subcommittee is the subcommittee that is the custodian of the safety net for this country welfare unemployment insurance foster kids all the  programs that were created one hundred thirty five exceptional security and i told the staff that we had to start thinking about what's going to happen in two thousand and ten because we have to reauthorize t n f at that point and  significant action to combat the recession earlier this year before that the primary concern was whether we were headed for a great depression now we're discussing in recovery and the timing of coming out of what is clearly been topped perhaps by the depression one hundred twenty nine many of the major economic indicators show significant improvement today compared to nine months ago everybody jumping up and saying oh it's over thank god it's over but the chart in front of you illustrates the reduction in the number of jobs lost last calendar quarter since the enactment of the recovery act in february obviously before that we were losing six hundred ninety one thousand jobs a month and since then we've reduced it to four hundred twenty eight thousand jobs a month and then in the second quarter so we're still losing jobs even though we are saying lagging indicator meaning it's one of the last things to improve at the end of a recession so we're here to assess the response of our public programs to rising joblessness and poverty brought on by recession many people are in need more people are in need more than during any time in recent history and we cannot ignore them we did make a major step in improving our safety net programs albeit in the temporary basis in the recovery act the measure extended expanded employed unemployment benefits and two weeks ago the house passed another legislation to further extend those benefits the recovery act also provided more funding for food stamps for the tanah program for medicaid for child care for child support enforcement for foster care for job training and a number of other programs that we did do a lot in that actually i had the biggest piece in the recovery act that went through here some months ago and also provided a major tax cut for working families to report by the center on budget policy and budget and policy priorities that used an updated administration were designed to help the rich becoming richer with the result of the worst recession in over seventy five years although the steps taken in the recovery act are significant challenges remain we have a record number of long term unemployment rate in this country somewhere around fifteen percent you also have programs that do not seem to meet the growing needs for example even before the recession the program was providing assistance to fewer than one out of every four children living in poverty in this country i know some of my friends on the other side may say that they're more interested in creating jobs than helping the jobless and it goes without saying job creation is our first priority however i don't think visiting the  failed policies of the past will yield the desired results we need to move forward with policies generate good jobs while also helping those who are struggling to find work and keep their families out of poverty the best doubles as a trampoline to help people bounce back during hard times and i look forward to hearing from the witnesses today on how best to achieve that goal i would like to enter into the record a couple of articles that appeared in the paper one in the you having spent many years in broadcasting which is no to turn him on my we are here today to evaluate the response of safety net programs during this recession and the current outcomes of the american recovery and  reinvestment act but before diving into those details and like to share with you the details of one recovering industry in our current economy this industry has realized a five thousand person job increase while others are still losing jobs this industry has had a recent increase in sales in this industry has ha increasing production all of these are signs of recovery and success while other industries continue to struggle what is this industry it is the housing industry the private housing market continues to recover housing did not receive bailout funds or other homebuyers were provided incentives to purchase homes this is a perfect example of our free market economy can help our struggling economy at a time when georgians need help job opportunities and economic growth the georgia legislature has lowered taxes and passed legislation to let free market solutions work for georgia families and businesses trillions of dollars in spending it only produced enormous debt for our children and grandchildren and have in my opinion not produced results the creation of government jobs or government anything is really nothing more than the destruction of private sector jobs free markets are under increasing assault by this continuous threat as we sit comfortably in this is stuart building americans by the millions search for a job these americans are not in search of a new government program they are not asking for another bailout and most assuredly they do not want their government to steal any more from the next generation they simply want to work early having and provide for their families so how is it that we create jobs surely it is a question that is asked by every member of congress or garbus of your political persuasion the answer is simple but perhaps  very difficult to admit for those of us who have to stand before the voters and ask about validation we much first recognize that we don't create jobs just as much as we don't create well we don't create happiness the american people do all these things and for more than two centuries have done them quite well despite increasing government interference the simple truth is that government cannot give anything that it has not taken first it's former massachusetts governor william weld once said there's no such thing as government money only taxpayer money a welfare check food or even an unemployment check cannot replace the value of a real honest to goodness paycheck so that is the real issue at hand whether the governor's going to spend more money it doesn't have to provide a temporary illusion of safety or whether the government trust the very americans that put us in office to solve the problems as they have always solve the problems i suppose we can pat ourselves on the back for taking money from peter to give the paul maybe in our wisdom as elected officials we thought peter had too much and paul not enough but perhaps there is a better way what if peter higher when this be the best possible scenario for everyone involved to make this happen million times over we need government to get out of the way the groundbreaking study of state by state economic growth was recently released by a world renowned economist dr arthur  senior economics writer at the wall street journal laffer and moore show the between one thousand nine hundred eighty two thousand and seven the nine lowest tax states had an astounding eighty nine percent greater job growth and thirty two percent greater income growth than the nine highest tax states dr  university of colorado similarly studied the economic policies and conditions of states between the years of one hundred sixty four and two thousand and four he concluded that higher tax rates have a significant negative impact on economic growth simply put creating jobs and creating wealth is the only way out this the economic struggle the fundamental laws of economics prove that economic growth occurs at a more rapid rate with fewer restrictions as opposed to more restrictions and i've held a number of jobs in my life and i can tell you that not one of them came from another person that was unemployed every one of them came from a business owner someone who is willing to exchange their resources for my labor if we want more jobs in america we must empower businesses to create those jobs if you force businesses to pay higher unemployment taxes you will have higher unemployment if you force businesses to pay a new healthcare payroll tax you will have higher unemployment if you force businesses to pay new carbon to emissions taxes you will have higher unemployment if you raise the capital gains tax on small business owners again you will have higher unemployment history is replete with failed attempts to tax and commies to prosperity winston churchill captured it best when he said we contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handles the problem of too few jobs cannot be answered by punishing the very businesses th create those jobs i'll close by offering an alternative to what we're doing in my home state of georgia we are seeking to reduce the tax burden on those businesses that hire the unemployed particularly the long term unemployed or making it less copple less costly to start maintain a business  we're going to eliminate silly rules that were dues working capital this year the georgia legislature introduced the jobs opportunity business success act of two thousand and nine letting the world know that georgia is open for business and investors the impetus of this job act is to create jobs open new businesses and encourage investment we believe georgia businesses that hire unemployed george georgian should receive credit we believe that businesses start of these taxes on inventory and business that set taxes stand in the way of a growing george's economy and we believe the state should return any sales tax deposits of the georgia businesses can use that money to hire jordans and finally we believe the best way to reward georgians to invest in our economy is to reduce the burden of investing so in these trying economic times i believe we're the only state in the nation that actually passed legislation this last year to cut our capital gains rate by fifty percent the best way to stimulate economy is to get the american people working again by providing incentives for businesses to hire those people who are currently unemployed we can turn a government depend it into a self sufficient chairman thank you for this opportunity to talk with you about tennessee's efforts to utilize stimulus funds to help its citizens during the economic downturn as is true nationwide statistics part of the story of how the recession has impacted tennessee in august of this year the statewide unemployment rate was ten point eight percent from six point seven percent in august of two thousand and four point eight percent in august of two thousand and seven case loads the economic assistance programs administered by the department of human services have skyrocketed today one in six tennesseans receive benefits to the supplemental nutritional nutrition assistance program or snap formally known as stamps in the last year alone snap case loads of increased by twenty five percent statewide in addition sixteen percent more families are receiving cash assistance compared to last year through our temporary assistance for needy families program which is known as famil first in tennessee historically public assistance programs see a delayed impact from economic downturn sometimes even after other indicators begin to improve this recession appears to be no different either by choice or d program requirements families often exhaust their resources before applying for benefits many of tennessee citizens who have never had to government assistance before are looking for a little help to get them back on their feet just in the last month the state introduced find help t n which is a web based tool designed to connect tennesseans with social service programs and resources but perry county a small rural county near tennessee near the tennessee river and western middle tennessee is suffering from much more than an economic downturn governor bredesen has described the economic situation there as no less than a depression in january of this year the unemployment rate in perry county reached twenty seven point three percent significantly higher than the nation during the depression of twenty four point nine percent in one nine hundred thirty three recognizing the plight of perry county the governor called upon cabinet members from human services economic and community development labor and workforce development transportation and environment and conservation to identify both short and long term options to restore economic vitality to the county to the combined efforts of the state government agencies local government and private employers in the community a swift effort was launched to put perry county resident back to work using primarily american recovery and reinvestment act funds on may fifteenth in the county seat of london governor br announced the program for perry county in front of a building shared by the department of human services and the department of labor and workforce development immediately after the governor's remarks individuals in the crowd were invited to go inside have their eligibility for subsidize work determined and attend a job fair where participating employers began the interview process within a week residents of perry county were working as a result of this program to date more than three hundred ninety people have been placed in jobs through this program with eighty four different employers participating employers may not supplant existing position to subsidize jobs and receive pay and benefits that are in step with the other workers i'm happy to say that by august of this year the unemployment rate in perry county was down to eighteen point six percent again statistics only tell a part of the story it's heartwarming to hear firsthand about the impact to the lives of perry county families and to know that this may be the jumpstart needed to create a sustainable economy in amik recovery a young woman from london told issues been able to make her house payment and avoid foreclosure thanks to her job subsidized with erro funds another perry county resident said i honestly do not know where i'd be today if it was not for this wonderful program and yet another gentleman described as family situation every bill i had was due i didn't know what i was going to do here i had my wife and kids depending on me and everything we owned was on the line i was about to lose it all then i found out about the stimulus plan of course jobs subsidized can only be these jobs can only be subsidized for so long but the influx of stimulus dollars into perry county has allowed some employers to grow their businesses so that they can retain their subsidized employees after even after the federal dollars stopped flowing one example in the food industry is a company that makes fried pies which they mail out another participating employer a media company has already expanded its business and expects to continue that trend when this happens we can truly say that these funds were a short term investment with long term dividends the governor is addressing concerns with the long term economic success in the county in other ways spearheaded by the planning efforts of the department of economic and community development and the department of environment and conservation investments are being made to cultivate the county's scenic potential for tourism related outdoor activities canoeing and hiking included in this initiative is an educational component to enhance the area's human capital the program includes a partnership with the tennessee board of regents to provide unemployed residents of perry county with the opportunity for one year of free to ition at three nearby community colleges we have also used the arrow funding in tennessee to help throughout the state as i mentioned earlier the program administered by the department of human services the programs are seen unprecedented participation to help manage the flood of paperwork we're using stimulus dollars to expand a program that was already in place to provide ten of clients with one year temporary jobs these positions allow the department to provide a higher level of customer service and the participants gain valuable work experience which makes them excellent candidates for employment in the private or public sector when their temporary placements are completed this experience allows participants to develop and model the basic skills that are needed to get and keep a job things such as showing up every day being on time dressing appropriately having backup plan to an children  sick or car breaks down all these attributes may seem simple they're often some of the most significant barriers to consistent employer employment for tanna recipients are also includes a good significant funding for whether as a si assistant and agencies determine eligibility for this program require additional staff to quickly process these applications were meeting the needs of these agencies by placing panel participants and subsidized as it positions on a temporary basis in doing so whether ization agencies are receiving the temporary help needed to process the expanded volume of applications tennessee low income families receive home improvements to enhance energy efficiency and once again opportunities have been made available for tennesseans to move from welfare to work in closing we believe there are more months ahead of rising case loads and economic hardship however as we have demonstrated in the perry county experience we're also convinced that in communities across the state stimulus dollars have allowed individuals to keep their heads above water and in many cases provided opportunities for tennesseans to improve their circumstances during these difficult times as one man from perry county said this job here is not a permanent fix we still need some kind of industry to look income into perry county but for right now we've got hope and when you've got hope you've got a way thank you and i'm happy to tell us what it's like on the phone thank you very much and thank you for this invitation and also congressman for your support and co sponsorship of h r two eleven that calling for two one one act as you said crisis clinic  operates the king county two one one community information line and we've been doing this since one thousand nine hundred seventy three and we have a wide range of information about community especially how the safety net is holding up and so while i'm going to be talking about some specific examples of king county these trends are applicable to many to one once across the nation so what's different now than it was one or two years ago the first thing is more people are calling for help and it's not just people who are living at the poverty level as you might expect those are the majority of our callers and sixty five percent of the needs that they ask for are basic needs are financial assistance rental assistance shelter food clothing but we're seeing an emerging trend of middle income and working families who are calling two one one they tell us i used to volunteer at my food bank now i'm the one who stand in line and this is reinforced by the skyrocketing number of calls that we're receiving in two thousand and six we got about one hundred thousand calls this year it'll be two hundred thousand and by two eleven two hundred seventy thousand call second our callers have multiple and more complex needs in the past they called for one or two services now it's three or four and this is shown by how long it takes us to talk with these callers on the phone in two thousand and six it was about three minutes and forty two seconds on average now it's five and a half minutes our staff also tell us that the emotional content of the call is much higher these are desperate people exhausted their family their friends the resources that they normally turn to and they're desperate for help because of their multiple needs we've seen the referrals that we make to community services go up by twenty percent as i said before it's not just the chronically poor it's middle income families whose breadwinners have been laid off and starting in march we made a note of people who mention that they've been laid off and since that time more than twenty five hundred of our callers have told us that's the reason that they're calling because they lost their job so we started tracking and seeing what kind of services do they need and we looked at some of the categories that are a little higher higher income people would look for of the first nine months of our weight compared to the first nine months of this year and saw that request for legal assistance related to bankruptcy went up one hundred fifty percent and this trend really started in january of this year and now averages about thirty nine calls a month which is about two calls per day the high point was in august when we had sixty three calls mortgage floor closure calls two hundred and forty six percent and unemployment claims increased four hundred and forty percent the reason this is so significant is that most people know that if you lose your job you call the state unemployment office so people who are calling us to ask for this information tells us that these people have never used any services before and they don't know where to start we're also looking at requests for health care which has gone up fifteen percent and we're really concerned about this because we know the state of washington is dissin rolling thousands of people out the basic health plan we're also concerned that cobra will be expiring and people will be needing more health services so we're seeing an increased demand for help at a time when state and local governments are reducing services and funding an example is in king county the executive is bringing forth a budget that eliminates funding for human services including a hundred thousand dollars of funding for two one one already this year we've eliminated two hundred services out of our database because they're no longer available for people to one one is the connector in the community that makes it efficient for people to navigate this very complex world of government and private services to one one is to human services what nine one one is to public safety unfortunately twenty percent of all americans don't have access to two one  s king county like many other to one once across the nation get funding from our local united way funding from state local governments grants and charitable foundations and individual but the calling for two one one act is very important and i know that there are h r two one one house one hundred and forty nine bipartisan co sponsors of this bill including six members of this committee and we  and voluntarily not only that those measures only reflect the people on average over the course of a year one third of the workforce will be unemployed or under employed one time or another and that would be around forty percent  talk the high unemployment rate will increase by half child poverty in the african american community we will see child poverty one out of two children in the years ahead for middle income families we can anticipate  income of fourteen thousand dollars over the next four years just from the higher unemployment up to long for a recession is not only a human catastrophe it also damages our long term growth potential as investment and innovation decline  and as the learning of our children is damaged by housing problems health problems rental stress and income was i would actually say that the damage to the disadvantaged children learning from the recession will be far greater than any education policies can help and the education policies are actually on the table yet we don't think of it this way fortunately the recovery act has been a bold and effective tool for moderating the employment decline and stabilizing the economy it has done this by providing fiscal relief for state local governments income support such as unemployment insurance to terminal assistance and payments to recipients through the making work tax cut that reduced tax withholdings in april and through the early stages of a major public investment program in infrastructure science energy and education i want to thank the chairman of the committee for your major role in accomplishing that we estimate that the recovery package has been creating two hundred to two hundred  fifty thousand jobs a month since april the economy is estimated to be growing in the third quarter which is june to september period and without the impact of the recovery package there would have been continued economic decline despite this progress much work to be done some claim somehow that the recovery package isn't working by simply pointing to continue job loss i consider this peculiar especially from those who favored the policies that got us into this mess let us examine a picture of president obama as someone who just inherited an apartment building it turns out to be completely on fire he rallies all the fire trucks he can find and he douses the fire in half the floors yet the critics complain that some of the floors are still on fire and it turns out that they were the ones who lit the fire and then they say let's withdraw the fire truck that's the way i see this debate going on right  now it should be pointed out that unemployment is certainly higher than was expected at the time of the election or in the administration's own projections mr lender appropriately said that the administration said that unemployment would exceed eight percent if we got the recovery package however that is not a policy failure and i look forward to a dialogue about that this in fact is an embarrassing failure of my very own profession in the bamber the blue chip forecast looked at what the g d p decline was going to be over the last half of two thousand and eight and the first three months of two thousand and nine it said that the economy was going to be declining at a one and a half percent rate which is pretty mild it turned out it was about a five percent rate more than three times as much they also said that unemployment in the first quarter of two thousand and nine was going to be six point nine percent it turned out to be eight point one percent in fact in march it was eight point five percent i would submit that you can hardly say that an unemployment rate higher than eight percent recovery act really started having in effect a loss of six million jobs or four point three percent of the total job this clearly can't be blamed on the obama administration let me mention a few things about ways to create jobs i think we also all can agree that people people need relief but they also want jobs first providing relief what these people are doing the people providing the social services supported by this committee by helping the people who are being hurt you are giving money to people who we know are going to spend as they spend it that actually generates jobs throughout the economy we need to do much more of that and that's the work of this committee to  is a no brainer goldman sachs says that we're going to see the states balance their budget and cause the economy to actually slow down by zero point six to zero point seven percent over the next twelve months that's a loss of around seven hundred thousand jobs right there we need to help fill the hole for the state governments so that they don't do that and i would note that when you do that the jobs that are created are in the private sector not all public sector jobs three i think we have to return to being able to provide direct government employment public service jobs in the government and the nonprofit sector especially in distressed communities we have to start that we can get a half a million jobs going you know within a year i think it's going to be needed in many many communities across the country especially the very hard hit communities represented by people here for the there's a part of the house repair recovery act that did make it through the senate that helped provide infrastructure spending for schools these to me a no brainer to do something like that this summer we can repurpose and build lots and lots of schools and create jobs last i'd say we should implement a jobs tax credit it's something that i normally don't favor but at this point of the business cycle in these desperate situations i think we can reimburse employers for some of the increase payroll taxes that they have based on the increase payroll taxes they pay and less for those who think that this is a problem to spend and i'm really a five hundred billion dollars of more expenditure over the next two years that we should actually pay for this i think we can pay for this starting with taxes that are implemented in three years from now and i would recommend a financial transaction reducing bill over a ten year window if we couple robust jobs package with the financial transactions tax and even give us money for other needed programs and i look forward to discussion with the thank you  today what i'd like to do is to start my testimony with two key points which i will then elaborate on first as many of you know the poverty released recently that poverty increased last year and it is certain to increase earlier this year didn't include provisions to actually provide support to people who are in need and second i would like to talk about the t n f program which has been highly responsive to increase unemployment poverty in only a few states and this is in contrast to the snap program also known as the food stamp program which has responded quickly and effectively to increase poverty unemployment and all the states first the chairman jim when you gave your remarks you  provisions i think an important point about that is that only cover seven provisions and those provisions only cover about a quarter of the recovery act funding so that it's missing a lot of what's happening and one piece that is not included in our  is the five billion dollars that was included in the emergency contingency fund for tiana and that fund was created so that to provide more cash assistance to families who spend more on providing emergency assistance to families with a can stave off crises and into create the new subsidized employment program some of what you've heard about already those funds have made it possible for states to meet increased demand for assistance it has made it possible for them to oregon have in the period we're looking which is from march two thousand and eight two thousand and nine experience more than a doubling of the number of people who are unemployed so they've been hit hard by the recession they are serving an additional  thousand families more a month in their program and that in the most recent sort of iteration actually is a increase of thirty five percent in caseload they are expecting to draw down over the next two years seventy four point nine million dollars from the fund and without that additional funding one thing they would have done was they would have completely eliminated their program for unemployed two parent families and they would have reduced eligibility for employment related child care they also had some other cuts which would people applying for disability and for newly employed claim is where they would have had to reduce those we're able to maintain those programs because of the additional funding we also know that states are at least ten states and we sure there more that are out there that we don't know are playing to create or expand subsidize employment programs so that they really can provide work opportunities and not lose the work focus of the program california as an example is planning to draw down three hundred million dollars from the  from the emergency fund to create a subsidized employment program and los angeles alone is planning to provide jobs for ten thousand individuals who would otherwise not have san francisco is as an existing program that they're playing f additional thousand programs and states are being creative in the way they use those funds new york as an example new york is planning to have expanded tree existing transitional jobs program but they're also planning to do a health outreach programs that they can both get people to help benefits they need while they're providing jobs and they're also planning to do a green jobs program which will help to spur the development of those jobs florida provides an example where they have a county much like was described in tennessee that had huge layoffs and in that what they are what they're doing is they're using the employees subsidize employees to staff a call center to try and increase address and increase demand so they're both addressing the needs of people who need the jobs as well as helping to program are at an all time high they've increased by thirty percent since the beginning of the economic down turn and cases have increased in every state so it really has been effective in systematic across the board is really a very different story the answers to that there's much more that we could learn but i think there are some things that we probably do know one is that for the last thirty years we really have had a focus on decreasing flows and been very slow to because of the stigma because they don't think they're eligible or they have time limits and they expect they will not be eligible and may not be what i'd like to do now is to focus on just two strategies there are more in my written testimony about things that i think we can do to actually try and address some of these needs the first that i'd like to focus on is a limited incentive for states to serve fewer poor families in our channel programs even when poverty is increasing  what's interesting about the teen a program that is different from the snap program is it really tries to serve two very different functions so it has a safety net function as an employment function and the way we have structured the incentives in the system those two functions are at odds with each other and we are not doing either one of them well so i think one of the things that we need to be thinking about when reauthorized how can we come up with an improved incentive system and measures for performance in the system that really allow the states to achieve both of those functions and do both of them well it isn't moving away from an employment focus again it's trying to figure out how do you provide assistance for families when they are in crisis as our witnesses described and how do you also really help them to improve their long term employment outcomes when so that they planned important considering it is realizing that there really is when you thinking about the safety net is not losing sight of how long term the consequences of this are going to be and despite improvements in the economy as a whole we look at each area individually and i think that's the way we've approached it what would work in a perry county is not necessarily something that would work in a memphis tennessee area perry county was is isolated there is nothing else they are there's not any other kind of safety net there they're not for profit organizations all of those sorts of things in there so we're continuing to look at counties or areas programs but what michigan did is that it created a program called jepp plus which was an additional route to employment we targeted education as the central factor so instead of taking the subsidized route which we think is an important route and a workable route what we did is provide literacy  programs high school programs and training programs matched to that and what we found was nearly a hundred percent placement in the few programs that we could fund unfortunately that program think what we're seeing in the states there is a start up a good thing is that there are states that were doing this before the recession started so there is experience to build on the transitional jobs network has created resources that states can is important that what florida did is again it was a community that had lost a lot of jobs they came together as a community and decided on how they can make that work what a common model is that i would work in lots of places is what and i was surprised to hear my economist friends suggest that he agrees with that now to encourage people to hire or businesses to hire people that have been long term unemployed and what we did the way we crafted ours was to say that you have to hire someone who's been unemployed at least three weeks which meets our definition of long term unemployed or the hard to employ and keep that person employed for a period of twenty four months and at the end of that twenty four months you would then receive a tax credit if you're in the business doing the hiring so we we thought that was a good policy in the short term in the long term  in the first day i ever ran for office i just wanna make my state the most business friendly state america i want businesses to flock to my state open up a business expand a business and hire people because we you know we talk so much about what we can do in the short term to help people that are in trouble but the reality is is that we in government shouldn't be looking for short term answers we should be looking for long term answers in the long term answer is to have an economy that produces a demand for labor so the people have high paying jobs  distinguished panel this morning i suggested that she had the mind of a purana fish in the heart of a doberman pincher but she prevailed and calif passed out of this committee with only one democrat supporting it the president signed it much to our dismay and mary jo bain peter edelman some others that you're familiar with in the social and the life of a famous congressman all resigned from health and human services in protest and i wonder dr prevent if we had had a program that was designed to help people rather than just throw people off the rolls i mean there's no question the town up with designed to reduce the welfare rolls at whatever cost should we turn that to a program to reduce poverty train people to enter into the workforce wouldn't that be a better direction for us to go absolutely i think that one of the things we can about over time is that what happened initially is there was substantial growth in people getting jobs we want to maintain that so i think you want to keep that employment focus but we have also seen is a very substantial increase in the number of people who we refer to as disconnected who are neither receiving assistance and are not connected to the workforce and i think that has to do because of the way we've really been structured and that we don't have enough focus on the safety net function i also would say that i think that there were difficulties when he was created in one thousand nine hundred sixty but the changes that happened in two thousand and five with the deficit reduction act actually i think made everything much worse and the focus on more participation rates have really pushed states to make decisions that they know are not best for families but that they have to meet those rates and even now when jobs are not available states are still focused on trying to figure out how can they meet those rates which they know they're very unlikely to meet and don't make a lot of sense in this climate i wanted to comment on the shelf next to eleven program in two thousand and eight in alameda county california nearly sixty thousand calls from individuals and families looking for help and referrals and i comment what little time i have remaining is coming up in the health reform issue is coming up comes up often and that is that government shouldn't be spending money or doing things to interfere with free enterprise longer than i i can remember i had some experience with free enterprise but i've things are in effect or even tax credits which are a way of spending money i see no difference in the refundable tax credit and actually having somebody a check with which they could subsequently pay their taxes so that and this is a difference between our two sides of the aisle for a couple of hundred years but those of us who think that government can be useful and creative force to create a better life for people to think that now is the time for us to prove that and so that i appreciate all of your suggestions and hope that we your publication of january entitled call for urgent action is justified by economic trends i read the paragraph in its entirety obama is calling on congress to pass stimulus package that would cost between seven and eight hundred billion or more  years that amount would create two point five million jobs in the first year and a total of five million jobs in the first two years and if so it would lower the unemployment rate by three point two percentage points leading to an unemployment rate of about seven percent and while unemployment is still uncomfortably high the stimulus package as envisioned by obama would prevent double digit employment give the economy a solid footing for future growth and begin to meet long term  wrong you're wrong and god bless you and if you're a guy that's just walking around on the streets and you're wrong it doesn't matter but if you're an economist coming in testifying before the ways and means committee it matters is what i'm trying to do i've never met you before i'm trying to  well informed and interesting you're off by almost three points ten months ago and my question is you're arguing with probably the same sense of urgency that you are arguing today that you're  point that had we not done the recovery package we would be in far worse shape leading to a stimulus recovery this quarter i would also say that my estimates of the effects were based on a proposal that didn't make its way all the you mr lewis i want to thank you for all the service you give our state and i know you are widely respected by people on both sides of the aisle when i was discussing taking money from a private individual to give the government the government then to spend on whatever they're going to spend it on whether it be a policeman a schoolteacher as my mother is a retired public school teacher and i certainly valued her job the point that i was making was the resources left in the hands of the private sector would have produced as many jobs as they would be spent by the government now whether it produced the exact same type of job that you're looking for was not the point of of what i was stating but to suggest that by saying that the money stays in the private sector means that  don't value the policeman or the or the teacher if you drew that impression i apologize that was certainly not what i was trying to state do you agree don't happen struggling family is not only good for them good and put  only way for that for educate if you left more money in my pocket i would spend more money on my children's  washington that's a great question i've had people ask me that before and as you know of course the recovery act and the so called stimulus money comes to us and hundreds of different forms we have held ourselves to some we didn't avail ourselves to others but i'll put it to you this way if my spouse were to go to an electronics store and they were going out of business which sadly is the case in many parts of america today and or in my case my spouse were to purchase with a credit card a large screen television and i couldn't take that back and get my money back when i'm not trying to television on well i gotta pay the bills so yeah i'm going to turn the television on to watch it now that's not the wisest decision she could have made but the fact the matter is it has been made so when you suggest that the state of georgia who almost always been a donor state not take any other resources well that would be awful foolish because we paid a lot of money into the federal government to get those resources but i'll give you one example if you're familiar with this area one of the areas of money that we did take was in transportation and seventy percent of all the transportation money that we had to take did absolutely nothing to alleviate atlanta's traffic problem i know you're familiar with that we have the third highest traffic problems of any major city united states because we were required to spend that money on shovel ready projects shovel ready projects are projects in our state that means you simply repave a road repaving a road doesn't get anyone to work with her it doesn't help us with economic development to alleviate the traffic prob have so all i'm suggesting is that when government does something they ought to do it right spending seventy percent of the money on repaving roads doesn't make sense in our area of metro atlanta sorry  i think it differs mostly in that in the intensity with which we did it we subsidize jobs in other parts of the state but but not in that whole team going in to  consolidated effort to turn that county around and so arrogantly was more hard than of those quite frankly it appears to me that what you're doing is sort of similar to what we yes if that were possible i think our governor has said for our state that sort of unapologetic if he could put a w p a program in right now that would be something he'd be interested in doing because  trying to do and i headed up a committee that studied this for a two year period is look into creating more manufacturing jobs because we understand when manufacturing jobs come into our state they spend an enormous amount of money investing in facilities that probably they're not going to let sit idle so so before we get out of here thank you mr chairman i want to thank all the panelists and senator rogers i think we can all have legitimate disagreements on on certain issues and fundamental approaches to various issues but it seems to me we should all be arguing over the same set of facts and i think your testimony betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about how the economic recovery bill was structured and provided as i hope you're aware one of the largest tax cuts to middle income americans in united states history that i'm familiar that there were tax measures included there and that does exactly what you suggested we should do does not put more money into the pockets of individual taxpayers so they go out and spend it allows them to keep more the money there and yes can you in fact talking about how the fact that the recovery takes money out of the private sector hands immediately and somehow transfers that dollar right away to a government program can you tell me what colors that we took out of the hands of your constituents this past year with respect to the recovery package i apologize if that was my statement that was not what i meant to say whether you're taking the dollars of today's taxpayers or the dollars of tomorrow's taxpayers it's it's somewhat irrelevant to man a fact i think it's it's it's worse if you take it from tomorrow's taxpayers because they haven't had a chance to  can be a legitimate debate about it was to do some we said that as a federal government important to try and confuse a resource in the economy to put people back to work at a time when the private sector is not creating jobs and yes there is a question of course on how you pay that but when you agree that when the economy is falling through the roof falling through the floor that our priority should be to try and turn the economy around so that number one people can get back to work and it can back on my way not a band aid approach why wouldn't we all with all that was told you wouldn't hear we've got two minutes to make the vote and i want to thank all the witnesses for your testimony and we'll probably be back on this issue again