[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12958-12962]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        A DISCUSSION ABOUT JOBS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, thank you.
  Following on Congressman Lungren, my colleague from the neighboring 
district, I didn't realize that Senator Dave Cox had died. I join him 
in the eulogy that he so graciously gave here on the floor. An 
extraordinary individual, represented my mother in the mountain 
counties, and was dedicated, as was said, to the betterment of 
California. So I will start with that.
  What I intended to discuss here today was jobs, American jobs, and 
the situation we are faced with today and the extraordinary burden 
that's placed upon so many Americans who have lost their jobs in the 
last years of this great recession.

[[Page 12959]]

  What I wanted to really start with was to try to get a sense of what 
has happened over the last 3 years, 2\1/2\, almost 3 years now. 
Beginning in December of 2007, the great American recession began 
during the George W. Bush period. And we began to lose jobs, largely as 
a result of the subprime mortgage, the lack of regulation that was 
going on, loans being made to people that didn't qualify, and all the 
games of Wall Street that began to unravel and to cause the American 
economy to literally crash.
  As that Wall Street problem magnified and grew, the number of jobs 
that were lost grew, so between December of 2007, when there is 
actually some modest job growth, and December of 2008, we saw an 
extraordinary decline in jobs. So that in December 2008 you are looking 
at over 750,000 jobs lost.
  Now, in January, at the end of January, the Obama administration came 
in, and again in January we faced another 700,000 jobs lost. But almost 
all that period of time was the previous administration. And the new 
Obama administration did not have any opportunity until the last 5 days 
of the month to even take over the administration of government.
  Thereafter, and most every month since then we have seen a decline in 
the number of jobs lost, so that now in the fall of 2009 we actually 
began to see the first signs of job growth. So that in September, 
October of 2009 there is actually a small, very modest increase in 
jobs, followed the next month by again a decline. But then in the 
following months since the fall of 2009 to this period, we have 
actually seen a growth in the number of jobs in America. And that's 
good news.
  We're not anywhere near where we need to be. And I think we all need 
to understand what has been done to--the effect of all of this job 
loss. So if I might just go to another chart here so that we can set 
the foundation for what we're going to talk about, you know, the 
numbers basically lay it out there.
  During the Great Recession, beginning in the fall of 2007 and then 
continuing on until the fall of 2009, 8 million jobs were lost. Nearly 
all of those were lost during the George W. Bush administration. For 
the Americans that depended on their savings, their retirement 
accounts, $17 trillion in retirement savings were lost during this 
period of time.
  You just compare that to the previous 8 years of the Clinton 
administration, when 22 million jobs were created during the Clinton 
administration. The question arises, why? What was the difference? What 
happened that caused during the last years of the George W. Bush 
administration the loss of these some 8 million jobs compared to 22 
million jobs that were created under the Clinton administration? We're 
going to come to that during this discussion. And it's a fundamental 
question, because it is the question of national policy.

                              {time}  1650

  During the prior period of the Bush administration, by contrast, 1 
million jobs were created in America. Again, enormous difference--22 
versus 1. Why? What's the reason for this? And the policy decisions 
that were made that led to this enormous difference here.
  I'd tell you what we'd like to do for the remainder of this year is 
create some 900,000 jobs, and we're on course to do that. It's going to 
take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of changes in policy.
  Beginning with the Obama administration, a series of pieces of 
legislation were put into place, and I'd like to just review those 
pieces of legislation and what they were doing. Many of these were 
designed specifically to deal with the great recession and to prevent 
the American economy from falling into a 1930 Depression. We were on 
the edge. We were teetering on the edge of that.
  Some of this was done in the last days of the George W. Bush 
administration, which was the bailout of Wall Street, the TARP program. 
That program pumped some $700-plus billion into Wall Street. A lot of 
controversy about it. Other nations around the world were doing the 
same thing. And the result was a stabilization of the financial 
industry. For me, I would have liked to have seen it done differently, 
but it was done that way during the Bush administration, and it did 
actually stabilize the economy. Now, because of bills that have been 
passed since that time, we're seeing a good portion of that money 
returned to the American Treasury.
  Now, beginning with the Obama administration, immediate action was 
taken here on the floor of this House and in the Senate to try to 
stabilize the job market to try to put Americans back to work. And the 
very first bill that was enacted, I believe, within the first 30 days 
was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
  Now, economists looking at that today have said that that legislation 
alone created 2.8 million jobs, including teachers, police, firemen, 
construction workers, and the like. It also provided the American 
middle class with the largest tax cut ever for the middle class. 
Ninety-eight percent of Americans received a reduction in their taxes 
as a result of that, so that today the amount of money collected from 
the American taxpayers is at a rate that is as low as it was in the 
1950s.
  There was also a major element of it that was called rebuilding 
America with clean energy jobs and with infrastructure. So 2.8 million 
jobs were enacted.
  I'm going to quickly go through these others. I'll come back to them 
during the course of this discussion. But also I want to just tell you 
the way we're going to do this, and that is we're going to talk about 
what's going on in various parts of America.
  So, from time to time, I'll come back and talk about the other six 
fundamental pieces of legislation that have been signed into law by 
President Obama, passed by this House. All seven, including the 
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, have created jobs in America 
and turned around the American economy. So we're growing. Not as much 
as we should and not as much as necessary, but we're growing.
  I'd like now to reach out--well, I guess I'm a Californian, but 
basically I'm from northern California. I represent a district in the 
San Francisco Bay Area east of the San Francisco Bay. But there's 
another part of California that is rather big. That would be the Los 
Angeles Basin. And specifically, joining me from Orange County is the 
gentlewoman from Orange County, Loretta Sanchez.
  Can you talk to us about what's happening there and the nature of the 
economy and the job situation.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Absolutely.
  As you know, I live in an incredibly wonderful area called Orange 
County, the OC that many of you have seen on television before. It's 
not clearly the way it's depicted there, but it is a beautiful place. 
We're the home of Disneyland, of the Anaheim Angels. We have one of the 
largest concert arenas in the Nation. We also have a beautiful 
coastline that so many people want to come to in Newport Beach and 
Laguna Beach, and it's just a very, very special place.
  But the housing issue affected Orange County in a dramatic way. We 
had, in Orange County, four of the six largest subprime lenders across 
the Nation were in Orange County. So almost overnight we lost 40,000 
jobs just to the housing issue.
  Well, I would like to let people know that it was reported in today's 
Los Angeles Times that housing is coming back in California. And 
specifically it noted, of course, this whole tax issue, because my 
colleague, my wonderful colleague from the northern portion of our 
State noted the tax cuts that we had in the American Recovery and 
Reinvestment Act, in particular.
  For people who say that Democrats--and I am a Democrat--never liked 
tax cuts, that's just not true. The fact of the matter in the stimulus 
package, in the American Recovery Act, we actually have a third of the 
moneys go to tax cuts. But we put them to specific areas to help people 
get an education, to help them keep their homes, to help them, 
encourage them to buy homes, to keep the economy going. And so today we 
have found in the newspaper

[[Page 12960]]

that there is a 7.2 percent jump in southern California home sales. And 
Orange County, out of any place in the Nation, leads the way in selling 
homes, putting homes on the market, getting new families excited to get 
into these new homes. Yes, a lot of the people that I represent have 
lost their homes. Right next door to my home there's a foreclosure. And 
so it is difficult.
  But in order to keep people in their homes, we've also passed 
legislation that would help modify some of those home loans so that 
people would actually get a chance to stay in their homes. And if they 
did have to leave their home before we could get somebody else in to 
buy that home, we also passed funds to help cities, for example, $10 
million and $6 million to the cities of Santa Ana and Anaheim that I 
represent, to make sure that homes were taken care of as we 
transitioned them from one family or person to the next.
  So we have actually passed quite a few pieces of legislation that 
have helped the housing market. And in helping the housing market, this 
is beginning to create some of the jobs that we see, especially in 
Orange County.
  So I'm so glad that my colleague has taken this hour to talk a little 
bit about how, slowly, we are beginning to come back and the effects of 
that very important piece of legislation we passed a year ago, the 
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the additional pieces that 
we have passed to help.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. So thank you so very much for talking about down home 
and what's going on there.
  I will note that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which 
the economists suggest has created 2.8 million jobs, provided the 
largest middle class tax cut ever, and also did the infrastructure--
streets, roads, sanitation facilities--and renewable green energy 
programs. Not one Republican voted for that.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Absolutely. And if my colleague 
will just give me a little bit more time, I will say to him, we have 
felt that in Orange County, $2.2 billion for the first piece of the 
high speed rail that will connect Anaheim all the way up to San 
Francisco, to your area, that $2.2 billion given to the Anaheim/Los 
Angeles portion of that high-speed rail.
  So looking to the future, other pieces of that legislation--research 
in the greening of America, research in new technologies for energy 
independence, and also research and to change over our hospitals to 
electronic filing rather than to have paperwork being shuffled between 
doctors. So it carried a lot of future-looking pieces.
  And, of course, when you look at innovation, that is what California 
is about. That is what is going to lead us out of a bad economy, and 
that is what we will, in fact, sell to the rest of the world after we 
establish those new areas of innovation.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you for bringing up the question of innovation 
and research. It was a very big portion of that. I'm going to come back 
a little later to another piece of legislation that has passed this 
House, yet to pass the Senate. But with regard to the American 
Reinvestment and Recovery Act, once again, it was the Democrats that 
carried the ball that shouldered the burden and passed and provided the 
votes. Not one Republican vote.
  You mentioned the home-buying situation in Orange County. The first-
time home buyer credit, I think it's $6,000, was made available through 
a piece of legislation that once again was pushed forward by the 
Democrats in this House and over in the Senate. And 93 percent of the 
Republicans on this floor voted against that provision that gives 
first-time home buyers that additional money that they needed for that 
down payment so they could buy that home.

                              {time}  1700

  It goes on and on and on. One of the issues that confronts us, since 
we're not back where we need to be with our employment, is the 
unemployment insurance situation.
  Now, representing a part of the Nation that has been really harmed by 
the loss of manufacturing jobs is the Ohio Valley region. 
Representative Charlie Wilson is from the Youngstown area, and I invite 
him here to talk to us about his situation in the Ohio Valley and the 
Youngstown region. Welcome. Thank you.
  Mr. WILSON of Ohio. Thank you for convening this important discussion 
about our economy and our need to create jobs. I appreciate both of my 
colleagues from the California area and say that I represent the Ohio 
River Valley area that runs from Youngstown down through Steubenville, 
Athens, Marietta-Athens, and on down. So it's all along the Ohio River 
where we have had for many years and generations steel workers and 
people that have helped to move this economy and our country forward.
  But by July 17 over 112,000 people in the State of Ohio will lose 
their unemployment benefits. This is due to the Senate's inaction to 
extend unemployment benefits which contribute to the important every-
day expenses like paying your mortgage, health care bills, utility 
bills, and cost of food where there isn't a paycheck coming in. The 
American people are hurting, and they want to work. Until we can get 
everyone who wants a job working again, I believe that it is important 
that we continue to support unemployment insurance.
  On July 1, I was proud to vote in favor of the House-passed 
legislation to extend unemployment benefits for millions of American 
families. This 6-month extension of benefits will not only help 
families looking for work, but it is a proven fact that it will boost 
our economy also.
  In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, more than 6 in 10 
Americans support congressional action to extend unemployment benefits 
for jobless workers. And The Washington Post agrees, stating in a 
recent article that passing the extension of unemployment insurance is 
both the right thing to do and the fiscally prudent thing to do.
  I would like to quote The Washington Post editorial: ``Drawing the 
deficit line at additional unemployment benefits is shortsighted, 
because, if anything, the economy could benefit from more stimulus 
spending, not less. Unemployment benefits, which are most apt to be 
immediately plowed back into the economy, are about the most 
stimulative form of spending. Extending them is both fiscally sensible 
and morally decent.
  ``Unemployment benefits . . . are an essential lifeline. The Senate 
needs to extend them.''
  In fact, the analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget 
Office suggests that extending unemployment benefits is one of the most 
cost-effective and fast-acting ways to stimulate our economy. It's not 
just the CBO. Many economists agree that extending these benefits 
decreases the chances of slipping back into a double-dip recession.
  As a matter of fact, I have here from Mark Zandi, chief economist at 
Moody's Analytics, a former economist to Senator John McCain, who says 
for every dollar that is invested in unemployment insurance $1.61 is 
pumped back into the American economy. I hope that all of us can see 
the need for extending these unemployment benefits and move quickly to 
get our people voted back to be able to have the Senate do the right 
thing and pass unemployment.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very, very much for the view from the great 
Ohio Valley.
  Before we started this 1 hour, you and I were chatting off the floor, 
and you raised another point and maybe the two of us can kind of talk 
about this for a second.
  We're really faced with a choice. First of all, this is unemployment 
insurance. This has always been a program in which over time employers 
pay into a fund for insurance if their workers become unemployed. 
Because of the downturn in the economy, the Federal Government has had 
to backstop that insurance program. Presumably over time, we get the 
economy going, some of that will be refunded. I know it certainly will 
be at the State level because the States are obligated to make it back 
up.

[[Page 12961]]

  But with regard to the individuals involved here, their unemployment 
insurance has run out. They have not received a check now I think for 
the last 2 weeks. If this is not extended, what happens to them?
  Mr. WILSON of Ohio. Well, it is sad because what will happen is they 
will go down to the welfare level. They have to be able to have food 
and some way to be able to survive, and I think it is the biggest part 
of cruelty and, secondly, I believe that the States are already 
scraping by with just not having the proper funding that they need. So 
to push this down to the State level would be catastrophic for a State 
like Ohio.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. And a person that was working, was receiving 
insurance, is now going to be on welfare.
  Mr. WILSON of Ohio. That's correct.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. So there is no win in this, and once again, where's 
the Senate? I know what happened in this House. The Democrats almost 
universally voted for this. We were able to get 29 Republicans to vote 
for this unemployment insurance program, and only 29 Republicans did 
so. We were able to pass it; 153 Republicans voted ``no.''
  So what's the sense of all this? It really raises the question in my 
mind because as we go through these bills that have been passed from 
this House, some of which have been signed into law, passed the Senate, 
signed into law, the Republicans universally vote ``no'' on these jobs 
bills and even on unemployment insurance. I don't quite get it. We were 
talking earlier about the workers, the first-time homeowner buyers, tax 
relief for small businesses, emergency relief for American families. 
That bill passed here with only 7 percent of Republicans voting ``yes'' 
and 93 voting ``no.''
  Even on student aid, we're talking about men and women that want to 
go back to school, that want to be able to continue their education, 
and one of the most important ways to stimulate the future economy is 
to have a well-educated workforce; but in that case, that particular 
piece of legislation that passed this House would have increased the 
Pell Grants so that kids and adults could afford to go to school. What 
did the Republicans do? Not one Republican voted for student aid to 
help students go to school, to continue in school.
  I'm curious what's going on here. I just noticed that my colleague 
from Connecticut has arrived here, John Larson. Maybe you can answer 
this or just tell us what is going on in Connecticut.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. First of all, let me thank the gentleman 
from California for organizing this hour, along with the gentlelady 
from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez), and I want to associate myself 
with the remarks of the gentleman from Ohio and join with you, well, 
frankly, out of frustration in terms of the kind of opposition that 
we're seeing in the United States Senate on an issue that's so 
important to people who, through no fault of their own, have found 
themselves in a situation where they are unemployed.
  I think during this Bush recession as we persevere through the Bush 
wars and the Bush financial collapse, when unemployment has hit this 
country hard, when America loses $17 trillion in wealth and assets from 
March of 2007 to February of 2009, you begin to see why Americans are 
so frustrated with these circumstances, and while this administration 
under Barack Obama has created 6 million new jobs, the frustration 
remains amongst the American people.
  In the midst of all of this, to deny unemployment benefits to those 
who are most in need, especially as the gentleman from Ohio has pointed 
out when we know that every dollar we spend in unemployment benefits 
creates $1.61 in the economy because the need is there to spend.
  Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it best about our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle. They are frozen in the ice of their own 
indifference; frozen in the ice of their indifference to people who are 
without work; frozen in their icy indifference between the need to 
invest in America and make things here in America and put this country 
back to work; frozen in an indifference that has them preoccupied 
politically and obsessed with blocking every item of the Obama agenda, 
even if it means providing unemployment to those who need it, even if 
it means providing health care to those who have had their policies 
rescinded or have found themselves in a situation because of a 
preexisting condition where they were denied coverage.
  This is the kind of thing that has frustrated Americans. I am proud 
to be associated with the gentlemen who have come to this floor this 
evening to speak out on behalf of their constituents, speak out on 
behalf of the administration, and point down the Hall where they need 
to come and work. More than 314 bills that have passed the House of 
Representatives have gone unattended to down in the United States 
Senate and, most importantly, including unemployment benefits.
  Stay in over the weekend. Do your work. Put America back to work. 
Provide those with the benefits that need them so that we can keep this 
economy going and so that we can restore the faith in the American 
people and their government.
  I thank the gentleman from California for organizing this important 
hour on this very timely and important issue and thank the gentleman 
from Ohio for joining him.

                              {time}  1710

  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Larson, thank you so very much. You've brought a 
great deal of passion to this. I know it's in your heart. I know that 
you see this problem in your own district among friends and others who 
are there.
  I want to turn back to my colleagues from Ohio and California in a 
moment. I said there were seven pieces of legislation that have passed 
and have been signed into law. I'm going to go through them quickly 
because in their own way each one of these has created economic growth 
and jobs here in California, in Ohio and in other States across the 
Nation.
  I mentioned the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We talked 
about the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act; First 
Time Homebuyers. The gentleman from Connecticut talked briefly about 
insurance reform, the way in which the insurance system discriminates 
against women, against people who have preexisting conditions. That 
insurance reform was embodied in the Health Insurance Reform Act that 
passed this floor and not one Republican voted for it. There will be a 
day of reckoning when somebody out there says, My 23-year-old daughter 
can stay on insurance now because the Democrats and President Obama 
passed the Health Insurance Reform Act.
  Student aid. We talked about that a moment ago. It is extremely 
important, so that adults can go on to school, can stay there, improve 
their employability, learn new skills; and as the economy is coming 
back, will be able to get a job.
  This one I found to be personally very upsetting because my old 
clunker didn't qualify. I actually did not register it in California. 
By the time you passed this, I wasn't here. It wasn't registered and I 
couldn't get rid of my clunker. But 700,000 cars were sold as a direct 
result of the clunker law and it really did help American automobile 
manufacturing. I know that a lot of people say that Toyota got more 
than its share, and it did, but a lot of that share were Corollas that 
were manufactured in Fremont, California; Toyotas to be sure, but 
nonetheless they were manufactured in California.
  We talked about the HIRE Act. Incidentally, 95 percent of Republicans 
voted against the Cash for Clunkers law. The Hiring Incentives to 
Restore Employment Act, the HIRE Act, created 300,000 jobs. Created. 
Not some wish list but actually created 300,000 jobs and unleashed 
billions of dollars of infrastructure across the United States--
streets, roads, sanitation facilities. Cut taxes for businesses that 
hire new workers that had been unemployed and cracked down on offshore 
tax havens.
  Oh, this one I love. I'm going to come back to this one.

[[Page 12962]]

  Again, 97 percent of Republicans voted against that program. Three 
hundred thousand jobs. They voted against it. What are you guys doing? 
We need to put people to work.
  Finally, one that most of the Republican leadership opposed, 
eventually it did become law and many, many Republicans voted against 
this one, which was the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. Which one 
of us has not been ripped off by some credit card scheme or scam? But 
this really gives those of us that have credit cards--and I've got more 
than I'd like to say in my pocket right now--gives us at least a little 
bit of an equal footing here on that.
  So here are seven bills, all of them in one way or another providing 
in this case credit, the opportunity to get reasonable credit; hire 
people; cash for clunkers, education; health care and other kinds of 
stimulus. Democrats in this side took it upon themselves to shoulder 
the burden, to pass the legislation necessary to put people to work.
  My final point before I turn back to my colleagues is that the 
argument that I keep hearing is that it will raise the deficit. Yes. 
But we ought to understand where the deficit really came from, and 
we'll go through that. The deficit was really created as a result of 
three things. Keep in mind that when Clinton left office, this Nation 
was in a surplus. We were running a surplus of over half a trillion 
dollars. George W. Bush came in and did three things that created as he 
left office for the next 10 years, an $11 trillion deficit:
  One, he started two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and didn't pay for 
them; really the first time in American history. Secondly, he started 
Medicare part D, the drug benefit, I think 700 to $800 billion in 10 
years, not paid for. And thirdly the great recession with the financial 
collapse. Those three things added up, beginning the day that Obama 
took office, he was handed a $1.3 trillion debt, given to him by the 
Bush administration. And if you look at the years out, continuing the 
Bush policy, that would add up to an $11 trillion deficit.
  We've got to put people to work. The question that I always ask is, 
do you want tax takers, welfare recipients, who cannot get a job, 
cannot get unemployment insurance, or do you want taxpayers? The 
Democratic House has voted consistently to put people to work so that 
they could become taxpayers.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. If the gentleman will yield just 
for a minute, when we as Democrats look at what is it that we can do, 
if we are going to spend money, we should spend money to invest in 
America. There are four major things in Economics 101, or any other 
book you read on economics, that will tell you how to increase the 
productivity and the innovation of a nation, because that is how we 
compete, by increasing the productivity of Americans. The first is, you 
have to have an educated workforce. Some of the bills that my 
colleagues mentioned are about education, education, education.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me. If I might interrupt, there is some House 
business that needs to be attended to. I notice our colleague arriving 
from the Rules Committee to take care of some House business.

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