Barney Frank: “First, I yield myself 1 minute to say that I regret that my friend from Texas felt the need to absolve himself from the…”

“First, I yield myself 1 minute to say that I regret that my friend from Texas felt the need to absolve himself from the charge of excessive bipartisanship by engaging in a partisan diatribe that was factually shaky. It is true that this recovery from the recession has been slower than any previous one, but that's because the economy Barack Obama inherited from George Bush was the weakest since the Great Depression. Yes, it was a deeper economic downfall under George Bush than we've had in 8 years, and that's why the recovery was slower. But it's also the case, if you look at the chart recently presented to us by a Bush appointee, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, it would show that in the beginning of 2006, there was a very steep drop in jobs, a month-by-month increase to the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the last couple of years in the Bush administration, and then less than 2 months after Barack Obama took office, and we were able to begin some policies to stimulate the economy, an equally sharp rise. So we haven't come as far back as we'd like to, but that's because we were so deeply in the hole when we started. Now I yield 2 minutes to one of the Members who has been a major shaper of this bill, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Carney).”