10-08-2010, 06:27 PM
Ted King wrote:
Okay, I've done more than one search for the speech you are talking about and can't find a video of it or a transcript. Would you please post a link.
Pelosi was right: Economists agree
From Pelosi's July 1 news conference: (accessed via Nexis)
PELOSI: When the economy turns down, there is a compact that we have that there is unemployment insurance for those who, through no fault of their own, lose their job, and we owe them that. It is a safety net, not just for those individuals but for our whole system, our whole system. It goes in cycles.
I think we further have to address the fact that we need to create many, many more jobs so that people's economic existence is not so dependent on cycles.
[...]
Now, let me say about unemployment insurance, we talk about it as a safety net and the rest. This is one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy. Economists will tell you this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and is job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name because, again, it is money that is needed for families to survive, and it is spent. So it has a double benefit. It helps those who have lost their jobs, but it also is a job creator. And for that reason, for those two reasons, at least, it should be passed, and I am optimistic that it will.
It is impossible to think of a situation where we would have a country that would say we are not going to have unemployment benefits and that the only people who want them are people who don't want jobs. That is just so contrary to what our country is about, and I reject that misrepresentation of the motivation for people to be on unemployment insurance.