[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12201]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         UNEMPLOYMENT AND JOBS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw attention to the recent 
rising unacceptable unemployment numbers in some regions of our Nation. 
The fact is Republicans control this House, and they are not only doing 
nothing to create jobs in America, they are actually creating more 
unemployment.
  In my home State of Ohio, the unemployment rate jumped up to 7.2 
percent. In the city of Cleveland, the unemployment rate rose from 9 
percent to 10.1 percent over the past month. In the city of Lorain, 
unemployment dramatically rose from 8.7 to 10.6 percent. In the city of 
Toledo, we saw an increase in unemployment from 8.7 to 9.3 percent.
  Nationally, the unemployment rate remains stalled, stuck, at 7.6 
percent. But in too many neighborhoods across our country unemployment 
is a daily reality.
  When you incorporate labor underutilization, the real national 
unemployment rate is actually 14.3 percent. There are currently 11.8 
million, nearly 12 million, unemployed people in this country--4.3 
million people have been jobless for 27 weeks or more and are 
considered long-term unemployed.
  New Federal Government employment has declined by 65,000 persons over 
the past 12 months--65,000 more people spit out.
  The unemployment rate for the construction industry is 9.8 percent. 
Manufacturing employment has declined in the past 4 straight months.
  Do those job numbers sound like an economic recovery to you? What is 
the Republican response to these dubious unemployment and jobs numbers? 
Block the President.
  So what do they do? Let's repeal the Affordable Care Act 38 times. 
And they've tried again and again to do that.
  Let's not appoint budget conferees so we can negotiate a budget deal 
that puts people to work and strengthens the middle class. No. 
Sequestration is arguably the primary driver of these poor job numbers. 
So, let's ignore the harmful effects of sequestration. The 
Congressional Budget Office estimates just the unemployment resulting 
from sequestration costs our economy an additional 1.5 percent in lost 
economic growth.
  Remember when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated 
that sequestration would reduce economic growth and cost about 750,000 
jobs? Well, they were right. We are seeing the effect of that today. 
The sequester was the largest cause of the negative growth numbers in 
the fourth quarter of last year.
  According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the economy is growing 
far slower than expected, despite the fact that personal consumption 
and business inventory spending has increased recently. You would think 
that if consumer and business spending is up, we would see strong GDP 
growth, given that our economy is based on consumer spending.
  Unfortunately, this is where the sequester and the Republican policy 
of cut and run, cut and run, cut and run comes into play. Government 
spending has declined in 11 of the last 13 quarters since the first 
quarter of 2010.
  We may have seen robust growth if we took a sensible, long-term 
approach to deficit reduction instead of using the Republican 
shortsighted sequester and steep unfair budget cuts. They are even 
kicking thousands of mentally ill citizens out of their assisted 
housing--thousands--over 27,000 people who can't make it on their own 
being kicked out of their humble shelters across this country.
  With the Republicans refusing to replace their mindless sequester, 
600,000 civilian defense workers are currently being furloughed. The 
economic impact of these defense furloughs will be the loss of over an 
estimated $2 trillion for our economy; just in Ohio 22,000 furloughs in 
the civilian defense sector. The policies of this Republican House are 
hampering robust economic growth across our country.
  The Federal Reserve agrees with what I am saying. In a recent hearing 
the chair of the Fed said, ``the economic recovery has continued at a 
moderate pace in recent quarters despite the strong headwinds created 
by Federal fiscal policy.''
  Unfortunately, Republicans will likely continue to refuse to 
compromise and focus on slowing the economy even further. Congress has 
already cut spending by $2.5 trillion. That has real impacts on job 
creation. Discretionary spending is at its lowest level in 45 years. 
The Federal deficit is projected to be at its lowest level in recent 
memory. And the Treasury has actually even recently made payments on 
the national debt.
  We need a jobs bill here, not more reckless cuts. The President has a 
plan; the Republicans don't. I would urge my Republican colleagues, 
bring to the floor the President's jobs agenda. Let's show America 
which party is committed to job creation in this country, not more 
stalling.

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