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- CONGRESS IS ACTING STUPIDLY
- From
- Dick Meister
Congress is engaging in economic stupidity by failing to grant states money needed to avoid laying off some 300,000 public service workers and failing to extend unemployment benefits to the many thousands of workers who've run out of eligibility for them.
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Piece Description
Congress is engaging in economic stupidity by failing to grant states money needed to avoid laying off some 300,000 public service workers and failing to extend unemployment benefits to the many thousands of workers who've run out of eligibility for them.
Transcript
AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has it right: It's not the heat in Washington, D.C., that 's bothering him and many other advocates of working people. It's the stupidity. Not the heat but the stupidity… the economic stupidity of Congress refusing to provide financial aid to states in order to save vitally needed jobs for some 300,000 teachers, nurses, firefighters , police and other public service workers who are facing layoffs because of budget deficits.
The possible remedy is at hand . . . a pending $100 billion jobs bill. Most of the money would go to states to enable them to quickly create or save up to a million jobs in public and private employment, the money also would go to restoring vital government services that have been cut, and would avert other planned cuts, mostly in education, public safety and job training.
Republican opposition has kept the jobs bill from passage,...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:Commentator Dick Meister says Congress is not acting very intelligently.
OUTRO:Dick Meister is a longtime labor and political journalist.
