Ed Perlmutter: “The Fifth. Let's see what you would get. You would get approximately 7,600 jobs. So this is about jobs across this…”

“The Fifth. Let's see what you would get. You would get approximately 7,600 jobs. So this is about jobs across this country. We've been losing jobs at an incredible rate, at a rate of at least 600,000 jobs per month for the last 3 months. We must stop it. We must stop that job loss now. We cannot let it go any further. There were 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008. It is time to reverse this. We cannot continue to go on this path. We are going into a spiral. The purpose of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is to rejuvenate this economy and to get it back on track. It is not going to be easy. It will take a series of bills and efforts, and it will take time, but this is about action, about action now. So let's talk about what is really in the bill. First of all, there are no earmarks. For anybody and everybody who is listening to me speak this morning: There are no earmarks in this bill. There is no earmark for rats in San Francisco. There is money that goes to the EPA and to the Department of the Interior for the cleanup of wetlands or for maintaining wetlands. Apparently, this is on a list of ready-to-go projects, but it, like many others, must compete within the departments for that money. It is not a specific earmark within the bill. Now, that trivializes this bill. This bill is in five parts. The first part is construction and the reconstruction of this country. It is new construction for roads, bridges, transit, and the energy grid.”