On the recordJuly 22, 2013
I am so pleased to have the opportunity tonight to be here in this Chamber with so many of our colleagues, either to discuss solutions--solutions for our country, solutions for our economy--and I am just going to invite my colleagues to participation in the conversation as they see fit. Mr. Speaker, I want to just point out to you that we have reached out to our constituents about this leadership hour tonight on Twitter using #4jobs; and, Mr. Speaker, we are hopeful that tonight during this hour, we will continue that conversation with our constituents at #4jobs. I have a lot of comments from my constituents back home that I'm eager to share as we go through this hour. I want to point out what many of you may have already read, and that is that the President has stated that he plans to pivot, once again, back to jobs and the economy. I thought, well, that's great news. That's what we have been pushing here. Many of you have seen us carrying around our laminated cards that talk about all of the jobs bills that we've passed in this Congress and, last, trying to promote economic growth in this country, to help get hardworking, taxpaying Americans back to work. But I lost my enthusiasm when buried in that article was the President's statement: White House officials said three speeches will not offer new proposals or approaches. So we're going to pivot back to jobs and the economy, but we have no new approaches and we have no new ideas.…
