Jobs For Main Street Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, there is no question that the American people are hurting. Since the start of this recession in 2007, 6.9 million people have lost their jobs. A third of those without jobs have been unemployed for more than 6 months. That's a post-World War II high.

Clearly Congress needs to find a way to spur private sector job creation, a bipartisan way, not one rammed through without public hearings. Madam Speaker, a famous son of New Jersey once said, and that's Yogi Berra, ``It's déja 2 vu all over again.''

Congress and the President enacted in February a trillion-dollar stimulus package with the promise that its shovel-ready spending would keep unemployment from exceeding 8 percent. While the Nation's official unemployment is 10 percent, the real unemployment and underemployment now exceed 17 percent.

Yet the majority is suggesting that we double down on spending borrowed dollars in many of the same areas touched by the first stimulus. For example, only 7 percent of the $2 billion in the stimulus bill for the Army Corps of Engineers civil construction has been spent. Yet this bill adds another $750 million.

Only 8 percent of the $1 billion in the stimulus for Bureau of Reclamation water projects has been spent. This legislation includes another $100 million.

The stimulus contained $4 billion for Energy Innovation Loans. Just 10 percent has been spent since February. So let's make sure to approve another $1 billion.

Of the $36 billion the Department of Energy has been given, about $955 million has been spent and only $17.5 billion has been obligated.

If this isn't bad enough, where is the funding coming from? It's coming from the TARP program, Troubled Asset Relief Program. That money, when it is paid back, is supposed to go to reduce the deficit. Here we are spending.

I rise to oppose this bill. This bill needs to be opposed.

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