Pelosi: Jobless Rate Would Be Even Higher If Not For Obama

By Lisa Kellman

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters today that America’s high unemployment rate would be even higher had Democrats not passed the 2009 American Recovery and Reivestment Act, otherwise known as the “stimulus law.”

“If President Obama and congressional Democrats had not acted, we would be at 15 percent unemployment,” Pelosi said during her weekly briefing. “No consolation to those without a job, but an important point to make.”

The current jobless rate is 9.1 percent.

Pelosi accused Republicans of not having any plan to put people back to work, and said Democrats acted quickly when they controled Congress during the first year of Obama’s presidency.

“One week and one day after the president made his inaugural address we passed the Recovery Act in the House, and in a few weeks it was in the Senate saving or creating millions of jobs for the American people,” she said.

The House under current Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has passed more than 15 jobs bills as part of the GOP’s “Plan for America’s Job Creators.” However, the bills have yet to be taken up by the Democrat-controlled Senate.