Joe Cunningham: “I think that some speakers seem to distrust big business. Some do need it, but I would tell my colleagues, California…”

“I think that some speakers seem to distrust big business. Some do need it, but I would tell my colleagues, California was hit extensively with defense cuts. A lot of the jobs were lost, a lot of not just DOD but jobs in the high-tech industries, defense and so on. We have replaced a lot of our businesses with bio-tech, and quite often the young entrepreneurial company does not have the capital to start up the business. So what did they do? They reach out to scientists and say, Hey, we cannot pay you the amount necessary to study a cure for AIDS or cancer, but we can give you a piece of the rock. Some of my colleagues talked about creation of jobs. Well, we have gotten rid of the high-paying jobs and only have the low-service jobs. These quite often are high-paying jobs. It is an investment in the future, not only of the company but for the workers on all levels of that company that do have stock options. For California, our job market is improving, primarily of those young entrepreneurial companies. There are some that want to tax those, put a tax on it, but we think that that is wrong. When we could create an environment that produces jobs on all levels of the scientists, all the way from the people that take out the trash, and that is good, and it means that the economy can recover; and in the State of California it helps us, and I rise in strong support of this bill.”