On the recordJuly 21, 2010
I thank the gentleman from California. And really we've got to kind of not forget what we've come through, because the better days are ahead. But you can't forget where you came from. And over the course of 2007 through 2008, at the end of the Bush administration this country was losing 780,000 jobs a month. And over the course of the next year, through a series of things that stopped the free fall of the economy, righted it, and dealt with some significant issues that have been really holding us back, holding this country back for a long time. Health care as it applies to business. Each car costs a ton of money. On top of that is the health care costs. A variety of things that have been holding us down from reaching our real potential as Americans and as America. But over the course of the last year-and-a-half, instead of losing 780,000 jobs, as we were under the Bush administration, we crossed the axis to positive job growth. And it's still kind of shaky, but we've gone from losing 780,000 jobs to gaining about 100,000 jobs a month. Now that's not good enough, and we can do a lot better. And we have a lot of work to do because in this trough, in this deep part of the recession, we lost 8 million jobs. We want good paying, good products coming out of that so that we can put people back to work. And that's the goal and the everyday job. Our first priority is putting people back to work to good jobs. And that's what we're doing.
