Economy Headed in Right Direction, Senate Should Quickly Approve Jobs Bill, Chairman Miller Says
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, issued the following statement today after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the nation’s unemployment rate fell from 10.0 percent in December to 9.7 in January.
“Today’s news that the rate of job loss continues to improve shows that the Obama administration’s efforts are moving our economy in the right direction. In the last months of the Bush administration we were losing 650,000 jobs a month on average. Now, almost a year after the Recovery Act was enacted, we have slowed our monthly job losses to less than a tenth of that. Twenty thousand American jobs lost are still far too many, but no one can deny that we’re making out way out of the storm.
“But, much more needs to be done to help the eight million Americans who have lost their job find work. Job creation continues to the top priority for Congress and the Obama administration. The House already passed legislation to create urgently needed jobs for construction workers, teachers, police officers, firefighters and others, and we must continue to consider any proposals that would put people back to work quickly. I urge the U.S. Senate to follow suit without delay.”
The Jobs for Main Street Act, passed by the House of Representatives on December 16, would use existing available funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to pay for targeted investments in infrastructure and emergency aid to state and local governments to hire teachers, police officers and other vital personnel.
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