The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WHERE ARE THE JOBS?” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H13505-H13512 on Dec. 3, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
{time} 1615
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, Republicans come to you today to talk about some of the same things that my colleague who just finished was talking about, but we are going to try and liven it up a little bit. Because, you see, the Democrats have controlled the Congress for the last 3 years, not the last 10 months or 11 months, but the last 3 years. But in the last 11 months, Americans have lost 2.9 million jobs.
You see, they passed this so-called stimulus, and they rammed it through in record time. It is one of those thousand-page bills that probably nobody had a chance to read before it got voted on, and then they passed it. The theory was that if they passed it into law, that unemployment wouldn't top out over 8 percent. That was their promise. That's what the Democrats promised, was pass the stimulus and it will solve unemployment. It will be no more than 8 percent. In fact, that's what their Department of Labor, the Obama Department of Labor, said right here, you can see it, Obama forecast with stimulus, right here is where unemployment would be. This is without the stimulus where unemployment would be at this point. These were their numbers. This is what they promised the American people. This is what they said.
Now, let's look at what really happened, however. Unemployment started out here in January of this year, 2009, whoa, up it goes. How high, nobody knows, but it goes on up and up and up over 10 percent, over 10 percent. Now who is benefiting from that? Well, let's, first of all, look at The Washington Post today. And right here on The Washington Post newspaper here in the Nation's Capital the top story is: ``Stimulus is Boon for D.C. Area Contractors.'' Federal Departments are paying firms to help spend the money.
And let me read Alec MacGillis' story here. It says: ``As struggling communities throughout the country wait for more help from the $787 billion stimulus package, one region is already basking in its largess: the government-contractor nexus that is metropolitan Washington, D.C.'' That's right. Come on down. You are the winner, Washington, D.C. Once again, the Federal Government is the winner.
``Reports from stimulus recipients show that a sizable sum has gone to Federal contractors in the Washington area who are helping implement the initiative--in effect, they are being paid a hefty slice of the money to help spend the rest of it.''
Now, if you want jobs for Washington, D.C.-based government contractors, I don't see how that is sustainable, helpful or even what was promised. And for heaven's sakes, we can see the red line here is not getting lower; it's getting higher. In fact, as I look at this, we would have been better off under the President's proposal, the Democrats' plan on the stimulus to have had no stimulus at all if you look at what they predicted versus what reality is.
But here is the best part. If you want to talk about helping rural areas, one of these people that has been involved in the government here tells The Post the reason all this money is being spent back here in the Washington, D.C. area is, she says, I'm not sure I ever heard of a government support contractor in Michigan.
Well, maybe that is part of the problem. Maybe if we had some of this actually flowing out to people who need the help and not into more government, things would be better.
So where is the money going? And where are the jobs? Now, we know that on February 25 in an interview with ABC's ``Good Morning America''
's Robin Roberts, our Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, said: ``We've got to make sure this is done by the numbers, man. We've got to make sure people know where the money is going. This cannot be squandered. We have an opportunity to get the Nation back to work and back on its feet, and the first piece of that is generating some economic growth here, and we have to do it right.''
Now that was February 25. Now, again, here is where they said we would be without the stimulus. Here is where they said we would be with the stimulus. Here's where we are. Here's where we are. And my colleague who spoke earlier about the horrible problem of unemployment--and it is--my home State of Oregon has suffered mightily. But this stimulus hasn't produced jobs out there. It may have produced them to contractors back here, but not out there.
So where are the jobs? And where is the money going? We were promised, the American taxpayers, when we borrowed all this money from China, we were promised that we would know, by golly, this is going to be accounted for. Everybody is going to know. Everybody is going to know. In fact, in a speech on the stimulus at the Brookings Institution on September 3 of this year, the Vice President, Joe Biden, said:
``Everybody has to account for the money they got beginning October 1. It's going to go up on a big old Web site. We've got a new modern Web site that is going to blow you away in terms of how detailed it is. ``
So, here is the Vice President. He says, first of all, we've got to make sure this is done by the numbers, man. We've got to make sure people know where the money is going. It can't be squandered. We have an opportunity to get the Nation back to work and on its feet, and the first piece of that is generating some economic growth here, and we have to do it right. And then he said, we're going to track it all. We have a new modern Web site that is going to blow you away. Everybody has to account for the money. They have got to get that, beginning October 1, going to go up on a big old Web site. We've got a new modern Web site that's going to blow you away in terms of how detailed it is.
Well, now, here is a guy who knows what happens with Federal money. You all know Lesko. You've seen him on TV. He says, free government money. Buy my CD. Buy my book. Get the free government money. You would think that even Lesko could track where the money goes.
So, let's look at what happened to some of the money, because I think Americans are asking, where's all this money going, $787 billion? Where did the money go?
Let's see, in Louisiana, the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper says Louisiana has seven congressional districts. So Louisianans visiting recovery.gov, that's the Web site that the Vice President said will blow you away with its detail, might find themselves not just a little skeptical, but truly puzzled to see that nearly $5 billion was listed as headed to Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, $2.8 million to the 22nd District, $1.8 million to the 12th Congressional District, and lesser amounts to the 26th, the 45th, the 14th, the 32nd and even the double 0 district.
Now let me go back. The 26th district? The 45th district, the 14th, the 32nd, the double aught. There are only seven, count them, seven congressional districts in Louisiana. And yet the Web site that the Vice President touted as really going to blow us away, it lists all these grants, all your money going to districts that don't even exist.
So the Times Picayune asked Ed Pound, who is the director of communications for recovery.gov, this is the fancy Web site that Joe Biden said is just going to blow us all away, and, boy, it has, they asked Ed, okay, you're the communications director for this fancy new Web site that's going to detail everything. How does all this work? This is the great accountability model of the transparency of the Democrats. He says, Oh, we rely on self-reporting by recipients for the stimulus money.
So Pound said the information from federalreporting.gov is then simply transferred to recovery.gov, and no one, get this, no one checks to verify its accuracy or to take note of the fact that Utah--here is another example--really doesn't have seven congressional districts. Utah has three congressional districts. South Dakota, well, they had a 10th Congressional District in South Dakota, but you see, folks, South Dakota only has one, count them, one--you don't even have to take your shoes off--one congressional district. Louisiana doesn't have 15 congressional districts. It has seven. So even Lesko here could know.
We will get back to Lesko here on some examples of some of that
``free money'' that went out.
In my home State of Oregon, we have actually five, count them on one hand here, five congressional districts. That is one, two, three, four, five. And yet on this fancy new Web site that is supposed to track all this, news media organizations looked and said, wait a minute, there isn't a double 0 district in Oregon or a 14th or an 8th or a 16th or a 60th or 21st. And this is transparency and accountability in a record amount of money that's being spent?
Now, frankly, being an Oregonian and having only five districts, I kind of like the notion that we are going to add congressional districts. Now even the people that don't live there, because there aren't that many, probably wonder about it, but that would give us a little more clout here in the Congress. That would be okay with me. Except you're talking about taxpayers' money here. And it is not creating jobs.
Now, Pound went on to say: ``We are not certifying the accuracy of the information.'' So you have the Vice President who is telling us, man, this Web site is going to blow you away. We've got to make sure people know where the money is going. Everybody has to be accountable.
This is accountability?
Oh, by the way, these are the folks, this is the same government that is going to take over your health care and take over energy production, and they can't even manage a guest list for a dinner party at the White House? This is what we are getting, folks, with too much government.
We know what the problem is, according to Pound, and we are trying to fix it. Asked why recipients would pluck random numbers like 26, 45, or 14 to fill in for their congressional district, the communications director replied: ``Who knows, man? Who really knows?'' That was his answer. ``There are 130,000 reports out there,'' he said. Okay. So we have an issue with reporting.
Now let's go back to our friend Lesko, because everybody knows him. Anybody that watches TV will see Lesko show up. And he says, where is the government money? There's lots of free government money. Get my CD, buy it, and you can get government money. Well, Talladega County, Alabama, now here they reported that they saved or created, this is frugal now, 5,000 jobs from only $42,000 in stimulus money. Now, I was a journalism major, not a math major, but 5,000 jobs from $42,000, that's $8.40 a job. This is a record. No, but wait. It gets better. The Belmont Metropolitan Housing Authority in Ohio reported 16,120 jobs saved or created from $1.3 million in stimulus funds from HUD. That's
$80.46 per job.
But the winner, the Lesko winner for efficiency in creation of jobs, goes to Shelton State Community College in Alabama: 14,500 jobs saved or created with $27,000 from the GAO. That is $1.86 per job. Now that's a bargain.
Alkan Builders of Alaska reported 3,000 jobs created or saved from 11 million, $3,666 a job. You can see why these aren't real jobs that are being created. It's not even being reported accurately. And yet we are saddling our kids with this enormous debt.
So, let's look at a few other examples. Earl E. Devaney, the top monitor of the stimulus in the Obama administration ``acknowledged that he too found dubious the 640,000 jobs figure touted by the Obama administration as proof the stimulus was working and that there were too many errors in the reporting of data to accurately offer that estimate.'' Now, he is the one who actually is the watchdog. And that's what he told The New York Times.
Now, how many Americans does it take to fill an $890 shoe order? According to The Wall Street Journal, November 19, on the recovery.gov site, an $890 shoe order for the Army Corps of Engineers created nine new jobs at Moore's Shoes and Service in Kentucky. Really. Head Start in Augusta, Georgia, they claimed they created 317 jobs with a $790,000 grant. Now I happen to be a supporter of Head Start, but it is this reporting issue and whether you're actually creating sustainable jobs. Actually, the money went to pay hikes for 317 workers. That would be a bonus of $2,500 per employee.
So you see, Republicans stand up here, and we hear our colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying we need a new jobs summit. We need an economic stimulus. We need Economic Stimulus II because we got to help people get back to work. And Lord knows we do. But that is what they said the last time. And they've been in charge for 3 years around these Halls, and we've never had greater debt, more government takeover and more to come, and record unemployment.
We are looking at a 10.2 percent unemployment. It has not gone down since they enacted their proposal. It has gone up, up, up, up, up, up. And Americans are paying the price. And our kids and grandkids are going to pay the price on debt.
Now, how about that Alabama housing authority claimed a $540,071 grant would create 7,280 jobs? That's what they reported, 7,280 jobs. It created 14 at best. Fourteen at best.
{time} 1630
Now, you go back to these congressional districts that have been identified here that don't exist. You remember back to the New Deal when President Roosevelt wanted to increase the Supreme Court from 7 to 9 members so that he could get a majority. Well, it appears this administration takes it one step further, forgetting to add the two more justices. Let's just add, I'm not kidding--let's just add 25 districts, maybe make it 50 new congressional districts, because that's what you would think happened here when this is your reporting. Far from accountable. And this is big stuff. We make a little light of this today perhaps, but this is big stuff because this is debt. This isn't like you have money in your checking account to spend. This is like you went to the bank and borrowed this money and shoved it out the door in record time, and you don't even know where it went.
I mean, I suppose Lesko's going to come out with a new DVD soon that says, Ask the government for free money and I'll tell you where it went. We found out. It's gone. Now, I just don't know, and in the next stimulus bill, are we going to create like whole new States? Maybe that's what we should do. When we're done creating new congressional districts, we can go to new States. Why stop at 50? You know, you like Massachusetts, you'll love New Massachusetts. Minnesota? How about South Minnesota or North Minnesota? Let's go for it. East Minnesota. Six little Mini-Me Al Frankens running around and voting for new job grants to States that don't exist and congressional districts that don't exist.
And if we created 100,000 new jobs, who can find the voters to say we didn't? They'll love us in West St. Paul and New Duluth. And don't worry, we'll find the voters in South Minnesota to say thanks for the jobs. I mean, this is crazy. I mean, this is just crazy where it's going. I mean, this chart, I think, and I see I've been joined by my friend and colleague from Ohio, Mr. LaTourette. But this is a report that came out in a newspaper here, The Examiner, inflated jobs by State. And it shows, you know, a drainage ditch number one and I don't know what all these are. But they show these inflated job numbers. I would yield to my colleague, Mr. LaTourette, from Ohio.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well I thank my friend from Oregon for yielding. And, in fact, that is a representation, and most people will recognize the United States of America. And each of the pushpins represents an area where the administration has reported jobs being created or saved. And it's kind of interesting, saved is a tough thing to analyze. And I'm going to talk about that in just a second. But created or saved. And each of those pushpins represents either a fictional place that didn't exist, as the gentleman's been talking about, or where the jobs that are claimed on recovery.gov, were, in fact, not created and/or saved. I just want to digress if you let me for just a second though because, you know, the gentleman's pointed out that, in 2006, the Republican majority had done such a bang-up job that it was replaced by a new Democratic majority, and it became historic in that we have the first woman Speaker in the history of the country, Mrs. Pelosi.
And so for 3 years they have been basically directing how the legislative process in the House of Representatives works or doesn't work. And we have been saying on our side of the aisle for a pretty long time now, when we go back, when I go back to Ohio, I assume when the gentleman goes back to Oregon, people are saying, where are the jobs? Why don't we have any jobs? You gave $700 billion to the banks to lend money. They're not lending money. You created and passed an almost
$800 billion stimulus bill to create jobs, and there aren't any jobs. And I think that they rightly ask, what is it that the Congress, this Democratic majority, has been doing with themselves to help stimulate the economy and create jobs?
I have a chart here that I like to use, and I want to be fair to them because they do have a rejoinder. But at the beginning of this year you had the Democrats in the majority in the House, Democrats in the majority in the Senate. And of course the President of the United States, President Barack Obama, was inaugurated on January 20. And this shows just through March of this year how the unemployment rate has increased. And the gentleman will recall that we were told that we had to pass this $800 billion stimulus bill or else unemployment would hit 8 percent. And now it's over 10 percent. If you look at the construction trades, the people that build buildings, roads and bridges and other things, it's 18 percent; 18 percent of the people that work construction in this country are currently out of work.
But just taking what--we'll get to the stimulus bill and the President's participation in a minute--but just what our Democratic colleagues have been thinking have been the most important issues facing the country, as this unemployment rate now has spiked to 10 percent. On the opening day of this Congress, which was January the 6th, you had kind of a modest, unemployment rate. Out here on January 20th you have unemployment is increasing. But then you get out here to, towards the end of January, the beginning of February, and again, when Americans by the thousands and tens of thousands are losing their jobs, the most important thing that the majority here in the House could put on the floor was a resolution supporting the goals and ideals of national teen dating.
Mr. WALDEN. Say that again.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. National teen dating. You know, when people are losing their jobs in steel mills and auto manufacturing plants, the House of Representatives is talking about the importance of teen dating. Now, I'm the father of some teenagers, and I want teen dating to go smoothly. But more importantly, I really want the people that I represent to have jobs so that their teenagers can afford to go to school and buy things and eat food and things like that. Well, unemployment continued to spike. And now we get in the middle of February. The President now has been installed only for a month, and so we certainly can't criticize him at this moment in time. But again, as unemployment rises, the most important thing that this majority could bring to the floor, and people have to recognize, bills only come to the floor when the majority says they come to the floor. So what we did on that day was commend Sam Bradford for winning the Heisman trophy. And again, just like teen dating, I'm sure that the Bradford family's very proud of Sam, and I think it's quite an accomplishment to win the Heisman trophy. But again, tens of thousands of people are losing jobs.
So now we get out towards the end of February, people continue to lose their jobs. Every jobs report that comes out, it's hundreds of thousands of people are being displaced and out of work. And so surely, at this moment in time, you know, with complete control of the government, you would think we would be doing a jobs bill. But the most important thing that they could come up with was the Monkey Safety Act, to debate the Monkey Safety Act here in the House of Representatives.
Mr. WALDEN. That sounds like real monkey business.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. And I want to be clear because when I mentioned this earlier, the Humane Society got upset with me. I'm not saying that this is a bad piece of legislation. But what I'm saying is, for crying out loud, when people want to know where the jobs are, why are we debating the Monkey Safety Act? I don't get it. But you get down into March now. And so again, hundreds of thousands of people are out of work. And you would say, surely, we're going to talk about a jobs piece of legislation in the House of Representatives. But when we get into March, the most important thing that they could come up with was the Shark Conservation Act. And, again, I like sharks. I don't like to swim with sharks, but sharks are nice to watch on television. But, again, where are the jobs, and where's the legislation?
And then we get out to where this chart ends at the end of March. I'm working on a new one that'll take us to where we are today. But you get out and, again, bad jobs report, tens of thousands more people have lost their jobs. And the most important thing that the majority leader could put on the floor was supporting pi.
Mr. WALDEN. Supporting pie?
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Supporting Pi Day.
Mr. WALDEN. Apple pie or cherry?
Mr. LaTOURETTE. No, it's not P-I-E, which as you can tell from my girth, I enjoy pie. This is pi, the math formula, 3.14 or whatever it is. And we needed to recognize the importance of the number 3.14, rather than dealing with the people that are out of work in this country. So then, you know, to be fair to the majority, they will say, well, wait a minute. That's not all we did. We also passed the stimulus bill. And the stimulus bill, just south of $800 billion, and it was advertised as creating 3 million new jobs across country. It's now been in place for about 9, 10 months, and my constituents, at least, are continuing to ask, where are the jobs?
And I think the gentleman has correctly pointed out that not only have the jobs not materialized, because they have not gone to job-
creating activities; instead, and on top of that, they continue to issue press releases taking credit for jobs saved or created. I can just tell the gentleman, in my district, and here's under the heading of ``press releases I would never send out,'' I represent the 14th District of Ohio. The White House sent out a press release saying that they had spent $100 million in the 14th District of Ohio of stimulus money to create or save jobs. And I guess I'd ask the gentleman, you know, so that sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money. It's borrowed money, as the gentleman said. But then in the next sentence they say how many jobs they created and/or saved. Does the gentleman care to guess what we got for $100 million in my Congressional district?
Mr. WALDEN. You could write a million-dollar check and get 100. I mean we could make 100 millionaires out of that. So maybe 1,000?
Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm sorry. It was 126. And so, again, with a straight face----
Mr. WALDEN. So we could have written a check and made nearly a hundred millionaires.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. No. What we could have done is everybody could have gotten maybe $800,000. But, no, the problem is as I go about the district, nobody knows where those jobs are. And I think, you know, the gentleman's talked about not only the difficulty of false claims of jobs, but jobs that have gone to places that don't exist. In Ohio--the gentleman's talked about Oregon--in Ohio, there was $7,960, not billions, but still a lot of money, if you're paying taxes, for a basketball system replacement in Ohio. And they claim that as a result of that, they created three jobs. Now that's a little bit better than the hundred million, because that's only a couple $3,000 a job. The problem, and basically, it was a grant to repair a basketball court in a park in Cincinnati, Ohio. But it was identified as Ohio's 0 district. Now, we have 18 districts.
Mr. WALDEN. We have one of those in Oregon. Actually ours was double 00.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, we have Ohio 0. And I'm sure that next fall in 2010 the Republican and the Democrat running in Ohio 0 are going to have a very tough race because nobody's going to be able to figure out where it is, because it----
Mr. WALDEN. No, they can go to recovery.gov. By then they'll know the district. And it's going to be well-jobbed.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. So we clearly have some difficulties. I know the gentleman, if the gentleman's talked about this, I apologize. But down in Texas, this fellow who runs a public housing authority got $26,000. But if you go to the Web site, it says that they reported creating 450 jobs, which is pretty----
Mr. WALDEN. What?
Mr. LaTOURETTE. 450 jobs for $26,000, which is pretty good. I mean, that's about $500 a job. The problem is when they contacted this fellow, whose name is Bob Bray, he said, Boy that's great. You did a great job with that 26 grand, creating 450 jobs. He says, oh, no, no, no, no, no. He told the government that he had created six jobs, basically five roofers and a fellow to inspect it. But when he was asked to do some reporting, they said, well, that's not enough jobs. And so the 450 doesn't represent jobs, it represents the hours that these six people worked to replace the roof. So we really didn't get a whole lot for that $26,000.
Mr. WALDEN. And even if it's six jobs, how long did those last?
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, for 450 hours. It was for 450 hours, all six of them. You know, it's a couple weeks work is what you're talking about.
Mr. WALDEN. So it's not like a permanent sustainable job that'll get us into a recovery that goes forward. I mean it replaced a roof, and roofs have to be replaced.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm sure with the rainy season coming, I'm sure they're all nice and dry down there in Texas. But the fact of the matter is they put a new roof on, and now those people, I would assume, are unemployed or fixing roofs somewhere else. So clearly, this is a problem.
Mr. WALDEN. Now, you know, the University of Massachusetts got a grant--you're aware of this one--for $95,000 to study pollen samples from the Viking era in Iceland. Now, I'm not making this up. It's there. You can find it. $95,000, the University of Massachusetts studied pollen samples from the Viking era. You want to study pollen from the Viking era, an old sample of the Viking era? Just have Brett Favre sneeze. You know, that's an old Viking. We can do that. Save the
$95,000. Maybe this will make good, like 1:30 in the morning, Discovery or Science Channel reporting, you know. We investigated old Viking pollen from Iceland. And we created jobs--95,000 of your tax dollars. We've been joined, Mr. LaTourette, if I could, by Mr. Scalise here from Louisiana. We're glad to have you join us today and share your comments to our colleagues, and we may even go back and forth here with our colleague from Ohio.
Mr. SCALISE. Well, I want to thank my friends that are talking about this important subject because, you know, when I go home, people want to know the same things that you've been talking about. They want to know where are the jobs. They surely don't want the government getting involved in all of these areas of our lives that the government doesn't belong. And even more importantly, they don't want the government going off on these wild spending sprees, spending money that we don't have. And so they look at the record of this administration since President Obama came in in January, and they recognize that right after President Obama came in, he had this great idea that he was going to have this stimulus bill. And he said, we're going to make sure that unemployment doesn't go over 8 percent.
Mr. WALDEN. That would be this chart here.
Mr. SCALISE. And the chart that you show that shows the lofty goals, the lofty promises. And in fact, those of us who actually want to fix the real problems, want to solve the problems in our country, we met with the President. We said, Mr. President, we've got some ideas on how to create jobs, because we agree, our economy should be focusing on creating jobs. And we actually laid out a recovery plan that the Congressional Budget Office scored that would create way more jobs than they projected to score and a whole lot less money than they were projecting to spend.
{time} 1645
Of course the President discarded our ideas. He went around the country telling people that we were just the party of ``no,'' failed to mention that we actually had a solid plan that is still as solid today. So he just put his blinders on and said, We don't want Republicans. We just want to go on a wild spending spree. Unfortunately, the President got his way.
And Speaker Pelosi rammed the bill through the House, Harry Reid rammed the bill through the Senate, and they spent $787 billion of our children and grandchildren's money--money that we don't have--claiming we need to do this because this was going to stop unemployment from reaching 8 percent and it was going to create 3 million jobs.
And then he stood here, right behind you, here on this House floor, right at that podium I'm looking at right there. President Obama said, We're going to track every dime, and Joe Biden, Vice President Joe Biden is going to be in charge of tracking every dime because nobody messes with Joe. That is what the President said. Nobody messes with Joe.
Mr. WALDEN. Nobody messes with Joe.
Mr. SCALISE. And so of course, we decide to take President Obama up on his claims, and as Americans for months and months later, after they then came with a budget that doubled the national debt in 5 years, and then they turned around with another bill called the cap-and-trade energy tax, a national tax on energy.
Then they came back with this government takeover of health care that they're still pursuing. All of this, running jobs out of our country at a time when Americans want us to be creating jobs.
And so now that unemployment has exceeded 10 percent, people are not only asking where are the jobs, they're saying, What did you do with all of that money that you spent.
And so we started digging in deeper, and what we found out is, as you were talking about, we found out in Louisiana, there were more jobs created in Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, according to the White House, by the stimulus bill than were created in my First Congressional District that I represent.
Mr. WALDEN. So what's the point?
Mr. SCALISE. So if you lived in the Eighth Congressional District and you're hearing all of these jobs that were created with taxpayer money that we don't have, that was borrowed from our children and grandchildren, you might be going, Well, I want to see what those jobs were. Of course people in Louisiana know, there is no Eighth Congressional District because we have seven congressional districts. So we dug deeper and we found out there were 15 different congressional districts in Louisiana that they were claiming they created jobs in using stimulus money.
Mr. WALDEN. So you think something got by Joe?
Mr. SCALISE. I'm not really sure.
And we did a little digging, and in fact, our local newspaper did some digging as well. They called the White House. First of all, they said, Okay, White House, you're claiming that you have got all of this transparency. Joe Biden is hunting out for every dime that's out there; how is it that you can have jobs being shown that you're creating in districts that don't exist? And the first thing the White House said is, We're not certifying the accuracy of the information.
So first, in January, they were going to be the most transparent administration ever. Now, 10 months later, billions and billions of dollars of borrowed money is going out the door. Nobody knows what it was spent on. They claimed to have created jobs in districts that don't exist, and the best they can say is, We're not certifying the accuracy of the information.
Mr. WALDEN. But I thought nobody gets past Joe?
Mr. SCALISE. We're going to get to that because I think we've got some enlightenment we're going to shine on it.
So then they actually followed up, and they asked the White House, Well, how is it if you're not certifying the accuracy, how is it, though, that somebody can show a district that doesn't exist on your Web site as creating jobs? And the White House spokesperson's answer was, Who knows, man; who really knows. That is his direct quote. That is the best the White House could come up with as the American people are saying, Where are the jobs and what are you all doing with all of this money? And their answer is, Who knows, man; who really knows.
So we go back to President Obama. Right here in February, February 24, on the House floor his quote, Because nobody messes with Joe. And then here we've got a picture of Vice President Joe Biden with these two folks that crashed the White House State dinner just a week or so ago, and you wonder why nobody is manning the store and nobody's taking any accountability now. These are the people that are manning the store, and the American people are saying enough is enough; this is not a joke because the joke is on us. And it's money that you're borrowing from China and our children and our grandchildren, and we're tired of it. We actually want to create jobs. That's why we're going to continue to try to create jobs. But this shows you just what's really going on with the taxpayers' money.
Mr. WALDEN. And I will yield to my friend from Ohio, but before I do that, maybe this one didn't get past Joe. Maybe he approved it, I don't here.
But it says here that the Sacramento Bee reported $25,000 of stimulus money, to provide five free concerts in the Sacramento area. I like concerts. I have gone to a concert. I have an iPhone. I've got headphones. I have my iPhone here. It would be cheaper to lend my iPhone probably than the $25,000.
But here's one of the programs. It is the kitchen review. Now, you gentlemen I know are students of philharmonic and its programming. The kitchen review where audiences can imagine, ``the life of a pot, a lid, a broom, and a dishrag.'' Twenty-five thousand dollars so that you can imagine--this reminds me of the Johnny Carson skit, you know, Carnac, the Magnificent. What do a pot, a lid, a broom, and a dishrag have in common? This is insane.
Now, the executive director did say the money will give 10 of his musicians a good long week of work. Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I hear of jobs--I was a small business owner for 22 years. I created jobs, I maintained jobs, small company. I know what it's like to sign the payroll check. If I created a job, I expected it to last more than one week. Most of us I think see these numbers and think, Oh, they created a million new jobs or whatever they're claiming, 640,000 jobs. And then we find it was a roofing project that lasted 2 weeks. It was the life of a pot, a lid, a broom, and a dishrag concert in Sacramento for free. They gave a long week of work.
Now, that is not going to bring about economic recovery. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think the message is--and the gentleman from Louisiana I think laid it out very well--is we don't claim to have all of the best ideas on how to do this. I think that in the House we represent about 47 percent of the American people. And as you move forward with sort of--it's like going to a bad movie, Stimulus 2 or Stimulus 3, about to rear their ugly heads around here. We would just like to have the ideas that we have--the gentleman's a former business owner, too--to say, Hey, I have an idea how to create a job. And I think if they were more receptive to that, you wouldn't have to report phony stuff, and people wouldn't be asking where the jobs are because the gentleman mentioned the health care debate.
One way to make sure that health care is less of a problem in this country is to have people working with health care, with retirement security. One way to solve the problem with the foreclosure crisis in this country is to have people working so they can pay their mortgages and their insurance and raise their families.
But just two quick examples. I don't understand why they're bragging about this stuff. The government claims to have spent $1,047 to buy a riding mower from the Toro Company to cut the grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery. I'm all for cutting the grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery, but the Web site claims that the purchase of that single lawnmower helped save or create 50 jobs.
Mr. WALDEN. A single lawnmower. Well, maybe it's a push mower. A big push mower.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. We've got a lot of shift work going on there.
Mr. WALDEN. For 49 people pushing and one steering. How many people does it take to push a lawnmower?
Mr. LaTOURETTE. It was a riding lawnmower.
So anyway, and then to Connecticut. I think again what our constituents ask us to do is what the next story does. And that is, the Police Department up in Plymouth, Connecticut, received a grant, and they used it to buy new computers. And again, law enforcement needs the best tools to catch the bad guys, but the administration is saying that the purchase of these computers created 108 jobs. There's a couple of problems with that. There are only 22 people who work at the police department, and when they called the mayor--they called the mayor up there in Plymouth. They said, Hey, how come you guys are reporting 108 jobs with some computers. He said, I can't tell you. His name is Vincent Festa. He says that--and this is what our constituents want us to do--he said that the town has resorted to counting paperclips to save money but that it had no plans to lay off any police officers even without the stimulus. He couldn't explain the police report, and the town's police chief--unlike the mayor--didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.
So, again, we need to be included as we find out not only how can we help assist the economy recover, creating jobs, but we need to do what the mayor, Mayor Festa, is doing in Plymouth, Connecticut, counting the paperclips.
Mr. WALDEN. And maybe we need to ask Lesko where the free government money went. He seems to know. He's on television all the time. Ask Lesko, where's the money, free government money?
How about this one: West Virginia requested $387,350 from the so-
called stimulus to hire two State coordinators and an assistant to encourage private land owners to grow ginseng and shiitake mushrooms on their private forest lands. Now, I have nothing against ginseng or shiitake mushrooms, for that matter, or farmers. With three staff and
$387,000 in Federal money they hope to contact 160 landowners. That works out to $2,377 per contact to reach out to 160 farmers, forest land owners, to say, Hey, you guys want to grow some ginseng and shiitake mushrooms out there under the trees?
This is your Federal tax money, $387,350 for West Virginia. I thought with all of the paving that goes on there--well, we won't go there.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Maybe they don't have phones in West Virginia.
Mr. WALDEN. I mean, come on--$387,000.
I loved this one, too, $4 million for a new bike path trail in Massachusetts so people can get to the North Hampton Taco Bell. Do you think I'm making this stuff up? So there's a new slogan that Taco Bell has come out with: ``Bike to the border.'' The problem is, we all know with Massachusetts, before it's built, you know, they're going to make it a crime to eat a burrito and ride a bike at the same time. You can't eat a burrito and ride a bike at the same time. No taco chips, no salsa, nothing on that bike. And forget the cheese if it's not from a free-range dairy cow. I mean, this is $4 million for a bike path to the Taco Bell.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Both gentlemen have talked a little bit about some of the other stuff that's been going on. At the same time the economy continues to tank and people continue to lose their jobs, they continue to pile on. This health care discussion that we had a little while ago in the House, one provision in that bill says that at Taco Bell, at every vending machine, in every location you're going to have to have a sign next to it that says what the thing is not only made of but whether it's good for you or not.
I'm not a healthy eater, you can tell.
Mr. WALDEN. Actually, you are healthy eater.
Mr. SCALISE. Robust.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think I have a healthy appetite. I don't know if I'm a healthy eater.
It's going to cost a lot of money, obviously for not only the consumer--because these signs are not going to come free--but also the people who are going to make all of this stuff. Does anybody think this compliance cost won't be added on? And how do you deal with compliance costs? You either raise prices or you let people go.
But anybody that thinks when they go to a vending machine and sees a Twinky, a Twinky filled with that delicious cream, anybody who thinks that that is good for you probably shouldn't be out and about without adult supervision during the day.
Mr. WALDEN. Or that thinks you're going to stand there at the vending machine with the lineup of Twinkies and you're going to read the ingredients list and the calorie list, and that's going to dissuade you from buying that Twinky that you have found the vending machine to get.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. And then on top of that, we had the cap-and-trade bill a little earlier. Again, everybody wants clean air--I come from Lake Erie--clean water and everything else. But the fact of the matter is there was a huge national carbon tax. And again, when you have an economy that is ailing and people are losing their jobs, imposing more taxes on them, the places they work is not the answer.
So you sort of have this double whammy going on here. You have no help for the people who have lost their jobs, and by the same token, you have policies to create more job displacement.
Mr. WALDEN. This government, this Federal Government, Democrats have run the House for the last 3 years. The House controls the purse strings. The Congress does. The President can put forward a budget and they end up signing the bills into law, but it's the Congress that controls the purse strings.
Under this administration, the Federal Government will run deficits in excess of $700 billion every single year for the next 10 years. Now, the highest deficit, the highest 1-year deficit prior to this administration was $459 billion, which was high, but it was coming down. Now it's $700 billion and higher for the next decade at best.
Now, that racks up to what? What do they figure? A $20, a $17, $20 trillion debt at the end of 10 years. So let's figure out how you pay that off. Let's say it's $20 trillion by the time they're done.
{time} 1700
Well, how about this? The Congress runs a trillion-dollar surplus for 20 years and pays down the debt. How many in this Chamber believe this Congress, or any Congress for that matter, is going to run a trillion-
dollar surplus and apply it to paying down debt? I see no hands going up.
So then you're going to drive inflation. You're going to inflate your way out of debt. And that's the fear I have, having been in small business, knowing a lot of small business people. That means higher interest rates, higher inflation, a return to Carternomics. You remember when Jimmy Carter left office we had double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, and the economy went in the tank. That's what portends from this enormous deficit.
I'd yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman from Oregon.
This is what we talk to our small business owners about. When I go back home, small business owners that I talk to aren't saying that they want the government taking over health care. What they're saying is these policies, these policies are what are causing them to hold back or to look at divesting and just getting out. But there's so much money on the sidelines because of the actions being taken by President Obama and the liberals that are running Congress that are literally stifling the ability for businesses to create jobs. The American people know that because the American people are looking at these policies. And they've got good common sense. And they're saying, If you've got tough economic times, the first thing you should be doing is figuring out how to help businesses create more jobs.
And so then they look at this health care bill. Here's a bill that, first of all, spends over a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars in new Federal spending. But then how do they get that money? Well, they go and they cut Medicare to the tune of about $500 billion, and our senior citizens know how bad that would be. But then they also turn around and they add over $700 billion in new taxes on the backs primarily of small businesses. And so, on one hand, the President's holding a job summit, but, on the other hand, he's got a bill that would add $700 billion on the backs of small businesses with the government takeover of health care. Then, on a third hand, he's got this cap-and-trade energy tax, which literally is a tax on any company in this Nation that manufactures goods.
Mr. WALDEN. Which will drive jobs out of this country.
Mr. SCALISE. Absolutely. In fact, the National Association of Manufacturers said the cap-and-trade energy tax would run at least 3 million more jobs out of this country. Now, of course, this is a President who, since the stimulus bill, he said it was going to create 3 million jobs. Our economy has lost about another 3 million jobs since his stimulus bill, but then his policies would run millions more jobs out of this country.
Of course, the President says we need to do all of this because we've got to save the planet. Well, just earlier this week they finally have exposed some of the corruption involved in this whole argument behind cap-and-trade.
Mr. WALDEN. You're talking about the emails and the conspiracy.
Mr. SCALISE. I'm talking about Climategate. Climategate just hit. This is something that's been going on internationally for over for 10 years. It just got uncovered because some of these emails came to light. Of course, to pass the cap-and-trade energy tax, they said man is destroying the Earth and we've got to limit carbon emissions. Of course, the two biggest emitters in the next 10 years are going to be China and India, and China and India have already said they're not going to comply. So you're not only running millions of jobs out of this country, you'd be running them to countries that actually emit more carbon to do the same thing. So it actually is counterproductive. But then let's look at the science behind what they're saying they need to do.
You've got Al Gore out there who's been running around for years now--he's won Nobel Peace Prizes and Academy Awards--saying the scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops, Now the debate is over. This is former Vice President Al Gore. The debate is over. There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about global warming. And what he's saying is all of these charts and graphs he's been talking about for years and in his movie ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' a very famous chart he used to show talking about global warming was called ``the hockey stick chart.'' That's this chart right here. It's showing over thousands of years they've documented that our Earth is going through cooling periods, our Earth is going through warming periods. We had more warm temperatures than we have today thousands of years ago when there was no combustion engine, there were no fossil fuels being burned. Mother Nature just has a way of going through different cycles on her own.
And so what they were showing was over hundreds of years you had this normal trajectory down, and all of a sudden there's this increase in the Earth's temperature that they showed. The problem is, we just exposed through Climategate, they got to this huge increase that Vice President Al Gore said we need to change our entire national economy over by corrupting the data.
These are some of the things that came out in the email: I have just completed Mike's nature trick to hide the decline. That was Phil Jones, who's one of the lead scientists for a group called the University of Anglia in England. This is a group that writes all of the documents that our scientists in America have used to say we need a cap-and-trade energy tax. They phonied up the numbers. They corrupted the data. And here's the email.
And there are many, many more emails, talking about how they use tricks and that they hide the declines that don't prove their argument. In fact, there are many scientists who have said we're in the seventh year of a cooling period, but they won't show any of that data because they literally have hid the data, and now we've exposed it through Climategate and these emails.
So you've got Vice President Al Gore still running around out there saying we need to have this cap-and-trade national energy tax. The President's going to be going to Copenhagen in about a week and a half, and I guess, just like he went there to try get the Chicago Olympics, a lot of us are hoping he comes back empty-handed in Copenhagen, because what he wants to do is sign an agreement that would literally lead to the destruction of millions of jobs in America based on corrupt science.
Mr. WALDEN. And we know that his stimulus plan that passed by the Democrats hasn't worked. Now they're coming back with stimulus II, we read, that may be $300 or $400 million more of borrowing and spending. And you're creating bike paths to Taco Bells and checking on Viking pollen air in Iceland. This is crazy.
Now, the scientist you referenced there, Jones, I believe that he has been the recipient of tens of millions of dollars for his research of American taxpayer research money from the Department of Energy.
Mr. SCALISE. In fact, we're now asking for an investigation to be conducted into not only----
Mr. WALDEN. Republicans are.
Mr. SCALISE. By the way, he just stepped down through the embarrassment of the exposing of this scandal. So for anybody to say, Oh, this isn't anything real, this is all being trumped up, this guy just stepped on down out of embarrassment over this scandal.
But we're now calling for an investigation to look into the millions of dollars of Federal grant money, U.S. taxpayer dollars, that have been either obtained through corruption or, when they got the Federal tax dollars, they went and conducted studies that they manipulated the data, corrupting the data, again, using that taxpayer money, and we want our money back and we want criminal charges to be filed against these people that actually went out and corrupted data to try to pass a national energy tax in this country that will run millions of jobs. And you wonder why small businesses feel like they're walking around this country with a bull's-eye on their back.
Mr. WALDEN. Beyond that, Republicans have asked for an investigation of this. It's pretty silent on the Democrat side of the aisle. This is a clear example where there has been a conspiracy to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, to discourage dissenting viewpoints from being included. All you have to do is go through the 3,000 emails. And as the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, our Republican staff is doing that as we speak, and it's phenomenal what they're finding in terms of this sort of concerted, conspiratorial effort. And I don't use those terms lightly.
It appears to be a real conspiracy when you've got a lead scientist emailing out to other scientists in the United States saying, Destroy this data, delete this email, get rid of this, and then you discover that the actual temperature data that were gathered from the sites has been destroyed. They took those data and then they ran them through their own model of what they think it should look like and then they destroyed the original data, which means nobody else can go back and use those original data to test and replicate whatever it is they model.
And then there are these emails about let's try and discourage people from getting published in this magazine because we don't think they're with us on this, or whatever. I mean, the American people are going to see transparency. They don't want to--I don't know of too many Members in here who sent out pamphlets in their campaigns that said, Send me to Congress and I'll raise the cost to turn on your light switch, yet that's what they voted for with that cap-and-trade. They voted for 3 million jobs to go overseas.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, they did.
I want to go back just to the jobs business for a minute, because there's a couple of things you can do as a government. The government doesn't create jobs. That's one of the myths around here. It's people who have the entrepreneurial spirit. It's corporations that make investments in not only equipment but product and people.
But going back to the health care thing and Mr. Scalise's observation about more jobs leaving, I would think that the first thing would be to be like a physician; do no harm. Let's keep what we've got and then we can build on it. Then we go can grow jobs. But if you look again at the health care bill, how that's financed--and a lot of my constituents don't understand that everybody recognizes in a country as great as the United States we shouldn't have people who die because they don't have quality health care. They should have the ability to have affordable, accessible health care.
But no matter what that number is--some people say it's 47 million. The President came here and said it's 30 million. Whatever the number is, even at their number of 47, you're talking about 15 percent of the people in the country. And a lot of people are asking the question: How come we've got to screw up everybody else to take care of this problem that's dealing with maybe 15 percent of the people?
And specifically to the jobs issue, the Senate bill that they're now debating across the Capitol has a number of taxes in it. First, both bills cut half a trillion dollars out of Medicare. And how you're going to make the country healthier by taking away half a trillion dollars from people on Medicare I have yet to have explained to me adequately. But on the other side of the Capitol they're debating all these new taxes, and one is specifically on companies that manufacture wheelchairs.
Now, I have, not in my district but on the other side of Cleveland, in Lorain, Ohio, the world's leading wheelchair manufacturer. And in talking to the folks that run that company, they're saying, You know what? If this tax comes about--and it's hard to know why you have to tax wheelchairs to take care of somebody who doesn't have health insurance--if this tax comes about, it will completely eviscerate any profit margin that we have, and I'm going to take thousands of jobs and they're going to have to be terminated and I will go to China. I will go to China and employ thousands of Chinese to make wheelchairs and have them imported into the United States.
Now, some of our friends on the other side say, Well, that's not patriotic. What are you doing? You're thumbing your nose at the United States of America. Business is business and jobs are jobs. So to disincentivize--not only to do no harm, but to harm--doesn't make sense to folks back where I'm from.
Mr. WALDEN. No, it doesn't. I think that's the issue. And we had an alternative that created twice the jobs at half the cost in America. Twice the jobs at half the cost. Clearly, we want to get people back to work. There are alternative ways to do that that Republicans have put forward on health care reform. We haven't even talked about tort reform that would save $68 billion. Get rid of the junk lawsuits and get access to affordable health care out there.
There are ways--and as a former small business owner, I can tell you--to create jobs in the market out there. Bike paths to Taco Bells is not a sustainable economic recovery model.
$95,000 for research on Icelandic Viking-era pollen seems a little outrageous at a time when we're running record reported deficits.
I know we're about to run out of time here. I'd go back to my colleague from Louisiana if he has got any final comments because, you know what? All of this has gotten past Joe.
Mr. SCALISE. And I guess that's a good place to finish, kind of where we started. The American people are saying, Who's manning the store? And they're also saying, Where are the jobs? And they're looking at these policies and they're looking at this cap-and-trade energy tax, they're looking at this government takeover of health care with the
$700 billion in new taxes. They look at what happened today here on the House floor. Speaker Pelosi's top priority was a bill that actually puts into law a permanent 45 percent tax on death. A tax on death. And so that's their answer.
Their ideas are actually leading to increased unemployment, running millions of more jobs out of this country, and the best that they can say is, Who knows? There's no accountability. But, don't worry. The President is still saying, There's old Joe. He's manning the store, because nobody messes with Joe. They think that this may be some kind of joke, but the joke is on the American people. And the American people are tired of it.
Mr. WALDEN. We yield back the balance of our time.
____________________
