Thomas Daschle: “we hear a lot these days about how essential optimism is to economic growth and progress. These discussions remind me of…”

“we hear a lot these days about how essential optimism is to economic growth and progress. These discussions remind me of that old saying that ``an optimist is someone who believes we're living in the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist is someone who fears this may be true.'' By those definitions, there are probably very few optimists or pessimists in America because we all know that America's economy today is not the best possible. This morning, I want to say a few words about how we can strengthen our economy and create new jobs and a brighter future for hard-working middle-class families in America. We are all relieved that the economy has finally started adding more jobs each month than it is shedding. After 2 rac{1}{2} years in which our economy lost jobs every month, these new jobs are good news--especially for the millions of Americans who are looking for work. But there are still over a million fewer jobs in America today than there were 4 years ago. In addition, the latest job-growth figures, released last Friday, were considerably weaker than most analysts had predicted. That disappointing news reminds us that optimism alone is not a national economic policy. What we need is realism. Many proposals have been introduced in this Senate to create jobs and to help people who have lost jobs find new ones. We owe it to the American people to consider a variety of ideas.…”