Chris Coons: “I come to the floor once again to talk about jobs and economic growth. We are continuing to see signs of a steadily…”

“I come to the floor once again to talk about jobs and economic growth. We are continuing to see signs of a steadily improving economy, with more than 200,000 jobs created last month in the jobs report just released last Friday. Of those, 19,000 were new manufacturing jobs. We have had 43 straight months of private sector job growth, but the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and sadly particularly for those who are long-term unemployed. Earlier today the Budget Conference Committee met, and we heard from Congressional Budget Office Director Dr. Elmendorf. He let us know that in his view, the uncertainty--the lack of clarity about the path forward for all of us here, for the solutions we need for the budget and for the deficit--is one of the greatest drags on job creation and on competitiveness for our country and our economy. In our Budget Conference Committee, we need to come together and reach a balanced budget deal that repeals sequester and allows the Appropriations Committee--ably led by Chairman Mikulski--to move forward with an Omnibus appropriations bill for this fiscal year. We cannot afford, in my view, another long-term continuing resolution at the current sequester levels. As we heard today from Dr. Elmendorf, and as we have heard from other sources, the sequester will have killed 750,000 jobs by the end of the year, and next year these ongoing, steady, grinding cuts could kill another 800,000. These are jobs.…”