testing testing testing testing unemployment budget deficits in historic levels of debt many state budgets are also deep in red and households continue to tighten their belt they are making very difficult decisions but necessary decisions on spending cuts which is what they expect their government to do we have to work our way through this together responsibly and that does not mean that we spend our way out of this recession as the distinguished majority whip said last month i fundamentally disagree with that approach in order to work towards a vibrant american economy in the twenty first century congress needs to take a comprehensive look at policies which build a solid economic foundation this will be accomplished by federal funds jobs three point three million jobs have been lost since passage including over twenty five thousand manufacturing jobs in kansas kansas wants to get back to work kansas employers want to hire them  here with this committee and it has to because it has started with the administration president obama promised a three year freeze on nondefense non security domestic spending it is request for programs under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee have increased by twenty seven billion dollars we need to do exactly what the president promised but has so far failed to do apply the scalpel to this budget request and make the tough perhaps politically unpopular decisions of a green jobs ever evolving but even the process by which we calculate green jobs growth is flawed take vice president biden december memo to the president entitled the transformation more than doubling its funding in one year this would be in addition to the five hundred million provided in the recovery act however your latest recovery act execution report states that only five hundred twenty thousand dollars of the five hundred million dollars provided for green jobs has been spent these funds were provided thirteen months ago i'm aware the obligation rate is higher but i think it's important to focus on what's actually been injected into the economy money that is merely obligated doesn't provide economic stimulus intended by the recovery act and it certainly doesn't help the american worker furthermore i'm concerned about the push to create green jobs where they will actually have a counter effect there is a washington post article about the smart grid and that's considered to be one of the clean energy sector jobs as the author who the director of smart grid initiatives suggest that because the smart grid is premised on automation more than twenty thousand jobs of meter readers are likely to disappear or maybe that's just the normal course of technology we should accept that  green jobs kind of a novel concept in the article he says it's really four categories based on what's happening in europe for green jobs when it comes to smart grid it's research and  development manufacturing installation and then information technology now we're excited about the manufacturing side of it because we have to make things in this country will make things our economy is going to be we cannot exist as a service us to say this is a this is a clean fuel and areas like the northeast ohio western pennsylvania have an opportunity to really i think resuscitate some long term chronic problems that we have had and i want to make a comment about the stimulus package too because there's just been so much said about it and you are someone in this administration i think believes that we need to make investments and into our communities and we were able to take some stimulus money not just stabilizing police and fire and a  lot of school teachers didn't get laid off in my district because of the money that came but we were able to take twenty million dollars from the state to do some site prep work move a rail line and it leveraged a six hundred  fifty million dollar investment from a french to being company that does a lot of natural gas tubing and i bring this up because i want you to bring back to the administration and to your colleagues that you work with in the cabinet that there are communities in our country as you know that just don't have money to make deals go down and so you know whether it's training money or community development block grant money you know we need more opportunities to make things happen when you don't have that local tax base to  make deals work for businesses so i just wanted to put a bug in your ear to bring that back i know you believe in it and we need to continue to recognize that community development block grants and those kind of things are very very important i want to thank you for all that you have done for ohio with green collar jobs in the training money that you have also are benefiting from some high speed rail lines that are going from cleveland to columbus to cincinnati and your money will come in handy to make sure that we have the workforce available to do lot of very high skilled work a lot of high skilled workers are unemployed now and what are we doing within the department of labor or in conjunction with the department labor department of commerce to take these very high skilled people engineers people who have made companies like general motors a lot of money how do we take these people and help them start their own business and i know that may not be directly manufacturing job we've got to get back to making things in this country so how do we take these brilliant engineers from general motors or corporations like that and help them with business plans and opportunities