John Ensign: “We have an important bill in front of us. We all know that. The reason is because our economy is struggling. A lot of…”

“We have an important bill in front of us. We all know that. The reason is because our economy is struggling. A lot of people have talked about the jobs that have been lost, the unemployment rate rising, and people losing their homes, and the fear of losing their homes and jobs. No State has been more severely affected in this last 12 months than my own home State of Nevada. We lead the country in foreclosures. Our unemployment rate is over 9 percent now. Many people thought that Nevada was almost recession proof, because we had been in an unprecedented economic expansion. We led the Nation for 15, 16 straight years in not only job creation on a percentage basis, but also population growth. It was kind of an economic miracle in our State. Our housing prices were skyrocketing for the last decade. When that bubble burst, we were one of the four States that was affected most severely. There were a lot of causes, we all know, to the reason that the prices went up so rapidly. A big part of that, I argue strongly, is Government intervention.”