Date: 2009-12-16
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

I thank the gentleman for yielding. and I thank him for all of his work on this legislation. Madam Speaker. today. Congress has the opportunity to continue the effort to rebuild the American economy. We have made significant progress since January when more than 600.000 people were losing their jobs. Last month. it was 11.000a dramatic improvement. In fact. in November. a year ago. it was over 700.000 people who were losing their jobs. I dont know what the figure has to be before the Republicans decide they ought to help Americans keep their jobs. to find new jobs. and to get jobs so they can support their families. The fact is. every day. as to the Recovery Act. which they want to continue to lampoon and the rest of it. more and more economists and more and more fiscal analysts of the markets in this country are telling us that the Recovery Act is the reason that we have moved from a negative GDP to a positive GDP. It is the reason we have saved or created more than 1.6 million jobs. Those arent our words. Those are the words of the people who are in the private sector who are talking about this market. What are they warning us about now? Its not just the traditional jobs. Its a question ofand this comes again from private analystswhether or not local governments which are somewhere between $200 billion and $300 billion underwater because of the economy. because of the recession and because of their loss of receipts and revenues can create a wave of unemployment that will swamp the good news that is taking place and the news that we hope will get better and that we think will get better. It can overwhelm the positive job numbers that we are starting to see. and it can create that kind of problem. It also means that. once again. we can seeand what this legislation preventsis that wave of layoffs in teachers. in firefighters. in police. and in first responders because we know that thats about keeping our communities healthy and safe. Its about making sure that our kids do not become the victims of this economy because of the layoffs. the shorter school days. the larger classes that are taking place. and the shorter school years. The States are going to struggle with this. We know from the private sector. if you look around at what has taken place in this recession. that the leaders in the private sector decided. in this kind of economy. this is when you want to invest in your future. That is what we are doing. We are investing in the future of our children and of our young people going to college. We are creating additional slots so they can get into community colleges. so that they can get job training. and so that they can have teachers and decent class sizes. That is what this legislation is about. Its about trying to create job opportunities. and its about holding onto job opportunities for American families. Its also to make sure that their children do not lose a year of educational opportunity and so that they do not slide back from the progress that were seeing. All across this country. as the test scores are getting better and as proficiency is getting better among fourth graders and eighth graders. that is the progress that we have made. This recession could wreck it all. and weve seen it all across the country. Rio Vista. Texas. laid off 15 percent of its teachers. Dearborn. Michigan. just approved 200 teacher layoffs. The LA Unified School District laid off 2.000 teachers and maybe another 1.500 teachers next year. You can stop that from happening. You can stop that from happening by voting for this legislation.