mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president.rom the recovery act to the small business jobs act, in the previous congress we passed a number of substantial pieces of legislation to preserve, protect and create american jobs. the recovery act alone has supported between 2.7 million and 3.7 million jobs, including 12,000 jobs in my home state of rhode island. this was vital in stemming the 700,000-per-month job loss rate that we faced when the previous administration left office. without the recover act and the -- recovery act and the other fiscal stimulus that we passed over the past two years, the economy would have been much, much worse. while the recovery act protected our country from what would have been a far worse economic meltdown, the employment market is still weak and families are sill hurting. our national unemployment rate was 9.4% in december, an unacceptably high level, and it was higher still in harder-hit states like rhode island, where we have had an 11.5% unemployment rate in december. as we begin this new cong

mr. whitehouse: mr. president, first let me thank the senator from new york for his very distinguished leadership of the rules committee and for the very open and thorough way in which he engaged that committee in these issues of addressing the filibuster and the problems that have been caused by its current abuse on the senate floor. and let me also thank senators udall and merkley who have worked so hard to organize this and who have put together what i think is a very good proposal. and i'd like to at the outset of my remarks ask unanimous consent that i be added as a cosponsor to the rules resolution that is here at this point. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you. the distinguished senator from oregon, senator merkley, showed a photograph a little while ago of jimmy stewart in "mr. smith goes to washington," and that has become the sort of emblematic signature demonstration of the american senate filibuster. and there's a scene in that movie that i'm sure the senator i

mr. whitehouse: madam president, i would like to compliment my distinguished colleague from new york on his remarks and i would like to add a few observations of my own, but i first wanted to echo very much what he said, what the president -- what he said. what the president did last night was to point a finger towards the future and for some people were just capable of seeing the finger. but for most people they really saw where he was pointing and he has pointed us towards an important future for our country. these are the issues we're going to have to address the decades ahead and we have to be prepared now and i wanted to touch about three areas that he pointed to. the first, of course, is infrastructure. i am not the only person in america who has noticed our crumbling infrastructure. everybody who drives on our roads, everybody who goes across our bridges, everybody who has been to our water and sewage plants knows that we have underinvested in those areas for decades. as the president pointed out last night, america's own engineers give america a d for the status of our infrastructur