Chuck Grassley: “I am happy to be, once again, on the floor with a very important piece of legislation. With the cooperation of the…”

“I am happy to be, once again, on the floor with a very important piece of legislation. With the cooperation of the Democratic leadership of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Baucus, we bring to the floor a bill that was voted out of committee 19 to 2. Senator Baucus and I always work together as much as we can--that is, most of the time--to bring to the Senate a bill that can get through the Chamber because as so many people who watch the Senate regularly know, the Senate, unlike the House of Representatives, can't function if it does not function in a bipartisan way. So we proceed, then, with this bipartisan bill: the Jumpstart Our Business Strength Act. If I refer to the acronym JOBS, it is jumpstart our business strength. Since March 2000, long before President Bush took office, the manufacturing sector has been under significant economic pressure. Obviously, that has affected manufacturing workers. A recent CBO study estimates that going way back to March 2000, an estimated 3 million workers have lost their manufacturing jobs. The Congressional Budget Office attributes this job decline to the recession that began in November 2000 and the weak economy in demand that followed, part of it a result of September 11 and recovery not coming as normal as recoveries do. But we always tend to look at bad news. Bad news tends to make the front pages of the newspaper. Good news tends to make the back pages, if there is good news printed at all.”