Political Quotes

“our country has endured a 9-percent unemployment rate for a longer period of time than at any other time since the Great Depression. Yet, unfortunately, the Democratic leader is reluctant to address this problem of joblessness in a serious way. One way to address it would have been to take the three trade agreements, which were negotiated 4 and 5 years ago--one with Colombia, one with South Korea, one with Panama--and send them up to the Senate and House and let us ratify them and let us move ahead to avoid losing 350,000 jobs--that is an estimate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--or create as many as a quarter of a million jobs--that is the estimate of the White House. Yet those three trade agreements had been sitting on the President's desk since the day he took office nearly 3 years ago. They arrived yesterday--or Monday, I suppose it was--and they are here waiting for us to act on them. Every day we do not act on them delays the day when we avoid losing 350,000 jobs or create 250,000 jobs. That has been the case every day for the last nearly 1,000 days. That would be a good way to address the jobs issue, but we have not. Instead, we had the President going around the country during the summer blaming Republicans for not acting on the three trade agreements when, in fact, the President had not sent them to us. There is no way the Congress can act on them until the President forwards them, which he now has. And if he has, why are we not debating them today?…”