Al Franken: “two enormous challenges will await us when we return from recess. Our economy is still not yet fully recovered from a…”

“two enormous challenges will await us when we return from recess. Our economy is still not yet fully recovered from a devastating recession, and the prospects for our middle class and for those aspiring to be in the middle class or to get back into the middle class remain uncertain. Meanwhile, our budget remains sorely out of balance, and our long-term debt crisis is putting our Nation's fiscal future at risk. These two challenges are, of course, linked. We cannot hope to solve our long-term debt problem unless we get our economy growing again, and we cannot hope to rebuild our prosperity unless we resolve our budget problems. So we will have big decisions to make when we come back, but in the meantime the American people will be wrestling with the same issues: What should we do to grow our economy and reduce our debt? What are the right investments to make? How should we pay for them? What sacrifices must be made in the name of fiscal responsibility? Who is going to make them? That is the debate our Nation will have over the next 6 weeks. Those are the questions we must be prepared to answer when we return. So before I go home to Minnesota to share my thoughts with my constituents, I wanted to take a few moments to share them with my colleagues. My view of what we should do in response to these challenges is based upon what we have done in response to similar challenges in the past.…”