Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the news broke this morning concerning the jobs report for January. The numbers came in that we only added 36,000 new jobs to the U.S. economy. The Wall Street Journal lead is, ``Economy Adds Few Jobs.'' It is a difficult matter. Some say maybe the weather had something to do with it. The Washington Post report noted that job creation was far less than economists had predicted. Mr. President, 36,000 might sound pretty good, at least not bad; but in truth it is not good. Mr. Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before our Budget Committee--of which the Presiding Officer, Senator Begich, is a member--that our economy needs to produce about 150,000 jobs a month--it needs to add that many--to stay even. We need to be adding about 250,000 a month to begin to reduce unemployment in a significant way. The numbers were mixed. Some people saw some good news in the report. The Household Survey showed a drop in unemployment, which was not a bad. But I think the low number of actual jobs created was pretty troubling. I will say a few things I believe are important and need to be understood. This Congress passed a stimulus package that was supposed to keep unemployment from going above 8 percent. It went to 9.6. It has dropped some since then, but it is still extraordinarily high. We passed that package, and it did not stop unemployment from rising.…”