[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3756-3757]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              JOB CREATION

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I see my colleague from Colorado is on 
the floor, and he is going to speak to an amendment which is very 
important. The Republican leader addressed an aspect of it. I will make 
a brief comment.
  If we want to create jobs in this country, we know how to do it. We 
passed a bill here last week, 74 to 22--a bipartisan bill. What a 
miracle. A bipartisan bill passes the Senate, a bill

[[Page 3757]]

that would create 2.6 million, maybe 2.8 million jobs--create and save 
that many jobs in this economy--a bill that will help the American 
economy expand in the 21st century. What could it possibly be? It is 
called the Federal transportation bill. We do it every 5 years. If we 
do not do it--if we do not build the roads, the bridges, the airports, 
sustain passenger rail service and Amtrak, make certain we have mass 
transit and buses around America--our economy starts to contract 
instead of grow.
  We passed this bill with a strong bipartisan vote, thanks to Senators 
Boxer and Inhofe. A Democrat and a Republican, a progressive and a 
conservative, came together on the bill. We sent it over to the House 
of Representatives and they said: Sorry, we are not going to take it 
up. We will not vote on it. We are going to send you a bill that allows 
people to create new startups, these new private companies, and we are 
going to eliminate the regulation that makes sure investors do not get 
fleeced. That is how we want to create jobs.
  Well, that is like hoping America has amnesia. We remember the 
subprime mortgage mess when a lot of unsuspecting people were dragged 
into offices and into mortgages they had no idea were going to explode 
when the balloon burst.
  Now, once again, the Republicans have said: The best way to create 
jobs in the future is to let that happen when it comes to the sale of 
stock in new companies. I am with Mary Schapiro, the Commissioner of 
the Securities and Exchange Commission. She has warned us, we need to 
put protections in this bill. It is not going to create the jobs they 
talk about. It is going to endanger investors.
  I yield the floor for the Senator from Colorado.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Thank you, Madam President. And I thank the Senator from 
Illinois for his leadership and agree it is vital we pass the 
transportation bill.

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