President Obama's Speech on Job Creation
Floor Speech
Mr. SOUTHERLAND. Mr. Speaker, when the President steps into this Chamber tonight, he will be addressing an American public that has grown weary of unfulfilled promises and empty, prepackaged rhetoric. He will be speaking to a restless Nation that grows louder than ever in its demand for strong, visionary leadership from its government leaders. They want solutions.
Not one job was added during the entire month of August. I will remind all of us that it requires 150,000 new jobs each and every month for this country's economy just to break even. For 31 straight months, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent, the lowest percentage of Americans holding a job in 28 years, over half of my lifetime.
Two hundred nineteen newly planned regulations are on tap for the American people if not stopped, costing over $100 million each. The average small business with fewer than 20 employees faces yearly regulatory costs of over $10,000.
Total yearly regulatory costs equal $1.75 trillion, according to the Small Business Administration. And according to the EPA Numeric Nutrient Criteria Standards, these standards would cost the State of Florida, my home state, over 14,000 agriculture jobs alone. And a GDP, I might say, that grew this year at just 0.4 percent in the first quarter.
The American small business people, Mr. President, deserve real results. They will expect that tonight. They will expect that from this entire body from this point forward.
American small business people are real people, people like Jay Trumbull.
Jay is a personal friend I've known for a long time. He lives in my own congressional district. Jay is an independent dealer for Culligan Water, a company with offices in Panama City, Tallahassee, and Fort Walton Beach. He has been in business for over 30 years delivering water purification systems and installing water softeners and drilling wells throughout north and northwest Florida.
Jay told me that he's never seen conditions as bad as during the past 3 years of this administration. Over the last 3 years, Jay estimates that his personal business has dropped over 25 percent. Jay says that continued economic uncertainty has made it very difficult, almost impossible for him to expand his work force and to purchase new work vehicles.
He has said that he receives 25 to 30 job inquiries each and every week, people seeking employment, but he says he's stuck in a ``holding pattern'' due to this administration's failed economic policies.
We've all heard similar stories. With 25 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, we can all count family, friends, and neighbors among those who are struggling to find work.
The American people will be listening very closely tonight to this address. They will be hoping, they will be praying that this President acknowledges we need to chart a new course. Government doesn't create jobs, but it certainly, certainly can destroy them.
We need tonight to reduce regulatory burdens on our small businesses. Small businesses make up 85 percent of this Nation's economy. We need to streamline our Tax Code to spur investment and create jobs.
We need to help the American manufacturers be more competitive. We need to expand access to safe, affordable American-made energy. And of course, we all know we should, by now, that we must pay down our crushing burden of our debt. Mortgaging our children's future is immoral. It is unacceptable.
That is the agenda that the American people want to hear about tonight, Mr. President. And until we do our jobs here in Washington, the American people will continue to find it harder and harder, if not impossible, to do theirs.
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