Emanuel Cleaver: “Let me first of all express appreciation to Congresswoman Donna Christensen, Dr. Donna Christensen, for how she has put…”

“Let me first of all express appreciation to Congresswoman Donna Christensen, Dr. Donna Christensen, for how she has put forth boundless energy making sure that we keep this issue of joblessness in front of us. Let me first of all say that I did two interviews during the votes today, one with ABC News. And as I stood before the cameras they showed me two comments, one from a gentleman who said that he was so disgusted with Congress because nothing is being done and he believed that we needed to start trying to deal with the problems. He thought that we should not be raising the taxes on what he called ``ordinary'' people or low-income working people. The other interview I did was on Fox and was an interview where I was interviewed about the joblessness among African Americans. I think both of those intersect. And the reason for this is, I said to people that as a Democrat I was embarrassed that during the last session of Congress we failed to listen to the American public. The public said they were interested in jobs. I would go home to my district in Kansas City, Missouri, and people would simply talk about the need for jobs. I would come back to Washington, and the only thing we talked about was health care. And health care was important, I supported it--it was not the bill that I wanted, but I supported it anyway. And many of us supported it because of the way in which you, Dr. Christensen, as a physician, presented us with how valuable it would be.…”