On the recordOctober 27, 2011
This ends yet another week for the House of Representatives without consideration of a meaningful jobs bill. More meaningfully, though, this concludes another week where a nightmare is about to come true for our constituents. This is another week without a paycheck for a lot of Americans. It might be the week that their unemployment benefits expire. This might be the day that someone shuts down their small business and closes the doors for the last time. This might be the week that the foreclosure notice is executed and someone loses their home. This has been a bad week for a lot of Americans. It's been a bad time for a lot of Americans. But what they have lost is not simply their job, not simply their business, not simply their health insurance or their pension. Many of our neighbors have lost their basic faith that America is fair. Mr. Speaker, 50 percent--50 percent--of the American people recently surveyed said the American Dream was either dead or on life support. They see in the halls of big institutions, they see on Wall Street and they see in the Halls of Congress a basic sense that America is not fair anymore, that the basic deal that if you work as hard as you can, give as much as you can and do as much as you can that you can go as far as your abilities will take you, too many of our constituents no longer believe that. My motion makes what I believe is an improvement to a good bill.…
