Paul Ryan: “Mr. Speaker, this debate today has been rather unfortunate. We have heard a lot of emotions, a lot of fear, a lot of…”

“Mr. Speaker, this debate today has been rather unfortunate. We have heard a lot of emotions, a lot of fear, a lot of envy. What we are trying to accomplish is simply this: let us take stock in what our Nation is facing right now. We are in the midst of a war, we have a homeland security crisis, and we are in recession. We have a lot of laid-off workers and more layoffs are occurring. And we know as a historical fact that even if our economy begins to slowly recover, that unemployment is going to linger on and on and on well after that recovery takes place. What we have been trying to do, starting in October, then in December and now, is to try and get people back to work. The things we are trying to pass in this bill are the time-tested, proven, bipartisan solutions to get businesses to stop laying off people, to hire people back, and to help those people who have lost their jobs. It is more than just giving someone an unemployment check. It is also helping those people with their health insurance while they have lost their jobs, and, more important than just that unemployment check is to do what we can to give people a paycheck. We have got to get the engine of economic growth growing again, because we now know because of recession, we do not have the revenues we wanted to, we do not have the revenues we need to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security, to fix these issues.”