Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned that the jobs numbers were pumped up by stimulus money, and without more, it will collapse.
Transcript of Schumer on MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle:
Stephanie Ruhle: With us now, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Leader in the Senate. Senator, this better than expected jobs number, what does that tell you?
Sen. Schumer: Well, it tells us that we still have a very long way to go. There’s a great anomaly here. The president says it’s “stupendous,†the president says “it’s a joyous day,†when we have almost 20 million people out of work, when the unemployment number went down, but it’s still much higher and higher than any time during the Great Recession after 2008. And why did this happen? In large part because of the stimulus. Because of the plans that we put together mainly pushed by Democrats to pump trillions of dollars into an economy that was just headed in free-fall. Here’s my worry, Stephanie. My worry is that these numbers will make the president, the Republican Senate, complacent. We have lots of cliffs coming up.
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July 1st, loads of states have their budgets due. If they don’t get state and local aid there are going to be massive layoffs among state and local workers—we haven’t seen that many of those so far. We have a rental crisis. People after three months moratoriums are going to be thrown out of their homes. The unemployment insurance, which pumped a whole lot of money into the economy, expires July 31st. Our bill moves it to December 31st, the one that passed the House. And let’s not forget the stimulus checks, $1200 people got, which got a lot of money quickly into the economy. There’s no more of those unless we pass a new bill.
Video of Schumer:
Schumer warns that the jobs numbers were propped up by government stimulus, and without a lot more, the economy will go back into the ditch. pic.twitter.com/rteJOyuXrQ
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) June 5, 2020
The jobs numbers that Trump is celebrating as some sort of a victory are the byproduct of the government putting a record amount of money into the economy. The economy was injected with trillions of dollars as a band-aid to stop the bleeding, but the money is gone and new challenges are coming up in a few weeks.
If Republicans and Trump use the new report to refuse to pass more stimulus, the economy will plunge again, and the American people will find themselves in a dire predicament thanks to Trump and the GOP.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
