Debbie, it is certainly good to be here. And as I have listened to the debate, the discussions that we have had about creating jobs in America, I think personally to go back and check a little bit of history, I represent a unique…
Debbie, it is certainly good to be here. And as I have listened to the debate, the discussions that we have had about creating jobs in America, I think personally to go back and check a little bit of history, I represent a unique congressional district, but so do 434 other Members of the U.S. House. The district I represent is the fourth most rural residential congressional district in this country. It has the third highest number of blue collar workers.
We are hurting in the Fourth Congressional District, as we are throughout America. And what we have been seeing in the last several years is an administration and those who truly do not understand, not only rural America, but those who live in urban and inner-city as well.
As an example, starting on January 1st, 2008, through October 31st, 2009, we lost eight million jobs in this country, eight million moms and dads, eight million working sons and daughters who lost their jobs starting in January. I am not talking about 2007, I am talking about just in that 22-month period alone, eight million jobs. During the
Bush administration, around one million jobs were created, new jobs in the time January 1st of 2001 through the time that George Bush left office on January 20th of 2009.
If you take that growth number during that period of 8 years and look how long it would take us to find the jobs to replace the eight million that were lost, it would take 64 years at the same growth rate during the Bush administration.
So for the folks on the other side of the aisle, start using math. When you use the math, be sure it adds up to what you are saying.
When we look at eight million jobs that we have lost starting in January, the last 13 months of the Bush administration, through October 31st of 2009, if we were to create 200,000 jobs a month--during the Clinton administration that is what happened, about 250,000 on the average jobs per month during the 8 years that Clinton was President. But if we take those numbers, it will take over 3 years to just replace the eight million jobs we lost as a result of the trade policies and the policies of the Bush administration.
So if we want to start analyzing and blaming folks, let's get the facts straight. Let's get the figures right. People in my district don't care who it is, whether it is Bush or whether it is the Obama administration, whether it is the Clinton administration. They want jobs.
How will we create those? Through the eighties, in the area I represent, the apparel industry and the textile industry was a great part of the low wages, quite frankly, and some of the low-skilled jobs that we had.
My brother worked at a garment factory that worked almost 1,500 people in 1983. As a result of the trade deals that we cut with the Caribbean steel initiative and the Andean region, as the result of the tax policy that we had, we reduced taxes on the richest people in America from 70 percent, as it was on January 1, 1981, to 28 percent was the max.
I am not complaining because we had a tax cut, but here is what I do disagree with. We also during that period of time told small business folks, I am sorry, the depreciation schedules you had, 10 to 15 years, are no longer in place. It is going to take you 30-plus years now. So in essence what we told small business folks, you no longer have the tax breaks that you had at one time. You no longer have the tax incentives to create jobs for folks who live in rural America and inner-city or urban areas, because what we are doing is giving the tax breaks to the wealthiest individual wage earners, not small business folks.
When the other side talks about helping small business engage, let's really get serious about a tax policy through depreciation schedules that will encourage small business folks, the creator of 70 percent of the jobs in our country, an opportunity to start revitalizing America again.
In 1970, one out of four people worked in manufacturing in this country. Today it is one in 10. Let me repeat that. One out of four people worked in manufacturing. One in 10 does today. Where are those jobs?
In 1998, we signed an agreement, this country did, and I have to blame the Clinton administration and perhaps Mr. Rubin, who was the Treasurer at that time, we signed trade deals called GATT, General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, and we brought two large countries, India and China, which has a third of the world's population, into the
Would you yield?
I notice there's a chart up showing the huge deficits. When Barack Obama was elected President, the first 30 days of his term he had to renew a trillion dollars and pay the interest on it. If John McCain had been elected, he would have had to renew a trillion dollars that he didn't bring to the table. Whoever was elected President and sworn in on January 20 in 2009, the next 30 days we had $12 trillion in total national debt. You look at that on a monthly basis, that's a trillion a month we have to renew and pay the interest on it. It didn't matter who it was. So as we look at the national debt, please, America, yeah, we need to reduce the deficit. And we're working on that. We call that pay-as-you-go. We need performance-based programming in our budget.
And so I would just want to remind you: 8 million jobs lost, starting on January 1, 2008, America, and the current President, regardless of who it is--Barack Obama or if it had been John McCain--had $1 trillion every month since they'd been President to renew and pay the interest on.
