[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9294-9295]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   WE NEED TO GET PEOPLE BACK TO WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Kinzinger) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, last September President 
Obama referred to America's small businesses as the ``anchors of our 
Main Streets.'' Unfortunately, economic data released on Wednesday 
proved that the President's actions speak louder than words. The failed 
policies of the Obama administration have left small businesses 
struggling.
  According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, 
confidence in small business has dropped into recessionary levels. And 
the reason? Small businesses will tell you that their economic 
uncertainty is caused by low sales, high taxes, and burdensome 
government regulations.
  Now, I hail from the State of Illinois. Let me tell you a little 
story about Illinois. Illinois just went and raised its personal income 
tax level and it raised its corporate tax level. So, as a result of 
this, just a few days ago, we saw The Wall Street Journal put out an 
editorial which basically said Illinois has raised $300 million in 
revenue because of the corporate tax increase. Oh, but however, because 
of the businesses threatening to leave Illinois, they've already spent 
$240 million in giveaways to corporations to keep them there.
  This idea, this thing that we've been on over the last couple of 
years of tax, borrow, and spend our way to prosperity isn't working. I 
remember when the President's economic--well, you know what? In my own 
home district, unemployment exceeds 11 percent in many of the counties. 
People are asking me: What are you doing to create jobs? Well, I tell 
them this: Look, the Federal Government can do one thing. We can create 
an environment for job creation, but the Federal Government

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doesn't create jobs, and that's been the problem, because in the last 2 
years we've been counting an $800 billion stimulus as a miraculous job 
recovery bill.
  In fact, the President promised that by this time unemployment would 
be 6.7 percent. How's that working out? The President's team promised 
that if we passed an $800 billion stimulus bill unemployment would 
never exceed 8 percent. We saw it approach 10 percent, and now it's 
back on the rise again.
  Mr. Speaker, you don't solve our jobs problem by spending more money, 
because we spent money, and where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? 
What we need to do is to understand that jobs are not created by this 
body, but they're created by the private sector, by the folks who get 
up every day and they put their minds together. They come up with an 
idea. They risk their capital. They risk their financial well-being, 
and they hire somebody in hopes that this dream that they have 
succeeds. In many cases, it doesn't. A lot of folks with an idea to 
begin a small business are not successful, but then they get up and 
they try again.
  But if you talk to any small business owner, you talk to any 
manufacturer in the United States, they will tell you that the biggest 
impediment to job creation is government regulation and taxation.
  Is there really anybody that believes--now, I understand some people 
can argue we have to raise taxes to get more money to government, 
fundamental disagreement, but I understand people can argue that. But 
is there anybody that truly believes that raising taxes creates jobs? 
Is there anybody who really believes that? And what's the number one 
issue we have right now.
  We want to take people, the almost 10 percent, the 9.1 percent of 
folks in this country that desperately want to have a job, we want to 
take them from a tax recipient to a taxpayer because they want to be a 
taxpayer, too.
  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and 
over and over and over and expecting different results each time. But 
you're going to get the same result. When this body spends money, when 
we spend $800 billion on a stimulus, we've got nothing but a future of 
debt, doubt, and despair. Well, I believe we have a future in this 
country that's prosperous, that never accepts second best.
  There's a lot of youth watching here today, but you have a job when 
you graduate from college, a country that never accepts anything less 
than being a world leader, and I believe we never ever accept second 
best. So when we talk about what to do in the future, we need to talk 
about the most important thing. We do have to rein in spending, but we 
have to get people back to work, and more and more spending isn't going 
to do that.

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