Political Quotes

“Thank you very much. I want to spend this evening talking about manufacturing. Manufacturing matters. It is the foundation of any solid economy. It is the one part of the American economy that is seriously hurting, and with the great recession, the manufacturing sector in America has even further weakened. I would like to start this discussion with just a quick review of what has happened with regard to jobs over the last 3 years. If you will look here on this diagram, you will notice that, beginning in 2007, jobs in America slowed down and began to decline, so much so that, between 2007 and November of 2009, some 700,000 jobs a month were being lost in the fall and into the early winter of 2009. When the Obama administration came in, it was at the lowest possible point of some nearly 800,000 jobs lost in December and January. As the administration came in, very strong action was taken--the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February, which was an effort to move the economy and to put people back to work. It was a major tax cut in that. The largest middle class tax cut ever was part of that. There was an effort to build roads and streets and infrastructure, and money was sent to school districts to continue to employ teachers and to stabilize the American economy. It worked. It worked, and slowly we saw a decline in the number of jobs that were lost.”