[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9922]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              WHEN AND HOW WILL AMERICA GET BACK TO WORK?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Huizenga) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity 
to rise and come before this body to talk about something that I think 
is a key question that the American people have. We are dealing with a 
lot of weighty issues these days--Afghanistan, Libya, the debt ceiling, 
the Tax Code and tax reform--but I believe the key question that we 
have before us is and the key question that the American people have 
for us is:
  When and how will America get back to work?
  Mr. Speaker, it's far more than just creating a bill and labeling it 
``job creation bill'' or a whole package of those or a stimulus package 
of government spending that, frankly, hasn't worked and even admitted 
to and joked about by the President recently when he said those shovel-
ready jobs and those shovel-ready projects maybe weren't so shovel-
ready.
  No, they weren't.
  But it's far more than just creating a bill and labeling it ``job 
creation.'' It's about creating an atmosphere for private sector 
growth.
  You see, Mr. Speaker, the private sector creates prosperity, not the 
government sector. The government sector can give a job, but the 
private sector creates wealth and creates prosperity, and it's not just 
in our Tax Code and how that's being applied; it's also in the 
regulatory atmosphere that we present to those job creators.
  I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that this House is trying to inject some 
reasonableness into a system that has gone awry. Whether it's the EPA 
creating out of whole cloth regulations that we have not dictated 
should happen or whether it's the National Labor Relations Board coming 
up with hurdle after hurdle for these job creators, this administration 
has continually overstepped the bounds of reasonableness, and it's our 
job, Mr. Speaker, to rein that in. You would think with 429,000 new 
jobless claims last week--let me repeat that--with 429,000 new jobless 
claims we would try to more aggressively create a better climate and 
change that atmosphere. I can tell you we're trying to do that here in 
the House. We just need some partners across the other side of the 
Capitol and in the administration as well.
  Recently, the House Republicans had an opportunity to meet with the 
President at the White House. My good friend and chairman of the Small 
Business and Job Creators Caucus, of which I'm a member, my friend from 
Wisconsin, Reid Ribble, got up and indicated to the President that we 
need to do three things for success.
  One, we need to have consumer confidence. That means, whether they're 
the people up in the balcony or those who are watching on TV right now, 
with the money that they have in their pockets, they feel confident 
enough that they're going to have a little extra, that they can go out 
and spend some money on an appliance or on a car, which is very 
important for those of us from Michigan, or maybe on a vacation. We 
need to have some consumer confidence, and they don't have that right 
now.
  The other thing is we need to have credit available to those small 
business creators, those job creators, who are out there, who are cash-
flowing, who are continuing to make those tough decisions to stay in 
the black, but they're now finding out that they can't access credit 
because of the unreasonable regulations that the Dodd-Frank banking 
bill has put in front of them.
  Lastly and thirdly and maybe most importantly, we need certainty. We 
need a stability that has not been there for a number of years now. We 
need stability in our Tax Code. We need stability in our regulations. 
People basically need to know what the rules of the game are so that 
they can make long-term business decisions to again create those jobs. 
Now, Mr. Speaker, that's one of the reasons why I support the House's 
plan for American job creators, and I encourage you to go to my Web 
site ``Huizenga.house.gov'' to see more about that.
  Again, it's not just about a bill that's labeled ``job creation.'' 
It's about an attitude that we need to have. In this package, we know 
that we need to remove redtape and the excessive regulations that are 
out there. We know that we need to expand American domestic energy 
production. That's a ``must do'' for us. We need to fix and streamline 
our Tax Code. We need to expand new markets abroad for the goods that 
our manufacturers make.
  But again, Mr. Speaker, it's not just a bill. It's an attitude. We 
need to have an attitude of, ``Yes, we will work with you to help 
create those jobs,'' not, ``No, it doesn't matter what your question 
is. The answer is `no.' We are not going to help.''

                              {time}  1050

  That, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, has been the dominant attitude of 
this administration and of this government, and it's time that we 
change that.

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