[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13152-13153]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              JOBS AGENDA

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, tonight, before a joint session of Congress, 
President Obama will address the Nation on the single most important 
issue facing our country: the unemployment crisis we have before us. I 
look forward to hearing the specifics of his plan. I have spoken to 
him, and I have a pretty good idea of what he is going to talk about.
  I support his goal to create good jobs for the 14 million people who 
have no jobs. This is a time of dark economic times, and it is 
important that we do this. I applaud the commonsense, bipartisan 
approach the President will unveil tonight to invest in badly needed 
infrastructure and to cut taxes for working families and small 
businesses to spur job creation.
  These are ideas around which Members of both parties should rally. 
Republicans have always supported tax cuts. They have done it in the 
past, and they agree we must bring America's infrastructure up to 21st-
century standards. I hope that in fact is the case. But if my 
Republican friends oppose these proposals now--proposals they have 
supported in the past--the reason will be very clear: partisan 
politics. Republicans seem convinced that a failing economy is good for 
their politics. They think that if they kill every jobs bill and stall 
every effort to revive the economy, President Obama will lose. My good 
friend the Republican leader has said so. He has said the Republican 
Party's No. 1 goal in this Congress is to defeat the President. But 
Republicans aiming at the President have caught innocent Americans in 
the crossfire.
  This week, Republican leaders have said they want to work with the 
President and Democrats in Congress. They want to work on job creation 
in a bipartisan way, they say. I hope that in fact is the case, but 
their actions over the last 8 months speak much louder than their words 
of the last few days.
  For example, Republicans opposed the reauthorization of the Small 
Business Innovation Research Program and the Economic Development 
Administration. Both have proven track records of spurring innovation, 
encouraging entrepreneurship, and creating jobs. Republicans were 
willing to put more than \1/2\ million Americans' jobs at risk and, in 
fact, eliminate those jobs rather than work with us to pass that 
legislation.
  The Senate passed much needed patent reform in March. Yet House 
Republicans stalled for months before sending us back their version of 
the bill, which we will vote on today. I am hopeful we can send it back 
to the House untouched.
  Republicans wasted weeks threatening to shut down the economy this 
spring. They held our economy hostage for months this summer over a 
routine vote on whether to pay the Nation's bills. Congress took the 
same vote 18 times while President Reagan was President and 7 times 
while George W. Bush was President and never was the vote time-
consuming or contentious. Through it all, Republicans hacked

[[Page 13153]]

away at funding for the very programs that were helping to get this 
Nation's economy back on its feet.
  The results of their stall tactics, obstructionism, and mindless 
budget cuts are beginning to show. Although the private sector created 
jobs for the 18th month in a row, August saw no change in the national 
unemployment rate. Unemployment in Nevada is still the highest in the 
Nation. But in spite of all this, the Republicans have refused to allow 
us to focus on unemployment. As Democrats introduced jobs bill after 
jobs bill, Republicans made it clear they were more interested in 
pursuing a political agenda than a jobs agenda.
  We will no longer allow our Republican colleagues to put politics 
ahead of the American people. There are two things we must get done 
this work period and both will create and save jobs immediately. We 
need to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration to protect both 
air travelers and airline workers--that is 80,000 jobs--and we must 
pass a highway bill to fund construction projects across the Nation. 
These two bills combined will save about 2 million jobs, including many 
jobs in the struggling construction industry, and it will do it now. 
But we need Republican help. We can't get it done without them. This is 
their chance to prove they remember the meaning of the word 
``bipartisan.'' It is time for necessity to trump ideology.
  Senator Robert Byrd once said, ``Potholes know no parties.'' The 
challenges this Nation faces today are greater than any speed bump, but 
the road to recovery is the same: cooperation. Partisanship will not 
solve our jobs crisis, but setting aside politics in service to our 
country certainly will.
  Mr. President, we have been able to move forward this week and get 
some work done. I especially appreciate very much the work of Senator 
Kyl, who is the Republican whip. His work to put the patent bill in the 
position it is in so we can finish that bill today--we certainly hope 
to be able to do that--has been very exemplary, and I appreciate it 
very much.
  Next week, likely, our first vote will be to do something about 
FEMA--the Federal Emergency Management Agency--which is broke. We have 
had a string of natural catastrophes that have been just awful--Irene, 
Lee, and tornadoes that don't have names, but the one that struck 
Joplin, MO, killed almost 200 people and devastated that town.
  I went down to S-120 last night, and they had a number of scientists 
showing some of the things they have developed. One of the things they 
have developed--and these are things they have done at universities, 
handmade pieces of magnificent equipment that do many things--is 
something they can place in the path of a storm--they have never been 
able to do that before--to determine from which direction the wind is 
coming and how hard it blows. Without belaboring the point, one of the 
instruments there recorded the strongest winds ever recorded in the 
history of the world--more than 300 miles an hour. That is basically 
what we had in Joplin, MO. There is no building that can withstand 
that. It is devastating.
  The pictures you see of Joplin, MO, look like a series of bombs hit. 
Every building was affected, most of them knocked down. The reason I 
mention that is that FEMA has stopped work in Joplin, MO. People were 
there working for $9 an hour, just putting things back into some 
semblance of order, but that work has stopped. FEMA has had to look at 
the places that are impacted right now. They are still trying to get 
the water out of some places because of Lee and to restore some of the 
immediate damage done by Irene. We have to do something to replenish 
that money.
  I was happy to see some of the statements from one of the Republican 
leaders in the House yesterday in effect changing his position on how 
all this has to be paid for. As we speak, we are spending billions of 
dollars every week in Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand that. But that 
is all unpaid for--unpaid for.
  Certainly, we have to do something to help the American people in an 
emergency and figure out some other way in the future to look at how to 
handle other disasters. We try to prefund what we think will happen as 
a result of disasters, but these are acts of God--that is what we learn 
in law school--these hurricanes and tornadoes and floods. Along the 
Mississippi River, we have more than 3 million acres underwater. This 
is farmland. It is not just vacant land, it is farmland underwater. 
These people need help, and the Federal Government can help them. So we 
need to do that, and that is why we will have a vote, as soon as I can 
arrange it next week, on funding FEMA so they can continue doing the 
work that is so important for our country.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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