Norman D. Dicks: “I want to stand here today and tell you that we're all worried about the economy. We're all worried about getting people…”

“I want to stand here today and tell you that we're all worried about the economy. We're all worried about getting people back to work; we have 9 percent unemployment. But the reality is there are a lot more people who have lost their jobs who have given up looking or are underemployed. This is the most serious economic problem we've faced since the Great Depression. Now, unfortunately, the choice of the majority is to cut very substantially into programs that are in the domestic accounts and $15 billion from defense. We all understand we have got to get spending under control and we have to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. But what I worry about here is with this approach we are going to hurt the economy. We are going to drive unemployment up. We're going to drive the deficit up. And it is countercyclical. When you cut this much spending, it is going to hurt the fragile recovery, and it's not going to put people back to work. As the Democratic majority leader has just said, there are highly regarded studies out there that show that 800,000 jobs will be lost because of this bill.”