Right-to-Work Law

RIGHT-TO-WORK LAW

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Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I say to my colleagues, Senators Portman, Alexander, Barrasso, and Cornyn, that it is great to be here this morning to engage in this colloquy. I want to follow up on the points that my esteemed colleague referred to on both energy and trade. They are very important in terms of job creation for our country.

If I could, I will start for a minute on the comprehensive nature of this jobs plan that Republicans have put together. If we look at it, we will see that it is truly comprehensive. It is about living within our means, about reforming our Tax Code, without raising taxes, to create a progrowth environment, create jobs, and get our economy moving. It is about unburdening our economy from the overregulation that is hurting job creation. It is about helping to create a more competitive workforce to compete in a global economy. It is about increasing our exports, and it is about a truly comprehensive approach to energy that will help us develop all of our sources of energy, both traditional and renewable. It is also about commonsense health care reform. We need to do that because we have more than 15 million people who are unemployed. Every day they are unemployed is one day too many. We also have to get on top of this deficit and debt we face. That means controlling our spending, reducing our spending, but it also means growing our economy. That is the way to not only get people back to work but reduce the debt and deficit.

If we look at the 1990s when we were in a somewhat similar situation, that is exactly what we did. We need to go back and do that. North Dakota is a large energy-producing State--oil, gas, clean coal technology, and also the renewables, biofuels, and wind. But the way we did it wasn't through government spending. It was through creating a legal, tax and regulatory environment and creating certainty so that companies and entrepreneurs could invest in energy and advanced manufacturing and technology--the whole gamut. But there are hundreds of millions to billions of dollars today that would go into investments all over this country in the energy patch, both traditional sources and renewable sources of energy, with the latest, greatest technology--more energy, more dependable, and cost effective, with better environmental stewardship.

That is what this is about, creating the right environment. By the same token, we are looking at three different trade agreements: the South Korea Free Trade Agreement, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and the Panama Free Trade Agreement. These would create more economic activity. The Korea agreement alone is expected to increase U.S. exports to South Korea by $10 billion a year. We are talking hundreds of thousands of jobs.

We need to be working on those free-trade agreements right now, today, to approve them. I urge our leadership and the administration to work with us to get those trade agreements to the floor and get them approved as part of this comprehensive jobs plan.

I thank my esteemed colleagues again, and I commend Senator Portman for his outstanding work on this plan. I thank all of the members of our caucus for the contributions they have made to this plan. Also, again, I express our desire to go to work with our friends across the aisle on all of these provisions for the benefit of all of those who are looking for work, for the benefit of our economy, and for the important role that economic growth, along with spending restraint, will play in helping us get on top of our debt and deficit.

With that, I turn the colloquy back over to Senator Portman for his additional remarks.

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