On the recordFebruary 11, 2011
I come from a State, New Jersey, which prides on being the medicine chest of the world, in our pharmaceutical industry. How can you have a cutting edge in pharmaceutical products if you lay off people from the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that review the applications for new drugs? How can you have a supermarket industry that's thriving and employs millions of people in the agriculture and food industries if the people who inspect our meat and our milk and our food are not there? Now these are questions that are going to be debated and answered next week here. They do have an effect on jobs--a profoundly negative effect on jobs. We understand that there is a common responsibility to enact sensible restraint on what our government spends. That's why Democrats balanced the budget when President Clinton was in office. That's why Democrats passed a pay-as-you-go statute. I would urge that we return to the business of the House.
