Joe Wilson: “Our American farmers feed the world. In my State of New Mexico, most folks would not suspect this, but New Mexico is the…”

“Our American farmers feed the world. In my State of New Mexico, most folks would not suspect this, but New Mexico is the tenth largest dairy producing State in the country. It is a very fast growing dairy industry. Of course, our cattle industry in the West has always been really strong. Our New Mexico cattleman, I was talking to a rancher, and he said we really want free trade, because most people outside the United States do not eat as much beef as people inside, and we want to introduce them to the wonders of beef. There are things that we can do to promote trade, but we have to give trade authority to do it. As you can see by this chart here, the House has passed the economic stimulus bill. We did that on October 24. We have passed now bipartisan trade authority, which would give the President the power to promote international trade and promote international business and get business for American companies abroad. We also passed something way back actually the second of August, before the August break, the Energy Security Act. When we talk about jobs, we have lost 700,000 jobs in this country since the 11th of September. The estimates are that this energy bill, and this kind of just surprised me when I saw these two numbers, went back and looked at my notes from August, the estimate is it would create 700,000 jobs in domestic energy suppliers. We are more dependent on foreign oil today than we were at the height of the energy crisis.”