Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to continue this question of: Where are the jobs?
The gentleman who spoke just before me is from Michigan, where their unemployment is upwards of 14 percent. Oregon's unemployment rate is now over 12.2 percent and is second only to Michigan.
Our basic industries have been shut down. My part of the State, by Federal policy, prevents us from even harvesting burned dead trees in a timely manner from our Federal forest lands and accessing our resources. Now along comes legislation that says if you take woody biomass off Federal land and use it to make new, clean, efficient energy, if it comes up as certain types of stands, it doesn't count. It's not renewable. So the jobs that would go with the creation of that were really diminished or were taken away fully by the cap-and-tax legislation, which we know is going to cost 1 million or 2 million jobs in this great State of ours.
I was out in John Day and Nyssa and Burns this weekend and Baker City. Everywhere I went at town meetings, the rooms were full, and people were asking, What are they doing to us in Washington? Where are the jobs?