Madam Speaker, I rise today as one of many freshmen who will be speaking during this hour because a little over a year ago, we came in on a wave of change. Many of us came into politics for the first time, certainly to the Federal…
Madam Speaker, I rise today as one of many freshmen who will be speaking during this hour because a little over a year ago, we came in on a wave of change. Many of us came into politics for the first time, certainly to the Federal Government for the first time, because we believed this country needed a new kind of politics, not just a politics of right or left, but a politics of right and wrong. For too long, both parties had failed to rise to the challenges of our time. Energy independence, redefining our competitive advantage--there were so many challenges to take on. And a year later, we are not satisfied.
Tomorrow night, the President of the United States will come and join us here in this body to speak and give us a report on the state of the Nation. Well, the Nation is in pain. Working and middle class families are in pain, and we haven't done nearly enough to show people the results of standing up for the working and middle class.
There are many things that the change was about, but certainly at the heart of it was a desire for a new era of accountability, accountability for the private sector, accountability for government, and even accountability for consumers and bad decisions that had been made.
But most importantly to this was a need to shift our economic policies from speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main Street. Changing the name plate on the door from Hank Paulson to Tim Geithner does not represent a change of economic policy. We need to understand what it will take to have actual economic accountability and job growth in this country.
We believe in this House, the people's House, we have taken dramatic steps to put working class and middle class people ahead of the most powerful among us. But the pain continues. In my district over the last 5 years we have seen people's utility rates go up 93 percent by Appalachian Power and others. We get calls every day, 20 percent increases in their health insurance premiums, bank fees, credit card fees, Comcast fees, all going through the roof while the working and middle class pay the price.
We have taken steps here to stand up and say someone is going to stand up for Main Street, demand that accountability and that economic relief that we thought was part of the change. We hope tomorrow night to hear more about your willingness to lead in these areas.
But we also must switch this focus to Main Street because we are in a jobs crisis. We need a wartime-like mentality of how serious this job crisis is. And we took dramatic efforts a year ago that have helped to stop the bleeding, to help turn from some of the most dramatic job losses in American history, certainly modern American history under the last administration, to stopping that bleeding so that we could begin the recovery. But we know much more needs to be done. We are not satisfied.
I hear time and time again the banks are still not lending. If we need to do direct lending, if we need to do more to get the lending going to small and medium-sized businesses, we have to understand that in America's economy today two-thirds of job creation comes from small- and medium-sized business. They may not have the political power and control over both parties in this town, but small- and medium-sized businesses create that job growth. We need to get job creation on Main Street
through direct lending. We also need to see the kind of investment in our infrastructure not only because it puts people to work today, but because it rebuilds America's competitive advantage.
The hardworking, proud people of my district would rather collect a paycheck for building something than an unemployment check for sitting home. People want to work. They don't want those holes in their resume. And we know we are being outcompeted. So this is a jobs crisis. But it also goes to the heart of restoring the capitalistic innovation in this country.
We saw a policy under the last administration of rewarding failure with bailouts. Many of us wanted a change in that policy. We are not satisfied with what we have seen. We cannot have the strength of our private sector when we continue to reward failure instead of innovation. The people's House has taken bold moves to ensure the kind of accountability that will restore the very heart of our capitalism.
We know that the other side put in place many of the policies that created this problem, but it is not enough to point the finger. Let us be judged not by what the other side did to get us here, but by what we did to get us out of this economic mess. Many of us came here, we are working a double shift every day and will not rest until we see the kind of job creation and rewards for innovation that the American people deserve. That is why many of us came here. And we are not satisfied. We want to continue being that change, demanding that kind of shift from speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main Street.
With that, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Let me yield to the gentleman from California.
Thank you very much.
I think it is important to remember we have got to rebuild jobs in this country that are between $6 an hour and six figures. There still has to be a middle class, a working class in this country. We have to respect those jobs, remember that we have lost jobs in construction, we have lost jobs in places where people want to go back to work.
The jobs bill we passed here was a good start. We need to be bold in our willingness to both put people to work and recreate our competitive advantage. Even before the Great Recession, even before some of the horrible fiscal decisions of the last administration we had been getting outcompeted around the world. We have got to make the investments in our infrastructure, in our small-and medium-sized businesses, and education and workforce development so that we can outcompete any country.
We are more innovative than any country on earth. We will continue to do that. But we cannot do it when we have a corporate capture of this body that means we reward failure instead of rewarding innovation. That must be the key.
With that, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.
One thing I just want to add on that before I move to the gentleman from Colorado is to say anyone who has run a business or a household knows the difference between an expenditure and an investment. Going out to the movies is different than investing in a solar panel or retrofitting your home.
Now is the time where we need to be investing. We can do that through some of the retrofitting of both our commercial and residential stock. We can do that by investing in our workforce development and by getting that lending, again, to small and medium-size business.
There has been a thought among some of the elites in this country that we can continue to prosper without building anything, without growing anything. At some point, we have to be creating value in the system. Our financial sector is extremely important, and it will be strong if there are good rules in place that allow for predictability.
But we also must remember the industrial and agricultural sectors. These are not things of a bygone past, though sometimes in this city and on Wall Street that is forgotten. These remain major drivers of economic growth, major drivers of employment; and we must have an economic development strategy in addition to a financial sector strategy.
Some of the things that continue to change and set us back, I believe the gentleman from Colorado wants to address, are not just in this building but perhaps across the street. With that, I yield.
I thank you for those comments. We can't say enough about how disastrous this decision is, not just for the political system in terms of corruption of the political system, but really a threat to the private sector itself, when the biggest corporations are able to capture government, as we have seen in the years past.
What they do is they try to lock in the status quo that is the very antithesis of capitalism, which is about innovation and competition. When you are able to buy the referees on the field, you no longer have a decent game. We will outcompete and win on that fair battlefield, on that fair sports field, but you cannot do it when they are buying the referees. And anyone who thinks that money has no influence in politics may need to have a little wake-up call.
This is a disastrous decision that goes against decades of precedent. Many out there who decry judicial activism, this is not only overthrowing decades of precedent but a decision just 6 years earlier that had come down the opposite way which looks dangerous in terms of what it means for our Supreme Court. But, again, I think you do a good job of pointing out exactly what it means for the private sector.
I will go to the gentleman from New York and then the gentleman from California.
What the gentleman talks about here is so important. We have to have the courage at this moment not just to think about how we survive the next quarter, but how do we thrive in the next quarter of a century, How do we compete again. And spending $1 billion every day on oil that goes overseas to some of the countries that hate us the most is one of the dumbest strategies imaginable, $1 billion every day out of this country.
Let me brag on Southside, Virginia for a moment before I go on, because we are at the cutting edge of the new energy economy. Just last week, we worked with one of the biggest dairy farmers in the State, and we are going to turn cow manure into power. So instead of having all the effluence go off into the Chesapeake Bay and annoy
neighbors with the smell and be a costly thing that makes milk more expensive, we are going to invest in an anaerobic digester that is going to turn that into power, not only fuel the entire farm, but also much of the town around it.
I say to farmers who say, How are my kids going to make it with the utility bills that these monopoly utilities are jacking up on us--a 93 percent increase in my area in the last 5 years--I'd say, I don't want you to have a power bill at all. In 5 years, I hope you're selling power in the same way that you're selling milk today.
We have a truck stop owner in my district who's figured out a way. After 9/11, he said, You know, I'm nothing but a front man for al Qaeda. I'm selling their product. Instead, I want to sell an American product. He's worked with farmers in our area to use canola oil to sell a premium diesel fuel--a premium fuel, not a low-grade fuel--and instead of 3 cents on every dollar staying in the county, which is what happens in a normal truck stop, 93 cents on every dollar is staying in our community supporting farmers, supporting the refining.
One of the poorest communities in Virginia, highest unemployment, we're working in their landfill to capture the methane, turn it into power so we can reduce power bills for low-income residents and make it more attractive to business. This is what other countries are daring to do, and we've always been better at it. We've got to dare to be better at it if we're going to be ahead.
With that, I yield to the gentleman from California.
Thank you.
And before I go to the gentleman from Ohio, I think it is important to note how serious fiscal responsibility is and how serious it is for those of us, frankly, who are some of the younger Members of this body who understand that this threat of fiscal irresponsibility is not coming due for our children or our grandchildren. It's not that far off. It's going to be within our lifetime that we see this. And in order to fix a problem, sometimes you have to understand the root cause of that problem.
With that, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
I will take the challenge from the gentleman from Ohio and remind him of the recent NCAA soccer championship in which I believe the University of Virginia beat a team from your State, a very good team from your State.
I do just want you to be warned that that challenge may not work out well for your State. I think what we're talking about here is this issue: We cannot speculate our way to economic recovery.
Sometimes when I'm meeting with the folks in my district--just a couple of days ago I was down in a town that has seen several plants close. The big plants closed back in the nineties after NAFTA. A recent set have closed that had managed to cling on a lot longer. They turned to me and said, Do people up there know we exist, those of us that are making 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour? Do they know we're out there?
And they know that I'm fighting through the Jobs Caucus, through the jobs bill, by being a broken record about jobs, jobs, jobs. But there's a sense that sometimes those on Wall Street and, as Mr. Poe mentioned, that Wall Street-Washington collusion, only think about the folks that are already doing really well in the economy and forget about that working middle class, forget about advanced manufacturing, forget about the next generation of farming and ag products and forestry, forget about the fact that two-thirds of job growth in this country comes from small and medium-sized businesses. They may not get the same headlines as the Goldman Sachs, but they employ America. They treat their workers well. They're accountable, and they produce real value in our community. Those are the folks we have to remember. Those are the people that are taking it on the chin from getting nickel-and-dimed by credit card companies and bank fees and utility rate increases and everything across the board. Those working- and middle-class folks need a voice. We need to be that voice.
I've given the President a little grief tonight and certainly his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, for not being the change that I expected to see and not doing enough for Main Street, but when the President last came here, he did say something that's so important for us to remember. He was talking about how big the challenges are that we face, whether it's health reform or energy independence or the great recession. And he said, We're going to step up and face this because that's what Americans do. We don't back down. We don't back away from a challenge.
Every generation of Americans are faced with a challenge. Some have to storm the beaches of Normandy, some have had to fight great wars. We are being asked to figure out how to compete again in the 21st century and have a strong middle class. And part of that is being willing to do the tough decisions on energy independence and other areas that are going to be the job creators. When we worry about something like the Supreme Court decision saying that if corporations can spend unlimited money, that means the corporations that are competitive today will be able to lock in their monopolies through the Washington-Wall Street collusion. What we have to have is the innovation, even the creative destruction, to create the jobs and the competitive advantage of the future.
The President asked us to have that courage that every generation of Americans has, to not back down from the challenge. This is our challenge, whether it's how to get the budget balanced, how to shore up the middle class, how to be economically competitive in a global economy, how to create competitiveness in energy and health care and other sectors. This is our time, and we will step up and we will try to be worthy of the American people. We will not forget those working- and middle-class folks.
With that, I yield the gentleman from New York.
Well, it is interesting that you mention the importance of this because really, again, what we're doing is voting referees back on the field. We shouldn't be choosing sides as a government, but we should make sure the rules are there. Now no one ever leaves the ball game and says, Wow, I really liked the referees in that game. No one ever says, Oh, the referees did a good job. You notice the referees when things go wrong and when a bad call is made. Government certainly makes errors. But what is important is that we have referees on the field.
I talk to friends of mine all the time who are investors and business leaders, and they say, We want predictability and accountability in the market so we can then adjust to that. It's frustrating not just, I think, for many working and middle class folks who have been asked to pay for the mistakes that were made on Wall Street, in part because of mistakes that were made in Washington, to ask hardworking people in my district making $30,000 a year to pay for people that were making millions every year. But it has also been frustrating for some investors to say, Look, I made the smart investment. I didn't go for the crazy, exotic mortgage-backed securities and derivatives. I made smart, reasonable hedged risks, and it was fine. Yet the people who did make those high-risk, high-return investments not only got to see the upsides in the good years but then got bailed out in the bad years. I mean, if you go to Vegas, and you bet 13 on the roulette wheel, it's a sucker's bet. But if you know that every time you lose on 13, someone is going to make you money to make the next bet, and when you win, you're going to get to keep it all, of course you are going to keep betting on 13.
So with this, we must understand that the rules must be clear on the field. That's what this is. It's not about being anti-Wall Street. It's about being pro-accountability and having rules that are there. So let's get down to some brass tacks on Main Street job creation, that moves us from speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main Street, and these are some good, commonsense ideas that should be able to be pursued on a bipartisan basis. We need to figure out a way to get lending going to small- and medium-sized business. If we need to do it through incentives, we can do it through incentives. If we need to do direct lending because the banks just won't do it, we need to do that.
We need to get creative. That is what I hear in my district. People want to expand. They want to hire. They can't get the lending. Consider a capital gains freeze for 2 years for small business. Infrastructure investment, particularly smart grid technology, water infrastructure, broadband infrastructure that we know creates competitive advantage. We've talked about retrofits that already make win-win sense in the economy. We can do this in the commercial sector, the industrial sector. Not at the scale of 100 homes here and 100 homes there. The market incentives are there to do this more broadly than that and put hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people to work in retrofits.
These are concrete areas that will not only help us in these dramatic downtimes in our economy, but do it in a way that creates value on the upside because we know that the cheapest electricity is the electricity you never have to buy in the first place. These are ways to invest in our competitiveness. And with that, I yield to another member of our class.
We stand here in the midst of a tremendous economic crisis. What we hear when we go home every weekend is the pain of people who have lost their jobs, the fear of those who think they might be next, the confusion and frustration of having seen one administration seem to wreck the economy and the next not doing enough to fix it.
Well, like many Americans, I am not satisfied. We can sit here tonight and blame the other side for letting the deficit go off the rails or helping to wreck the economy. I am not satisfied being judged by what the other side did. I want us to be judged by whether we get this economy back on track. I want us to be judged by whether we have stepped up to the generational challenges that both parties have failed to address in the decades past.
It's too easy in this town to focus on winning a debate or a legislative fight or a campaign by convincing people that the other side is even worse. That's not a politics worthy of the American people. We've done a lot to stop the bleeding in the economy in the last year, but I'm not satisfied with us merely stopping the bleeding. We must have the healing and the rehabilitation, not just to get us back to where we were, but to an even stronger working and middle class that we've seen in the last few years, a more competitive American economy. A politics that doesn't just reward and lock in the status quo through corporate campaign contributions and ads, but rewards innovation and dares to think of what the next big thing can be, that can unleash again the American competitiveness that is being choked out by so much of the Washington-Wall Street collusion that seems to reward what has been, instead of what needs to be in this country.
It's good to see that Wall Street has recovered and is above 10,000, but I am not satisfied until we see that growth on Main Street, we see the job creation, we see jobs that are somewhere between $6 an hour and six figures for that vibrant middle class that's always been at the heart of this country. I'm a big believer in this President, and I am a big believer in hope, but hope doesn't pay the mortgage. We have to deal with the banking crisis, the housing crisis. We have to look at the construction sector, education, and workforce development. I am not satisfied with solutions that simply stabilize where we are or offer something a little bit better than what came before. We promised something better than that.
I believe tomorrow night the President has an opportunity to give an address to this Nation that gives an honest reading of the state of this Union, both its unbelievable strengths, its unprecedented hunger for innovation, but also the reality of its economic suffering, particularly with our middle class and working class families who continue to suffer under monopolies of electric utilities, of the credit card companies, of the joblessness; that we will see a President who steps up and continues to say, We are not going to shirk away from the challenges of our time because that's not what Americans do. We step up. We figure out a way to innovate, to out-compete, and to give the American people a kind of politics that they deserve.
That's what brought many of us into politics for the first time, like many of the freshmen who have been speaking tonight. And we are not satisfied yet with the change, but we still believe it is possible. We are looking for everyone to come together, Congress and White House, Republican and Democrat, and all the American people throughout this country, to dare to believe that that hunger we have for change and for hope can translate into real results, including a reinvention of America's competitive advantage that helps restore the strength of that middle class, that understands that two-thirds of our job growth comes from small- and medium-sized business, that gets lending going again, that gets job creation going again and moves us from rewarding speculation on Wall Street to job creation on Main Street.
I thank my colleagues tonight for joining with us on the eve of the State of the Union address.