Date: 2011-06-13
Speaker: HERRERA BEUTLER (republican)
Chamber: H

And I couldnt agree more. I was just sitting here reflecting on the number of people who come up and talk to me in my district in southwest Washington about how hard it is to find work. how hard it is to find a good paying familywage job. I mentioned timber resources. In our neck of the woods we traditionally have had just a booming timber economy. resourcebased economy. and a lot of those operations have either shut down or moved elsewhere to be more competitive. Weve got to allow job growth. I mean. it sounds simple. It really does. You know. the last time our country had the amount of spending that we see happening right now was actually in the lead up to World War II. And Ive talked a lot about cutting and reducing government overspending and government growth. It needs to be done. In the last 3 years. the what we call discretionary spending. the money that has to be appropriated annually has increased by over 80 percent. Federal employment has increased by 10 percent in about that same time. So government spending has grown. And people are saying that the way tonot "people"-my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President are saying that the reason we have stagnant job opportunities is because we havent spent enough. Well. I listed earlier the stimulus. the bailouts. the auto bailouts. the health care bill. all this spending thats taken place. and were still where we are now. And people say. well. it happened during World War II. we spent a ton of money and then coming out of that we grew jobs. The difference. the big difference was coming out of World War II. the last time our debt to GDP ratio was near where it is now. the difference was. and the thing that saved us. was the immediate cuts. Right? We cut government spending back. but we grew jobs. We literally made things here in America. You know why? We had an environment that fostered job creation. We had an environment that cultivated entrepreneurs. We grew jobs here in America because we made things here. We produced things. Again. in southwest Washington we had a roaring timber industry that has all but shut down. and the sad thing is if you dont manage the health of a forest. it deteriorates. Some of these folks who are here in these bureaucratic offices in Washington. D.C. I swear have never stepped foot in a real forest. They think you just tie a big ribbon around it and dont let anybody in or out. and thats how we protect our environment. Theyre wrong. You see. they think that our environment and our economy are mutually exclusive. Man. that is such a low opinion of American researchers. That really must say that we dont think we can. our citizens. our people are intelligent enough to come up with new and innovative ways to both manage our timber and our timber economy and protect our environment. So what we have now is shut off stands of trees ripe for beetle infestation. disease or worse. fire as we enter the summer seasons with a lot of dry foliage and underbrush. You know. it sure would be great if the EPA would have allowed some of those companies I mentioned in my district to create their biomass facilities. because then we could create jobs because wed have a biomass facility up and running. We would be taking the remnants of trees. We wouldnt be taking full trees. but chips and bark. and using those in the biomass facility so we are creating green energy. Were fully utilizing a renewable resource. and were creating jobs. My goodness. Thats a novel concept. We need to get there.