearly $5 billion was 
listed as headed to Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, $2.8 
million to the 22nd District, $1.8 million to the 12th Congressional 
District, and lesser amounts to the 26th, the 45th, the 14th, the 32nd 
and even the double 0 district.
  Now let me go back. The 26th district? The 45th district, the 14th, 
the 32nd, the double aught. There are only seven, count them, seven 
congressional districts in Louisiana. And yet the Web site that the 
Vice President touted as really going to blow us away, it lists all 
these grants, all your money going to districts that don't even exist.
  So the Times Picayune asked Ed Pound, who is the director of 
communications for recovery.gov, this is the fancy Web site that Joe 
Biden said is just going to blow us all away, and, boy, it has, they 
asked Ed, okay, you're the communications director for this fancy new 
Web site that's going to detail everything. How does all this work? 
This is the great accountability model of the transparency of the 
Democrats. He says, Oh, we rely on self-reporting by recipients for the 
stimulus money.
  So Pound said the information from federalreporting.gov is then 
simply transferred to recovery.gov, and no one, get this, no one checks 
to verify its accuracy or to take note of the fact that Utah--here is 
another example--really doesn't have seven congressional districts. 
Utah has three congressional districts. South Dakota, well, they had a 
10th Congressional District in South Dakota, but you see, folks, South 
Dakota only has one, count them, one--you don't even have to take your 
shoes off--one congressional district. Louisiana doesn't have 15 
congressional districts. It has seven. So even Lesko here could know.
  We will get back to Lesko here on some examples of some of that 
``free money'' that went out.
  In my home State of Oregon, we have actually five, count them on one 
hand here, five congressional districts. That is one, two, three, four, 
five. And yet on this fancy new Web site that is supposed to track all 
this, news media organizations looked and said, wait a minute, there 
isn't a double 0 district in Oregon or a 14th or an 8th or a 16th or a 
60th or 21st. And this is transparency and accountability in a record 
amount of money that's being spent?
  Now, frankly, being an Oregonian and having only five districts, I 
kind of like the notion that we are going to add congressional 
districts. Now even the people that don't live there, because there 
aren't that many, probably wonder about it, but that would give us a 
little more clout here in the Congress. That would be okay with me. 
Except you're talking about taxpayers' money here. And it is not 
creating jobs.
  Now, Pound went on to say: ``We are not certifying the accuracy of 
the information.'' So you have the Vice President who is telling us, 
man, this Web site is going to blow you away. We've got to make sure 
people know where the money is going. Everybody has to be accountable.
  This is accountability?
  Oh, by the way, these are the folks, this is the same government that 
is going to take over your health care and take over energy production, 
and they can't even manage a guest list for a dinner party at the White 
House? This is what we are getting, folks, with too much government.
  We know what the problem is, according to Pound, and we are trying to 
fix it. Asked why recipients would pluck random numbers like 26, 45, or 
14 to fill in for their congressional district, the communications 
director replied: ``Who knows, man? Who really knows?'' That was his 
answer. ``There are 130,000 reports out there,'' he said. Okay. So we 
have an issue with reporting.
  Now let's go back to our friend Lesko, because everybody knows him. 
Anybody that watches TV will see Lesko show up. And he says, where is 
the government money? There's lots of free government money. Get my CD, 
buy it, and you can get government money. Well, Talladega County, 
Alabama, now here they reported that they saved or created, this is 
frugal now, 5,000 jobs from only $42,000 in stimulus money. Now, I was 
a journalism major, not a math major, but 5,000 jobs from $42,000, 
that's $8.40 a job. This is a record. No, but wait. It gets better. The 
Belmont Metropolitan Housing Authority in Ohio reported 16,120 jobs 
saved or created from $1.3 million in stimulus funds from HUD. That's 
$80.46 per job.
  But the winner, the Lesko winner for efficiency in creation of jobs, 
goes to Shelton State Community College in Alabama: 14,500 jobs saved 
or created with $27,000 from the GAO. That is $1.86 per job. Now that's 
a bargain.
  Alkan Builders of Alaska reported 3,000 jobs created or saved from 11 
million, $3,666 a job. You can see why these aren't real jobs that are 
being created. It's not even being reported accurately. And yet we are 
saddling our kids with this enormous debt.
  So, let's look at a few other examples. Earl E. Devaney, the top 
monitor of the stimulus in the Obama administration ``acknowledged that 
he too found dubious the 640,000 jobs figure touted by the Obama 
administration as proof the stimulus was working and that there were 
too many errors in the reporting of data to accurately offer that 
estimate.'' Now, he is the one who actually is the watchdog. And that's 
what he told The New York Times.
  Now, how many Americans does it take to fill an $890 shoe order? 
According to The Wall Street Journal, November 19, on the recovery.gov 
site, an $890 shoe order for the Army Corps of Engineers created nine 
new jobs at Moore's Shoes and Service in Kentucky. Really. Head Start 
in Augusta, Georgia, they claimed they created 317 jobs with a $790,000 
grant. Now I happen to be a supporter of Head Start, but it is this 
reporting issue and whether you're actually creating sustainable jobs. 
Actually, the money went to pay hikes for 317 workers. That would be a 
bonus of $2,500 per employee.
  So you see, Republicans stand up here, and we hear our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle saying we need a new jobs summit. We need 
an economic stimulus. We need Economic Stimulus II because we got to 
help people get back to work. And Lord knows we do. But that is what 
they said the last time. And they've been in charge for 3 years around 
these Halls, and we've never had greater debt, more government takeover 
and more to come, and record unemployment.
  We are looking at a 10.2 percent unemployment. It has not gone down 
since they enacted their proposal. It has gone up, up, up, up, up, up. 
And Americans are paying the price. And our kids and grandkids are 
going to pay the price on debt.
  Now, how about that Alabama housing authority claimed a $540,071 
grant would create 7,280 jobs? That's what they reported, 7,280 jobs. 
It created 14 at best. Fourteen at best.

                              {time}  1630

  Now, you go back to these congressional districts that have been 
identified here that don't exist. You remember back to the New Deal 
when President Roosevelt wanted to increase the Supreme Court from 7 to 
9 members so that he could get a majority. Well, it appears this 
administration takes it one step further, forgetting to add the two 
more justices. Let's just add, I'm

[[Page 29277]]

not kidding--let's just add 25 districts, maybe make it 50 new 
congressional districts, because that's what you would think happened 
here when this is your reporting. Far from accountable. And this is big 
stuff. We make a little light of this today perhaps, but this is big 
stuff because this is debt. This isn't like you have money in your 
checking account to spend. This is like you went to the bank and 
borrowed this money and shoved it out the door in record time, and you 
don't even know where it went.
  I mean, I suppose Lesko's going to come out with a new DVD soon that 
says, Ask the government for free money and I'll tell you where it 
went. We found out. It's gone. Now, I just don't know, and in the next 
stimulus bill, are we going to create like whole new States? Maybe 
that's what we should do. When we're done creating new congressional 
districts, we can go to new States. Why stop at 50? You know, you like 
Massachusetts, you'll love New Massachusetts. Minnesota? How about 
South Minnesota or North Minnesota? Let's go for it. East Minnesota. 
Six little Mini-Me Al Frankens running around and voting for new job 
grants to States that don't exist and congressional districts that 
don't exist.
  And if we created 100,000 new jobs, who can find the voters to say we 
didn't? They'll love us in West St. Paul and New Duluth. And don't 
worry, we'll find the voters in South Minnesota to say thanks for the 
jobs. I mean, this is crazy. I mean, this is just crazy where it's 
going. I mean, this chart, I think, and I see I've been joined by my 
friend and colleague from Ohio, Mr. LaTourette. But this is a report 
that came out in a newspaper here, The Examiner, inflated jobs by 
State. And it shows, you know, a drainage ditch number one and I don't 
know what all these are. But they show these inflated job numbers. I 
would yield to my colleague, Mr. LaTourette, from Ohio.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well I thank my friend from Oregon for yielding. And, 
in fact, that is a representation, and most people will recognize the 
United States of America. And each of the pushpins represents an area 
where the administration has reported jobs being created or saved. And 
it's kind of interesting, saved is a tough thing to analyze. And I'm 
going to talk about that in just a second. But created or saved. And 
each of those pushpins represents either a fictional place that didn't 
exist, as the gentleman's been talking about, or where the jobs that 
are claimed on recovery.gov, were, in fact, not created and/or saved. I 
just want to digress if you let me for just a second though because, 
you know, the gentleman's pointed out that, in 2006, the Republican 
majority had done such a bang-up job that it was replaced by a new 
Democratic majority, and it became historic in that we have the first 
woman Speaker in the history of the country, Mrs. Pelosi.
  And so for 3 years they have been basically directing how the 
legislative process in the House of Representatives works or doesn't 
work. And we have been saying on our side of the aisle for a pretty 
long time now, when we go back, when I go back to Ohio, I assume when 
the gentleman goes back to Oregon, people are saying, where are the 
jobs? Why don't we have any jobs? You gave $700 billion to the banks to 
lend money. They're not lending money. You created and passed an almost 
$800 billion stimulus bill to create jobs, and there aren't any jobs. 
And I think that they rightly ask, what is it that the Congress, this 
Democratic majority, has been doing with themselves to help stimulate 
the economy and create jobs?
  I have a chart here that I like to use, and I want to be fair to them 
because they do have a rejoinder. But at the beginning of this year you 
had the Democrats in the majority in the House, Democrats in the 
majority in the Senate. And of course the President of the United 
States, President Barack Obama, was inaugurated on January 20. And this 
shows just through March of this year how the unemployment rate has 
increased. And the gentleman will recall that we were told that we had 
to pass this $800 billion stimulus bill or else unemployment would hit 
8 percent. And now it's over 10 percent. If you look at the 
construction trades, the people that build buildings, roads and bridges 
and other things, it's 18 percent; 18 percent of the people that work 
construction in this country are currently out of work.
  But just taking what--we'll get to the stimulus bill and the 
President's participation in a minute--but just what our Democratic 
colleagues have been thinking have been the most important issues 
facing the country, as this unemployment rate now has spiked to 10 
percent. On the opening day of this Congress, which was January the 
6th, you had kind of a modest, unemployment rate. Out here on January 
20th you have unemployment is increasing. But then you get out here to, 
towards the end of January, the beginning of February, and again, when 
Americans by the thousands and tens of thousands are losing their jobs, 
the most important thing that the majority here in the House could put 
on the floor was a resolution supporting the goals and ideals of 
national teen dating.
  Mr. WALDEN. Say that again.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. National teen dating. You know, when people are 
losing their jobs in steel mills and auto manufacturing plants, the 
House of Representatives is talking about the importance of teen 
dating. Now, I'm the father of some teenagers, and I want teen dating 
to go smoothly. But more importantly, I really want the people that I 
represent to have jobs so that their teenagers can afford to go to 
school and buy things and eat food and things like that. Well, 
unemployment continued to spike. And now we get in the middle of 
February. The President now has been installed only for a month, and so 
we certainly can't criticize him at this moment in time. But again, as 
unemployment rises, the most important thing that this majority could 
bring to the floor, and people have to recognize, bills only come to 
the floor when the majority says they come to the floor. So what we did 
on that day was commend Sam Bradford for winning the Heisman trophy. 
And again, just like teen dating, I'm sure that the Bradford family's 
very proud of Sam, and I think it's quite an accomplishment to win the 
Heisman trophy. But again, tens of thousands of people are losing jobs.
  So now we get out towards the end of February, people continue to 
lose their jobs. Every jobs report that comes out, it's hundreds of 
thousands of people are being displaced and out of work. And so surely, 
at this moment in time, you know, with complete control of the 
government, you would think we would be doing a jobs bill. But the most 
important thing that they could come up with was the Monkey Safety Act, 
to debate the Monkey Safety Act here in the House of Representatives.
  Mr. WALDEN. That sounds like real monkey business.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. And I want to be clear because when I mentioned this 
earlier, the Humane Society got upset with me. I'm not saying that this 
is a bad piece of legislation. But what I'm saying is, for crying out 
loud, when people want to know where the jobs are, why are we debating 
the Monkey Safety Act? I don't get it. But you get down into March now. 
And so again, hundreds of thousands of people are out of work. And you 
would say, surely, we're going to talk about a jobs piece of 
legislation in the House of Representatives. But when we get into 
March, the most important thing that they could come up with was the 
Shark Conservation Act. And, again, I like sharks. I don't like to swim 
with sharks, but sharks are nice to watch on television. But, again, 
where are the jobs, and where's the legislation?
  And then we get out to where this chart ends at the end of March. I'm 
working on a new one that'll take us to where we are today. But you get 
out and, again, bad jobs report, tens of thousands more people have 
lost their jobs. And the most important thing that the majority leader 
could put on the floor was supporting pi.
  Mr. WALDEN. Supporting pie?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Supporting Pi Day.
  Mr. WALDEN. Apple pie or cherry?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. No, it's not P-I-E, which as you can tell from my 
girth,

[[Page 29278]]

I enjoy pie. This is pi, the math formula, 3.14 or whatever it is. And 
we needed to recognize the importance of the number 3.14, rather than 
dealing with the people that are out of work in this country. So then, 
you know, to be fair to the majority, they will say, well, wait a 
minute. That's not all we did. We also passed the stimulus bill. And 
the stimulus bill, just south of $800 billion, and it was advertised as 
creating 3 million new jobs across country. It's now been in place for 
about 9, 10 months, and my constituents, at least, are continuing to 
ask, where are the jobs?
  And I think the gentleman has correctly pointed out that not only 
have the jobs not materialized, because they have not gone to job-
creating activities; instead, and on top of that, they continue to 
issue press releases taking credit for jobs saved or created. I can 
just tell the gentleman, in my district, and here's under the heading 
of ``press releases I would never send out,'' I represent the 14th 
District of Ohio. The White House sent out a press release saying that 
they had spent $100 million in the 14th District of Ohio of stimulus 
money to create or save jobs. And I guess I'd ask the gentleman, you 
know, so that sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. It's 
borrowed money, as the gentleman said. But then in the next sentence 
they say how many jobs they created and/or saved. Does the gentleman 
care to guess what we got for $100 million in my Congressional 
district?
  Mr. WALDEN. You could write a million-dollar check and get 100. I 
mean we could make 100 millionaires out of that. So maybe 1,000?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm sorry. It was 126. And so, again, with a straight 
face----
  Mr. WALDEN. So we could have written a check and made nearly a 
hundred millionaires.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. No. What we could have done is everybody could have 
gotten maybe $800,000. But, no, the problem is as I go about the 
district, nobody knows where those jobs are. And I think, you know, the 
gentleman's talked about not only the difficulty of false claims of 
jobs, but jobs that have gone to places that don't exist. In Ohio--the 
gentleman's talked about Oregon--in Ohio, there was $7,960, not 
billions, but still a lot of money, if you're paying taxes, for a 
basketball system replacement in Ohio. And they claim that as a result 
of that, they created three jobs. Now that's a little bit better than 
the hundred million, because that's only a couple $3,000 a job. The 
problem, and basically, it was a grant to repair a basketball court in 
a park in Cincinnati, Ohio. But it was identified as Ohio's 0 district. 
Now, we have 18 districts.
  Mr. WALDEN. We have one of those in Oregon. Actually ours was double 
00.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, we have Ohio 0. And I'm sure that next fall in 
2010 the Republican and the Democrat running in Ohio 0 are going to 
have a very tough race because nobody's going to be able to figure out 
where it is, because it----
  Mr. WALDEN. No, they can go to recovery.gov. By then they'll know the 
district. And it's going to be well-jobbed.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. So we clearly have some difficulties. I know the 
gentleman, if the gentleman's talked about this, I apologize. But down 
in Texas, this fellow who runs a public housing authority got $26,000. 
But if you go to the Web site, it says that they reported creating 450 
jobs, which is pretty----
  Mr. WALDEN. What?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. 450 jobs for $26,000, which is pretty good. I mean, 
that's about $500 a job. The problem is when they contacted this 
fellow, whose name is Bob Bray, he said, Boy that's great. You did a 
great job with that 26 grand, creating 450 jobs. He says, oh, no, no, 
no, no, no. He told the government that he had created six jobs, 
basically five roofers and a fellow to inspect it. But when he was 
asked to do some reporting, they said, well, that's not enough jobs. 
And so the 450 doesn't represent jobs, it represents the hours that 
these six people worked to replace the roof. So we really didn't get a 
whole lot for that $26,000.
  Mr. WALDEN. And even if it's six jobs, how long did those last?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, for 450 hours. It was for 450 hours, all six of 
them. You know, it's a couple weeks work is what you're talking about.
  Mr. WALDEN. So it's not like a permanent sustainable job that'll get 
us into a recovery that goes forward. I mean it replaced a roof, and 
roofs have to be replaced.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm sure with the rainy season coming, I'm sure 
they're all nice and dry down there in Texas. But the fact of the 
matter is they put a new roof on, and now those people, I would assume, 
are unemployed or fixing roofs somewhere else. So clearly, this is a 
problem.
  Mr. WALDEN. Now, you know, the University of Massachusetts got a 
grant--you're aware of this one--for $95,000 to study pollen samples 
from the Viking era in Iceland. Now, I'm not making this up. It's 
there. You can find it. $95,000, the University of Massachusetts 
studied pollen samples from the Viking era. You want to study pollen 
from the Viking era, an old sample of the Viking era? Just have Brett 
Favre sneeze. You know, that's an old Viking. We can do that. Save the 
$95,000. Maybe this will make good, like 1:30 in the morning, Discovery 
or Science Channel reporting, you know. We investigated old Viking 
pollen from Iceland. And we created jobs--95,000 of your tax dollars. 
We've been joined, Mr. LaTourette, if I could, by Mr. Scalise here from 
Louisiana. We're glad to have you join us today and share your comments 
to our colleagues, and we may even go back and forth here with our 
colleague from Ohio.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, I want to thank my friends that are talking about 
this important subject because, you know, when I go home, people want 
to know the same things that you've been talking about. They want to 
know where are the jobs. They surely don't want the government getting 
involved in all of these areas of our lives that the government doesn't 
belong. And even more importantly, they don't want the government going 
off on these wild spending sprees, spending money that we don't have. 
And so they look at the record of this administration since President 
Obama came in in January, and they recognize that right after President 
Obama came in, he had this great idea that he was going to have this 
stimulus bill. And he said, we're going to make sure that unemployment 
doesn't go over 8 percent.
  Mr. WALDEN. That would be this chart here.
  Mr. SCALISE. And the chart that you show that shows the lofty goals, 
the lofty promises. And in fact, those of us who actually want to fix 
the real problems, want to solve the problems in our country, we met 
with the President. We said, Mr. President, we've got some ideas on how 
to create jobs, because we agree, our economy should be focusing on 
creating jobs. And we actually laid out a recovery plan that the 
Congressional Budget Office scored that would create way more jobs than 
they projected to score and a whole lot less money than they were 
projecting to spend.

                              {time}  1645

  Of course the President discarded our ideas. He went around the 
country telling people that we were just the party of ``no,'' failed to 
mention that we actually had a solid plan that is still as solid today. 
So he just put his blinders on and said, We don't want Republicans. We 
just want to go on a wild spending spree. Unfortunately, the President 
got his way.
  And Speaker Pelosi rammed the bill through the House, Harry Reid 
rammed the bill through the Senate, and they spent $787 billion of our 
children and grandchildren's money--money that we don't have--claiming 
we need to do this because this was going to stop unemployment from 
reaching 8 percent and it was going to create 3 million jobs.
  And then he stood here, right behind you, here on this House floor, 
right at that podium I'm looking at right there. President Obama said, 
We're going to track every dime, and Joe Biden, Vice President Joe 
Biden is going to be in

[[Page 29279]]

charge of tracking every dime because nobody messes with Joe. That is 
what the President said. Nobody messes with Joe.
  Mr. WALDEN. Nobody messes with Joe.
  Mr. SCALISE. And so of course, we decide to take President Obama up 
on his claims, and as Americans for months and months later, after they 
then came with a budget that doubled the national debt in 5 years, and 
then they turned around with another bill called the cap-and-trade 
energy tax, a national tax on energy.
  Then they came back with this government takeover of health care that 
they're still pursuing. All of this, running jobs out of our country at 
a time when Americans want us to be creating jobs.
  And so now that unemployment has exceeded 10 percent, people are not 
only asking where are the jobs, they're saying, What did you do with 
all of that money that you spent.
  And so we started digging in deeper, and what we found out is, as you 
were talking about, we found out in Louisiana, there were more jobs 
created in Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, according to the 
White House, by the stimulus bill than were created in my First 
Congressional District that I represent.
  Mr. WALDEN. So what's the point?
  Mr. SCALISE. So if you lived in the Eighth Congressional District and 
you're hearing all of these jobs that were created with taxpayer money 
that we don't have, that was borrowed from our children and 
grandchildren, you might be going, Well, I want to see what those jobs 
were. Of course people in Louisiana know, there is no Eighth 
Congressional District because we have seven congressional districts. 
So we dug deeper and we found out there were 15 different congressional 
districts in Louisiana that they were claiming they created jobs in 
using stimulus money.
  Mr. WALDEN. So you think something got by Joe?
  Mr. SCALISE. I'm not really sure.
  And we did a little digging, and in fact, our local newspaper did 
some digging as well. They called the White House. First of all, they 
said, Okay, White House, you're claiming that you have got all of this 
transparency. Joe Biden is hunting out for every dime that's out there; 
how is it that you can have jobs being shown that you're creating in 
districts that don't exist? And the first thing the White House said 
is, We're not certifying the accuracy of the information.
  So first, in January, they were going to be the most transparent 
administration ever. Now, 10 months later, billions and billions of 
dollars of borrowed money is going out the door. Nobody knows what it 
was spent on. They claimed to have created jobs in districts that don't 
exist, and the best they can say is, We're not certifying the accuracy 
of the information.
  Mr. WALDEN. But I thought nobody gets past Joe?
  Mr. SCALISE. We're going to get to that because I think we've got 
some enlightenment we're going to shine on it.
  So then they actually followed up, and they asked the White House, 
Well, how is it if you're not certifying the accuracy, how is it, 
though, that somebody can show a district that doesn't exist on your 
Web site as creating jobs? And the White House spokesperson's answer 
was, Who knows, man; who really knows. That is his direct quote. That 
is the best the White House could come up with as the American people 
are saying, Where are the jobs and what are you all doing with all of 
this money? And their answer is, Who knows, man; who really knows.
  So we go back to President Obama. Right here in February, February 
24, on the House floor his quote, Because nobody messes with Joe. And 
then here we've got a picture of Vice President Joe Biden with these 
two folks that crashed the White House State dinner just a week or so 
ago, and you wonder why nobody is manning the store and nobody's taking 
any accountability now. These are the people that are manning the 
store, and the American people are saying enough is enough; this is not 
a joke because the joke is on us. And it's money that you're borrowing 
from China and our children and our grandchildren, and we're tired of 
it. We actually want to create jobs. That's why we're going to continue 
to try to create jobs. But this shows you just what's really going on 
with the taxpayers' money.
  Mr. WALDEN. And I will yield to my friend from Ohio, but before I do 
that, maybe this one didn't get past Joe. Maybe he approved it, I don't 
here.
  But it says here that the Sacramento Bee reported $25,000 of stimulus 
money, to provide five free concerts in the Sacramento area. I like 
concerts. I have gone to a concert. I have an iPhone. I've got 
headphones. I have my iPhone here. It would be cheaper to lend my 
iPhone probably than the $25,000.
  But here's one of the programs. It is the kitchen review. Now, you 
gentlemen I know are students of philharmonic and its programming. The 
kitchen review where audiences can imagine, ``the life of a pot, a lid, 
a broom, and a dishrag.'' Twenty-five thousand dollars so that you can 
imagine--this reminds me of the Johnny Carson skit, you know, Carnac, 
the Magnificent. What do a pot, a lid, a broom, and a dishrag have in 
common? This is insane.
  Now, the executive director did say the money will give 10 of his 
musicians a good long week of work. Now, I don't know about you guys, 
but when I hear of jobs--I was a small business owner for 22 years. I 
created jobs, I maintained jobs, small company. I know what it's like 
to sign the payroll check. If I created a job, I expected it to last 
more than one week. Most of us I think see these numbers and think, Oh, 
they created a million new jobs or whatever they're claiming, 640,000 
jobs. And then we find it was a roofing project that lasted 2 weeks. It 
was the life of a pot, a lid, a broom, and a dishrag concert in 
Sacramento for free. They gave a long week of work.
  Now, that is not going to bring about economic recovery. I yield to 
the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think the message is--and the gentleman from 
Louisiana I think laid it out very well--is we don't claim to have all 
of the best ideas on how to do this. I think that in the House we 
represent about 47 percent of the American people. And as you move 
forward with sort of--it's like going to a bad movie, Stimulus 2 or 
Stimulus 3, about to rear their ugly heads around here. We would just 
like to have the ideas that we have--the gentleman's a former business 
owner, too--to say, Hey, I have an idea how to create a job. And I 
think if they were more receptive to that, you wouldn't have to report 
phony stuff, and people wouldn't be asking where the jobs are because 
the gentleman mentioned the health care debate.
  One way to make sure that health care is less of a problem in this 
country is to have people working with health care, with retirement 
security. One way to solve the problem with the foreclosure crisis in 
this country is to have people working so they can pay their mortgages 
and their insurance and raise their families.
  But just two quick examples. I don't understand why they're bragging 
about this stuff. The government claims to have spent $1,047 to buy a 
riding mower from the Toro Company to cut the grass at the Fayetteville 
National Cemetery. I'm all for cutting the grass at the Fayetteville 
National Cemetery, but the Web site claims that the purchase of that 
single lawnmower helped save or create 50 jobs.
  Mr. WALDEN. A single lawnmower. Well, maybe it's a push mower. A big 
push mower.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. We've got a lot of shift work going on there.
  Mr. WALDEN. For 49 people pushing and one steering. How many people 
does it take to push a lawnmower?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. It was a riding lawnmower.
  So anyway, and then to Connecticut. I think again what our 
constituents ask us to do is what the next story does. And that is, the 
Police Department up in Plymouth, Connecticut, received a grant, and 
they used it to buy new computers. And again, law enforcement needs the 
best tools to catch

[[Page 29280]]

the bad guys, but the administration is saying that the purchase of 
these computers created 108 jobs. There's a couple of problems with 
that. There are only 22 people who work at the police department, and 
when they called the mayor--they called the mayor up there in Plymouth. 
They said, Hey, how come you guys are reporting 108 jobs with some 
computers. He said, I can't tell you. His name is Vincent Festa. He 
says that--and this is what our constituents want us to do--he said 
that the town has resorted to counting paperclips to save money but 
that it had no plans to lay off any police officers even without the 
stimulus. He couldn't explain the police report, and the town's police 
chief--unlike the mayor--didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.
  So, again, we need to be included as we find out not only how can we 
help assist the economy recover, creating jobs, but we need to do what 
the mayor, Mayor Festa, is doing in Plymouth, Connecticut, counting the 
paperclips.
  Mr. WALDEN. And maybe we need to ask Lesko where the free government 
money went. He seems to know. He's on television all the time. Ask 
Lesko, where's the money, free government money?
  How about this one: West Virginia requested $387,350 from the so-
called stimulus to hire two State coordinators and an assistant to 
encourage private land owners to grow ginseng and shiitake mushrooms on 
their private forest lands. Now, I have nothing against ginseng or 
shiitake mushrooms, for that matter, or farmers. With three staff and 
$387,000 in Federal money they hope to contact 160 landowners. That 
works out to $2,377 per contact to reach out to 160 farmers, forest 
land owners, to say, Hey, you guys want to grow some ginseng and 
shiitake mushrooms out there under the trees?
  This is your Federal tax money, $387,350 for West Virginia. I thought 
with all of the paving that goes on there--well, we won't go there.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Maybe they don't have phones in West Virginia.
  Mr. WALDEN. I mean, come on--$387,000.
  I loved this one, too, $4 million for a new bike path trail in 
Massachusetts so people can get to the North Hampton Taco Bell. Do you 
think I'm making this stuff up? So there's a new slogan that Taco Bell 
has come out with: ``Bike to the border.'' The problem is, we all know 
with Massachusetts, before it's built, you know, they're going to make 
it a crime to eat a burrito and ride a bike at the same time. You can't 
eat a burrito and ride a bike at the same time. No taco chips, no 
salsa, nothing on that bike. And forget the cheese if it's not from a 
free-range dairy cow. I mean, this is $4 million for a bike path to the 
Taco Bell.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Both gentlemen have talked a little bit about some of 
the other stuff that's been going on. At the same time the economy 
continues to tank and people continue to lose their jobs, they continue 
to pile on. This health care discussion that we had a little while ago 
in the House, one provision in that bill says that at Taco Bell, at 
every vending machine, in every location you're going to have to have a 
sign next to it that says what the thing is not only made of but 
whether it's good for you or not.
  I'm not a healthy eater, you can tell.
  Mr. WALDEN. Actually, you are healthy eater.
  Mr. SCALISE. Robust.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think I have a healthy appetite. I don't know if 
I'm a healthy eater.
  It's going to cost a lot of money, obviously for not only the 
consumer--because these signs are not going to come free--but also the 
people who are going to make all of this stuff. Does anybody think this 
compliance cost won't be added on? And how do you deal with compliance 
costs? You either raise prices or you let people go.
  But anybody that thinks when they go to a vending machine and sees a 
Twinky, a Twinky filled with that delicious cream, anybody who thinks 
that that is good for you probably shouldn't be out and about without 
adult supervision during the day.
  Mr. WALDEN. Or that thinks you're going to stand there at the vending 
machine with the lineup of Twinkies and you're going to read the 
ingredients list and the calorie list, and that's going to dissuade you 
from buying that Twinky that you have found the vending machine to get.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. And then on top of that, we had the cap-and-trade 
bill a little earlier. Again, everybody wants clean air--I come from 
Lake Erie--clean water and everything else. But the fact of the matter 
is there was a huge national carbon tax. And again, when you have an 
economy that is ailing and people are losing their jobs, imposing more 
taxes on them, the places they work is not the answer.
  So you sort of have this double whammy going on here. You have no 
help for the people who have lost their jobs, and by the same token, 
you have policies to create more job displacement.
  Mr. WALDEN. This government, this Federal Government, Democrats have 
run the House for the last 3 years. The House controls the purse 
strings. The Congress does. The President can put forward a budget and 
they end up signing the bills into law, but it's the Congress that 
controls the purse strings.
  Under this administration, the Federal Government will run deficits 
in excess of $700 billion every single year for the next 10 years. Now, 
the highest deficit, the highest 1-year deficit prior to this 
administration was $459 billion, which was high, but it was coming 
down. Now it's $700 billion and higher for the next decade at best.
  Now, that racks up to what? What do they figure? A $20, a $17, $20 
trillion debt at the end of 10 years. So let's figure out how you pay 
that off. Let's say it's $20 trillion by the time they're done.

                              {time}  1700

  Well, how about this? The Congress runs a trillion-dollar surplus for 
20 years and pays down the debt. How many in this Chamber believe this 
Congress, or any Congress for that matter, is going to run a trillion-
dollar surplus and apply it to paying down debt? I see no hands going 
up.
  So then you're going to drive inflation. You're going to inflate your 
way out of debt. And that's the fear I have, having been in small 
business, knowing a lot of small business people. That means higher 
interest rates, higher inflation, a return to Carternomics. You 
remember when Jimmy Carter left office we had double-digit inflation, 
double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, and the economy 
went in the tank. That's what portends from this enormous deficit.
  I'd yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman from Oregon.
  This is what we talk to our small business owners about. When I go 
back home, small business owners that I talk to aren't saying that they 
want the government taking over health care. What they're saying is 
these policies, these policies are what are causing them to hold back 
or to look at divesting and just getting out. But there's so much money 
on the sidelines because of the actions being taken by President Obama 
and the liberals that are running Congress that are literally stifling 
the ability for businesses to create jobs. The American people know 
that because the American people are looking at these policies. And 
they've got good common sense. And they're saying, If you've got tough 
economic times, the first thing you should be doing is figuring out how 
to help businesses create more jobs.
  And so then they look at this health care bill. Here's a bill that, 
first of all, spends over a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars in new 
Federal spending. But then how do they get that money? Well, they go 
and they cut Medicare to the tune of about $500 billion, and our senior 
citizens know how bad that would be. But then they also turn around and 
they add over $700 billion in new taxes on the backs primarily of small 
businesses. And so, on one hand, the President's holding a job summit, 
but, on the other hand, he's got a bill that would add $700 billion on 
the backs of small businesses with the government takeover of health 
care. Then,

[[Page 29281]]

on a third hand, he's got this cap-and-trade energy tax, which 
literally is a tax on any company in this Nation that manufactures 
goods.
  Mr. WALDEN. Which will drive jobs out of this country.
  Mr. SCALISE. Absolutely. In fact, the National Association of 
Manufacturers said the cap-and-trade energy tax would run at least 3 
million more jobs out of this country. Now, of course, this is a 
President who, since the stimulus bill, he said it was going to create 
3 million jobs. Our economy has lost about another 3 million jobs since 
his stimulus bill, but then his policies would run millions more jobs 
out of this country.
  Of course, the President says we need to do all of this because we've 
got to save the planet. Well, just earlier this week they finally have 
exposed some of the corruption involved in this whole argument behind 
cap-and-trade.
  Mr. WALDEN. You're talking about the emails and the conspiracy.
  Mr. SCALISE. I'm talking about Climategate. Climategate just hit. 
This is something that's been going on internationally for over for 10 
years. It just got uncovered because some of these emails came to 
light. Of course, to pass the cap-and-trade energy tax, they said man 
is destroying the Earth and we've got to limit carbon emissions. Of 
course, the two biggest emitters in the next 10 years are going to be 
China and India, and China and India have already said they're not 
going to comply. So you're not only running millions of jobs out of 
this country, you'd be running them to countries that actually emit 
more carbon to do the same thing. So it actually is counterproductive. 
But then let's look at the science behind what they're saying they need 
to do.
  You've got Al Gore out there who's been running around for years 
now--he's won Nobel Peace Prizes and Academy Awards--saying the 
scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops, Now the debate is 
over. This is former Vice President Al Gore. The debate is over. 
There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about global 
warming. And what he's saying is all of these charts and graphs he's 
been talking about for years and in his movie ``An Inconvenient 
Truth,'' a very famous chart he used to show talking about global 
warming was called ``the hockey stick chart.'' That's this chart right 
here. It's showing over thousands of years they've documented that our 
Earth is going through cooling periods, our Earth is going through 
warming periods. We had more warm temperatures than we have today 
thousands of years ago when there was no combustion engine, there were 
no fossil fuels being burned. Mother Nature just has a way of going 
through different cycles on her own.
  And so what they were showing was over hundreds of years you had this 
normal trajectory down, and all of a sudden there's this increase in 
the Earth's temperature that they showed. The problem is, we just 
exposed through Climategate, they got to this huge increase that Vice 
President Al Gore said we need to change our entire national economy 
over by corrupting the data.
  These are some of the things that came out in the email: I have just 
completed Mike's nature trick to hide the decline. That was Phil Jones, 
who's one of the lead scientists for a group called the University of 
Anglia in England. This is a group that writes all of the documents 
that our scientists in America have used to say we need a cap-and-trade 
energy tax. They phonied up the numbers. They corrupted the data. And 
here's the email.
  And there are many, many more emails, talking about how they use 
tricks and that they hide the declines that don't prove their argument. 
In fact, there are many scientists who have said we're in the seventh 
year of a cooling period, but they won't show any of that data because 
they literally have hid the data, and now we've exposed it through 
Climategate and these emails.
  So you've got Vice President Al Gore still running around out there 
saying we need to have this cap-and-trade national energy tax. The 
President's going to be going to Copenhagen in about a week and a half, 
and I guess, just like he went there to try get the Chicago Olympics, a 
lot of us are hoping he comes back empty-handed in Copenhagen, because 
what he wants to do is sign an agreement that would literally lead to 
the destruction of millions of jobs in America based on corrupt 
science.
  Mr. WALDEN. And we know that his stimulus plan that passed by the 
Democrats hasn't worked. Now they're coming back with stimulus II, we 
read, that may be $300 or $400 million more of borrowing and spending. 
And you're creating bike paths to Taco Bells and checking on Viking 
pollen air in Iceland. This is crazy.
  Now, the scientist you referenced there, Jones, I believe that he has 
been the recipient of tens of millions of dollars for his research of 
American taxpayer research money from the Department of Energy.
  Mr. SCALISE. In fact, we're now asking for an investigation to be 
conducted into not only----
  Mr. WALDEN. Republicans are.
  Mr. SCALISE. By the way, he just stepped down through the 
embarrassment of the exposing of this scandal. So for anybody to say, 
Oh, this isn't anything real, this is all being trumped up, this guy 
just stepped on down out of embarrassment over this scandal.
  But we're now calling for an investigation to look into the millions 
of dollars of Federal grant money, U.S. taxpayer dollars, that have 
been either obtained through corruption or, when they got the Federal 
tax dollars, they went and conducted studies that they manipulated the 
data, corrupting the data, again, using that taxpayer money, and we 
want our money back and we want criminal charges to be filed against 
these people that actually went out and corrupted data to try to pass a 
national energy tax in this country that will run millions of jobs. And 
you wonder why small businesses feel like they're walking around this 
country with a bull's-eye on their back.
  Mr. WALDEN. Beyond that, Republicans have asked for an investigation 
of this. It's pretty silent on the Democrat side of the aisle. This is 
a clear example where there has been a conspiracy to avoid the Freedom 
of Information Act, to discourage dissenting viewpoints from being 
included. All you have to do is go through the 3,000 emails. And as the 
ranking Republican on the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, our 
Republican staff is doing that as we speak, and it's phenomenal what 
they're finding in terms of this sort of concerted, conspiratorial 
effort. And I don't use those terms lightly.
  It appears to be a real conspiracy when you've got a lead scientist 
emailing out to other scientists in the United States saying, Destroy 
this data, delete this email, get rid of this, and then you discover 
that the actual temperature data that were gathered from the sites has 
been destroyed. They took those data and then they ran them through 
their own model of what they think it should look like and then they 
destroyed the original data, which means nobody else can go back and 
use those original data to test and replicate whatever it is they 
model.
  And then there are these emails about let's try and discourage people 
from getting published in this magazine because we don't think they're 
with us on this, or whatever. I mean, the American people are going to 
see transparency. They don't want to--I don't know of too many Members 
in here who sent out pamphlets in their campaigns that said, Send me to 
Congress and I'll raise the cost to turn on your light switch, yet 
that's what they voted for with that cap-and-trade. They voted for 3 
million jobs to go overseas.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, they did.
  I want to go back just to the jobs business for a minute, because 
there's a couple of things you can do as a government. The government 
doesn't create jobs. That's one of the myths around here. It's people 
who have the entrepreneurial spirit. It's corporations that make 
investments in not only equipment but product and people.
  But going back to the health care thing and Mr. Scalise's observation 
about more jobs leaving, I would think

[[Page 29282]]

that the first thing would be to be like a physician; do no harm. Let's 
keep what we've got and then we can build on it. Then we go can grow 
jobs. But if you look again at the health care bill, how that's 
financed--and a lot of my constituents don't understand that everybody 
recognizes in a country as great as the United States we shouldn't have 
people who die because they don't have quality health care. They should 
have the ability to have affordable, accessible health care.
  But no matter what that number is--some people say it's 47 million. 
The President came here and said it's 30 million. Whatever the number 
is, even at their number of 47, you're talking about 15 percent of the 
people in the country. And a lot of people are asking the question: How 
come we've got to screw up everybody else to take care of this problem 
that's dealing with maybe 15 percent of the people?
  And specifically to the jobs issue, the Senate bill that they're now 
debating across the Capitol has a number of taxes in it. First, both 
bills cut half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. And how you're going 
to make the country healthier by taking away half a trillion dollars 
from people on Medicare I have yet to have explained to me adequately. 
But on the other side of the Capitol they're debating all these new 
taxes, and one is specifically on companies that manufacture 
wheelchairs.
  Now, I have, not in my district but on the other side of Cleveland, 
in Lorain, Ohio, the world's leading wheelchair manufacturer. And in 
talking to the folks that run that company, they're saying, You know 
what? If this tax comes about--and it's hard to know why you have to 
tax wheelchairs to take care of somebody who doesn't have health 
insurance--if this tax comes about, it will completely eviscerate any 
profit margin that we have, and I'm going to take thousands of jobs and 
they're going to have to be terminated and I will go to China. I will 
go to China and employ thousands of Chinese to make wheelchairs and 
have them imported into the United States.
  Now, some of our friends on the other side say, Well, that's not 
patriotic. What are you doing? You're thumbing your nose at the United 
States of America. Business is business and jobs are jobs. So to 
disincentivize--not only to do no harm, but to harm--doesn't make sense 
to folks back where I'm from.
  Mr. WALDEN. No, it doesn't. I think that's the issue. And we had an 
alternative that created twice the jobs at half the cost in America. 
Twice the jobs at half the cost. Clearly, we want to get people back to 
work. There are alternative ways to do that that Republicans have put 
forward on health care reform. We haven't even talked about tort reform 
that would save $68 billion. Get rid of the junk lawsuits and get 
access to affordable health care out there.
  There are ways--and as a former small business owner, I can tell 
you--to create jobs in the market out there. Bike paths to Taco Bells 
is not a sustainable economic recovery model. $95,000 for research on 
Icelandic Viking-era pollen seems a little outrageous at a time when 
we're running record reported deficits.
  I know we're about to run out of time here. I'd go back to my 
colleague from Louisiana if he has got any final comments because, you 
know what? All of this has gotten past Joe.
  Mr. SCALISE. And I guess that's a good place to finish, kind of where 
we started. The American people are saying, Who's manning the store? 
And they're also saying, Where are the jobs? And they're looking at 
these policies and they're looking at this cap-and-trade energy tax, 
they're looking at this government takeover of health care with the 
$700 billion in new taxes. They look at what happened today here on the 
House floor. Speaker Pelosi's top priority was a bill that actually 
puts into law a permanent 45 percent tax on death. A tax on death. And 
so that's their answer.
  Their ideas are actually leading to increased unemployment, running 
millions of more jobs out of this country, and the best that they can 
say is, Who knows? There's no accountability. But, don't worry. The 
President is still saying, There's old Joe. He's manning the store, 
because nobody messes with Joe. They think that this may be some kind 
of joke, but the joke is on the American people. And the American 
people are tired of it.
  Mr. WALDEN. We yield back the balance of our time.

                          ____________________