What About Jobs?

Floor Speech

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Ms. SUTTON. Well, I thank the gentleman, and I thank you for your leadership.

Boy, that poster says a lot: GOP continuing resolution destroys 700,000-plus jobs, possibly yours. And where did we get that number? Before we get to Ohio, where did we get that number? We got that number from a number of places. Ben Bernanke said that the plan would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. The GOP's CR, according to Goldman Sachs, would reduce economic growth by 2 percent and cause the unemployment rate to increase. And a study by the International Monetary Fund concluded that the idea that fiscal austerity stimulates economic activity in the short term finds little support in the data.

We have a group of 300 economists, including two Nobel laureates, who wrote a letter warning that the shortsighted budget cuts to ``human capital, our infrastructure, and the next generation of scientific and technological advances'' would threaten future economic competitiveness as well as our current recovery.

So that's where we begin. Despite all of this forewarning about what this path will lead us to, we still see a continuing resolution that indicates we're going to lose 700,000-plus jobs.

In the State of Ohio, I'm sure that a number of people, most of the people out there, have seen at the statehouse where we're witnessing democracy in action, at least from the outside, because for a while there the statehouse doors were closed when all of the workers and fair-minded Ohioans descended upon our State's capitol to protest against what the Republican Governor there is trying to do to public sector workers.

Under the guise of taking care of our deficit, an attack on workers' rights is being waged not only in Ohio but across this country, from Wisconsin to Ohio to the floor of Congress where we've seen attack after attack. And it's really a sad thing, because we all know we should be focused--and the other side should join us in focusing--on priority one, which is putting people back to work.

In Ohio, the key to our budget problems is more people working than you have revenue to pay for the public services and the public sector employees who help to make our world turn. Can you imagine the idea?

It was not the workers in Wisconsin or Ohio or across this country that drove our economy off the cliff. It was not those teachers or those firefighters who rush into those burning buildings when we run out of them. It was not the police officers who are out there on our streets protecting us and keeping our communities safe. It was not the workers.

The workers are not the problem. They are part of the solution of where we need to go. But the bottom line is we need to be focused on creating jobs. And it's just amazing that not only are our friends across the aisle, the Republicans, not interested and focusing on that--10 weeks on the job, zero jobs--they're actually looking at cutting those people who do have jobs, their rights. It's just fundamentally unfair and it's counterproductive.

We all know that we need to trim back our budget. We should always be willing to trim back the budget, but only by engaging in smart cuts, not just indiscriminate cuts.

What happens when a person doesn't have a job? What happens when 700,000 people don't have a job? Do we think they just disappear, that they are no cost to our government, to our country? Not to mention the loss of dignity and the loss of opportunity, everything that our country stands for, having a chance to make a way for your family, to feed your family and take care of your family. It's a crazy idea to say that we can make cuts that cut hundreds of thousands of jobs and somehow that will lead us to prosperity.

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