Sam Brownback

Senator Lautenberg and the members of this committee worked very hard to craft an acceptable compromise to both protect public health and the environment.

Mr. President, the reason I have come to the floor is not to talk about energy prices but to talk about what happened in my State last night. We had devastating tornadoes. A series of tornadoes struck parts of our State and caused at least…

The City of Garden City and Finney County have always planned our growth responsibly, avoiding development in those areas which have been historically located within the Special Flood Hazard Area.

I want to particularly point out a provision in the bill that was added on the House side by Representative Bart Stupak from Michigan, that would prevent the use of genetic information from unborn children and children in the process of…

Today's news that the economy lost 80,000 payroll jobs last month and that the unemployment rate rose to 5.1% is disappointing all of us.

I find this real interesting.

Well it just kind of jumped out at me because I had thought that would have gone differently but it would have a bearing on whether or not to extend unemployment benefits.

Ah, thank you. OK, so that that is a reflection of the bigger number of unemployment taking place, rather than that people are unemployed for a less period of time.

You are saying that the duration, the mean, the average duration of unemployment decreased in March of 2008 to 16.2 weeks from 16.8 weeks in the preceding month, and a year ago it was 17.2 weeks.

We are trying to figure out what we should be doing from our end in order to stem the tide of all these negative statistics.

So that one is more alarming than the number might portend because it has been a growth sector?

So we have got a real weakness in the automotive sector continuing there? Correct?

So that the stimulus package which put forward toward consumers is one we would hope would go at that particular sector?

Thank you for letting me do this, and thank you for participating with me on this.

So that fall-off in the housing market is a key piece of this data. That is the big piece of this data?

68,000 in all housing-related. So that would include your durable goods that you put into a house?

So if you took construction and manufacturing together, what percentage of the job loss--was it well over 100 percent?

I think everybody's key focus has been on the housing market and what we can do to stimulate the housing market.

OK. And the biggest falloff in employment has been the construction industry?

Oh boy. So you are looking at well over 60 percent of the job loss is in the one industry alone, construction?

Now Chairman Bernanke talks about slow performance late last year, you know, the signs of a recession this year.

So that is telling us that companies are not putting on temps? Is that what you are saying to us?

What were the other major ones?

You were hesitant to use the word 'recession,' but would you say we are in a recession relative to unemployment rates?

Well the definition is two quarters of negative growth is what I have always understood the kind of classic definition of a recession is.