Charles W. Stenholm: “We are here tonight not for fingerpointing, but in an offer to work in a bipartisan way for a solution. We offered ours…”

“We are here tonight not for fingerpointing, but in an offer to work in a bipartisan way for a solution. We offered ours last year in the budget debates and we were turned down. That is perfectly the prerogative of this body. The majority can ignore the minority anytime you would like. You passed your economic plan. We thought it was poorly conceived, but you did not. And now we have the results. Today the stock market reached the lowest point that it has been in 6 or 7 years. Unemployment is beginning to move up. We have a lot of concerned people around this country, concerned about whether or not their jobs are secure, their savings are secure; and we still have the very real concern about Social Security, because we can talk all about, we can blame all we want to, and I am a little bit perturbed with both sides regarding the Social Security arguments that are taking place today, but the one thing we cannot say is that anybody is doing anything about it.”