Maria Cantwell: “Mr. President, while we are talking about gun liability, I think a more important question for this body to be debating…”

“Mr. President, while we are talking about gun liability, I think a more important question for this body to be debating is the liability we are leaving the American workers with when, in fact, this body refuses to pass unemployment benefit extensions at a time when our economy is not recovering at the speed it takes to create new jobs. As our own newspaper in Washington State, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, said this past week: Everything is not fine in the job market. That is what many Americans are saying. That is what many people across the country are starting to debate when they talk about the issue of outsourcing. Everything is not fine in the job market. The President and his economic advisers issued a report, the Economic Report from the President of the United States, as to the growth we were supposed to expect in our economy in 2004. If my colleagues have a copy of that report and turn to page 98, they will see that the President and his economic advisers, when talking about growth in real GDP over the long term, predict that jobs for this year are going to grow by 2.6 million.”