Earl Blumenauer: “The State of the Union is not sound. Millions of Americans and their families are not secure in their homes, not because…”

“The State of the Union is not sound. Millions of Americans and their families are not secure in their homes, not because of some huge new crime wave, not because of the threat of Saddam Hussein or any external threat to our Nation, but because of the deep recession into which our country is falling. My State has the highest unemployment rate in the Union. We have been dueling with Washington State to be number one or number two for more than a year. There is chronic unemployment, but it is not isolated to our States, it is all across the Nation. We have the highest unemployment rate in more than a decade. We have the most chronic unemployment we have seen in a quarter of a century in terms of the length of time people are out of work before they can find gainful employment.”