Prepared Remarks for Secretary Ray LaHood
Politics & Eggs Breakfast
New Hampshire Political Library
October 30, 2009

It is an honor and a privilege to be here with you this morning at the prestigious Politics and Eggs breakfast.

The New Hampshire Political Library is truly a national treasure and a model of bipartisan discourse.

I have great respect for the Library’s tradition of providing an accessible forum for candidates and political leaders from different parties to make their case on important issues of the day.

It’s a great way to build an informed and responsible electorate.

Perhaps if every state had a resource like this, we could tone down the extreme rhetoric we’ve been hearing on TV and elsewhere, and discuss our shared challenges calmly and rationally.

Throughout my career in Congress – and now as a Republican serving in a Democratic Administration – I have always believed that to move our country forward, we should listen respectfully to one another and come up with solutions that work for everyone.

This nation was founded on compromise, cooperation, and collaboration.

We need those skills today as much as our Founding Fathers did.

To find our way out of the current economic crisis, we certainly need all hands on deck -- government and industry, management and labor, Democrat and Republican.

I think the pragmatic, independent-minded citizens of New Hampshire understand this.

Meanwhile, I know that New Hampshire is being sorely tested by the recession.

As Vice President Biden has said, “One job lost is one job too many, and it’s still too much pain.”

This Administration’s first priority is to put Americans back to work.

We’re still a long way from declaring victory. Too many families here and around the country continue to struggle. But we’re working overtime to get us back on track.

And I think we can begin to point to some successes.

For example, the popular Cash for Clunkers program we ran over the summer spurred manufacturing increases in the auto industry and generated the equivalent of 21,000 year-round full-time jobs.

Here in New Hampshire, this program has netted more than 22 million dollars for auto dealers and put more than five thousand fuel-efficient cars on the road across the state.

And just as importantly, it’s had a ripple effect.

For instance, the Osram Sylvania plant in Hillsborough that makes vehicle headlamps for automakers around the world, has experienced a remarkable turn-around.

Six months ago, this company had laid off more than five dozen workers.

Now, thanks to the increased demand for cars and trucks triggered by Cash for Clunkers, the company has hired four dozen workers back.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is also making a measurable difference by helping hard-working Americans put food on the table and pay the mortgage.

As bad as things are today, we’d be worse off without this historic program.

Our newest report based on data collected from every state and territory confirms that he Recovery Act is responsible for generating hundreds of thousands of jobs – with more to come.

Jobs were reported in every state, by Democratic and Republican governors alike.

DOT’s share of recovery funds has spurred upwards of 49,000 direct jobs nationwide.

Hundreds of those transportation jobs are in New Hampshire – and we’re confident many more jobs are in the making, both nationally and across the state.

Meanwhile, as of mid-October, close to a billion dollars’ worth of contracts, grants, loans, and entitlement payments have been made available to this state and its citizens.

These investments translate into lower taxes for the middle class; extended unemployment benefits for workers who have lost jobs; grants for community health centers; more cops on the beat; Internet access for rural communities; and more.

The program also reaches out to small business -- raising the guarantees on federal small-business loans to 90 percent, eliminating costly fees for borrowers and lenders, and providing tax cuts and incentives to encourage investments.

The Recovery Act is strengthening New Hampshire’s transportation infrastructure as well.

For example, the state is paving about 750 miles of roads using stimulus funds. That’s three times as much work as the state could budget before the Recovery Act was passed.

And state leaders have done a great job getting this money out the door to rebuild roads and replace obsolete bridges: 95 percent of highway recovery funds are in the pipeline – about 124 million dollars so far.

This work is an economic lifeline for many New Hampshire families. Plus, good roads are good for business.

Last April, I met with Pike Industries – the contractor hired to work on the first New Hampshire highway construction project funded by the Recovery Act in Epping-Exeter.

At the time, the company was just beginning to add workers to its payroll.

Today, Pike Industries is still going strong. They’ve hired 50 new workers and avoided 75 layoffs.

In addition, there’s nearly 13.5 million dollars in recovery funds to improve public transportation across the state – in urban and rural communities.

These investments buy new buses and trolleys, improve the reliability of existing equipment, and make transit greener through alternative energies.

And later today, I’m going to visit Manchester Airport, where improvements to the airport’s main access road will relieve congestion and promote new economic development nearby.

This project taps 15 million dollars in recovery funds to help accelerate the work.

Over the next 9 months, we’re going to accelerate the recovery spending across the board and get all the money out the door on schedule, so that more good projects like this one can move forward.

That spells more jobs, and more investments in critical infrastructure and services.

There’s plenty of evidence that the Recovery Act is helping our economy to recover – but we’ve also got to find new ways to stimulate economic growth.

One essential step is reforming health care.

Small business in this country creates roughly half of all new jobs.

But rising health care costs undermine small-business growth, explode our deficits, and cost our nation more jobs with each passing month.

We know that reforming our health insurance system will be a critical step in rebuilding our economy so that entrepreneurs – and all working families – can pursue the American Dream again.

We also need to transform energy policy: We can remain one of the world's leading importers of oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy.

And we need a new outlook on transportation that goes well beyond the Recovery Act.

We should empower communities to prioritize their investments in roads, bike paths, public transit, airports, and other infrastructure – provided they make choices that connect people and employers, improve regional mobility, and make our neighborhoods as livable and sustainable as possible.

These three goals are connected.

Taken together, they point toward a future for New Hampshire and the United States that will enable us to redirect and reinvest trillions of dollars in the activities and services we need to succeed – from jobs, education, and affordable health care, to cleaner, healthier communities with plenty of transportation choices.

The bottom line is that from Day 1, the Obama Administration has been proactive to get our economy moving again and put Americans back to work.

We all recognize this isn’t going to happen overnight.

But I’m confident that working together, we’ll pull through this.

We’ll take our economy and our nation in new directions.

And we’ll build a brighter future for our children and grandchildren, right here in New Hampshire and throughout the United States.

Thank you very much.