Pelosi Wakes From Coma To Realize That Jobs Are Important
Jan 25, 2010 8 Comments ›› Erik Wong
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that the issue of job creation has “permeated†the efforts of congressional Democrats over the past year. Pelosi’s statement stands in stark contrast to a bleak jobs year that saw unemployment rise to over 10 percent.
“The jobs issue has permeated everything, [every] major initiative that we have,†Pelosi said at her weekly press briefing Thursday. The speaker outlined the various proposals that she said had pulled the economy “back from the brink†over the past year.
“With the recovery package, we not only created jobs – about 2 million saved or created with more being rolled out – but pulled us back from the brink of even deeper recession. In his [President Obama’s] budget, which we passed one hundred days after his swearing-in, he had a blueprint for how we go into the future, create jobs, stabilize the economy [and] do so as we reduce the deficit – [it’s] very central to everything we do – reduce the deficit.
“And three central pillars to that, to create jobs, are investment in education to produce innovation for the 21st Century, investments in health care to lower its cost, and it’s a competitiveness issue as well as a health issue, and that’s important to business, and then to have a new green energy policy to create new good jobs.â€
Pelosi claimed that Congress’ focus had “always†been about jobs and deficit reduction.
“So it’s always been about jobs and deficit reduction,†she said. “Perhaps we haven’t been clear enough about the purpose and focus of the connection of creation of jobs and reductions of [the] deficit in our initiatives.â€
The results of Pelosi’s year-long “focus†on job creation does not seem to have born much fruit, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – which compiles jobless claims and other employment data.
By the end of 2009, the national unemployment rate had risen to 10 percent, two percentage points higher than Democrats claimed it would go after passing $787 billion in stimulus spending – the goal of which, as Pelosi pointed out – was to create or save 2 million jobs.
In fact, unemployment continued to rise despite congressional attempts to create jobs. According to BLS figures, unemployment was 7.7 percent in January, when Obama took office and Pelosi gaveled Congress into session. By March, after passage of the stimulus, unemployment had risen to 8.6 percent.
By August 2009, despite tens of billions in government stimulus spending, unemployment had climbed to 9.7 percent before reaching 10.1 percent in October. By year’s end, unemployment held steady at 10 percent for the third straight month.
Despite Pelosi’s claim that stimulus spending had “saved or created†2 million jobs, BLS figures show that, in fact, the number of unemployed Americans did not shrink at all during 2009, nor did the number of employed Americans grow. According to BLS, the number of employed Americans in January 2009 was 142.2 million and the number of unemployed Americans was 11.9 million.
By March, the number of employed people had fallen to 140.8 million while the number of unemployed had risen to 13.3 million. By December – despite tens of billions in stimulus spending – the number of employed Americans had fallen to 137.8 million while the number of unemployed Americans had risen to 15.3 million.
A total of 3.9 million people lost their jobs in 2009, according to BLS.
