Newt Gingrich: “let me say that I agree with the gentleman from Missouri that this is an imperfect instrument and that this is a…”

“let me say that I agree with the gentleman from Missouri that this is an imperfect instrument and that this is a difficult time. On the other hand, we were told a year ago it was the wrong time to vote. That was not an election year. Now we are told this year, it is the wrong time to vote. This is an election year. Now, since under our Constitution the House is elected every two years, if it is not right to vote in the year before the election and it is not right to vote in the year of the election, the correct answer from some of our friends on the left is that there is never a time to vote, because they do not want to expand markets. And I understand that. But we need to understand just how historic this moment is. And Members are going to have to live with their conscience for a long time if they vote ``no.'' We have entered the first deflation since the Great Depression, from Malaysia and Thailand, to Indonesia, to South Korea, to Japan, to Russia, now to Brazil, we see all over this planet people whose economies are shaky, whose currencies are shaky and they are looking for leadership. The choice for them is very simple: Do they move into the world market which since World War II has so dramatically increased the wealth of the entire world, including the United States? Or do they move towards autarchy and protectionism and beggaring their neighbors and all of the policies which under Smoot-Hawley led to the Great Depression? It is that simple.…”