Chellie Pingree: “I am a freshman Member of Congress. Unlike my colleague, I wasn't here last year. When the President from the former…”

“I am a freshman Member of Congress. Unlike my colleague, I wasn't here last year. When the President from the former administration, President Bush, proposed the TARP to Congress, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle actually voted in favor of that bailout of Wall Street. Many believed it was critical to reviving our economy, just as I believed it was critical to support the Recovery Act to make sure that we did, yes, in fact, send a considerable amount of money back into our home districts, whether it was for infrastructure construction or to shore up the jobs of our teachers and firefighters, to make sure that we were continuing to build projects in our own districts, continuing to make sure that we supported our education system. I am pleased to see that the economy is making some improvement. Now, I would be the first to say it's not improving fast enough, the jobs aren't growing fast enough in my home district. We have lost too much in our manufacturing segment.”