I thank the gentleman from California. And really we've got to kind of not forget what we've come through, because the better days are ahead. But you can't forget where you came from. And over the course of 2007 through 2008, at the end of…
I thank the gentleman from California.
And really we've got to kind of not forget what we've come through, because the better days are ahead. But you can't forget where you came from. And over the course of 2007 through 2008, at the end of the Bush administration this country was losing 780,000 jobs a month. And over the course of the next year, through a series of things that stopped the free fall of the economy, righted it, and dealt with some significant issues that have been really holding us back, holding this country back for a long time. Health care as it applies to business. Each car costs a ton of money. On top of that is the health care costs. A variety of things that have been holding us down from reaching our real potential as Americans and as America.
But over the course of the last year-and-a-half, instead of losing 780,000 jobs, as we were under the Bush administration, we crossed the axis to positive job growth. And it's still kind of shaky, but we've gone from losing 780,000 jobs to gaining about 100,000 jobs a month. Now that's not good enough, and we can do a lot better. And we have a lot of work to do because in this trough, in this deep part of the recession, we lost 8 million jobs.
We want good paying, good products coming out of that so that we can put people back to work. And that's the goal and the everyday job. Our first priority is putting people back to work to good jobs. And that's what we're doing. We've taken care of dealing with some long-standing problems, whether it's reeling in Wall Street, dealing with health care, making sure that women get equal pay for equal work. Those are the kinds of things that we've been focusing on, when the Republicans have been focusing on the George Bush agenda of cutting taxes for the wealthiest, prosecuting wars without paying for them, failing to police Wall Street, privatizing Social Security, and abolishing Medicare. That's not the contract that we want to have with this country, but that is their contract that they want to pursue, just as George Bush pursued it.
Now, I would recommend to you, Mr. Garamendi and to the other speakers, an article that was published in the Denver Post this past Sunday by a gentleman named Andy Grove, who was the chief executive of Intel. And it describes manufacturing in the United States, and when it grew, and how it's waned, and what we can do to start building it again.
My friend from Ohio (Ms. Sutton) talked about manufacturing jobs in that State. One of the places where we can have solid manufacturing jobs is in the green, clean technology arena. Now, it's manufacturing, whether it's solar panels or wind turbines or many things that are of huge size that we build in this country, we construct in this country, and it puts our people, Americans back to work. And that's the kind of thing, we are building a country by looking forward, by looking to that new day where we're going to have something better for the people of this country.
One of the things you talked about, Mr. Garamendi, was this bill that we passed involving students and community colleges. Well, community colleges in that bill will really be a base for developing these new manufacturing positions so that we have well-educated, well-prepared people to go build the best products in the world. That's what we've done before, that's what we're going to do again, because that's what America is made of.
And I am so proud to be part of a Democratic Caucus, and a Democratic Caucus that has dealt with a very difficult financial time, dealt with very substantial and difficult subjects like health care, and Wall Street, and getting this country back on its feet. And now we're going to move forward, just as America wants us to do, and we're going to start building this thing the way we know we can.
I yield to my friend from California.