mr. harkin: mr. president, the debt ceiling agreement that will soon come before the senate is a clear and present danger to the fragile, indeed faltering economic recovery. to say that this is the wrong policy at the wrong time is a gross understatement. you have to ask the question is anyone paying attention? we just learned that economic growth fell to a 1.3% annual rate in the second quarter and the first quarter growth was revised downward sharply to .4%, virtually flat. the economy created a meager 15,000 jobs in the month of june, again flat, barely even keeping up with population growth. last month, nearly 25 million americans could not find full-time employment. let me repeat that. 25 million americans are effectively out of work. state and local governments continue to slash funding and jobs at a stunning pace, destroying an estimated 500,000 jobs in the last two years. let me repeat that. in the last two years, state and local governments have destroyed an estimated 500,000 jobs. now, thos

mr. withrow, please proceed. >> chairman harkin, ranking member enzi and senator frank and, senator merkley, thank you for inviting me today to testify on health care, the efforts to hire the states. my name is dan withrow, president of css group headquartered in louisville kentucky. behind me since my beautiful daughter, and i apologize, i might be a bit nervous because i'm testifying in front of my biggest fan. [laughter] i am honored to be here. thank you for your service to the united states. in 2006 after working with the distribution industry for decades to my wife and i borrowed nearly a million dollars from friends, banks, credit card companies to open css distribution group. the company we approach everything with a challenge of building trust and partnerships by doing the right things right. we've worked hard to grow our company, but to date css has not made a net profit. although we projected this year in the breakout year, it's now hard to see how the new regulations will impact our business. we did reduce the workforce from 16 to ten full-time employees in order to retain as mu