On the recordJuly 22, 2010
Mr. Speaker, we are here today to consider legislation paying another $34 billion in unemployment benefits. The other side says that these unemployment benefits stretching to almost 2 years are needed and must be added to the $13 trillion debt, even as they claim their trillion dollar stimulus plan has been a success at creating millions of jobs. It makes you wonder if they are looking at the same jobs data as the rest of us. Eighteen months ago, this administration said the stimulus would create 3.7 million jobs. It hasn't. Through June of 2010, the United States lost 2.6 million more private sector jobs, leaving millions of Americans to ask: Where are the jobs? The administration also promised that the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent. It hasn't. Instead, unemployment reached 10 percent and remains stuck near that level today, and that ignores millions of missing unemployed left out of the official statistics. The administration also said that the administration would create mostly private sector jobs. It didn't. Managing all that spending helped government jobs grow by 201,000 since the stimulus was passed, which has made Washington, DC, the Nation's strongest job market. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, 47 out of 50 States have lost jobs since the Democrats' February 2009 stimulus. While the job situation seems to have finally stopped getting worse, things are not getting much better.
