Lee Terry: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think coupling--putting the unemployment extension, the tax holiday, the doc fix, and a real…”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think coupling--putting the unemployment extension, the tax holiday, the doc fix, and a real jobs bill together--which is what the American people have been telling Congress for the entire year, that they want to see tangible job creation. There's no better job creator in the pipeline--pun intended--than Keystone XL. {time} 1420 It's a 1,700-mile, $7 billion, shovel-ready project--not the fake shovel-ready in the stimulus, but real, ready, earnestly ready to start digging right now. The only holdup for Keystone pipeline's permit is the politics of the 2012 election. The process sits in the State Department. So what we say is in this bill, State Department, use the information that has been sitting on your desk collecting dust. You said you would make a decision by December 31. We just want you to make it 60 days after the permit's again requested, with the carve-out for the Nebraska exemption. Why is it so important? Well, it really does displace 700,000 barrels of imported oil, almost the entire amount from Venezuela or about half from Saudi Arabia. It creates 20,000 jobs nearly instantaneously, 20,000 new jobs. It seems to me that as we're talking about putting food on the table and Christmastime that this is meat and potatoes. The potatoes will sustain you like the unemployment insurance, but what people really want is the red meat of good, high-paying jobs, labor that they can go to.…”