Max Baucus: “the battle to enact this bill has certainly--thankfully--not been compared to a war. But I do believe we can now say…”

“the battle to enact this bill has certainly--thankfully--not been compared to a war. But I do believe we can now say this bill is at least what Prime Minister Winston Churchill is reputed to have said after the British victory at El Alamein, when he said: ``[I]t is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.'' Perhaps we may even say what Talleyrand said after the Russian victory at Borodino, when he said: ``It is the beginning of the end.'' In either case, I believe by obtaining an exclusive list of amendments--that is, Senators already agreeing to a finite list--we have a victory. We may now say we can work to the end of this bill. And well we should, because we still have not won the battle to create jobs here in America. I refer you to this chart I have in the Chamber. Yes, the economy did turn in one good month of job growth in March. The American economy created a net of 308,000 new jobs. But as this chart shows, one good month does not a recovery make. On this chart, the green bars are the months of job creation, and the red bars are the months of job loss. As the chart shows, March was, indeed, a strong month for job growth with more than 300,000 new jobs. But March was the only month in the last 4 years where there was that much job growth. In contrast, during the 8 years of the Clinton administration, the economy turned in 25 months with more than 300,000 net new jobs per month.”