Solving the Jobs Crisis

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it is no secret that the vast majority of Americans are not happy with Washington right now. They say 13 percent of the public approves of Congress, and I have not met any of those people.

It is also no secret that the President of the United States is trying to use the displeasure of Washington for political gain. I think that is a pretty sad commentary on the state of affairs over at the White House lately. As the only person elected to represent every American, the President should speak for all Americans, especially in times of crisis, not divide them for short-term partisan political gain.

But it is perfectly obvious why the President would find the path of division appealing, because on the No. 1 issue we face, jobs and the economy, the President's policies have not worked as advertised. After nearly 3 years in office, he has failed to make any progress on his promises to turn the jobs crisis around. I think we can pretty much sum up that failure with a single number, 1.5 million. That is how many fewer jobs there are right now in America since the President signed his first stimulus, according to the Obama administration's own Labor Department--1.5 million.

So what is the President trying to do? Well, he is trying to change the topic. He wants to deflect attention from that 1.5 million job loss. He wants to think the problem is not his policies, it is those mean Republicans in Congress who oppose them. But the President leaves a few things out of the reelection script he brought along on his bus tour.

First of all, it was not just the Republicans who defeated his latest stimulus bill last week. The only reason a majority of Democrats voted to debate it is they knew they would not have to vote on it. That is why the majority leader repeatedly moved to block a vote on the measure itself, the actual proposal.

Second, we are now living under economic policies that President Obama himself put in place. This is not something you will hear on the bus tour, but let's be clear. The President got everything he wanted from a Democratic-controlled Congress during the first 2 years of his presidency. He owned the place.

Now we are living with the hard realities that those policies have brought to bear on the American worker. So at this point, anytime the President says ``pass this bill,'' people have a very good reason to be skeptical, because this is not the first time President Obama demanded that Congress pass what he calls a jobs bill. But if this one were to pass and it worked as advertised, then it would be the first one that did.

Again and again, the President's response to America's ongoing jobs crisis has been to insist that Congress pass some urgent piece of legislation right away or an even worse calamity would result. Those bills were supposed to create jobs and prevent layoffs as well.

But he keeps coming back for more. I guess the President is counting on the American people to forget that part. He is counting on us to forget about the other stimulus legislation he has already signed into law and that has failed to live up to its hype every single time.

Again and again the President has demanded that Congress do something to create jobs, and the only thing we seem to end up with at the end of the day is more debt, more government, and fewer jobs. So let's review the record for a while.

Two and a half years ago, President Obama went down to Florida and said the first stimulus--the nearly $1 trillion government spending bill he signed shortly after taking office--would save or create millions of jobs, including jobs for firefighters, nurses, police officers, and teachers.

Well, what happened? The States got their bailout, the national unemployment rate didn't budge, and a year and a half later the President was back asking for another one. That is right, a year and a half after the first stimulus, the White House was back last August saying they needed another $26 billion right away or else 160,000 teachers would get pink slips and police and firefighters across the country would literally be off the job. What happened then? Well, the States got another bailout. The unemployment rate didn't budge. And now the President is riding around on a bus saying that if they don't get another one, teachers, police, and firefighters will lose their jobs again.

Does anybody notice a pattern? We have been doing this for nearly 3 years now--3 years. It doesn't work as advertised. Bailouts don't solve the problem. In fact, they perpetuate it. Yet all we get from the President and Democrats in Congress is do it again, do it again, or else.

We have been mired in a jobs crisis for 3 long years now, and all the Democrats ever want to do is throw more taxpayer money at it. It never works the way they claim it will. Yet they want to keep on doing it--with other people's money. Just throw another bailout together, slap the word ``jobs'' on the cover page, and dare people to vote against it. That is, apparently, the Democrats' governing philosophy--3 years into this jobs crisis. It would not be irresponsible to oppose an approach such as this; it would be irresponsible to consider it. It didn't work the first time. It didn't work the second time. The third time won't be a charm. That is why Republicans and a growing number of our Democratic friends want a different approach. There is a growing bipartisan opposition to trying the same failed policies again.

There is bipartisan opposition to raising taxes, especially at a time when 14 million Americans are out of work. If there is one thing we should agree on now, it is that we should be making it easier for businesses to hire, not harder. So the President should drop his obsession with raising taxes, and if he really wants to create jobs, maybe he should consider doing something different.

We have tried the bailout approach. We have tried more regulations, more debt, and more taxes. Why don't we try a new idea for a change, one that has bipartisan support, one that isn't a two-time proven failure? Let's try something that might actually work because the American people didn't send us here to kick our problems down the road. They certainly didn't send us here to repeat the same mistakes over and over and then stick them and their children with the tab. That might be how you maintain a sense of urgency--by failing to solve the problem the first two times around--but it is not how you solve a jobs crisis. The American people simply deserve better than this. They deserve better than the false promises they have been getting.

The President got everything he wanted from a Democratic Congress for 2 years--everything he wanted: a health care law designed to take over one-sixth of the entire economy; a financial reform bill that punishes businesses that had nothing to do with the financial crisis; out-of-control regulations that are forcing otherwise healthy businesses to shut down, businesses such as Smart Papers in Hamilton, OH, a paper mill that said last week it is shutting down because of onerous new Federal regulations that make it too costly to do business; and a trillion-dollar stimulus that was supposed to solve the jobs crisis 2 1/2 years ago.

For 2 years, when the President said: Pass this bill right away, Democrats did it. Here is what they got, despite all that: trillions in debt and more than 1 1/2 million fewer jobs. And that is after the President got everything he wanted for 2 whole years. We don't need any more of that. We can't afford more of the same.

I yield the floor.

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