Rob Andrews: “I appreciate this opportunity, and I would like to thank the members of the House staff that are staying beyond voting…”

“I appreciate this opportunity, and I would like to thank the members of the House staff that are staying beyond voting hours for our opportunity to speak, and I promise that I will reward your efforts with brevity. This is the end of another difficult week for a lot of Americans. For too many Americans, it's another week without a paycheck. For many Americans, this is the week their unemployment benefits will expire and they will have no income next week. For many Americans, this is the last weekend they'll be in their home because the foreclosure is about to be executed upon. And sadly, for many Americans, this might be the last time that he or she closes the doors on their business. This time they close it for good. Our constituents and neighbors are hurting, hurting desperately, and I think there has been far too little attention paid to those problems here in this institution. I hope that when we return after what is, parenthetically, our 12th recess of the year, we will get to work on the jobs problem for our country and try to put our people back to work. As vital as that jobs crisis is, we can never put our country in a situation where we are not paying attention to threats to our security here at home and around the world. And I do want to spend a few moments this afternoon talking about what I think is a very significant threat, and that is the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.…”