Energy

Floor Speech

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, in January, President Obama took office while facing the worst economic crisis in generations.

Faced with that tremendous challenge, President Obama and the Democratic Congress responded with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an aggressive plan to jump-start our economy and to create jobs.

As we look back on the Recovery Act's first 8 months, its success in averting catastrophe is clear. We are not out of the woods yet, and much more work remains to create good jobs and to lower unemployment; but there are positive signs that the recession is over and that the economic policies pursued by the Democrats are starting to work.

Just last week, the Obama administration made important announcements to invest $3.4 billion into the smart energy grid and into the first round of awards under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or the ARPA-E program. These announcements by the administration show that the Recovery Act is working, giving investors the confidence they need to leverage private funds to create new clean-energy jobs to put people back to work and to revolutionize the way we power our economy and drive American innovation.

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