Clinton addresses the Building and Construction Trades Department

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton spoke today at the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) 2008 Legislative Conference, where the BCTD celebrated a "century of leadership." She told the participants to think of the election as a hiring decision, and the primary as a long job interview.

She said unions build the middle class, and that the American labor movement is under assault, which is shrinking the middle class. She said she co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to stand up for the right to organization. She also said she would stand up for the Davis-Bacon Act and fair wages, and that her plan is to raise minimum wage, and to tie minimum wage to congressional salaries. She said that when the economy is faltering, the country needs unions to "stand strong" for workers' rights, wages, and a right to affordable health care.

Clinton said that if she becomes president, she will end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home, and when the veterans come home she will take care of them with programs such as Helmets to Hardhats to get them jobs. She said she also has ideas for a program called the Rebuild America Plan to create three million more jobs, and will appoint a Secretary of Labor that is pro-labor. She also said she plans to keep defense jobs in America, create a strategic energy fund, and work on trade that is good for families.


Clinton said she thinks this is the most anti-union and anti-labor administration this country has ever had. She also thinks Sen. John McCain is "dead wrong" on important issues facing America, and that he does not understand the economy. She said right now the U.S. has lost jobs, costs are up, and there is a home and credit crisis, and that what this country needs is a labor movement like it had in the 20th century.

Other speakers at the conference were Charlie Cook of the National Journal's Cook Political Report, and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), and Joint Economic Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Cook said he expects the presidential election to be very close, like the last two elections in 2000 and 2004. Schumer said he also supports EFCA, and wants to "go back to the days" where laborers had bargaining power, and to "bring back the middle class."

Chairman Ben Bernanke explains why the Fed "bailed out" Bear Stearns

Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Ben Bernanke testified at the Joint Economic Committee Hearing on "The Economic Outlook," attempting to explain to the committee why the Federal Government moved to save Bear Stearns from compete failure but is doing nearly nothing to save homeowners from foreclosures. "Normally," Bernanke said, "the market sorts out which companies survive and which fail, and that is as it should be. However, the issues raised here extended well beyond the fate of one company… with financial conditions fragile, the sudden failure of Bear Stearns likely would have led to a chaotic unwinding of positions in those markets and could have severely shaken confidence."

In his opening statement, Chairman Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said it was "hard to disagree" with a need to take quick action to avoid the kind of meltdown as seen in the Great Depression, but wanted to know what justice there was in helping Bear Stearns and not millions of homeowners. He compared the actions taken by the Federal Reserve to moving at "a snail's pace, if at all." There are six principles to moving forward, Schumer said, and above all, the focus should be on controlling systemic risk. The regulatory system should be unified and simplified, the unregulated parts of the financial markets should be regulated, there must be greater transparency, and the "Laissez-faire view of this administration" in regards to "no regulation is good," needs to end.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) stressed the need for a bipartisan economic summit and said that there was a need to move quickly to "keep families in their homes and blunt the devastating effects of the weakening economy." She compared the Fed's creative, unprecedented, and controversial steps to ease the credit crunch to "the spontaneous improvisation of jazz." Wall Street has been helped, she said, and now it is time to help Main Street.

With a slightly trembling voice that belied his calm demeanor and instead evidenced his nervousness at appearing before the Committee, Bernanke said that although recent actions appear to have helped stabilize the situation somewhat, the financial markets remain under "considerable stress." Effects of the financial strains on credit cost have been increasingly evident, he said, and some portions of the system that had previously escaped the worst of the turmoil have been affected. "These developments in financial markets-- which themselves reflect, in part, greater concerns about housing and the economic outlook more generally-- have weighed on real economic activity," Bernanke said.

He said he expects the tax rebates to provide support to consumer spending, and also that he expects economic activity to strengthen in the second half of the year. Inflation, though, has been a source of concern. The pickup in inflation has been the result of increases in price of crude oil, agricultural products, and other globally traded commodities, Bernanke said. In addition, the decline in the foreign exchange value of the dollar has also contributed to inflation. "We expect inflation to moderate in coming quarters," he said, explaining that the expectation is based in part on futures markets' indications of a leveling out of prices for oil and other commodities. Clearly, he said, the U.S. economy is going through a very difficult period. Much financial adjustment has already taken place, and he said he remains confident in our economy's long-term prospects.

Joint Economic Committee listens to testimony from Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner regarding the employment situation

The Joint Economic Committee met today to discuss the employment situation for January 2008. Committee Chairman Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) began by giving an overview of the current economic situation. Schumer said that 7.6 million people are out of work in the U.S. and that the figure is about double for African Americans. He said that the current economic downturn began last year with the housing sub prime mortgage crisis and quickly spread causing lower consumer spending, and is now afflicting the job market. He also advocated for a stimulus plan to be enacted immediately.

Committee member Congressman Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD) spoke next criticizing the Bush administration's tax cuts for contributing to job loss. He also criticized the current economic stimulus package for not going far enough. He said that he wants to see the administration approve unemployment insurance, a program that Schumer said is a proven form of economic stimulus.

The only panelist to give a statement was Keith Hall, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He presented figures released today by the Bureau today showing small, but widespread declines in unemployment. According to him, construction was one of the hardest hit industries saying that 284,000 construction jobs had been lost since September 2006. He also said that 269,000 manufacturing jobs had been lost in the last 12 months. He answered the committees questions in vague terms repeatedly saying that he does not want to speculate about the future outlook for jobs. He refrained from issuing criticism of the administration's economic policy and offered no suggestions to ameliorate job growth.