On the recordFebruary 23, 2010
During the State of the Union message last month, the President reminded us that he inherited a true economic mess and that job losses have been reduced dramatically due to actions by the Democrats in this Congress and his administration. At the end of the Bush years in January 2009, 800,000 Americans lost their jobs. But by contrast, after just 1 year of economic recovery policies from Democrats in this Congress and President Obama, 20,000 people lost their jobs in January 2010. Make no mistake, any jobs lost are important to the people who have lost them. But we're on the road to recovery. The philosophy that 'a rising tide lifts all boats,' though, does have its limitations. So we need an economic and industrial policy in this country that creates jobs for the future for the long term and to put those who are newly unemployed and the chronically unemployed back to work. In short, we need to embrace our clean energy future for sustained job creation, economic growth and innovation, and let's use our taxpayer dollars to buy American, to build American.
