Political Quotes

“There has been talk in recent months that if there is to be an economic recovery in our future, it will be a so-called ``jobless recovery.'' I would submit that for the 8.5 million Americans who are currently unemployed, an economic recovery that does not provide jobs is no recovery at all. The Economic Policy Institute has reported that using even optimistic projections of the gross domestic product, the unemployment rate is expected to remain at 6 percent for all of 2003. An analysis projecting less optimistic growth numbers suggests the unemployment rate will climb to 6.4 percent by the last quarter of this year. However, there is one factor that impacts the severity of the current downturn for American workers more than any other. That is, significantly more workers have exhausted their Federal benefits since the Federal extension of benefit program began in March than ran out of Federal benefits over a comparable number of months in the recession of the early nineties. Under the Federal extension program of the early nineties, each worker was eligible for 20 to 26 weeks of benefits some 10 months after the program was enacted. Under the program which just expired at the end of December, most workers were eligible for a maximum of 13 weeks of benefits. As a result, by the end of December, an estimated 2.2 million workers had exhausted all of their Federal benefits.”