Byron Dorgan: “this country, as all of us know, faces very significant challenges these days. We have roughly 20 million people who…”

“this country, as all of us know, faces very significant challenges these days. We have roughly 20 million people who woke up in America today without a job, who probably are out today looking for work and haven't found it yet. It is a pretty tough thing in a severe economic downturn--the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s--to find that you lost your job, and in some cases your home, and you have lost hope and you wonder what is next for you and your family. I suppose it is in keeping with our politics these days that, at a time when we face the most significant economic challenges since the Great Depression, if you stop and watch and listen and hear the sounds of democracy, which sound a little like fingernails on a blackboard sometimes, what you hear on the news is something about someone's dysfunctional behavior somewhere.”