Maurice Hinchey: “last February the President's Council of Economic Advisors forecast that, as a result of the economic policies of the…”

“last February the President's Council of Economic Advisors forecast that, as a result of the economic policies of the Bush Administration, there would be 510,000 new jobs generated this year. Here we are on the advent of October; and in order for that prediction of last February to succeed, 947,000 jobs would have to be created between now and December 31, in other words, within the next 14 weeks. I wish the President's Council of Economic Advisors luck because this administration, aided and abetted by this Congress, has lost 437,000 jobs so far this year. We have had record job losses under this administration and that includes the 93,000 jobs that were lost in August alone. We do not yet have the figures of course for September, but it is likely that we will be seeing some similar amount of job loss. This administration and this Congress have given us the worst economic performance in more than 70 years; 2.7 seven million jobs have been lost since the neoconservative Republicans have controlled both the White House and the Congress. They have also done other things which are huge in their consequences. They have given us the largest budget deficit in history, and they have also provided the Nation with a record national debt. Just recently we learned from the Census Bureau that America is now poorer than it was last year, just as it was poorer last year than it was the year before.”