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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you very much, Representative Wasserman Schultz, Representative Tonko, Representative Jackson Lee.

Listen, everybody should take a look at that chart that was next to Representative Tonko. It's not a coincidence that from month to month to month in the last year of the Bush administration we lost more and more and more jobs, and then immediately upon the new President, President Obama, taking office, we started to lose less and less and less jobs to the point now where we are adding jobs to the economy. It's because the stimulus has worked. It is because it is infusing new money into the economy. It is because tax rates are the lowest in this country since 1950. People have more money to spend than ever before. It's because we put money in the hands of teachers and firefighters and police officers and renewable energy companies and solar companies and advanced battery technology companies. The leading edge of our economy is creating jobs. It's because manufacturing is coming back.

To Mr. Schauer's point in June, 9,000 new manufacturing jobs in this economy. Since December, 136,000 new manufacturing jobs. The economy is heading in the right direction because we're putting new policies into place that are investing in small manufacturers, in small businesses, in Main Street.

And that's the dichotomy here. I mean, that's why I ran for Congress 4 years ago, because I watched Washington, I watched the Bush administration put all of its focus on the haves, on the big multinational companies, on the big oil companies, the big pharmaceutical companies, the big defense contractors, and very little emphasis on the small manufacturer with 10 employees around the corner from me; very little emphasis on the small mom-and-pop business that was struggling to get by paying for the energy costs and the health care costs that were padding the pockets of the big guys. That's the fundamental shift that's happened here, and you see it on issue after issue.

You see it in our approach to energy as, Mr. Tonko, you said we're investing in small renewable energy companies while the Republican leadership, on issues of energy, are asking for apologies to BP. You see it on health care reform, where we're putting power in the hands of consumers; whereas, the Republicans, when they tried their stab at health care reform with the Medicare Prescription Drug Act, put all the power in the hands of insurance companies and drug companies. And you see it with respect to manufacturing.

What we're talking about as Democrats is reinvigorating American manufacturing, to stop this defeatist notion that we can't make things here in America anymore. That's what sort of drove the House of Representatives when the Republicans were in charge was

manufacturing is dead. They can't do it here any longer; we're just going to sign free trade agreements with any country that comes to us without any regard to fair trade, that we're going to allow jobs to flow out to China, to India, to Mexico.

Democrats and the Obama administration refuse to give in to that notion. And I think you are going to see, over the course of the next several weeks and several months on this House floor, Democrats in the House of Representatives standing up for American manufacturing and saying we can make it here in the United States.

Mr. Schauer's initiative is right on, right on. If we can start standing up to countries like China and say, Listen, if you're going to--if you want free trade with the United States, then you have to allow us to sell to you just like you sell to us. I think it starts with the way that we buy things for the American Government.

A number of us are working on legislation that we hope will come before the floor very shortly that will say simply this: When the American Government buys things, whether it be for the census or whether it be for the Defense Department, let's buy it here in the United States.

Sure, you might be able to find that part for the jet engine 10 percent cheaper in China, but that job being created in China rather than in a machine shop in New York or Connecticut is costing our government, is costing our economy way more than the 10 percent you saved in lost wages, in lost taxes, and in increased social safety net costs like unemployment compensation.

So I'm looking forward to this summer and this fall as we build on the work that we've done here, when Democrats do what we're good at doing, which is standing up for small guys, for little guys, for American manufacturing, and that we put an end to what has been a decade-long defeatist attitude in this country and in this government to just allow for manufacturing to go to the folks that can do it for the cheapest and who can do it with the lowest and the worst environmental and labor regulations around.

I think we're going to stand up for American manufacturing. I think we're going to continue this trend of growing manufacturing jobs. I think it's going to be part, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, of the story of the recovery and the resurgence of the American economy.

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