Political Quotes

“Since 2001 the country has lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs. Now, I offered an amendment which was President Bush's 21st Century Job Initiative in an act of bipartisanship. Let me quote what he said on April 5 when he introduced his initiative. ``We are not training enough people to fill the jobs for the 21st century. There is a skills gap,'' the President says, ``and if we do not adjust quickly, if we do not use our community colleges, we are going to have a shortage of skilled workers in the decades to come.'' Now, when you were designing this bill, you did not include the President's initiative on the 21st Century for manufacturing jobs, so I offered it as an amendment. What does the Committee on Rules do? They knock it down and said, forget it. I do not know how many times you are going to show disrespect to the President of the United States when he is trying to help with manufacturing jobs. He did not come up here and lobby for it, though. He did not send anybody here to lobby for his initiative, so I do not really so much think that you are showing disrespect because why should you include something the President does not care about? But it makes sense. Every budget he has proposed, he has tried to eliminate the manufacturing extension program, and we have resulted in 2.7 million jobs lost.”