Senate Proceeding on Oct 28th, 2009 :: 7:02:45 to 7:12:39
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7:02:41 to 7:03:02( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: of their health care. amer a senator: the presiding officer: the

7:02:45 to 7:12:39( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Jeff Bingaman

7:03:03 to 7:03:24( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: senator from new mexico. mr. bingaman: mad president, i wanted to speak today about jobs and unemployment. i know we're on the -- we're in this period the effort to extend unemployment benefits, and frankly i have great difficulty understanding why w should have to be going through this kind of procedural obstacle in order to extend unemployment benefits to

7:03:25 to 7:03:45( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: the many americans who need those benefits. so i hope that we get through that, i hope we go ahead and pass that extension of unemployment benefits, but frankly that does not begin to address the overall employment and jobs needs of the country, and i think we all recognize

7:03:46 to 7:04:09( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: that and i want to talk a little about that today. frankly, we need additional policies to create jobs. even as congress and the president focus on other critical challenges facing the country, and that is health care reform, it's climate change, it's energy. at the same time that those issues are being discussed, we

7:04:10 to 7:04:30( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: need to also prioritize job creation. while there has been considerable debate about whether the recovery act is working, whether it has raised the gross domestic product, whether it is creating jobs, most economists tell us that the recovery act has boosted the gross domestic product by 2% to

7:04:31 to 7:04:53( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: 4% points during the past six months. and with 2/3 of the funds not yet spent, the recovery act certainly has the potential to create or save four million jobs as the administration has expected that it would and as all of us hope that it does. i've divided my remarks here into three parts. first, i want to describe the

7:04:54 to 7:05:15( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: scale of the job comeetion problem that the country faces. because of the anemic job creation that we have seen in this country over the last nine years, the economy is short by about 12 million jobs from what we actually need in order to have reasonable employment.

7:05:16 to 7:05:38( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: second, there's considerable evidence -- this is the second subject i'll address. there is considerable evidence that this recession is much worse than it was expected to be. critics of the recovery act are missing this fundamental point. the recovery act is working, but the recession is more severe than the recovery act was

7:05:39 to 7:06:02( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: designed to address. accordingly, we need to do more. finally, i'll propose four ideas to create jobs that i think congress should hold hearings on and fully debate. these are by no means the only good ideas, but given the size of the problem that we face, congress should consider all ideas that have the potential to create jobs.

7:06:03 to 7:06:27( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: i have two charts that creation problem. let me start by putting up this this -- this first chart. the black line on this chart shows the monthly change in the number of jobs since january of 2001.

7:06:28 to 7:06:49( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: the red here, this red area represents 100,000 jobs. that's an important number to understand. it is the break-even number. because our population is constantly growing, we need to create about 100,000 jobs, new jobs every month just to maintain our unemployment and

7:06:50 to 7:07:10( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: our employment level. that's 100,000 jobs per month just to keep unemployment from going up. every time the black line -- this black line that you see here, every time that black line is in the red area, which is most of the time in the last nine years, we are not creatg enough jobs to break even, and

7:07:11 to 7:07:31( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: the jobs deficit is getting larger and more americans are out of work. as you can see for most of the past nine years, the number of new jobs has bee far short of where it needs to be. from 2001-2004, the jobs deficit grew by 5.8 million jobs. even when job creation was above

7:07:32 to 7:07:52( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: the break-even level -- and that's this period here where this black line is above the reddish area on the chart -- even in that period, it was never high enough to dig us out of the hole that we had created in the previous years.

7:07:53 to 7:08:14( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: the sec this is labeled "the jobs deficit." it shows the total jobs deficit that has accumulated over the past nine years. it illustrates the cumulative effect of nine years of slow job creation and job losses.

7:08:15 to 7:08:35( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: the country had 132.5 million jobs in december, 2000. if job creation had kept pace with population growth, today we would have 143 million jobs, but it has not. and today we short of that number.

7:08:36 to 7:08:57( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: that shows there how that has happened. today we have only 131 million jobs. we actually have fewer jobs today in this country than we had before president bush took office.

7:08:58 to 7:09:18( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: take -- the take away from these charts is this. congress needs to act quickly so that new job creation policies will overlap with and will complement the remaining recovery act funds that will be invested this next year. there's no danger of doing too much to create jobs as i see it. we should learn from japan's lost decade.

7:09:19 to 7:09:40( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: japan was plagued by weak economic growth and lack luster job creation all through the 190's. its lost decade as that period was referred to was caused by the bursting of an asset price bubble silar to what triggered the financial crisis that we experienced last year. the prary les

7:09:41 to 7:10:01( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: lost decade is that intermittent stimulus policies are ineffective. overwhelming action to re-energize our economy. now let me talk for a moment about the current recession and data about the current recession. in january of this year, the

7:10:02 to 7:10:22( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: prospects for the economy were truly grim. the country had lost jobs in every month in 2008. over three million jobs in total. over 1.6 million jobs were lost in just october, november, and december of 2008. the financial system had suffered a massive

7:10:23 to 7:10:44( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: self-inflicted wound, causing the biggest crisis since the great depression. and the prognosis was far from clear. american families in every state were worried about their jobs, their homes, their children's futures, and economists were making dire predictions about what would happen in 2009. so that was what was happening

7:10:45 to 7:11:08( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: when we -- when we began january of this year. yet in january, while the recovery act was being designed, these predictions still substantially underestimated how bad the recession would turn out to be. the 54 economists regularly surveyed by "the wall street journal"aid on average that gross domestic product would

7:11:09 to 7:11:29( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: shrink by 3.3% in the first quarter of 2009. there were only four of those 54 economists who predicted that the gross domestic product would decline by as much as 5%. yet now we know that the economy actually contracted by 6.4% in that first quarter, twice as

7:11:30 to 7:11:52( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: much as the economists had projected. over the entire year, that is a difference of $420 billion or more than half the size of the recovery act. the effect on jobs and unemployment was also underestimated. this same group of economists, 54 economists thought the job

7:11:53 to 7:12:15( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: losses would average 154,000 per month in 2009. there were only three of those economists who thought it would be more than 300,000 per month. so far this year, the country is losing, in fact, an average of 458,000 jobs every month. three times more than economists predicted.

7:12:16 to 7:12:36( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: in january, the same 54 economists thought the unemployment rate would be 8.2% in the first half of 2009. mark zandy at moodieseconomy.com estimated unemployment would be less than 7.5% in the first quarter of 2009 and 8.5% in the

7:12:37 to 7:12:41( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Bingaman: second quarter if the recovery act were not enacted.