John Thune: “Yes, that is correct. We had an opportunity to vote on a number of alternatives. The McCain alternative, which you and I…”

“Yes, that is correct. We had an opportunity to vote on a number of alternatives. The McCain alternative, which you and I both supported, was one that, in my judgment, made a lot of sense because it got you about twice the effectiveness, twice the job creation, at half the cost. It was focused, as you mentioned earlier, and as our colleague from Wyoming mentioned, on the central issue of housing, which is so critical to bringing our economy back on a pathway to recovery. It also focused on tax relief for middle-income Americans and for small businesses which are responsible for creating most of the jobs in this country. It had an appropriate focus on infrastructure, which many of us agree is an area that can create jobs. It also had a trigger in there, a hard trigger that said when you have two consecutive quarters of economic growth, the spending would cease or would terminate. In other words, when we start to get our way out of the recession, we would actually bring some fiscal responsibility to this debate. What troubles me about where we are going with this particular bill right now is it does not have that.”