Washington, DC – Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced that for the third straight week more than 11 million Americans collected unemployment checks instead of paychecks. Today, the Department released the latest job report showing that in January 2010 another 20,000 jobs were lost. In all, over 3 million jobs have been lost since last year’s stimulus and the unemployment rate remains well above what the Administration promised when the so called stimulus was signed into law. In response to this latest data on the state of the U.S. labor market, Ways and Means Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement:
“Almost one year since stimulus, over three million Americans have lost their jobs and over one million Americans have simply given up even looking for work. It is well past time for the President and Congressional Democrats to suspend their plans for a government takeover of health care, higher taxes on energy, and other job-killing taxes and regulations. The combination of these policies is harming our economic recovery and leading millions of Americans to ask: Where are the jobs? It’s time to scrap these policies and send a clear and immediate signal to employers that the federal government will not increase their costs of doing business. Until we do that, we will not see the job creation Americans need and deserve.”
###