On the recordDecember 22, 2010
as we end this year, I wanted to look back at what we have been able to accomplish--and look ahead at some of the important priorities we must tackle next year. The 111th Congress has been one of the most productive in our Nation's history. Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein has said the legislative achievements of this session are ``at least on par with the 89th Congress'' of 1965-1966, under President Johnson, which produced landmark civil rights legislation as well as Medicaid and Medicare. We should take a moment to reflect on some of those accomplishments. After years of unsupervised gambling on Wall Street fueled an unsustainable housing bubble, we inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We helped bring our economy back from the brink by taking bold action. We passed the Economic Recovery Act, which has created or saved more than 350,000 jobs in my home State of California alone. We approved the bipartisan HIRE Act--a jobs package that cut taxes for companies that hire unemployed workers and extended the highway trust fund. As chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I was pleased to help advance this critical measure to protect more than 1 million jobs nationwide building our roads, bridges and transit systems. We helped small businesses--which are the true engines of our economic growth--by passing the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act.
