so h.r. 1741, sponsored by my good friend, representative elijah cummings, is an important legislate tif initiative. it joins right together for h.r. 454 which will be on the house floor in a few minutes which deals with the national center of missing and exploited children, those who have been kidnapped and murdered and those exploited. again, it ties back to this whole question of witnesses providing the necessary testimony to convict those of heinous crime. this may not be the necessary -- necessity for h.r. 515, but i also add my support for the legislation that condemn the slaughter and murder of army private william long and the wounding of army private quinton ezeagwula. that was a terrorist act of which we condemn. it may be that the alleged perpetrator is in prison but we don't know if there is a widespread conspiracy. we hear so. again, h.r. 1741 would allow us to protect these witnesses. the act of killing our military personnel on u.s. soil was an act of terror. i abhor it, i denounce it. it is a resounding disgrace in this country and, therefore, h.res. 515 should in fac

that is elijah cummings of maryland and the acting chairman today. they'll hear from keith hall the bureau of statistics. live coverage on c-span2. >> the consumer index experienced a small uptick and the european central bank held rates steady yesterday. signaling expectations that the global economy may just had bottomed out. i'm encouraged by the marginal improvements like consumer confidence but even this good sign is accompanied by a sobering counterpoint increased consumer spending that yet to translate by actual spending of consumers of businesses or businesses rather, families are saving and i don't blame them. they see that more than 1 in 4 unemployed workers has been unemployed for over six months. and that the median duration of unemployment is now 14.9 weeks, a record high since the series started in 1967. the cumulative effects of the recession seven conservative months of loss totaling 6 million jobs have left these ordinary, very hard-working americans in on precarious footing. when the person is laid off the person experiences, quote,