[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15244]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  JOBS

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, it's a very important day today.
  Five hundred and nineteen years ago, Columbus discovered America. He 
was on a trade mission. But the problem is that today, instead of 
dealing with trade missions and all the rest, we ought to have the bill 
out here that the President presented on creating jobs for American 
workers.
  Now, this Congress has been in session for 300-some-odd days. With 
the Republicans talking about all of the problems of this society and 
how the President's plan hasn't worked, they have yet to bring to this 
floor a presentation of a way to create jobs for American workers.
  These trade agreements, they say, well, if we had a level playing 
field with Korea and all of these other places, suddenly we would have 
a lot of jobs here. There is a much better way and a much surer way to 
provide jobs here in this country. My predecessor here talked about 
manipulation by the Chinese of our currency, which has been estimated 
to cut out a million jobs. There are other things we ought to be doing 
today than these free trade agreements.

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