Mr. Tonko, thank you very much for your leadership and your steadfastness on this issue of rebuilding the American middle class. The President spoke here less than 2 weeks ago on the issue of manufacturing, on the issue of jobs and making…

It's good to be back and wishing you and all of our colleagues the best of this new year and happy new year, and I hope yours and the other 433 Members of this august body had a great holiday season. For many Americans that was not the…

I think somehow I made a mistake. I came over here to listen to the debate, and it's almost like ``Alice in Wonderland,'' like we all fell down the hole here--up is down, down is up, black is white, white is black. I mean, this is…

Black Friday, a week ago. It is all about the big retailers. But Small Saturday, now that was exciting. A lot of advertising out in California about, Go to your local shop. Buy local. Buy small. And it was just what you are talking about…

Thank you for the opportunity this evening. I'm joined by my colleague from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur. I want to thank our colleague from Texas for the explanation he gave about the tragedy at Fort Hood. It was, indeed, an American tragedy, as…

I thank you very much, Mr. Tonko, for bringing that up. I'm going to ask Ms. Kaptur of Ohio to take the podium here and to tell us about Wall Street and some of the reforms that she is advocating.

Let me just give you another example. I thank you for raising that very, very important issue. Last year, this House by an overwhelming bipartisan vote set out to address the China situation. It was a piece of legislation that simply said…

Let me just add to this. This was a result of the stimulus bill that put the money there, if need be, to rebuild certain sectors of America. President Obama courageously, and with enormous opposition from Republicans, said, I will not let…

Let me give you another example of what we can do with policy. Right now we have a ``Buy American'' policy that really has not been enforced much. So I've introduced a piece of legislation, H.R. 613, that simply says that if it's our tax…

Wouldn't you love to go into Wal-Mart and find ``Made in America''? Wouldn't that be something?

I don't think we're talking about a law or a new regulation here, but we're talking about something that we ought to do for our communities, and that is recognize that we're all part of a community. You said something a few moments ago…

If I might interrupt for just a moment, you raised a very, very important point about the fate of the American middle class and of the extraordinary benefit that has grown for the top 1 percent. This is where the 99 percent comes in. Let…