news release
from
BARNEY
FRANK
September 1, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Peter Kovar (202) 225-5931
STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK ON THE
EMPLOYMENT NUMBERS RELEASED TODAY
Washington, DC—Congressman Barney Frank today released the
following statement on the August employment figures:
“The job numbers for August further confirm the fact that economic growth in
the Bush years means higher profits for corporations but no gains for the
great majority of working people.
“It’s a sign of how badly
the Administration has failed to meet its own projections for job and wage
growth that they find good news in today’s numbers only by lowering their
standards for success. When arguing for their tax cuts, Administration
officials repeatedly asserted their policies would produce an average
200,000 jobs per month. As job creation has consistently fallen below these
claims, they have responded not with policies that create more jobs but by
downward revisions of their job projections. That is, they are achieving
economic victory by defining it downwards. Job creation in the Bush
Administration has become an exercise in limbo dancing in which workers are
expected to be happy while forced to pass under an ever lowering bar.
“The miniscule 0.1%
increase in nominal wages reported this morning is also further confirmation
of the bad news the great majority of Americans have been receiving on the
earnings front. Here too the Administration’s earlier claims are repudiated
by the facts. Earlier, they said that lagging wages would rebound as the
economic recovery moved forward. Yet wages continue to lag even as the
recovery appears to be losing steam.
“This morning’s figures
confirm that in the Bush years, economic growth appears to benefit a very
small group of the wealthiest Americans while most workers are lucky to stay
even.
In July, Congressman
Frank released a report demonstrating that real wages in have been flat for
several years, and despite the rosy outlook by the Bush administration,
Americans are not feeling any economic growth in their wallets.
The report can
be found at:
http://www.house.gov/banking_democrats/JobsAndWagesReport.html
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