[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14163]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           PRESIDENT OBAMA'S JOBS AND DEFICIT REDUCTION BILLS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Southerland) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUTHERLAND. I rise today with great disappointment in the 
administration's misguided agenda on job creation and deficit 
reduction.
  You see, I have been in a family that has created jobs for 
generations. Shortly after World War II, my grandfather wanted to 
create an opportunity for his family. He wanted to create an 
opportunity to make a difference in his community. So, with a sixth-
grade education, with $3,000 of borrowed money, and with a dream to 
make a difference, he did what small businesses do naturally when they 
do not have the impediments of the Federal Government: He created jobs. 
His dream, his vision, included that--to make a difference, to give 
other people an opportunity to forge a brighter and better future for 
them and their families.
  It wasn't a self-serving dream.
  It was a dream to serve others.
  During those decades following World War II, we saw that same example 
all across this great Nation of people doing what people were created 
to do--make a difference.
  It is not government's responsibility to create a job through a bill. 
It is government's responsibility to create an environment, an 
environment that produces certainty, an environment that a small 
business owner has the guarantee that he knows what his taxes are going 
to be, that he knows what his fees are going to be, that he knows what 
his regulations are going to be, not just in 6 months or 12 months, but 
for years, and that creates certainty.
  I had never served in elected office before being sworn in as a 
Member of this House in January. I went from small business to 
Congress, and so I bring with me that understanding that, if government 
gets out of the way and if we can do what Americans do better than any 
country in the world, we will make our communities a better place, and, 
yes, because of our benevolence, we will make the world a better place.
  It was a great disappointment when the President came to this Chamber 
and the President introduced his plan. I was saddened. Yes, there were 
some things that I agreed with that we need to do--the free trade 
agreements. We are still waiting for those free trade agreements with 
Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. We're waiting. There was agreement 
on tax reform. There was agreement on payroll tax reduction to give 
small businesses more money, to give individuals more money on their 
paychecks. We agreed there. But if you look deeper into this bill, you 
will see, unfortunately, more of the same.
  This jobs bill creates a brand new, permanent, government-owned 
bureaucracy. As a matter of fact, it's a corporation--the President's 
American Infrastructure Financing Authority, a solely owned subsidiary 
of the Federal Government. It is not time for the Federal Government to 
create corporations, corporations that have chief executive officers 
and chief financial officers, risk officers, chief compliance officers, 
chief operating officers, chief lending officers, general counsel, and 
boards of directors who are lending money--lending money--with terms 
out to 35 years.
  Now, unfortunately, this is insanity. This sounds so much like the 
first stimulus--and the first stimulus, we know, with 35 percent of 
those funds having yet to be spent. We were promised our unemployment 
numbers would not go over 8 percent. As a matter of fact, the 
administration claimed that unemployment numbers by this time would be 
at 6.5. Well, we all know that is not true. As a matter of fact, in my 
home State of Florida, we're living with 10.7 percent unemployment, 
and, last year, we spent most of the year at 12--historic unemployment 
numbers.

                              {time}  1100

  Unfortunately, insanity, when you do the same thing over and over and 
over again, expecting different results, seems to be the order of the 
day; and that is not what the American people want right now. They want 
certainty. They want certainty to be able to work hard, to have honest 
dealings and to know that after they work hard and they're honest, that 
they will have a brighter future when they wake up tomorrow.
  They deserve that. They deserve that and unfortunately this plan goes 
in the opposite direction. So it bothers me that with the regulations 
that we face, the cloud of uncertainty just grows.
  Madam Speaker, I say in closing, business has never been asked to do 
more with less, and they clearly know less certainty.

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