Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. I would urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It is about jobs. It is about small businesses. It is about the well-being of American families. Just remember this: the stark numbers. The unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent; the average over the last 2\1/2\ years, 9.4 percent. For 23 out of the last 28 months, unemployment has been at 9 percent or higher. Housing prices are at the lowest level since mid-2002. This is the longest recession since modern record- keeping. These are stark, grim numbers. What I am hearing here today is a bureaucratic process and response, exactly what we are trying to attack. This is not indiscriminate, as some have described on the other side of the aisle about this regulatory reform measure. It is very consistent. I know the Senator from Louisiana was talking about several of the issues. I would like to go through them. First of all, she mentioned about the concerns of the judicial review. But this provision is nearly identical to one that she and Senator Cardin introduced in their own legislation in the 111th Congress. The Senator also was concerned with our tying budget cuts to the SBA to this amendment as a way of paying for some of the costs of it. But, to avoid controversy, we specifically selected as offsets, cuts in the SBA that had been proposed by the Agency's Inspector General, and in the President's very own budget.…”