[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13108]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            PROVEN POLICIES RATHER THAN POLITICAL POSTURING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, America needs jobs, and it's 
time we focused on proven policies rather than political rhetoric and 
posturing.
  We need a real jobs program that builds on actual successes. The 
President tonight will be putting forward his job creation proposal. 
Unfortunately, some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
have already decided that they are not even going to come and respect 
the President's joint appearance tonight. Talk about closed minds.
  According to reports, he will call for infrastructure investments and 
middle class tax relief through an extension of the payroll tax cut, 
policies we know can create jobs. I look forward to working with the 
President and those who are willing to work with us on the other side 
to jump-start our economy and create American jobs.
  To that end, I have introduced two bills to incentivize private 
sector job creation. They include tax cuts and private sector tax 
incentives, ideas that work, ideas that Republicans traditionally have 
supported.
  I introduced H.R. 11 to extend the successful Build America Bonds 
program to leverage private sector investment to facilitate needed 
infrastructure improvements. Repairing bridges, building hospitals, 
renovating schools create jobs now. During the last 2 years under the 
Build America Bonds program, for every Federal dollar we invested, we 
leveraged $41 of private sector support for more than 2,000 projects in 
every State and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Build America 
Bonds is the kind of public-private partnership that Republicans 
generally support, and we know from the Recovery Act that they create 
jobs.
  I have also introduced legislation to expand the tax deduction for 
business startups. Lending and venture capital investments in small 
businesses, especially startups, continue to lag significantly behind 
traditional levels. Extending this tax deduction for startup expenses 
gives entrepreneurs greater certainty for their financial planning and 
greater incentives to start creating jobs. These tax cuts and small 
business startups will enable the private sector to do what it does 
best--create jobs.
  Make no mistake: The challenge is daunting. The Great Recession was 
the worst economic collapse in 80 years. At its height, America was 
losing 700,000 jobs a month; so Democrats in the last Congress took 
action. We passed the Recovery Act, which cut taxes for 95 percent of 
all Americans and increased infrastructure investment, saving and 
creating hundreds of thousands of construction jobs. We provided 
educational support to train a more highly skilled workforce. We 
enacted a hiring tax credit to spur private sector hiring of recently 
laid off workers, and we saw results. After months of horrific job 
losses, America began more than 1 year of monthly private sector net 
job growth, peaking earlier this year with 3 straight months of more 
than 200,000 private sector jobs created. In fact, in the last 18 
months, we created 2.4 million private sector jobs. The public sector, 
however, has lost jobs every single month this year. Isn't this the 
result for which the Republicans actually advocated?

                              {time}  1020

  Didn't they tell us that cutting government will free up the private 
sector? Then why did we have just 17,000 private sector jobs created in 
August? In fact, the job results this August, with the Republican 
economic plan in action, continued cutting and zero net jobs created.
  It's time we acknowledge that the Republican ``cut to create'' 
philosophy cuts the job market and creates only uncertainty. The choice 
is simple: Politics versus job creation. We're all going to be 
listening with great attention tonight to the President, and I hope all 
of us attend.

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