I remember being in the House of Representatives in 1997, I believe, when we voted to balance the budget for the first time in 30 years under President Clinton. It was tough. We had to make tough decisions, but we did that, and we were on a trajectory so that by the year 2000--when I was elected to the Senate in 2001 and came into the Budget Committee--the big debate was what to do with the biggest surplus in the history of the country. We saw that big surplus, during the 8 years of President Bush, go red with red ink, down, down, down, down, so much so that when President Obama came in, the job loss was at about 750,000 jobs a month. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month. So we went to work and we focused on people in the middle class, on innovation and investing in businesses and creating opportunities and so on, and these numbers now, on jobs per month, have gone from a negative now up to a positive. The challenge is--we are not done yet--do not stop what we have been doing.
On the recordJune 22, 2010
Editor's note · Context
Senator Stabenow discusses the economic challenges and job recovery efforts since the 1990s.
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