Bill Clinton: “That in part depends on whether the Members of the Congress listen to economists who have good jobs--[laughter]--and who…”

“That in part depends on whether the Members of the Congress listen to economists who have good jobs--[laughter]--and who have not had declining incomes, by and large, for the last 12 years, or whether they listen to people like the folks who are up here with me, without regard to party, who know what's happening on the streets out there. The assumption is--look, nothing would make me happier than to know that just the efforts to bring interest rates down and the extraordinary efforts by American business-people in the private sector to increase productivity would generate 365,000 jobs a month for 2 or 3 years. That would be a wonderful thing. But I would say again, the unemployment rate in this country is 7 percent. That is very high in our economy because it's an open economy without the sort of huge support you have in some of the European economies that are built for higher unemployment rates in a way. And a lot of those jobs were part-time jobs. That, again, speaks to the need to address the health care issue because one of the reasons so many of these jobs are part-time jobs is that employers can't afford to hire full-time employees because they can't pay the health care bill. But I just simply don't agree. I mean, there are people who see one month of--the employment rate dropped one-tenth of a point. That is not an enormous drop. These jobs were not all, or even most, full-time jobs. I am very grateful for it, but it seems to me that, if anything, the continued persistence of relatively high unemployment is a good argument for the stimulus package.”