Max Baucus: “not to belabor the point, but at a hearing I held in the Finance Committee this morning, we heard from Mark Zandi, who…”

“not to belabor the point, but at a hearing I held in the Finance Committee this morning, we heard from Mark Zandi, who is the chief economist and cofounder of Moody's Analytics, and he was talking about unemployment benefits. In fact, part of the hearing was to determine ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of unemployment benefits. Actually, the panel came up with a lot of very interesting ideas. Different States are, frankly, using the unemployment program to help create jobs as well as make payments. Anyway, at this hearing, Mr. Zandi volunteered, frankly, that now is not the time for extension of unemployment benefits to be paid for. He said that is self-defeating. It is unproductive. He said, now that we are in a recession, frankly, unemployment compensation benefits should not be paid for. Who is Mark Zandi? Mark Zandi is a moderate economist, very well respected by Senators on both sides of the aisle. He also was the adviser for Presidential candidate John McCain--Mark Zandi was. The point is, clearly, he is not a liberal, leftwing economist. I don't know even now if he is a moderate economist. But whatever he is-- moderate, leftwing or liberal--he is an economist, and he has worked for Presidential candidate John McCain. He volunteered today on the record at the Finance Committee hearing that it would not be wise to pay for unemployment benefits at this time because that would be self-defeating.”