On the recordMay 13, 2010
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Maybe the public gets tired of this back and forth. But the gentleman talks in ways that indicate that all of a sudden, in 2009, January, when President Obama took office, somehow the world fell apart. In point of fact, as the gentleman knows, in the last year of the Clinton administration, we gained 1.9 million new jobs. In the last year of the Bush administration, under the policies that the gentleman supported and his party was very enthusiastic about, we lost 3.8 million jobs. That is a 5.7 million job turnaround. Yes, we were in dire straits. And conservative economists, Republican economists, Mr. Zandi and others, as well as progressive economists, liberal economists, call them what you will, all said: If you do not invest in this economy, if you do not invest in stabilizing this economy, very frankly, you are going to lose 800,000 in additional revenues. Which meant that you would be in the same debt position whether you invested that money or didn't. Now, in investing that money, I say to my friend, with all but maybe 2 months over the last 15 months we have had a straight line out of the almost 800,000 jobs that under your policies were lost in the last month of the Bush administration. Almost 800,000 jobs. We have been on a straight line to now where 5 of the last 6 months, we have had positive job growth. Is it enough? It is not. Should we do more? We should. Should we cooperate in doing that? Absolutely.
