Maria Cantwell: “I will take a minute to report something to my colleagues. Hopefully this debate has stimulated some great thinking. As…”

“I will take a minute to report something to my colleagues. Hopefully this debate has stimulated some great thinking. As I pointed out, we can look at the history of the two different Bush administrations. The first Bush administration decided after creating 379,000 new jobs that it was going to extend unemployment benefits for 9 months--20 weeks for individuals who had already received State benefits could get a Federal benefit. This administration, having a similar recession in challenging economic times, only created 112,000 jobs in January and decided there would be no benefit program and no weeks for employees. I am not surprised to see the Washington Post headline ``Number of Mass Layoffs Rose Sharply in January''--``2,400 employers let go 50 or more people.'' That is the economic news facing the country. This administration and the other side of the aisle are not promising jobs or promising unemployment benefits. If someone wants to stand up and say we are going to have real job creation in 2004 and stand by the President's numbers, that is one thing. But if you are not promising either growth or economic assistance, then we have a serious problem. I reserve the remainder of my time.”