JEC Hearing on Preventing Recession

The Joint Economic Committee, where Sen. Chuck Schumer is the Chairman and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14) is the Vice Chairman, is currently holding a hearing, "What Should the Federal Government Do to Avoid a Recession?" Scheduled witnesses include Dr. Lawrence Summers, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary; Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute; and William W. Beach, Director of the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation. Read the full hearing announcement (pdf) >>

Watch the hearing live on C Span 2.

Lawrence Mishel gives opening testimony:

Mishel: "The key issue is there's going to be rising unemployment, don't focus totally on GDP the way that brokerage house economists might. What American working families need is our jobs, and to ameliorate the impact of the higher unemployment. As I said, Goldman Sachs and others are projecting that even by the end of this year we will see an unemployment rate of 6.2%, and this will put downward pressure on wages and income. If we don't see bold action we're going to end up with the same kind of lousy recovery we did at the beginning of this decade where even after the economy was so called 'recovering' we had two years of further job losses and rising unemployment. We can't afford to do that again."