[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8628-8632]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         REBUILDING THE ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Maffei). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Perriello) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Mr. Speaker, Americans are sick of it. They are sick 
and tired of hearing excuses and finger-pointing. They are sick and 
tired of other people not having to play by basic rules of decency and 
fairness. They are sick of it, and they should be. They want Wall 
Street to play by the rules. They want Washington to play by the rules.
  One of the most important moves we can make right now is for the 
Senate to see through to completion their efforts to clean up the 
financial system so that those who work hard and play by the rules, 
save up a little, put it into their home values, put it into their 
401(k), know that other people aren't able to gamble away their 
retirement security and their future. Basic rules of decency and 
fairness.
  We need those similar rules in Washington. That is why many of us 
have fought hard to make sure that we reinstate PAYGO legislation that 
the other side of the aisle let die a few years ago that simply says, 
anything you do, you've got to pay for it. These are the rules of 
everyday Americans back home on Main Street, and it is time for those 
Main Street values to apply to Washington and to Wall Street.
  But Americans are also sick and tired of those who put slogans ahead 
of solutions. They want us to solve problems, and none is greater than 
that of the jobs crisis we face in this country.
  On Wall Street, and maybe with our friends in the Senate, there is a 
sense that this recession has passed and the urgency is gone. But every 
weekend we go home and we talk to business owners who can't get credit. 
We talk to people who have been looking for job after job after job 
just so that they have the dignity of knowing that they can support 
their family; hardworking people who are willing to go back and get 
that additional degree or certificate but need to know that there is 
going to be a job on the other side. What they ask us to do is to come 
here, play by rules of decency and fairness, and focus on solving 
problems.
  We have an opportunity here before Memorial Day to make the most of 
the summer construction season, to make this an opportunity to rebuild 
America, but specifically, to rebuild America's competitive advantage 
in the world.
  This crisis didn't begin a couple of years ago. It began a couple of 
decades ago, as we saw more and more borrowing from the financial 
institutions, overleveraging, and the consumer market with consumer 
credit to cover for falling wage rates, and in the government sector. 
That cannot go on forever. But at its core was an issue of whether we 
can continue to compete in the world with a living wage and middle 
class incomes and jobs.
  The answer is to reward innovation and stop bailing out failure. This 
solution that both parties have had at times of bailing out failure 
will not succeed. We must begin again to reward innovation, research 
and development, and creativity so that we can be building the jobs of 
the future here in the United States.
  Many of us have worked hard day and night here to focus on pragmatic 
solutions, like the HOME STAR program that will help thousands, 
hundreds of thousands of people renovate their homes and their offices. 
It will help reduce pressure on an electric grid that is way out of 
date, and it helps put people back to work in construction and in 
manufacturing, the insulation, the double-paned glass, the window films 
that are manufactured right here in the United States.
  But we also know that the key of this new job creation, this new 
competitiveness revolution that we must have in this country, is an 
understanding that two out of every three new jobs created in this 
country are created by small business. Small business is the engine of 
job growth even as big business is too often the engine of our 
politics.
  We must make sure that we are getting those Main Street values and 
those Main Street businesses back into the equation that have too often 
been choked out, rolled out by big business for photo ops and by 
politicians for photo ops, but forgotten when it gets down to policy.
  Well, we have been hard at work on programs to get direct lending to 
small business, get support to our community banks that still tend to 
support those small businesses, the homegrown businesses that stay in 
our community, where the CEO still knows the name of every worker, the 
name of their spouse and their kids, wants to give them a decent wage 
and help them be able to support their family. These are concrete 
solutions that make sense back on Main Street instead of the kind of 
bomb-throwing that goes on here.
  And one of the great freshmen in our class who is also focused on the 
solutions-oriented approach, this pragmatic approach, what I would call 
a postpartisan approach that doesn't focus on how we can bring everyone 
together by watering things down but how we can leave our partisan 
divisions behind by getting better ideas that help create that 
competitiveness revolution, Jared Polis, who has been successful in the 
private sector, in the nonprofit sector, as well as the government, to 
talk some about these solutions-oriented approaches that we have.
  Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.
  Like many Members of Congress, I listen to, I visit the small 
businesses in my community in Colorado. Small businesses are really the 
backbone of our country. When I visited one of our small towns like 
Lyons, Colorado, last month, I did what I call a Main Street tour where 
I stop and introduce myself at many of the local businesses. I have a 
small business advisory council.
  I am not alone as a Member of Congress in hearing from the businesses 
in our district that one of the biggest impediments to their growth and 
allowing them to hire people is the lack of credit that they have from 
their banks. Their traditional borrowing that they have been able to do 
to fund their activities, whether it is against accounts receivable or 
future revenue flows, they find themselves cut off and unable to access 
those credit lines because of the tightening of credit.
  There is a swing in the pendulum. Credit was, in all honesty, too 
loose 3 years or 4 years ago. It has now swung to the other extreme, as 
it tends to do, and has become too tight. That has become an impediment 
to job growth. There are businesses in my district that, if they had 
access to credit, they would be able to grow and expand and hire more 
people.
  Now, when you talk to the banks, the banks in my district and 
everywhere, they say there is a number of reasons for this. One is 
increasing capital requirements that the Federal Government is imposing 
to reduce the rate of bank failures, a very legitimate policy interest. 
Others include other regulatory reasons that the banks feel that they 
are having to reduce the amount of money they are effectively able to 
lend out. But it is something that we need to solve, Mr. Speaker, 
because it will create jobs for Americans, small and midsize businesses 
across our country.
  There are a number of solutions that people are talking about in this 
body. It includes the Federal credit facility to small businesses 
through the banks, includes some actions on the regulatory front, and 
it includes an idea, a bipartisan idea that I have introduced, H.R. 
4877, which would provide an incentive for private money to flow into 
the equity line of these community banks to get them lending again.

[[Page 8629]]

  Now, a bank, like any business, has many kinds of capital. So when 
you deposit your money with a bank, they can certainly loan against 
that money, but it is not as leverageable as equity capital. If a bank 
actually sells its shares, they get money in that they can lend against 
with much higher leverage.
  So what we can do is provide an incentive for people to invest in 
community banks; for community banks to go back out to their 
communities, to their boards, to say, You know what? We need to sell 
some more shares of our community bank to raise some more capital. And 
that capital can be deployed in a very powerful way in lending to our 
small businesses.
  So for any investment in the community bank under H.R. 4877 during an 
18-month period when we want to incentivize this investment--and much 
of it will occur very quickly, I might add, 1 month, 2 months, 3 
months, and held for 5 years, then the investors would not have a 
capital gains tax. There would be an exemption from capital gains on 
that investment in the community bank.
  What will this do? It will get the attention of the people that we 
want to get the attention of, existing investors at banks, private 
equity funds, and others who could be doing anything with their money. 
They could be sitting on the sideline with their money. They could be 
investing in businesses of any sort. This will get their attention to 
say, Hey, there is a special incentive, because of the public good that 
comes from a robust community banking sector and the lending that will 
help stimulate the demand for a whole host of businesses and help 
businesses grow, to put your money into community banks.

                              {time}  1830

  Many community banks will recapitalize. By the way, this might even 
prevent some bank failures by allowing community banks on the margin to 
recapitalize within the bounds of solvency rather than becoming 
insolvent or having to be bailed out.
  There is, rightfully so, great frustration with what has been seen as 
collusion between the government and big banks; what has been seen as a 
bailout and what is a bailout of bad behavior. Why not incent a private 
investment in these banks before we start talking about using taxpayer 
money for this or that or the other? Let's see what investors out there 
are willing to do when given the chance to invest in our communities, 
invest in our banks, and help them extend credit widely to the small 
businesses.
  This is truly one of the highest leverage areas that small businesses 
have come to me and other Members of Congress and said, If only we can 
get the banks lending again. Well, we can, Mr. Speaker. With H.R. 4877, 
we have the opportunity without the use of taxpayer money to get an 
infusion into our community banks and get them lending to our small and 
medium businesses, commercial property across this country, to help get 
the economy going and create good jobs for Americans.
  I yield back to my friend from Virginia.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you so much for your work in this area. We do 
understand that small business is a lifeline for our communities, a 
huge job creator, huge engine of that, but it's also an area where we 
have not seen the kind of behavior that got us into this mess. Our 
community banks, our credit unions, have often been more solvent 
through these situations. Didn't see the huge upside, but also 
continued the old-fashioned tradition of looking someone in the eye and 
doing their due diligence. In fact, if you look at the people who saw 
the crash coming within the markets, it was actually people who went 
out and did old-fashioned due diligence. Going and looking at where 
these subprime mortgages actually were. Sometimes there's no 
replacement for old-fashioned hard work, due diligence. And we know 
that community banks do this.
  So a program like this tries to get private-sector solutions to this 
problem. Help incent that investment in our community banks. Our 
community banks in turn can invest in our small businesses and our 
small businesses in turn invest in our families--our working families--
and in our communities. This is the sort of thing that can move us 
forward, as has another thing that we worked on in the House, which was 
a 1-year freeze on capital gains taxes for small business. Again, 
something that doesn't say we're giving you free money. It just says we 
are going to encourage this kind of small business innovation. We know 
this tends to lead to job creation. It's a good thing. So these 
pragmatic, private-public partnerships like the Home Star program, like 
Rural Star, where we're helping to make our country safer, more 
efficient, and rebuild manufacturing.
  The gentlemen on the other side were talking about all the post 
offices we've renamed today. And we did some of that. They failed to 
mention that we also had the America COMPETES Act up today, which is 
actually to support research and development and rebuilding some of the 
manufacturing base and investment in efficiency technologies and job 
creation that, too often, they've tried to take down with poison pills 
about child pornography and this sort of thing. And the American people 
look at that and say, You've got to be kidding me. We're in the worst 
job crisis in two generations, and you're up there scoring cheap 
political points when you have an opportunity to do something both 
sides of the aisle know we need to do, which is figure out how to 
reinvent America's competitive advantage. When we can do that, 
particularly with these public-private partnerships, like your efforts 
with the community banks, like the capital gains, these are engines not 
just of short-term job growth, but of rebuilding America's 
competitiveness and getting us back to work.
  With that, I want to yield to one of our newest Members from 
California.
  Ms. CHU. I rise today to urge the quick passage of H.R. 4213, the 
American Jobs, Closing Tax Loopholes and Preventing Outsourcing Act. 
This bill is such a comprehensive approach to improving our economy by 
providing important tax breaks and to spur innovation and create jobs. 
But one reason I'm extremely enthusiastic about it is that it extends 
and expands an extremely successful employment program that is called 
Jobs NOW, which has created over 156,000 jobs, and in my district 
alone, 400 jobs.
  In Palmdale, California, Jobs NOW helped Jody, a single mother of 
two, find a job at a local coffeehouse working as a barista. The 
regular paycheck puts food on the table and is helping her get through 
a rough patch. Her boss is extremely impressed with her work and plans 
to permanently hire her and three other subsidized employees that they 
brought on. It's this kind of success story that makes Jobs NOW such a 
good model for job creation. Without it, the coffeehouse would not have 
been able to grow its business or take on new employees. Jody would not 
have had a chance to learn these new skills and support her family.
  Now I came across this innovative program because it's in my 
district, Los Angeles County. One of the Los Angeles County 
supervisors, Don Knabe, created a program which provided over 11,000 
jobs, all in 1 year, using stimulus funds to create these subsidized 
jobs. How does it work? Eligible participants are placed into 
subsidized jobs in all sectors of the economy, from small business to 
nonprofits to the government sector, and they're matched with jobs that 
complement their employment goals. The employer must provide 
supervision equal to 20 percent of the cost of this job and they must 
ensure that the job will not displace an existing employee or someone 
who is to be promoted.
  What this means is that the county then is paying for 80 percent or 
more of the payroll costs through Recovery Act funds. Some examples of 
these jobs are park rangers, receptionists, teachers' assistants, 
dental assistant trainees, customer service clerks, and child care 
workers. Workers get paid $10 per hour for up to 40 hours per week.
  Jobs NOW allow small businesses to succeed and the employee to 
succeed. I've spoken to countless people in my

[[Page 8630]]

district about this program and I keep on hearing about how this 
program is truly a win-win for businesses and workers. This program 
works because they do both benefit. Workers benefit beyond the paycheck 
by getting hands-on experience in a setting where they can earn wages 
and make sure that they put food on the table. They are also developing 
their skills. Small businesses benefit by getting the help they need to 
grow or expand while temporarily reducing payroll costs. Companies may 
ultimately desire to hire these subsidized workers permanently as the 
economy improves. The jobs generated by the program can help businesses 
expand in these difficult times by reducing their economic risk and the 
need for expensive loans.
  In April of this year, over 7,000 people were enrolled in the program 
in Los Angeles County, and 1,100 employers were improving their 
productivity and putting someone to work with this extra help. These 
are companies like Punch Television Network in Carson, California. 
Punch TV is a fledgling channel that is trying to build a new 
nationwide television network, and they needed quality employees to 
truly expand. They hired six subsidized employees using Jobs NOW and 
they recently moved into a new large production center to handle all 
their new work. They even want to hire these new, highly motivated 
workers permanently. So now, not only do these employees have hands-on 
experience, they are going to have a permanent job.
  But this great program isn't just putting people to work in my area. 
It's employing people all across the Nation in 29 States across the 
Nation. They are using Jobs NOW to keep their residents working, paying 
taxes, and purchasing groceries that's fueling local economies. In 
Tennessee, the State focused on rural Perry County, which was hard hit 
by a plant closure. The unemployment rate had risen to 27.3 percent. 
Tennessee brought local workforce development and human service 
agencies and the business community together and developed a subsidized 
employment program for over 500 individuals. The effort cut local 
unemployment down to 18.6 percent. Because of successes like this, more 
States want to join. And if we pass H.R. 4213, Jobs NOW can expand and 
help thousands more people.
  But we can't delay. Already, States are stopping their subsidized 
jobs programs because the funding will expire at the end of September. 
Companies aren't as interested in taking on new employees and training 
them, just to lose them again in 4 months. In my district, Los Angeles 
County will stop placing participants in new jobs in June, and soon 
many more counties and States will do the same. Yet, the full amount of 
funding has yet to be claimed by the States. The Recovery Act 
authorized $5 billion for Jobs NOW's employment program, but less than 
$1.5 billion has been accessed by the States, and the program really 
actually can still expand across the country. That's why H.R. 4213 is 
so crucial. It not only extends Jobs NOW for another year, it lets the 
unspent funds for this year pay for next year's salaries for workers 
hired in 2010.
  If we don't act now, 60,000 Americans across the Nation will lose 
their jobs when this program ends and endless more will not have the 
opportunity to get the jobs that they need. This bill will keep 
Americans employed and will create thousands of necessary jobs.
  I yield back.
  Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you so much for those remarks and bringing back 
to the kitchen table those individuals that are involved in this.
  With that, I will yield to Mr. Polis of Colorado.
  Mr. POLIS. There are many issues before Congress, both great and 
small--all of tremendous importance. One of the issues that there's an 
outcry among the American people for us to deal with is immigration 
reform. Whether people are conservative or liberal, left or right, 
Republican or Democrat, we agree that what we are doing now does not 
work. We have a large population living, working here illegally. We 
don't have adequate enforcement of our borders, verification of who can 
work.
  Now, within our efforts to solve immigration, to replace our broken 
immigration system with one that works and reflects our basic American 
values of, if you follow the law and learn English, you're welcome 
here, within the comprehensive House immigration reform bill that I'm a 
cosponsor of there's a provision to create jobs for Americans to help 
make immigration work for us rather than immigration be a cost for us.
  Today, there are investors and foreign entrepreneurs who raise 
venture capital, ready to start their companies, who can't get the 
visas to come to this country and start their companies here. And then 
we wonder why these businesses in China and England and India are so 
successful. Well, some of them actually wanted to set up shop in this 
country. The House comprehensive immigration reform bill contains a 
startup visa provision that would allow an entrepreneur, be they a 
French entrepreneur, an Indian entrepreneur, that is backed by an 
investment that has raised several hundred thousand dollars, we would 
allow them to come here and start their company here as long as they 
hire five American citizens. This bill will likely create at least 
50,000 jobs. And that's just a start. Because, you know what? Some of 
those companies hiring five people today could be the next Google, 
could be the next Yahoo of tomorrow, and employ tens of thousands of 
Americans.
  Yes, America has an immigration challenge on a whole host of issues, 
but we also have an immigration opportunity--the opportunity to attract 
the best and brightest from around the world to help make America more 
competitive and provide jobs for America here at home. It's insourcing 
instead of outsourcing. Our current immigration code works against us 
and forces companies that want to hire Americans and be based here to 
instead set up shop overseas. Through comprehensive immigration reform 
we have the opportunity to change that. In the House bill there's a 
startup visa provision. Senator Kerry has introduced that as well in 
the Senate.
  We need to encourage not only financial capital to flow into our 
country, but also human capital to create jobs for American citizens 
here at home. And that's an important lens to look at any piece of 
legislation through. I, for one, am thrilled that the House 
comprehensive immigration reform bill will create tens of thousands of 
jobs for American families. And that's one of the reasons that I'm a 
proud cosponsor.
  I yield back to the gentleman from Virginia.

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. PERRIELLO. Thank you.
  The gentleman talked some about the next Yahoo! or the next Google. I 
just want to talk for a minute about something that's a little more old 
fashioned than that--construction. We actually do still need to build 
things in this country. We need to put down asphalt and concrete. We 
need to build roads and bridges. The infrastructure of the last century 
needs to be rebuilt. But we also need to be thinking in terms of 
leapfrogs in infrastructure. We need to be laying the broadband that is 
the highway system of the future. We need to be looking at a modern 
electric grid because our current one is not only so vulnerable to 
attack, but it's full of inefficiencies. The amount of energy we lose 
between where we produce the energy and where we consume it is 
astronomical. It is incredible how inefficient.
  So here we have businesses that are trying to compete against very 
low-cost countries around the world who are still using an electric 
grid essentially from the 1930s. This is a moment where we need to have 
the boldness to rebuild our competitive advantage by doing some 
building again. And construction should certainly not be a Republican 
or a Democratic issue. We all have construction needs in our districts. 
We have construction companies in our districts. Ninety percent of 
construction companies are small businesses, and we are already into 
the summer building season for many parts of this country. But from 
Memorial

[[Page 8631]]

Day to Thanksgiving, it's going to be an important moment.
  We've lost 1.6 million construction jobs since this recession began. 
We have a 25 percent unemployment rate among skilled construction 
workers, 1.6 million in losses in construction jobs, 25 percent 
unemployment, yet we cannot get bipartisan support for the investments 
in our 21st century infrastructure that could put people back to work 
in construction, so that instead of receiving an unemployment benefit, 
they're receiving a paycheck; and we are getting a more efficient, 
modern infrastructure system. This is common sense. This makes sense 
back on Main Street. It just doesn't make sense in Washington, where we 
score points by preventing the other side from doing something smart 
instead of by solving the problem. We know we need these construction 
jobs. We know it's where some of the biggest losses have been. We know 
it's something that exists in every one of our communities, and we know 
we are well nigh at the beginning of that construction season.
  We passed in December through this House a plus-up of some of the 
infrastructure that's needed. It's desperately needed here in this 
area. Just try to drive from D.C. to Richmond sometime and see whether 
we have an infrastructure worthy of the year 2010, worthy of the kind 
of growth and competitiveness of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Head out 
66 and down 29. We need it on the roads and the bridges; we need it on 
the freight; we need it on the passenger rail, the energy and electric 
grid as well as the broadband technology. These are important leaps, 
and we have made some leaps. We are going to be able to wire every 
public school in central and southern Virginia through some of the 
stimulus grants. That's going to put people to work now, putting that 
in place; but it's also going to be creating businesses of the future 
that people can run out of their homes, out of a small business hub, 
making sure that the children going to through our school system have 
the education to be able to compete in the 21st century.
  Construction. It may not be the most dramatic thing to talk about, 
but it is vital. It's where an enormous amount of the job losses have 
been, and many of us have been trying to get that construction going 
again in time for the summer building season.
  We have bills sitting in the Senate, ready to move as soon as they're 
done with this Wall Street reform. I hope they will pick up the job 
initiatives that we have passed here because they are pragmatic; they 
are powerful; they are effective; and they can put people back to work 
in areas like construction where we have had some of the biggest 
losses. I mentioned the Home Star program where we can put people to 
work immediately, retrofitting and renovating the building stock of 
this country. The payback, 12 months, 18 months before you're 
immediately saving money for decades to come, increasing the home value 
and value of that commercial building stock, putting Americans to work 
manufacturing the insulation, the double-paned glass, the wiring and 
other things that are part of that. It's just common sense. It saves 
the consumer money. It makes the business more efficient. It's being 
manufactured here. It's something that makes us more competitive. It 
protects our environment, and it makes our country safer because we're 
less dependent on foreign oil--and even domestic oil, as we've seen the 
costs of that recently.
  The Home Star program could put 168,000 people to work. Even before 
home construction starts to pick back up again, which will vary 
regionally around the country, we know we can renovate the building 
stock that we have. Concrete, pragmatic ideas, public-private 
partnerships. We have the Rural Star program which is going to help 
rural electric co-ops to forward-fund those sorts of renovations in 
some of our hardest hit rural communities that are much more likely to 
have inefficient housing stock, where people are paying a much higher 
percentage of their very low income sometimes on that electric bill 
because that housing stock is so inefficient. But it's also costing our 
electric co-ops and others because there's so much power on our 
electric grid that we can't even meet that challenge.
  This is a moment where we need to look not just at what got us into 
this mess for the last 2 years but the last two decades. How do we 
rebuild America's competitiveness? And we must do it by joining forces 
across the aisle. We must do it by looking for ideas that are pragmatic 
but bold. The answer can't be to water it down to be so small that it 
has no chance of making a difference. When you go to Main Street in 
this country, they're furious at us, they're furious at Wall Street 
because no one's playing by the same rules they have to play by. We 
have to get that sense of decency and fairness back into play. We need 
to play by those rules. That's why we've put PAYGO back into place. 
That's why we're increasing transparency. But they also want us to 
focus on pragmatic solutions, Home Star, Rural Star, efforts to get 
equity and investment going into our community banks. Why would we put 
all this emphasis into the five or six huge banks that helped get us 
into this mess in the first place? It makes no sense.
  We have to stop bailing out failure and start rewarding innovation, 
research and development. That's how we get out of this. We can still 
out-innovate and, therefore, out-compete any country in the world. But 
we can't do it by looking backwards, and we can't do it by rewarding 
and bailing out failure. We have to do it based on innovation. We have 
concrete, pragmatic things right now that the Senate can move on and, 
in some cases, that we need to move on here. Home Star, Rural Star, 
green energy jobs, getting that capital gains tax cut to our small 
businesses, getting the incentive to invest in our community banks.
  If two out of every three jobs come out of small business, this is an 
area where we can and must put more emphasis, and construction is part 
of that. Here people may not think it's a big deal to go out and have a 
small construction company working a couple of crews. Here maybe too 
many people are focused on the Goldman Sachs of the world. But for 
those construction companies, for those crews, going out and working is 
rebuilding America, and it's putting food on the table and knowing they 
can support their family. And all of us benefit from the efficiencies 
and quality of that infrastructure investment. We have a building 
season right now. This town is way too insulated from the urgency of 
this job crisis back home.
  We, just last week, had the announcement of over 500 jobs lost in the 
town of Martinsville at the Stanley Furniture factory. Tens of 
thousands of furniture and textile jobs have been lost in southern 
Virginia over the last 20 years. This was really one of the last, down 
to a few jobs that have been kept. The unemployment rate in the city 
already I think is at 22 percent. It could pop up to 25 percent or 
above. And each one of I think 535 jobs lost represents not just an 
individual and not just an income but a family and its economic 
security.
  At this time when millions have lost their jobs, when millions feel 
that they might be next, the American people are sick and tired of us 
playing games up here. We have concrete solutions on the table that 
will create real jobs in the construction sector, the manufacturing 
sector, and the agriculture and forestry sectors. These are things we 
can still do and do better than anyone in the world, but we are being 
choked off by the kinds of games being played in Washington and on Wall 
Street. It is long past time for people in this town to understand the 
urgency of this job crisis for working-class and middle-class Americans 
who not only live in fear of losing that job but are getting nickeled 
and dimed by the credit card companies, the electric utilities and 
others as they try to make ends meet day after day, week after week.
  We have to be bold right now in rethinking America's competitive 
advantage. There is no quick fix. We must in the immediate term not 
miss the summer construction season. I see too many trucks parked in 
the driveways, in the parking lots of our construction companies at a 
time that we need to be

[[Page 8632]]

rebuilding. Not overbuilding in some of the housing and speculative 
areas that helped get us into this mess, but building in the areas that 
reinvent and reinforce America's competitive advantage. Whether that's 
on the high-end R&D and intellectual property of those areas or whether 
it's old-fashioned infrastructure, these are areas that mean real 
business for real working families. Part of how we do that is by 
putting a solutions-oriented approach over a slogans-oriented approach, 
and the way we do that is to come together.
  In this town, too often bipartisanship means cutting a good idea into 
half to the point that it means nothing at all, or simply adding one 
side's support to the other side's support. What Americans want is 
post-partisanship. They want us to answer the question, What solves the 
problem, and not, What is the halfway point between the Democrats and 
the Republicans? Start with the question, What solves America's energy 
independence? What rebuilds America's middle class? What makes sure 
that we have basic stability in our financial institutions so that 
people who have worked their whole lives, saving up money in the value 
of their home, in their 401(k), know that someone isn't off gambling 
with that money in ways that are unthinkable and unimaginable.
  There is 25 percent unemployment in our skilled construction. 
Americans are ready to build. They are ready to go to work rebuilding, 
whether that's housing or infrastructure or building stock, whether 
it's renovating, whether it's manufacturing here in America the 
materials that go into that. We need to put that sense, the urgency of 
the American economy first. We need to remember that small business is 
the engine. We need to understand that our community banks played by 
the rules through this crisis, stayed solvent, and still continue to 
get that lending out to so many of those in our communities.
  I look forward to continuing to fight for a jobs agenda and an agenda 
of decency and accountability. I hope that those in the Senate on the 
other side of this building will complete a solid reform in the 
financial sector and turn to these jobs bills we've produced. There are 
five, six of them now, pragmatic, often private-public partnerships to 
reward innovation, to get us building again, to get the lending going 
through our community banks again, through a smart combination of 
investments and tax credits. I hope the Senate will turn to that and 
understand that back home, people are desperate for jobs, for economic 
security, for growth and that they will get some taste of that urgency 
and move from restoring those basic rules of decency and accountability 
to Washington and Wall Street and get these jobs bills passed so that 
we can get America working again, rebuilding America's competitive 
advantage again, and that is a fight I look forward to.

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