Thomas Daschle: “I also want to comment, if I have another moment, on the recklessness of this administration in considering economic…”

“I also want to comment, if I have another moment, on the recklessness of this administration in considering economic policy. The extraordinary recklessness of offering a tax plan, that has yet to be unveiled but was certainly outlined by administration officials, leaves me with a great deal of concern and I think ought to be a source of anxiety for the American people. The President has said we need stimulus. Yet the plan he has outlined has almost no stimulative value at the very time when it is required. We lost 190,000 jobs in November and December. Mr. President, 190,000 jobs were lost. There are 190,000 families unemployed. That was just in the last 2 months of last year. And 2.2 million Americans have lost their jobs since the President was sworn in. The Wall Street Journal, the other day, noted you have to go back decades to find an economic record as serious and, in many respects, as dislocating to working families as this one. Yet the President's so-called stimulus plan provides for 190,000 jobs in the remaining 11 months of this year. That is their figure. That is what they say they will generate. For the next 11 months, they will generate the same number of jobs, under their plan, that they lost in the last 2 months of last year. How, in Heaven's name, can anyone suggest that is a stimulus?”