On the recordMay 11, 2010
very briefly, I commend our colleague from Colorado for reaching out on this. The amendment is authored by the Senator from Colorado, and he has attracted good bipartisan support from Senators Tester, Isakson, Klobuchar, Begich, LeMieux, Mark Udall, and Brown of Massachusetts on how this ought to be done. The substance of the amendment is critically important. He worked with Treasury to ensure that we are responsibly winding down the TARP and getting the government out of the business of owning businesses. We can all agree with that, and I commend him for that amendment. It also ensures that unused TARP funds are used to pay down the deficit. We have heard a lot of talk about fiscal responsibility and watching what is happening in Europe and other countries and knowing the fiscal problems of those nations are the root cause of a lot of the problems they are going through today. This amendment actually dedicates these resources to deficit reduction. I think all of us applaud his leadership on it. There are signs our economy is recovering. In the last 3 months of 2010, our economy added roughly 187,000 jobs a month. Last year, it was 290,000 jobs, which is the largest number in over 4 years. Compare that to the first 3 months of 2009 when we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. In the first quarter, the economy grew 3.2 percent, a swing upwards of nearly 10 percent in 1 year, something many economists say is largely due to the Recovery Act.
