Providing for Consideration of H.R. 7110, Job Creation and Unemployment Relief Act of 2008

Floor Speech

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, because our country urgently needs to create new jobs and provide vital relief for struggling families to get our economy moving forward again, I rise in strong support of our economic stimulus package, H.R. 7110.

Our economy needs two things right now to help workers and families. First, we must restore the confidence in the credit markets, confidence that was destroyed by the reckless lending and risk-taking by banks and Wall Street institutions and the failure of the Bush administration to properly police and regulate those financial markets on behalf of the taxpayers.

We must revive the credit markets to help the economy grow again and create jobs so that Americans can borrow at a reasonable rate to make payroll at small businesses, invest in new equipment and inventory, borrow for college education, start a new business, buy an automobile or protect their pensions.

Wall Street and Main Street are joined at the hip. We all share an interest in helping to restore the confidence in these markets that have been so battered by the lack of regulation over the last several years.

Secondly, we must invest directly in new infrastructure, roads, bridges, mass transit, clean water and new schools to get America working together, to create good, well-paying, good-paying, middle-class jobs for Americans all across this country.

Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their jobs so far this year. The unemployment rate continues to go up month after month after month as people are looking for jobs to support their families.

Our economic recovery package will yield immediate results, helping to get more Americans back to work. It provides for long overdue investment of $3 billion to repair crumbling schools and help children, while also creating construction jobs; much-needed support for millions of unemployed Americans through extending the unemployment insurance benefits to help cover the basic living expenses of them and their families; a $500 million investment in job training programs to prepare workers for new jobs; to create new recycling projects that are so desperately needed in the parts of our country that are now in persistent drought conditions, and we need to use water more efficiently so that we can continue to have economic growth and the growth of jobs.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. That is what this legislation is about. It is about putting Americans to work here at home by making the basic investments, so that our transportation systems become more efficient, our water systems become cleaner, our recycling of water makes more efficient use of that water, and so that people and goods and services can move across this country as they should.

We are not only falling behind the competition in terms of intellectual property, in terms of intellectual capital and science and engineering, we are falling behind in the basic infrastructure that is needed for this country to compete with the rest of the world in the movement of goods, in the education of our children and the improvement in our water systems and the infrastructure of our cities.

This is an urgent piece of legislation, and I would encourage all of my colleagues to support it.

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