Political Quotes

“this morning we learned that another 598,000 jobs were lost in the month of January. Our unemployment rate now stands at 7.6 percent and will no doubt be higher still in the coming months. With that in mind, I would like to have printed in the Record an opinion piece authored by Steven Pearlstein that appeared in today's Washington Post. The piece does a much better job than I could hope to do of explaining the basic economics of why increased Government spending in a time of recession is a good thing. I encourage my colleagues to take a serious look at this opinion piece. In his final sentence, Mr. Pearlstein gives us all a crib sheet that I think we all might want to pay a bit more attention to. Spending is stimulus, no matter what it's for and who does it. The best spending is that which creates jobs and economic activity now, has big payoffs later and disappears from future budgets. As I have been saying all week, the $365.6 billion in spending that we include in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act meets these simple criteria. I again urge my colleagues to set aside partisan differences and work together on this legislation.”