Speaker Pelosi.  Good afternoon.  I’ve very delighted to be here with our Distinguished Majority Leader.  We had hoped also that the Chair of the Infrastructure and Transportation Committee, Mr. Oberstar, would be with us, but he has a very important bill on the floor right now and depending on that debate, he may or may not be joining us.  But he certainly has been on the lead in investments in infrastructure, which is what this bill is about.

We’re gathered here again today to talk about putting Americans to work, not just back to work, but many more jobs to bring other people into the workforce with HIRE — the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act.

With $15 billion of investments, it unleashes tens of billions of dollars more in infrastructure — to build the infrastructure for the future in terms of how it unleashes funds from the highway trust fund.  And it provides support for small businesses with credits and accelerated write-offs.  It will produce — this bill here will produce 300,000 jobs.  Now, this is part of a series of jobs bills that we have — this one — Mr. Hoyer will talk some more about other legislation that is coming up.

In recent months, we’ve seen the results of the Recovery Act.  And I think it’s really important to note, again, a couple of facts.  In the last quarter of 2008, the last full quarter of the Bush Administration, the GDP was a minus 6.4 — GDP growth—minus 6.4 percent.  In that same equivalent quarter, in 2009, the GDP grew by 5.9 percent.  It shrank by 6.4 the year before.  It grew by 5.9 the following year.  A swing of over 12 percent.  Thanks to the leadership of Barack Obama and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.  The fastest growth in a very long time.

Jobs — in January of ‘09, the last month of the Bush Administration, the job loss was 779,000 jobs.   The equivalent this year, January 2010, 20,000 jobs.  We don’t want to lose any jobs.  We want to be on the plus side.  But the fact is the difference is over three quarters of a million jobs.  Thank you, President Obama, and the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Today, as I left my office, I noticed the stock market was over 10,700 points.  When we were debating this bill, it was in the mid-6,500s.  So, an increase of over 4,000 points in the stock market.

We know that the bill has created — the legislation has created or saved over 2 million jobs and that continues as the investments continue to be made.  What we’re doing here today is a step in more job creation, building on that success, and I’m very proud to be enrolling it here today.

I had hoped that perhaps Mr. Oberstar will join us, but I do want to say how grateful we all are to his — for his tremendous leadership, his persistence in pushing investments in our infrastructure in our country.  It’s important — infrastructure and transportation.  Important to commerce.  It’s important to quality of life.  The air we breathe and the water we drink.  So, it is an essential bill.  Our infrastructure deficit is a great one.  This takes some strong steps in addressing it.

Now, I want to yield to the distinguished Majority Leader.  This bill was something we had to go back and forth with because it did not — it wasn’t as fiscally sound as we needed to be in the House.  Well, the Leader will speak to those points.  But I thank him for making this day possible with his leadership in bringing the parties together in the House and the Senate.

Mr. Hoyer.

Majority Leader Hoyer.  Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker.  I’m pleased to join the Speaker.

One thing we want to say today is: “We’ve told Americans we’re going to focus on growing the economy and creating jobs.”  We know that Americans are in pain.  Over 8 million jobs have been lost over the last two years.  We need to create jobs.  The Speaker has pointed out we have reduced the loss of jobs by 96 percent — an extraordinary reduction.  That’s progress.  You’ve all heard me say success will be when we get in the positive job growth number.  It will take us some time.  The stock market is up.  And we are making real progress economically on GDP.

So that on those three levels we have made real progress.  But until Americans are back to work, we are not making enough progress.  So today, recognize, notwithstanding, that all of you have been asking me questions about health care, which we think is a very important issue.

Our eye remains focused on job creation and growing our economy.  It also remains on the second priority that I indicated to you, whether we have, and that is reaching fiscal balance once again — as we had in the Clinton years.  The only President in my lifetime who had a net-surplus in the eight years of presidency was President Bill Clinton.  The past Administration inherited a $5.6 trillion surplus, turned it into a very deep debt, and an economy that was failing.  We’ve had to borrow money to stabilize and to start growing as the figures point out — the economy again.  But, this bill recognizes the fact that, “Yes, we want to do that.  But we want to make sure that we do it in a fiscally responsible way.”  So, we sent it back to the Senate, with the paid-for provisions in there, and they have passed it.

So, the Speaker will sign this bill today.  We’ll send it to the President as a continuing commitment to the American people that we are focused on growing the economy and until the economy is back and growing and providing jobs and growing jobs, we will not rest any day of this coming year.

Thank you very much.

[Signing Bill]

Speaker Pelosi.  President Obama does this left handed.  [Laughter.]

With that, we sign HIRE.  We are going to hire more people — very exciting.  Thank you.

Leader Hoyer.  Excellent.  Thank you.  Thank you for your leadership.  Great.

Speaker Pelosi.  Perhaps you have some questions about this legislation?

Leader Hoyer.  You too are focused on building jobs and growing the economy, I hope.

Q:  Now that the jobs bill you just signed is done, do you…

Leader Hoyer.  We have more to do on jobs.  The Speaker indicated, I thought you were going to ask a question.  We have a jobs bill that is being marked up in the Ways and Means Committee.  The Senate has passed a bill that they have sent over to us, so we have at least two more job creating, job, economy growing pieces of legislation we will be considering in the next few weeks.

Q:  Which day will bring the health care bill to the floor?  Do you know yet whether you will push it to Sunday or Monday?  Or you still might have it done by Saturday?

Leader Hoyer. We are going to do it as soon as it is ready to be brought to the floor, as soon as we have the CBO numbers that we can have confidence in and I would say that certainly Saturday and Sunday are possibilities.

Q:  Can you give us the latest estimate of when you might release the CBO numbers and of course the legislative language that you will release along with it?  Any update?

Leader Hoyer.  We are going to release those numbers when we have them.  Well, this is a complicated bill, and we have pledged to the American people that we will pay for this bill.  And we have made it very clear to all of our Members and to CBO that we want to make sure that this bill is paid for, does not increase the deficit, and in fact decreases the deficit over time.

As I quoted to you a Wall Street Journal article, while the CBO originally scored $132 billion decrease in the deficit, a Wall Street Journal article believes it will reduce the deficit by $600 billion dollars in the first 10 years and more than that in the second 10 years.

But the answer to your question is, we are waiting to get a real confidence level on the jobs.  Before we go further, let me yield to the individual who was so responsible in the Recovery Act.  As a matter of fact, let me yield to the Speaker, because I know she wants to say something about him.

Speaker Pelosi.  Well, I join Steny in acknowledging the tremendous leadership of Mr. Oberstar.  Any time we have legislation to create jobs, his imprint is on it.  His leadership is clear.  In this legislation, we want more, and we will have more.  But what we have would not have been possible without his tremendous leadership.  He is a man born for this job.  He understands job creation.  He understands the needs of our country in terms of its greatness, in terms of infrastructure and what that means to the commerce, to the health, to the well-being, quality of life of the American people.  And he is a great legislator.  He knows how to translate a need into a law, into better public policy for the American people.  So we are very honored to take any opportunity to acknowledge the leadership of Chairman Jim Oberstar.  Thank you, Jim.

Would you like to say something, Jim?

Chairman Oberstar.  Thank you.  I’m sorry, I was delayed getting here.  We’re passing the unfinished business of the HIRE Act — correcting the misappropriation of the House language and the trust fund formula by the other body, which correction has been agreed to by Majority Leader Reid in a letter to Speaker Pelosi.  And I had to be there to validate that and insert the statement into the record and correct the formulas for all the states and re-establish the funding formulas for the future as the baseline for our authorization bill.

But I’ll just underscore what the Speaker has said about the Recovery Act.  We can account — this is my monthly report card.  We can account for 1,091,005 jobs created by the three principal programs — highway transit and state revolving loan fund, under the jurisdiction of our committee.  All of the $34.2 billion have been obligated, and 13,000 projects approved.  We have, of the — 329,000 direct on-project jobs, $3 million paid in federal taxes by people working on job sites, $279 million in unemployment compensation checks avoided, 24,000 lane miles of highway improved — that’s equal to half of the interstate highway program, and 1,200 bridges restored, replaced, or rebuilt new.

That is a concise and specific and precise achievement that all of us can be proud of in the stimulus program.

Speaker Pelosi.  And this legislation today continues that.

Chairman Oberstar.  Yes.

Q: Mr. Oberstar, there is a report that said you will vote “yes” on the health care bill.  Is that accurate?

Chairman Oberstar.  This is for jobs.  I’ll talk about health care another time.

Speaker Pelosi.  Thank you.

#  #  #

Washington, DC— Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement this morning after the Senate voted to pass the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act by a margin of 68-29:

“Passage of this bill is an important step in our continuing commitment to put more Nevadans and more Americans back to work.  This fully paid-for legislation cuts taxes for businesses so that they can hire more workers, cuts costs for small businesses and invests in our nation’s infrastructure.   Thousands of Nevadans and millions of Americans are struggling to find work and are worried about being able to support their families.  Today’s vote is vital because more than one million jobs will be saved or created by this bill.

“The bipartisan support that this bill has received is a signal that Republicans will support our jobs agenda to strengthen our economy and create jobs.  I ask those Republicans who continue to object and obstruct to join us in our work to find solutions.  Senate Democrats stand with middle-class Americans trying to support their families and small businesses trying to thrive in this economy.”

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The Daily Caller

As if the Obama administration hasn’t given union bosses enough “payback,” it is poised to give them even more – only this time the gift is as dangerous as Big Labor’s other agenda items such as the Employee “Forced” Choice Act, and will result in more job loss.

The new and badly mislabeled “High Road Contracting Policy” as reported in The Wall Street Journal will allow the government to “use its authority over how taxpayer money is spent to favor unions and their agenda. This is good news for Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union. But not so good for job creation.”

First reported in The Daily Caller, the policy gives preference to any federal government contractor who complies with union-driven wage and benefit demands, and the government would rate each contractor according to yet-undefined evaluation factors – possibly blacklisting existing or new, non-union contractors from competing.

Simply stated, this is not the American way.

Get full story here.

“Any month in which the economy doesn’t create jobs is a disappointment. But today it’s clear that, thanks to the policies adopted by President Obama and the Democratic Congress, job losses are slowing to a halt. A year ago, America shed more than 700,000 jobs in February; this February, we lost 36,000. Its widely acknowledged that this number would have been better except for the snowstorms that hit the Northeast last month.

“Nevertheless, millions of Americans remain out of work, and Congress will continue to focus on creating jobs. We are past the stage of large reductions in jobs—now, we need to encourage employers to begin hiring. One of the most effective ways to do so, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, is creating a payroll tax credit for employers who hire new workers. The bipartisan HIRE Act, passed by the House yesterday, creates just such a tax credit, while continuing the job-creating projects that put Americans to work building much-needed roads, bridges, and more. I hope that the Senate will quickly move to final passage of the HIRE Act and send it to President Obama’s desk.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement after the Department of Labor reported that the U.S. economy lost 36,000 jobs in the month of February:

“Today’s disappointing jobs report makes the case for scrapping Democrats’ government takeover of health care, which is already keeping people out of work by saddling our small businesses with uncertainty amid the threat of higher taxes and burdensome mandates.  All these job losses certainly validate the American people’s opposition to putting the federal government in charge of one-sixth of our economy.

“Mother Nature is a force to be reckoned with, but it’s the blizzard of higher taxes, wasteful spending, and reckless borrowing coming out of Washington that’s destroying jobs in this country.  President Obama and Democratic leaders will come out of the woodwork today armed with rehashed promises to do better, but their top and seemingly only priority remains this unpopular, unaffordable government takeover of health care.  This partisan health care bill has become a national distraction, and it’s not too late to scrap it so we can start over with a clean sheet of paper and a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.

“Taxpayers aren’t getting their money’s worth from the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ and struggling families and small businesses are rightly asking ‘where are the jobs?’  Republicans have proposed a no-cost jobs plan to help small businesses put people back to work and get our economy moving again.”

NOTE: A new analysis by economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a member of Leader Boehner’s informal “kitchen cabinet” of economic advisors, takes a skeptical view of White House claims that the new national jobs numbers look significantly worse than they otherwise would have due to the snowfall that affected some states last month.

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We all remember the Wendy’s ad campaign, “Where’s the Beef?” This iconic campaign triggered fast food consumers across the nation to take notice of the product – or lack thereof – they were receiving at the drive-through. Sometimes it takes creative campaigns like this to get people to notice they’ve been shortchanged.

Borrowing from the Wendy’s playbook, I’ve started asking, “Where’s the jobs?” because I believe the American people have been shortchanged when it comes to job creation policies. Congress has spent plenty of time and plenty of your money debating health care takeovers, energy taxes and spending increases – but no real policies to jump start America’s economy.

Just last month, South Carolina’s unemployment rate hit an all-time high at 12.3 percent. How high will unemployment numbers have to rise before the majority party finally straightens out Congress’ misplaced priorities? Since Nancy Pelosi has been in the speaker’s chair, 8.7 million more people are unemployed. What’s more frightening is that 3 million of those jobs have been lost since the misnamed trillion-dollar stimulus was rammed through Congress less than a year ago.

Adding insult to injury, lawmakers cannot account for the stimulus jobs that your hard-earned tax dollars were supposed to create. The federal government’s official Web site was reporting fake jobs in fake congressional districts. For example, it showed that $3 million couldn’t produce a single job in South Carolina’s 43rd district – which doesn’t exist. Somehow, $1.8 million was spent for 1.4 jobs in the nonexistent 00 district. This might be funny if it weren’t the taxpayers’ money.

Recently, reports have gone from bad to worse. The Government Accountability Office reported that one out of every 10 jobs created by the stimulus is also fake. Reports show that Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, received $6 million in stimulus money to preserve three jobs. I cannot fathom how a pollster could receive enough stimulus money to sustain dozens of S.C. families for decades.

After weeks of reports on blatant inconsistencies in stimulus spending, the administration has yet to provide adequate answers as to the whereabouts of stimulus funds. In response, I have called for an outside audit of all stimulus dollars appropriated.

My legislation, the National Commission on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will create a bipartisan commission to audit all money that has been spent by the “stimulus” bill. The 10-member panel, appointed by the President and Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, will investigate how many jobs actually have been saved or created by the stimulus bill. It also will examine the circumstances in which those jobs have been saved or created and the effectiveness of measures taken to prevent the improper use of funds.

It’s important to find out where your hard-earned dollars are being spent. At the same time, we must keep asking “Where’s the jobs?” to get congressional leaders focused on long-term job creation to give this economy the jolt it needs.

When I visit business owners and employees, I am reminded of our state’s remarkable workforce and strong industries that can create and keep jobs in our communities. But South Carolina needs Congress to stop hindering and start helping small businesses and individuals get the job done.

Right before Thanksgiving, I was thankful to welcome Four Star Industries to Allendale County. The $2.75 million investment that will create 50 news jobs is appreciated, as Allendale County’s jobless rate was the highest in the state. Last month, I joined Ameresco’s CEO George Sakellaris in Aiken as ground was broken on the largest energy efficiency project in the federal government’s history. The state-of-the-art renewable energy facility is a $795 million project that will create jobs in our state while reducing air emissions and energy and water consumption nationwide.

The recent economic commitments in our state from Four Star Industries, Boeing, Scotsman Ice, Dixie Narco and Ameresco came about because of incentives that the state of South Carolina has offered. The combination of low taxes, worker training, right-to-work protections and less regulatory red tape is a sound recipe to attract business. This common-sense approach must be applied at the national level.

We cannot stand by and watch more families cope with layoffs, survive on smaller paychecks or lose their homes while some in Washington are jeopardizing America’s future by spending more, and increasing our nation’s debt.

Mr. Wilson, a Republican, represents South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District.