SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON THE STIMULUS
(House of Representatives - July 21, 2011)<span style="style" 12pt;="12pt;" font-family:="font-family:" "times=""times" times"="times"" "=""" new="New" roman","="roman","" ,""=",""" ""="""">
Ms. BROWN of Florida. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The best anti-poverty program is a job. The stimulus bill
saved 3.3 million jobs just this year. After 8 years of reverse Robin Hood
under Bush, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. I repeat: We were losing
800,000 jobs a month. Eight hundred thousand people headed toward poverty. The
stimulus bill reversed the slide toward poverty for this Nation.
Earlier this week, I submitted data for the Congressional
Record showing that the stimulus bill has funded 700,000 education jobs,
more than all of the jobs lost due to Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill
combined. Today, I submit for the record data on jobs saved or created by
transportation funding in the stimulus bill. Since February 2009, 335,000
positions have been funded directly by the Department of Transportation. That
figure does not include the jobs indirectly created by the stimulus bill as
States and local governments leverage these funds for improvements that get
goods and services moving throughout this country.
So far, the DOT has paid out $30 billion in grants and has
authority for another $18 billion. Over 15,000 projects have been made possible
by the stimulus bill. Mr. Speaker, can anyone seriously argue that $48 billion
for roads, rails and infrastructure will not put millions of people to work? Of
course they can't.
In my district, construction of a new Amtrak station in
Sanford, Florida, employed 46 subcontractors. Forty-five of them are from
Florida. Does anyone want to call that a disaster.
The real disaster is that we didn't put enough money in
the stimulus bill for transportation. This country gets a failing grade for the
conditions of our roads and bridges, and we're going to have disaster after
disaster like what occurred in Minnesota, the collapsing of the bridge that
killed people.
Mr. Speaker, the stimulus bill put us on the road to
recovery, and I will continue to set the record straight. Let's not stop this
recovery by reversing course. The pending transportation reauthorization bill
will take us backwards a decade and will kill the millions of jobs. That is
what I call a disaster.
I am placing in the Record the transportation and
how much each State received and how many jobs it created. For example, in
Florida, 782 projects, over 16,000 people put to work. Let me just mention one
other State--Pennsylvania, 384 projects, 13,000 jobs reported.
Mr. Speaker, people come to this floor and they talk all
the time, and I guess people on TV think that what they're saying is actual, or
factual. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool
all of the people all of the time.
VIDEO: Congresswoman Corrine Brown Sets the Record Straight About Transportation and The Stimulus Bill