Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his comments and for his focus on jobs. If we ask the American people what the most important thing we face is, it is jobs, creating good- paying jobs right here in the United States so families can succeed and so our economy can grow. I noted this morning that the President's economic adviser Gene Sperling said in the first 3 months after President Obama was sworn into office we lost 2.3 million jobs. That is what he faced walking in the door, and we have been trying to dig out of that hole ever since. I would say that, symbolically, this agreement we are working on is moving us to the point where we are having the final interment of John Maynard Keynes. He nominally died in 1946, but it appears now we are going to put him to his final rest with this agreement. Keynes was a British economist who turned the world upside down when he started arguing that just the force of the markets is not enough to resolve problems when we face recession and depression. We need to play a more active role, a more assertive role in increasing aggregate demands by programs. One of the great disciples of that point of view was Franklin Roosevelt, who, when he came to the Presidency in the midst of the Great Depression, believed we needed to create jobs and work, infrastructure work across America to put more money into our economy. That was a positive force that helped to bring us out of the depression.…”