[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11003]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               THE WILL TO GET AMERICAN JOBS MOVING AGAIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Denham) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DENHAM. Madam Speaker, with the June national unemployment rate 
at 9.2 percent and with consistent double-digit unemployment in my 
district, we must get Americans back to work. June marks 29 consecutive 
months in which we've had unemployment at or above 8 percent, averaging 
9.5 percent during that time. Unemployment hasn't been above 8 percent 
for that length of time since the Great Depression.
  We've got to start utilizing the policies that will get Americans 
back to work. We need to make sure that we are reducing the regulations 
and are having the economic policies that get Americans willing to take 
the risk: the risk to go out and borrow money to start a business, 
willing to take the risk to not only hire employees but to actually 
make sure that they're willing to have that long-term employment, 
making sure that they've got the promise to those employees that 
they're going to be able to continue on those jobs. We've got to give 
Americans the opportunity to take that great risk in our economy.
  We also need to unleash the strength of our Nation by utilizing our 
natural resources. The greatest opportunity we have as a Nation to get 
Americans back to work is by utilizing our own natural resources. In my 
area, where we've got double-digit unemployment, we've got a water 
shortage that causes our agriculture to leave land fallow, leaving 
thousands unemployed. By getting the water flowing again, we will not 
only get agriculture moving again but the local economies as well.
  The mountain areas with timber, if we don't use the natural resources 
that we have in our forests, if we don't manage our timber harvesting 
plans, not only will we see the lack of employment opportunities, but 
we'll see devastation and we'll see fires, because the forests will 
manage themselves if we don't manage the forests for them.
  We need to make sure that we're looking across the Nation at our oil 
reserves. Between our oil, our natural gas, our oil shale reserves, we 
have the largest resources in the world. We've just got to be willing 
to tap into them. We need to shorten the time on permits. We need to 
reduce the regulations so we can actually go in and get the oil so that 
we're not dependent on other nations.
  These aren't Republican jobs. These aren't Democrat jobs. These are 
American jobs for which we've got to be willing to go out and stand 
strong on cutting the regulation, on getting the right economic 
policies, on getting the permits moving again so that we can actually 
utilize our natural gas, utilize our oil, utilize our oil shale so that 
we're not relying on other nations, utilize our timber harvesting plans 
so that we don't see the devastation when the fire hits us, and utilize 
our water so that we can actually get agriculture moving again.
  Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a job to do here in Congress. We've 
got to get American jobs moving again. That's going to be by utilizing 
our natural resources and by getting Americans willing to take the risk 
on our economy: willing to invest, willing to borrow money to start a 
new business, and willing to go out there and promise new employees, 
not only that they'll have a job, but a long-term job.
  We have the power to do that here in Congress.
  We need to have the will.

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