Jon S. Corzine: “Again, I think we have our priorities mixed up here. There are a whole bunch of folks in this country who benefit…”

“Again, I think we have our priorities mixed up here. There are a whole bunch of folks in this country who benefit enormously from the minimum wage. When they go out and buy things, that will stimulate the economy. One of the great opportunities for us is to deal with some of these economic issues that we have, instead of haranguing. I think, unfortunately, about these four folks, about whom I think there is legitimate reason to have a debate--where they stand on judicial philosophy, and how their history is, or how their writings fit with settled law and from a constitutional perspective. Again, we have put 98 percent of the nominees to work. We have not done anything about the 9 million Americans who don't have a job, who want to work. There are a whole bunch more who have dropped out of the system--I think about 4 million, if memory serves me correctly. It strikes me we have our priorities mixed up. I don't understand it. By the way, I will go through some other statistics. It is actually mind-boggling to me that we are spending so much time on four people, when the unemployment rate is 6 percent, and 9 million folks are without jobs. That is up from 4.1 percent 3 years ago. The poverty rate is up from 11.3 percent to 12.1 percent; I think that is 4 million people. The percentage of uninsured has gone up from 14.2 percent to 15.2 percent. About 2 million people have lost their health insurance in the last 3 years.”