On the recordNovember 1, 2011
if we pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act, we will immediately invest $50 billion into our transportation infrastructure and generate hundreds of thousands of good jobs and establish a national infrastructure bank which will generate even more good jobs. We need these jobs during the current period of high unemployment, and upgrading our crumbling infrastructure will spur long-term job growth in addition to the immediate employment benefits. So I strongly support this bill and I hope our colleagues can be brought around as well. The Rebuild America Jobs Act is one piece of the larger American Jobs Act which, when Leader Reid brought it to the floor, all 47 Senate Republicans chose to filibuster instead of allowing us to begin debating and, if they wished, improving the jobs legislation. That filibuster blocked President Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes for every single American worker, and it blocked his plan to offer business owners generous tax breaks to hire new workers and grow their businesses. Economists estimated that the American Jobs Act would create nearly 2 million jobs--1.9 million jobs. Perhaps for that reason, many pieces of the bill have received wide bipartisan support in the past. Indeed, just last December, similar job-creating provisions were included in the Job Creation and Tax Cuts Act, which received 81 votes in the Senate.…





