John Garamendi: “Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to focus on the great trauma and pain that Americans are suffering from. We could…”

“Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to focus on the great trauma and pain that Americans are suffering from. We could start with it looking like that, but, really, you turn this around and you can see what's happened over the last 2 years. Americans are in a world of hurt. I recall so clearly in California, the area I represented--actually, the entire State as I would travel around--we would talk to people who were saying that they were in the real estate business; they were buying houses. And my wife and I, as we would drive to work, she would often say, How could it be? They don't have any money? What is going on? What was going on was the great scam and the great fraud of this century, and the result is seen so clearly on this chart. Beginning in the year of December of 2007, there was actually a little uptick in jobs during that Bush administration year, and then came the crash and things came down around all America. And we see the falloff in jobs over the years from December 2007 until the change of administrations in 2009. Some 700,000 jobs were lost in December and January of 2008--and January of 2009. And then we have a new administration, and we begin to turn things around.”