A Discussion About Jobs

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, thank you.

Following on Congressman Lungren, my colleague from the neighboring district, I didn't realize that Senator Dave Cox had died. I join him in the eulogy that he so graciously gave here on the floor. An extraordinary individual, represented my mother in the mountain counties, and was dedicated, as was said, to the betterment of California. So I will start with that.

What I intended to discuss here today was jobs, American jobs, and the situation we are faced with today and the extraordinary burden that's placed upon so many Americans who have lost their jobs in the last years of this great recession.

What I wanted to really start with was to try to get a sense of what has happened over the last 3 years, 2 1/2 , almost 3 years now. Beginning in December of 2007, the great American recession began during the George W. Bush period. And we began to lose jobs, largely as a result of the subprime mortgage, the lack of regulation that was going on, loans being made to people that didn't qualify, and all the games of Wall Street that began to unravel and to cause the American economy to literally crash.

As that Wall Street problem magnified and grew, the number of jobs that were lost grew, so between December of 2007, when there is actually some modest job growth, and December of 2008, we saw an extraordinary decline in jobs. So that in December 2008 you are looking at over 750,000 jobs lost.

Now, in January, at the end of January, the Obama administration came in, and again in January we faced another 700,000 jobs lost. But almost all that period of time was the previous administration. And the new Obama administration did not have any opportunity until the last 5 days of the month to even take over the administration of government.

Thereafter, and most every month since then we have seen a decline in the number of jobs lost, so that now in the fall of 2009 we actually began to see the first signs of job growth. So that in September, October of 2009 there is actually a small, very modest increase in jobs, followed the next month by again a decline. But then in the following months since the fall of 2009 to this period, we have actually seen a growth in the number of jobs in America. And that's good news.

We're not anywhere near where we need to be. And I think we all need to understand what has been done to--the effect of all of this job loss. So if I might just go to another chart here so that we can set the foundation for what we're going to talk about, you know, the numbers basically lay it out there.

During the Great Recession, beginning in the fall of 2007 and then continuing on until the fall of 2009, 8 million jobs were lost. Nearly all of those were lost during the George W. Bush administration. For the Americans that depended on their savings, their retirement accounts, $17 trillion in retirement savings were lost during this period of time.

You just compare that to the previous 8 years of the Clinton administration, when 22 million jobs were created during the Clinton administration. The question arises, why? What was the difference? What happened that caused during the last years of the George W. Bush administration the loss of these some 8 million jobs compared to 22 million jobs that were created under the Clinton administration? We're going to come to that during this discussion. And it's a fundamental question, because it is the question of national policy.

During the prior period of the Bush administration, by contrast, 1 million jobs were created in America. Again, enormous difference--22 versus 1. Why? What's the reason for this? And the policy decisions that were made that led to this enormous difference here.

I'd tell you what we'd like to do for the remainder of this year is create some 900,000 jobs, and we're on course to do that. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of changes in policy.

Beginning with the Obama administration, a series of pieces of legislation were put into place, and I'd like to just review those pieces of legislation and what they were doing. Many of these were designed specifically to deal with the great recession and to prevent the American economy from falling into a 1930 Depression. We were on the edge. We were teetering on the edge of that.

Some of this was done in the last days of the George W. Bush administration, which was the bailout of Wall Street, the TARP program. That program pumped some $700-plus billion into Wall Street. A lot of controversy about it. Other nations around the world were doing the same thing. And the result was a stabilization of the financial industry. For me, I would have liked to have seen it done differently, but it was done that way during the Bush administration, and it did actually stabilize the economy. Now, because of bills that have been passed since that time, we're seeing a good portion of that money returned to the American Treasury.

Now, beginning with the Obama administration, immediate action was taken here on the floor of this House and in the Senate to try to stabilize the job market to try to put Americans back to work. And the very first bill that was enacted, I believe, within the first 30 days was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Now, economists looking at that today have said that that legislation alone created 2.8 million jobs, including teachers, police, firemen, construction workers, and the like. It also provided the American middle class with the largest tax cut ever for the middle class. Ninety-eight percent of Americans received a reduction in their taxes as a result of that, so that today the amount of money collected from the American taxpayers is at a rate that is as low as it was in the 1950s.

There was also a major element of it that was called rebuilding America with clean energy jobs and with infrastructure. So 2.8 million jobs were enacted.

I'm going to quickly go through these others. I'll come back to them during the course of this discussion. But also I want to just tell you the way we're going to do this, and that is we're going to talk about what's going on in various parts of America.

So, from time to time, I'll come back and talk about the other six fundamental pieces of legislation that have been signed into law by President Obama, passed by this House. All seven, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, have created jobs in America and turned around the American economy. So we're growing. Not as much as we should and not as much as necessary, but we're growing.

I'd like now to reach out--well, I guess I'm a Californian, but basically I'm from northern California. I represent a district in the San Francisco Bay Area east of the San Francisco Bay. But there's another part of California that is rather big. That would be the Los Angeles Basin. And specifically, joining me from Orange County is the gentlewoman from Orange County, Loretta Sanchez.

Can you talk to us about what's happening there and the nature of the economy and the job situation.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. So thank you so very much for talking about down home and what's going on there.

I will note that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the economists suggest has created 2.8 million jobs, provided the largest middle class tax cut ever, and also did the infrastructure--streets, roads, sanitation facilities--and renewable green energy programs. Not one Republican voted for that.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you for bringing up the question of innovation and research. It was a very big portion of that. I'm going to come back a little later to another piece of legislation that has passed this House, yet to pass the Senate. But with regard to the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, once again, it was the Democrats that carried the ball that shouldered the burden and passed and provided the votes. Not one Republican vote.

You mentioned the home-buying situation in Orange County. The first-time home buyer credit, I think it's $6,000, was made available through a piece of legislation that once again was pushed forward by the Democrats in this House and over in the Senate. And 93 percent of the Republicans on this floor voted against that provision that gives first-time home buyers that additional money that they needed for that down payment so they could buy that home.

It goes on and on and on. One of the issues that confronts us, since we're not back where we need to be with our employment, is the unemployment insurance situation.

Now, representing a part of the Nation that has been really harmed by the loss of manufacturing jobs is the Ohio Valley region. Representative Charlie Wilson is from the Youngstown area, and I invite him here to talk to us about his situation in the Ohio Valley and the Youngstown region. Welcome. Thank you.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very, very much for the view from the great Ohio Valley.

Before we started this 1 hour, you and I were chatting off the floor, and you raised another point and maybe the two of us can kind of talk about this for a second.

We're really faced with a choice. First of all, this is unemployment insurance. This has always been a program in which over time employers pay into a fund for insurance if their workers become unemployed. Because of the downturn in the economy, the Federal Government has had to backstop that insurance program. Presumably over time, we get the economy going, some of that will be refunded. I know it certainly will be at the State level because the States are obligated to make it back up.

But with regard to the individuals involved here, their unemployment insurance has run out. They have not received a check now I think for the last 2 weeks. If this is not extended, what happens to them?

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Mr. GARAMENDI. So there is no win in this, and once again, where's the Senate? I know what happened in this House. The Democrats almost universally voted for this. We were able to get 29 Republicans to vote for this unemployment insurance program, and only 29 Republicans did so. We were able to pass it; 153 Republicans voted ``no.''

So what's the sense of all this? It really raises the question in my mind because as we go through these bills that have been passed from this House, some of which have been signed into law, passed the Senate, signed into law, the Republicans universally vote ``no'' on these jobs bills and even on unemployment insurance. I don't quite get it. We were talking earlier about the workers, the first-time homeowner buyers, tax relief for small businesses, emergency relief for American families. That bill passed here with only 7 percent of Republicans voting ``yes'' and 93 voting ``no.''

Even on student aid, we're talking about men and women that want to go back to school, that want to be able to continue their education, and one of the most important ways to stimulate the future economy is to have a well-educated workforce; but in that case, that particular piece of legislation that passed this House would have increased the Pell Grants so that kids and adults could afford to go to school. What did the Republicans do? Not one Republican voted for student aid to help students go to school, to continue in school.

I'm curious what's going on here. I just noticed that my colleague from Connecticut has arrived here, John Larson. Maybe you can answer this or just tell us what is going on in Connecticut.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Larson, thank you so very much. You've brought a great deal of passion to this. I know it's in your heart. I know that you see this problem in your own district among friends and others who are there.

I want to turn back to my colleagues from Ohio and California in a moment. I said there were seven pieces of legislation that have passed and have been signed into law. I'm going to go through them quickly because in their own way each one of these has created economic growth and jobs here in California, in Ohio and in other States across the Nation.

I mentioned the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We talked about the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act; First Time Homebuyers. The gentleman from Connecticut talked briefly about insurance reform, the way in which the insurance system discriminates against women, against people who have preexisting conditions. That insurance reform was embodied in the Health Insurance Reform Act that passed this floor and not one Republican voted for it. There will be a day of reckoning when somebody out there says, My 23-year-old daughter can stay on insurance now because the Democrats and President Obama passed the Health Insurance Reform Act.

Student aid. We talked about that a moment ago. It is extremely important, so that adults can go on to school, can stay there, improve their employability, learn new skills; and as the economy is coming back, will be able to get a job.

This one I found to be personally very upsetting because my old clunker didn't qualify. I actually did not register it in California. By the time you passed this, I wasn't here. It wasn't registered and I couldn't get rid of my clunker. But 700,000 cars were sold as a direct result of the clunker law and it really did help American automobile manufacturing. I know that a lot of people say that Toyota got more than its share, and it did, but a lot of that share were Corollas that were manufactured in Fremont, California; Toyotas to be sure, but nonetheless they were manufactured in California.

We talked about the HIRE Act. Incidentally, 95 percent of Republicans voted against the Cash for Clunkers law. The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, the HIRE Act, created 300,000 jobs. Created. Not some wish list but actually created 300,000 jobs and unleashed billions of dollars of infrastructure across the United States--streets, roads, sanitation facilities. Cut taxes for businesses that hire new workers that had been unemployed and cracked down on offshore tax havens.

Oh, this one I love. I'm going to come back to this one.

Again, 97 percent of Republicans voted against that program. Three hundred thousand jobs. They voted against it. What are you guys doing? We need to put people to work.

Finally, one that most of the Republican leadership opposed, eventually it did become law and many, many Republicans voted against this one, which was the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. Which one of us has not been ripped off by some credit card scheme or scam? But this really gives those of us that have credit cards--and I've got more than I'd like to say in my pocket right now--gives us at least a little bit of an equal footing here on that.

So here are seven bills, all of them in one way or another providing in this case credit, the opportunity to get reasonable credit; hire people; cash for clunkers, education; health care and other kinds of stimulus. Democrats in this side took it upon themselves to shoulder the burden, to pass the legislation necessary to put people to work.

My final point before I turn back to my colleagues is that the argument that I keep hearing is that it will raise the deficit. Yes. But we ought to understand where the deficit really came from, and we'll go through that. The deficit was really created as a result of three things. Keep in mind that when Clinton left office, this Nation was in a surplus. We were running a surplus of over half a trillion dollars. George W. Bush came in and did three things that created as he left office for the next 10 years, an $11 trillion deficit:

One, he started two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and didn't pay for them; really the first time in American history. Secondly, he started Medicare part D, the drug benefit, I think 700 to $800 billion in 10 years, not paid for. And thirdly the great recession with the financial collapse. Those three things added up, beginning the day that Obama took office, he was handed a $1.3 trillion debt, given to him by the Bush administration. And if you look at the years out, continuing the Bush policy, that would add up to an $11 trillion deficit.

We've got to put people to work. The question that I always ask is, do you want tax takers, welfare recipients, who cannot get a job, cannot get unemployment insurance, or do you want taxpayers? The Democratic House has voted consistently to put people to work so that they could become taxpayers.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Excuse me. If I might interrupt, there is some House business that needs to be attended to. I notice our colleague arriving from the Rules Committee to take care of some House business.

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