Political Quotes

“As I indicated before, their view has been echoed by the CBO. Tax cuts, in their view, are the least effective form of economic stimulus, and the most effective is unemployment insurance benefits. On November 16, the Department of Labor released an independent study that was commissioned during the Bush administration. It found that since mid-2008, the Federal unemployment insurance program has saved 1.6 million jobs in every quarter, averting 1.8 million layoffs per quarter at the height of the downturn, and reduced the unemployment rate by 1.2 points. Separately, the Economic Policy Institute has found that continuing the programs through the end of 2011 will support the creation of 700,000 full-time equivalent jobs. People who get unemployment insurance benefits tend to take that money and go to the grocery store or buy shoes for their children or pay down, if they can, some of their credit card debt. Maybe in this holiday season they will buy an extra present for their children. That keeps our economy moving, and it keeps the people in the grocery stores working, people at department stores working, and the manufacturers producing these goods working. Our economy grew at 2 percent in the third quarter and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Goldman Sachs analyst Alec Phillips estimated that if unemployment insurance benefits expired, it would shave half a percentage point from growth. Such a decline would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.”