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Pelosi Statement on Today’s Economic Forum
2008-07-15 15:59:00
WASHINGTON, July 15 /EMWNews/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders held a news conference today with economic experts following an economic forum this forum. At the forum, five national economic experts endorsed Democrats' call for a second stimulus package to further jumpstart the economy. Below are the Speaker's opening remarks and selected excerpts from Q and A: "Good morning. This morning, we had the fourth in a series of economic forums about the state of our economy and a need for perhaps another stimulus package. We were joined by a number of our House leadership. This is in addition to some of the meetings that we've had to specifically address energy, infrastructure, and health care and their relationship to our economy. We're very blessed to have the intellectual resources of so many leaders in our country, to help us make the proper public policy to meet the needs of all of America's families. That is the New Direction of this Congress. "Today, we had the participation of the former Secretary of the Treasury, Dr. Larry Summers; Dr. Alan Sinai from Decision Economics, Inc.; Alan Blinder of Princeton University; Douglas Elmendorf of the Brookings Institution; and Rebecca Blank of the Brookings Institution. "Our focus was on the state of the economy, the need for another stimulus package, and what that would contain, the impact of the price of oil on our economic growth, and issues that relate to mortgage foreclosure crisis in our country, among others. "I want you to hear from our special guests and to say that we will be proceeding with another stimulus package and we hope that we will once again be able to work in a strong bipartisan way with our colleagues here in the Congress and with the President of the United States, because even though we believe that the initial recovery rebates had a positive impact, it certainly is not enough to offset the rising prices in gasoline, in food, in fuel, in health care, in education, and other rising costs while the purchasing power of Americans' income is going down." Selected excerpts from Q&A On Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac: "I want the record to show that under Chairman Barney Frank's leadership, as chairman of the Financial Services Committee, in April 2007, a GSE reform bill was passed by the House of Representatives. Part of it was in the stimulus package earlier this year; it was passed again in May. So he has been way ahead on this issue. He saw, down the road, the need for this reform. Earlier than others. That's called leadership. The President of the United States today in his press conference is calling upon Congress at long last to pass this legislation. With all due respect to all of the wishes of all of the Members, the priority for us is for the message to be clear: Congress will act, we will act expeditiously, we will get this job done, and we will not leave for the August break until this is signed into law, which is just a matter of about 10 legislative days." On Second Stimulus Package: "As you heard, our distinguished experts here say, again, something targeted, temporary, and timely, as were our criteria before, is very important. So I would hope the President wanted that before, I would hope that they [tax rebates for the middle class] would part of any package. But we can't have them exclusively dominate the package. We have to have assistance, direct assistance, in terms of the other issues that were named: food stamps, LIHEAP, and the issues that relate to infrastructure, Medicaid, aid to the states. But again, this is the menu from which we will choose and we will have to work in a bipartisan way because this legislation must be signed into law." "We have to move the Barney Frank/Chris Dodd bill; that will be part of, I think, stimulating the economy. That will be our biggest initiative. We will have legislation relating to energy that will be coming to the floor in the next couple of days. All of these things to grow the economy. We have to work with the President on a timetable. "The President said in February, when the first bill was passed, and we did it in record time, we worked together in a bipartisan way, that he didn't want to do any of these other things: unemployment insurance, food stamps, LIHEAP, aids to states in arrest, because he wanted to just do the rebates, he wanted to see how they worked. Well, I think they had a positive effect except they have been offset, as has been said by our experts, by the rising costs in other necessities for the American people. So while they may have saved the second quarter from a technical definition of a recession, the fact is that we are into a third quarter and we need to have another stimulus package. Last time, it took the testimony of Chairman Bernanke to convince him of that; hopefully he will hear from his financial advisors, although Bernanke is independent of the President, I hasten to add." In addition to the Democratic Members of Congress, the following experts attended the forum: -- Rebecca Blank - Brookings Institute; former dean of Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan -- Alan Blinder - Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies, Department of Economics, Princeton University -- Douglas Elmendorf - Brookings Institute; former principal analyst, Congressional Budget Office -- Allen Sinai - Founder, Chief Global Economist and President, Decision Economics Inc. -- Larry Summers - Professor and Past President, Harvard University; former Treasury Secretary
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