David Thomas: “I rise to make a couple of general comments. As we move towards perhaps the final day, certainly very close to the final…”

“I rise to make a couple of general comments. As we move towards perhaps the final day, certainly very close to the final day of our time here, I hope we can move forward. We have three appropriations bills that we have been looking forward to discussing and have to finish before we end. There will probably be some discussion on particularly the Defense appropriations. Nevertheless, the bill and the issue that I suppose we will talk about the most, and seems to be one that is not agreed to, is that of economic stimulus. Certainly that will be coming forward. We have talked about it for a very long time. The President has talked about it. We have had meetings about it. The House obviously has worked out a separate proposal for us. I am hopeful that as we undertake this effort, we will decide, as we should on all of the topics that come before us, what do we want to see as the result. So often we get wrapped up entirely with the details of what is going on here, and the details obviously are important, but what is more important is what it is we want to accomplish and how will what we are talking about do that. Certainly, I hope we talk about what is the purpose of an economic stimulus package. Obviously, we are in a recession. No one seems to know exactly what the best techniques are to deal with stimulating the economy.”