Political Quotes

“Thank you, Congressman Klein. Thank you for organizing this colloquy which we are, as a Congress, on the verge of one of the, I think, biggest votes of the 111th Congress. And it's important that I think we take the time to spend a few minutes to explain why the stakes are so high and what, in fact, the proposal is before us because there's a lot of bad information out there. First of all, just to follow up on your point, This is not a normal downturn, a normal business recession. As the chart that you just showed demonstrates, the drop-off in terms of job losses in this economy and the velocity with which it's happened is something that again we have not seen as a Nation, certainly at least since the Great Depression. Just using as a quick snapshot in the State of Connecticut, I talked to some companies which have experienced downturns in the past. Pratt and Whitney has had layoffs because the commercial aircraft market has certainly shrunk in recent months as the economy has closed down. The insurance industry has had layoffs as business has fallen off. But I was talking the other day to a guy who is in charge of a trash collection agency, which trash tends to be sort of recession proof. He's never had a layoff in the time that his family has owned this trash hauling business that goes back decades.”