On the recordFebruary 24, 2010
I thank Senator Dorgan for his great leadership. For so long, he has been working on this. I have a feeling this is finally going to get done. It is true and we invite the Presiding Officer to visit North Dakota and Minnesota. I think he thinks the State of New Mexico is pretty cool, but he has never been to Teddy Roosevelt Park in North Dakota. So often marketing campaigns for our country are done by specific cities such as Las Vegas and New York, which is important. But when you look at this country, marketing our country as a whole is going to mean something. We are competing against countries the world over that do this all the time. That is why we have seen a 20-percent decrease in international visitors. When I held a hearing on this issue, along with former Senator Martinez, this past year, there was a story in the Washington Post, in good humor, about all the Senators hawking their own States and the deals you could get--whether it was Senator Begich's $99 cruise in Alaska or the stuff I talked about with Duluth, MN. We were doing that because people need to know about the opportunities in America. Doing it at a Commerce Committee hearing is not going to be anything compared to what France, Indonesia, and other countries are doing. They are bringing in visitors. They spend thousands and thousands of dollars. We are doing this jobs bill this week, and an important part of that is the travel industry because it employs one out of eight Americans.
