American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Floor Speech
AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT -- (Senate - February 11, 2009)
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I recently received a letter from a woman in Sultan, WA, that I want to share with you today as we work to finalize the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. She wrote to me because her family is going through some very hard times and she doesn't know where else to turn.
Her husband, who is a veteran who received a Purple Heart, lost his job in October. Her own wages have been cut and her daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter had to move in with them because they can't afford rent and childcare. At the end of this month, they are going to lose their home to foreclosure.
She said her family is living ``both literally and figuratively on the edge.'' As she put it:
We are the textbook middle class ..... sliding into a jobless, homeless, and hopeless future.
Mr. President, I come this afternoon to share her story with you because the pain she is going through is being felt by millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes in the last couple of years. Families such as hers feel as though their lives are slipping out from under them, and they are looking to us for help.
The House and the Senate have taken a critical step forward by passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It is going to give our economy the jolt it needs to create jobs and help our country get back on track. But we are not done yet. We still need to get that bill to the President. Every day we wait, the economy gets worse. Every day, more jobs are cut, more small businesses close their doors, more homes are lost, and more families are forced to make new sacrifices just to make ends meet. That is why I have come to the floor this evening.
The American people need action now. They need us to set aside our differences and put a final bill into President Obama's hands so we can start the real work of getting our country moving again. So I urge my colleagues in the House and the Senate to finish this job and give this bill final approval.
We know the bill that is coming out of conference is not perfect, but it makes tried-and-true investments that will help create jobs and get our country back on track. It makes a downpayment on the future by rebuilding our roads and bridges, our water and sewer plants--investments that will put people to work today and strengthen our economy for years to come.
The bill expands our renewable energy options, creating good-paying jobs in a growing industry and helping to end our addiction to oil. It will also help improve health care and cut costs by computerizing health records and boosting research. It invests in education and job training that will help our laid-off workers learn new skills and find new jobs.
Mr. President, our economy is not going to recover overnight. We still have very hard times ahead. But I am confident this is the urgent action we need to begin moving forward again. I want to take a few minutes this evening to talk about what it will mean for families in my home State of Washington.
To begin with, this bill offers a helping hand to thousands of families in Washington State who are struggling to meet their basic needs. In the last couple of months, we have seen a demand for food stamps, Medicaid, and other programs rise dramatically. Food stamp applications are up 15 percent over last year. State workers have said they are having trouble keeping up with the demand. This bill is going to help us meet the needs of the most vulnerable families by extending unemployment insurance benefits, expanding food stamps, and increasing funding to help with Medicaid costs.
This isn't just the moral thing to do, we would not be able to dig ourselves out of this economic crisis until people have money to spend. So this is the right decision economically as well. The money we spend on unemployment and food stamps will go right back into the economy as people use the benefits to pay for things they need. That is the same reason we are working to get money into the hands of working families and small business owners.
Like families all across the country, people in my home State are scared, they are struggling to make ends meet, and they aren't spending. So we include in this bill an income tax cut that will give almost 2 1/2 million Washington workers some extra money in their paychecks every week. Because this bill is about stabilizing our economy and getting our country back on track, we are also including funding to help struggling families pay for critical expenses, such as childcare or health care or college tuition.
I was a working mom. I know that reliable childcare is what makes it possible for millions of parents to go to work every day. This bill increases the childcare development block grant so more parents can afford quality daycare for their kids. It increases Pell grants and higher education tax credits to help thousands of our students stay in college, get their degree, and then qualify for a good-paying job. Importantly, the bill also makes COBRA more affordable so people who have lost their jobs can keep their health insurance while they look for work.
So we are helping working families pay for their basic expenses, stay in school, and keep their jobs and their health care. That is critical to getting our country back on track.
But the biggest jolt to our economy will come from the millions of jobs we are creating in construction, in environmental cleanup, and in energy development. In my State, this bill will help put thousands of people to work fixing our roads and bridges and upgrading our mass transit and ferry systems. These are investments that will also make our communities stronger and more attractive to businesses in the long run. It will help us take a big step toward energy independence and lower energy costs for everyone.
This bill expands the Bonneville Power Administration's existing borrowing authority, and it will help us take advantage of more renewable energy sources and hire hundreds of thousands of new employees who will be trained to update our energy transmission systems. That will allow the new energy we hope to produce, such as wind, get to our homes and our businesses and save all of us money in the future.
This bill will also help create and preserve jobs at Hanford, and it will keep our legal and moral commitment to cleaning up nuclear waste in Washington State and across the country. It will also ensure that we can fulfill our responsibility to our Nation's veterans by making investments in badly needed construction and repair projects at our VA hospitals and medical facilities in Washington State and across the country.
But we are not just creating construction jobs in this bill. We are helping our local and State governments keep critical employees on the job--our police and our firefighters, our teachers, our university employees. This economic crisis has hit State and local governments terribly hard. They have had to make cuts across the board, including in education and emergency response. Local officials have told me they are very worried about what that will mean for their communities. Police chiefs and sheriffs have been warning me that I.D. theft, burglary, bank robbery, fraud, and gang activity are going to increase as jobs vanish and people become more desperate.
In this bill we provide money for Byrne and COPS grants to help keep
our police on the beat and our families safe. Just as important, this bill will help our schools and our colleges and our universities keep their doors open and keep the teachers in the classroom.
School board members from across my home State of Washington told me this week they are struggling to afford everything from salaries to their light bills. Several of them have already started laying off, and they are worried there is more to come. Universities in my home State are looking at hundreds of job cuts.
Education is critical to our communities, especially when the economy is bad. We need strong schools and colleges to train the workforce of the future. We need to make sure they are strong so our current workforce can get the skills and training they need to qualify for better jobs as well. We can't afford to take a step backward. So we are sending billions of critically needed dollars to schools and colleges across the country to keep the lights on, the doors open, teachers on the job, and to make sure we can meet the needs of students who have been hurt by this economic crisis.
Mr. President, let me add one other note. We aren't just helping to make up for State budget cuts. We are adding incentives that make sure schools keep working to increase standards and improve education for all of our students.
Finally, we are also investing in our greatest resource--our workers--so that our communities can stay productive and competitive in the global economy. This bill includes $64 million for training and job research services that will help our laid-off workers in Washington State learn the skills they need so they can begin new careers and stay in the middle class. It also provides incentives to encourage businesses to hire homeless veterans and disadvantaged teenagers who are looking for jobs today.
Mr. President, this isn't just going to help our teens and our veterans find jobs, it is good for the economy too. Teenagers, in particular, as we all know, are more likely to spend the money they earn in their own communities, and some of them also contribute to their families' incomes to help pay rent or put food on the table. So this is a smart investment.
This bill we are going to consider in the next day or so is critical for my home State. In Washington alone it will create thousands of jobs and make investments that will strengthen our communities for years to come. It isn't perfect. It is not a silver bullet that will solve all of our problems, but it certainly is the first of many steps that we are going to have to take to get our country turned around.
As President Obama has outlined, getting our economy back on track is going to take an aggressive three-pronged approach. The first step is to recover and reinvest. We also have to stabilize our financial institutions to fix the credit and banking system. We need to address the housing crisis. But I want to emphasize, we have to do all three if we are going to get this economy moving again.
We are starting today with a bold recovery bill. While there are no guarantees with any of this, we can guarantee that if we do nothing, things are going to get worse. As hard as it has been to write and put this bill together, it does not even compare to the pain that is being felt by millions of Americans who are going to wake up tomorrow without a job.
They are watching us now, and they are expecting us to make good on the promises we have made--to bring change to Washington and restore confidence and security in our country. They expect us to work together. They expect us to put our differences aside and make the difficult decisions that will move our country forward. They cannot afford to wait any longer.
When I was growing up, my father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and all of a sudden he couldn't work any longer. My family--all seven kids, my mom--had to survive on food stamps. My brothers and sisters and I were able to go to college because of Pell grants and student loans. So I want you to know I understand what a lot of our families are going through today as they struggle in this economy. That is why I am working so hard with so many others to find ways that our Government and our country can help today.
President Obama made it clear Monday night that if we do not act, the economic crisis we are in now could become an economic catastrophe. I urge my colleagues to help pass this bill out of the conference, through the Senate and House, get it signed, get Americans back to work, and get our country on the road to recovery.
I yield the floor.
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