The Honorable Donna F. Edwards
Jobs in America
December 10, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from California because every week you are here talking about what we can do and what we should be doing to create jobs in this country.
Now, I have heard it said by some that there is nothing that the Congress can or should do to try to create jobs. Well, that is just a bunch of hooey. We know that the Federal Government, Mr. Speaker, has a lot of capacity to help spur private sector job creation, but we haven’t done it in this Congress. We have had an opportunity, but we haven’t done it in this Congress.
I thought as you put that quote up there by Franklin Roosevelt, when I think of all the memorials there are here in Washington, DC – and there are plenty of them, free to the public, paid by the taxpayers. One of my favorite is the FDR memorial, and the reason is because as you are walking through that memorial, you have there, in bronze, replicas of people standing in line: standing in line waiting for assistance, standing in line waiting for a job.
When President Franklin Roosevelt saw what was happening in this country, try to come out of that Great Depression, he didn’t say, oh, well, there is nothing we can do. Now, it is true, he did have some Members of Congress who were fighting him every step of the way, who didn't want to do what it would take to wholesale the Federal Government all in, investing in the American public, investing in job training, investing in rebuilding this country. Franklin Roosevelt knew the difference, and he pushed for that so that all of those people standing in that line would have jobs. And that is what I see when I go to the memorial.
Now, if you take the trail along from the FDR memorial, you can walk along the pathway and it brings you to the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial – another great man who stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, calling for us to put people to work for equality, right on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Each man, including Lincoln, in their time calling on the Congress: do the right thing. Well, now, Mr. Garamendi, it is our time. It is our time to invest in our infrastructure that by all accounts is crumbling. And you know what, we don’t even need experts to see that our roads, our bridges, our railways are crumbling. We don’t need those experts because we can see that for ourselves. I see it when I drive over some of our bridges in Maryland. I see it across our roads. I see the crumbling bridges.
Now we wait. When a bridge does in fact fall, potentially injuring or even killing people, and certainly killing the economy around it, oh, we are all in. The Congress is right there, injecting the Federal resources that it takes, but why do we have to wait until a bridge falls for the Congress to do the right thing to invest in our infrastructure, knowing that every investment of a billion dollars creates 35,000 new jobs in the economy?
If we were doing what it would take just to keep up, we would be investing about $200 billion. Think of the millions of jobs we could create by making those investments.
Because what we can see is that with that decades-long disinvestment in our infrastructure, not only do we have new needs, but we have the old ones, the old repairs stacking up.
I am glad that you mentioned unemployment, because as the gentleman from Nevada mentioned, unemployment in so many areas is still up there. Now, across the country, I am proud to say that last week unemployment numbers were reported 7 percent – the lowest since November 2008, the lowest since when I first came into this Congress. In some ways, it has been despite us. I think the President, the administration, have done all of the things that they can do, the private sector that they can do.
But think if we had those infrastructure investments. We could tick off 2 more percentage points on unemployment with a robust investment in this Nation’s infrastructure. That is about building for the future; that is about building for the 21st-century economy. Yet here we are – and as the gentleman from Nevada pointed out – unemployment benefits end for about 1.3 million people; 1.9 million Americans’ unemployment will end December 28.
Now, here we are in Congress – and we have taken a lot of breaks this year without creating any jobs, and we are about to take another one, another really long one – and on December 28 some of our Members will be finishing up their holiday leftovers. Some people will be sitting with their children looking through their toys and the goodies that they have gotten over the holiday season, and then there will be 1.9 million Americans who will lose their unemployment benefits in the first half of 2014, 1.3 million who will lose those benefits on December 28, and we will be opening up gifts. That is an embarrassment; it is an absolute embarrassment.
So while we could be doing things that create jobs and opportunity for the American people, instead we are doing something that is actually going to cost jobs. Not extending unemployment benefits, not only is it bad for all of those people who will lose their benefits; it also is going to cost the economy another 200,000 jobs. So what we are doing in our inaction in Congress is actually counterproductive to putting the American people back to work.
Do you know what? I would like to say that it is the responsibility of all of us as Members of Congress; but the fact is, much to our chagrin, Democrats don’t control the gavel in this House; the Republicans control it. And tomorrow, and certainly within the next 72 hours before we leave town for vacation, Republicans could put a bill on the floor that would extend unemployment benefits that would expire on December 28 for the American people so that those unemployed persons can afford to have a Christmas, a holiday, for their families. But I don’t see it in the offing. I can tell you this right now: if Democrats controlled that gavel, Mr. Speaker, we would be extending unemployment benefits, but we are not doing that.
I want to close very quickly and have a little bit of a dialogue, because I want to tell you what unemployment means. It means 37 percent of the unemployed workers in this country have been unemployed for more than 6 months. So it is true, our unemployment numbers have ticked down; but for 37 percent of those unemployed workers, it has been a long time. These are skilled workers. They are laborers who because the construction jobs are not quite up to par they are not working the way that they were. They are people who have scientific and technical skills. Because we are not making the kinds of investments we need in research and development, and I know that has been of particular importance to the gentleman, those workers are unemployed.
The gentleman put up the picture there of the people who were standing in line in his district at a job fair. Well, I held a job fair in my district. Over 2,000 people, 100 employers, job seekers, people who want to work, who are unemployed now but who want to work. What is the harm in providing unemployment benefits for those workers?
Now, I have heard some on the other side of the aisle say things like, well, if you provide unemployment benefits, then it will make people less likely to go out and find a job. Well, clearly that is somebody who has never received unemployment benefits. I had the misfortune of having to apply for unemployment at one point in my life. I didn’t want to be unemployed, but I sure needed that benefit to get me to the point where I could then find a job.
That is what our job seekers do – 1.3 million of them who will not have unemployment benefits come December 28, who will not be able to provide. Forget providing for a holiday or a Christmas celebration. How about putting food on the table?
And this, Mr. Garamendi, at the same time that there are some who are contemplating taking away $40 billion from food stamps. So take away unemployment benefits, take away food stamps, the nutrition program that also supplies our food pantries, and then say, do you know what, unemployed Americans, you are on your own.
Well, that is not the kind of America, Mr. Garamendi, that you and I believe in. We believe in the kind of America where as a Congress we make a decision about investing in our infrastructure, supporting research and development so that all of those innovators and creators out there can create more jobs, making sure that we have a manufacturing sector that really works in this country, and putting people back to work.
I will just close by saying I don’t really get this. But I tell you what, the Grinch is in full force right now. The Grinch is out there saying, I am taking your unemployment, I am taking away your food stamps, I am not going to create any jobs. Do you know what? That is not good for America. But we are saying, Happy Holidays, and in 72 hours the Congress goes home and people who are on unemployment lose their benefits.
