Ron Klein: “good evening. It is a pleasure to be here tonight on behalf of the freshman class. It certainly has been an honor to…”

“good evening. It is a pleasure to be here tonight on behalf of the freshman class. It certainly has been an honor to serve here this last year, and to be joined by Mr. Hall of New York, and a number of other Members who are going to join us tonight. What we are going to talk about tonight is something that I think is weighing very heavily on the minds of Americans right now, and that is the economy. We understand because the United States is the most resilient, optimistic, innovative country in the world, that we will persevere and we will work out the issues that have caused some of the problems in our economy right now. But that being said, as we speak today, there are people all over the United States who are hurting. They are hurting because their jobs may be threatened or they have lost their jobs or lost confidence that their job may be here in the next weeks and months. They are hurting because their home may be threatened from foreclosure or difficult terms. They may be hurting because gas prices have shot up. If we think about what the cost of oil was not that long ago, literally back in 2002, it was $28 per barrel. And we know as of today, it hit $114 per barrel. Shame on all of us for allowing that to be the case today and for having this dependence on oil. We have leadership in this House that is working on that.…”