Record Job Losses in September; America's Working Families Need Real Solutions

By Chairman George Miller on 10-03-2008, 02:41 PM in

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that 159,000 jobs were lost in September, the steepest decline in five years and the 9th consecutive month of job losses.

Today’s jobs report highlights the massive destruction that the Bush-Cheney-McCain wrecking ball has done to our economy, workers, and families. Eight years of their misguided policies have culminated in nine straight months of job losses. Two million workers have been unemployed for more than 27 months – 167,000 more than in August. Our nation is now dealing with the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

America’s working families are hurting, and in need of real solutions to get our economy back on track. For starters, we must extend unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans whose current benefits are set to expire this weekend. Today, as the House considers a financial rescue plan to protect the credit that small businesses and families rely on, we will also vote to extend unemployment benefits to help workers cover their bills while looking for a new job.

But workers also need a long-term strategy to generate new jobs. Last week, the House passed a much-needed stimulus that would create millions of good-paying jobs by investing in our crumbling infrastructure – an investment that would get our nation back to work and prevent our economy from falling deeper into recession. Unfortunately for American families, Senate Republicans blocked the package.

This latest news underscores the urgent need to ease the pain of America’s working families and get our economy on the road to recovery.