Max Baucus: “Winston Churchill once said: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in…”

“Winston Churchill once said: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. The great recession has been a difficulty, to say the least. Today we are looking for the opportunity. One opportunity--and our first priority--is to create new jobs. This is no easy task. Over the course of the great recession, more than 8 million jobs have been lost. But we must not shy away from this opportunity. The first step Congress took to create jobs was to pass the Recovery Act in February of 2009. In their latest report on the Recovery Act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the Recovery Act has added 1.2 to 2.8 million people to America's payrolls. And in March, Congress passed the HIRE Act. The HIRE Act includes a payroll tax exemption for new hires. That act will help to bolster job creation in the coming months. These actions are working. In April, we learned that the economy added 290,000 jobs. And while we added fewer jobs than expected last month, May marked the fifth consecutive month of job growth. Since the beginning of 2010, the American economy has created more than half a million jobs. We are also beginning to see economic growth. Just a year ago, in the first quarter of 2009, the economy was shrinking at a rate of 6.4 percent. In the first quarter of this year, however, the economy grew at a rate of 3.2 percent.”