Al Franken: “I rise to speak about some of the important work we can be doing to help strengthen our economic recovery and to get…”

“I rise to speak about some of the important work we can be doing to help strengthen our economic recovery and to get more Minnesotans and more Americans across the country into jobs. During the government shutdown in October, I came to the floor to talk about how the shutdown was preventing us from doing the work that people sent us here to do. Every day we spent on the shutdown was a day we weren't working together to create jobs and to rebuild the middle class. The budget deal we passed this week is far from perfect, but it is my hope it will enable us to stop lurching from crisis to crisis and focus on the work we were sent to do. This agreement means businesses will have the stability and certainty they need to create jobs and strengthen our economy, and it allows us to focus on educating our kids, creating a 21st century workforce, and putting people back to work. As I said, this budget deal is far from perfect; it is a compromise and, as with any compromise, it has elements I like, elements I don't like, and elements others like and don't like that may be different. In addition to providing some budgetary certainty for the next 2 years, the budget deal undoes some of the extreme across-the-board cuts of the sequester that will enable us to make more of the critical investments we need to make in education, research and development, and infrastructure.…”