i do not think anything has happened. >> there is a column that says you have failed already with medicare reform. you do not clarify your points. you are turning a third sheet. -- you are turning the other cheek. the opposition is suing. what i am saying is that you're not selling it. either clarify your point of view for sol 8. you can take it one by one, on the use the nation -- on the euthanasia, on the other items. >> i do not think there is a start and finish line. if there is, we have not gotten to the finish line. that is why i have told this

gentleman that our guys would be to continue talking to your constituents, continue to talk to them about why it is important that we get health care and health care and trench reform, why it is important that we deal with -- health care insurance reform, why it is important that we deal with -- >> [unintelligible] >> helen, the president has had a pretty good week. we will take this week. >> on the mexico summit, there seems to be the possibility of agreements coming down the road. the mexican government points to resolutions for something that could be deliverable in the near future. what are the obstacles to reaching that? >> let me not get into the back-

and-forth on what has to be ironed out on that. we do not expect anything -- to announce anything big. obviously, it is something that the president and members of congress on both sides of the issue are concerned about. it is important to our relationship with mexico and to our continued economic growth. i do not want to get into a back-and-forth on issues that might be a standing up and on how they might be solved. >> the president sounded really wound up last may that the campaign rally when he said that bank prices did not happen on my watch. i do the folks who created this mess to do a lot of talk and to

get out of the way. who is getting under the president's skin like that? >> i think the president just gets fired up. it is liberating to get outside of 1600 pennsylvania avenue. >> it was not that far. [laughter] >> you would be surprised at how liberating it can be to get outside the complex. [laughter] i think the president gets fired up. i think the president wants to -- look, we get free advice every day from people with that took the bus and rode it into the ditch and want free advice on how to get it out. we get advisory day on how to pay the mx and build from a bunch of guy -- bmx bill -- we

get advice every day on how to pay the mx bill from the guys who ran it up. >> have you heard from judge? >> -- have you heard from judge sotomayor? >> she will be sworn in on saturday. he will not be here. it will be for the chief justice and family and friends and then there will be a ceremony that will be a more public one. >> next week, when the president meets with the judge sotomayor,

this is a very special thing for me because i was born in puerto rico. is she going to be here? >> i didn't think there will be an open mike night. but i think there will be an open press component to it. >> [unintelligible] to what extent will the president go to make sure it stays at $80 billion, no more and no less. >> i think we're getting ahead of ourselves about negotiating differences. the auk -- the house is in that ballpark. we can keep important players involved and everybody at the table. >> tonight, we will bring you remarks from ann coulter of the national conservative student

conference at george washington university. you can see her remarks live beginning at 8:15 p.m. eastern here on c-span. tomorrow, we have the scoring in a ceremony for judge sonia sotomayor. see it live tomorrow here on c- span. florida senator mel martinez held a news conference earlier this afternoon where he announced his intention to resign from the senate before his term ends in 2011. his remarks were about five minutes. >> hello, everyone. thank you for coming 12 years ago, i offered myself as a candidate for public office in florida out of a deep sense of appreciation -- of appreciation for the people of florida who supported me as a young

immigrant. first, i had the privilege of being the mayor of orange county and then i was a member of the president's cabinet. now, i have had the honor of serving as the united states senator. i have gained a great respect for the people of florida and have enjoyed immensely serving their interests. i began my term as senator and promised that i would not simply war may seek appeared i promised to take on the difficult issues and work onin their interests. [unintelligible] i am especially grateful to the men and women of our military and their families whom i have had the distinct honor of serving in washington. i have had the platform to speak against the oppression of the cuban regime and my hope for a

better future for the people of cuba. i will continue it as my lifelong passion. i will always be grateful to the people of florida for bestowing upon me the singular honor of repressed -- of representing them in the united states senate. at this stage in my life, after nearly 12 years of public service in florida and in washington, it is time to return to florida and my family. today, i am announcing my decision to step down from public office effective upon a successor taking office to fill out the remainder of my term. i have a joy to my time at the senate immensely -- i have enjoyed my time of the senate immensely. i have a difficult time leaving the relationships that i have developed in the united states senate. i also want to thank ms. mcconnell for his guidance, for his friendship, and for his insights to me while in the

senate. i also want to thank my family. they have made many sacrifices during this time of public life. this will give us an opportunity to reminiscent chairs the wonderful memories that we have developed together and the opportunity to move on in our lives, a closer opportunity for family time. i will continue to be an active voice for issues in the -- that are important to florida and in the united states. i look forward to be a part of the resurgence of the republican party. i will take questions. >> [unintelligible] >> absolutely not. this is a free country. >> [unintelligible] >> for the reasons i just stated. >> [unintelligible]

>> that is the governor's decision. i respect that. i trust him to do a good job on that. i called the governor to tell him when i was doing. we talk about this potential. i think he is prepared to conduct a transparent and good process. i leave that in his hands. >> [unintelligible] >> again, i am going to leave all those questions to the governor. >> [unintelligible] >> no, thank the good lord. i am in good health. >> [unintelligible] >> in the next phase in my life will be in the private sector. as a private sector citizen, i hope that i will have a voice to speak on issues that i consider important. but that is as far as it goes. i have no specific plans for my

future of the then it will be a private life. [speaking in spanish] >> [unintelligible] >> no. [speaking in spanish] let me say -- excuse me? >> [unintelligible] >> no, sir. according to my kitty's request,

there will be a 60-day gap where you'll not see much to me at all. thank you very much. >> tonight, we will bring your remarks from ann coulter that george washington university. you can see her remarks live beginning at 8:15 p.m. eastern here on c-span. tomorrow, the swearing-in ceremony for newly confirmed supreme court justice sonia sotomayor. see it live tomorrow here on c- span. all this month, revisit the festivals and fairs we have

covered this year. this weekend, we have panels from the key west literary seminar. >> sunday, frank rich reflects on 15 years of political columns for "the new york times." that is sunday night here on c- span. >> how is c-span funded? >> donations. >> grant funds. >> may be private contributions. >> honestly, i do not know. >> from commercials. >> something from the government and. >> have always c-span funded? 30 years ago, america's cable companies created c-span as a public service, no government mandate, no government money. >> the joint economic committee held a hearing this morning to

look at the latest monthly unemployment figures. there's a report on unemployment numbers for july. karen maloney of new york is the chair. this is about an hour and a half. >> evidence that the stimulus bill is taking hold a starting to emerge. the pace of job loss has moderated significantly in recent months. clearly, the trend is towards recovery. i am optimistic that more americans will be heading back to work as more stimulus projects get under way. while we welcome these signs of improvement, this morning's employment report reminds us of

the high toll that the recession has had on millions of working americans. this recession, which began in to step -- in december 2007, is now the longest and deepest in the post-world war ii period. while the economy is expected to expand later this year, the repression of this recession has turned out a long swell of unemployment for workers. those out of work have found it increasingly difficult to find a job. more than one-third of the unemployed, a staggering 5 million americans, have been without a job for at least six months. it is the highest on record. overt 2.3 million workers have been unemployed for a year or longer. the national employment law project estimates that, by the end of september, more than

500,000 workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own will extend -- will exhaust their unemployment benefits. for many, those weekly benefit checks are the ever-so-thin cushion that helps them keep up with their utility bills, stay current on their credit-card bills, and to meet basic needs. congress and the president worked swiftly to expand and extend the unemployment insurance program for the thousands of workers losing their jobs each month. we funded of debt 20 additional weeks at the state level through the extended benefits program. the emergency unemployment compensation program provided additional 20 weeks of federally funded benefits for workers in all states and an additional 15 weeks for laid-off workers in states with exceptionally high rates of unemployment.

many jobless americans are receiving an additional $25 to $100 each month. for many of these unemployed workers, it is not just to the income that they have lost, but millions of jobless americans and their families have evaporated health insurance benefits. the report was released yesterday estimating that 1.4 million women and 2.7 million men have lost their employment- based health insurance because of job losses during this recession. today's job report makes it clear that we are making progress, but it will be a long road to recovery by extending unemployment benefits, we will give out of work americans some peace of mind as they continue to search for work. by passing health care reform, millions of uninsured americans will have access to affordable health care insurance regardless

of their employment status. i look forward to working with my colleagues in the house and the senate to act swiftly on behalf of the millions of unemployed americans across this country. i now call on my colleague, mr. cummings, for five minutes. >> thank you very much, madame chair. as we continue to emerge from the worst recession since the great depression, it is sobering when the loss of 247,000 jobs qualifies as good news. secretary geithner and alan greenspan suggested on sunday that the united states economy may have turned the corner. both men point to forecasts that portend a possible economic growth for the second half of 2009. further, "the new york times" reported that the stimulus has

driven the recovery, adding two percentage points to the economic activity. however, as we know, unemployment is a lagging indicator. as dr. larry summers noted, it will be sometime before economic to growth produces consistent job growth. i would resist any impulse to put on rose-colored plastic. i have -- rose-colored glasses. people were constantly saying that the stimulus would do no good. i expected to hear, as it did from former senator and fred thompson this morning, that some folks are giving no credit to this administration for their efforts. i wanted to make sure that the record is clear that, while we may not have seen the very end to this long tunnel, the fact is that the things we're doing

are making a difference. today's data tells us that the number of long-term unemployed continues to climb. 5 million americans have been unemployed for over six months. of those, 2.3 million have been unemployed for more than 12 months. as families travel to put food on the table and pay rent each month, the state's coffers on which the unemployed and depend continue to be empty. long-term unemployed residents impact states and local government in the form of reduced tax revenue. when this occurs, services are put at risk. the unemployment safety net has been stretched dangerously thin

in some states. this congress has previously taken dramatic action in this recession to reduce the burden of unemployment on families. the stimulus bill included funds to extend and increase state unemployment benefits. this continues to be so essential for those who are struggling. now we find that the weight of the cumulative job loss comes to $12.1 billion from the federal unemployment trust fund just to keep the benefits available to the unemployed residents appeared facing the potential -- residents. facing the potential exhaustion of this program, [unintelligible] this 11th-hour action will ensure that 4.6 million workers will have a vital unemployment benefits in august and

september. however, i also hope that, upon our return from recess, we will be able to move another extension of unemployment benefits through the house. while the recession has provided its share of bad actors, the unemployed, our constituents, remain our responsibility. i am proud of what we have accomplished in congress. but i know that we can and will do more and that we will do better. i look forward to the testimony of the commissioner. with that, madam chair, i yield back. >> senator klobuchar for 5 minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. it looks like we have a little stability here. and look forward to asking questions of you. we know that we are not out of

this. this will not turn around overnight. the fact is, being in minnesota, there have been signs i have seen -- we have a 20% increase in home sales in our state. i met with the realtors in minnesota and they attribute a lot of that to the $8,000 first time buyer tax credit. when i was going to get coffee, this guy was standing next to me in line and told me that he is overwhelmed by work. he says, i move people. i have moved people out of apartments when they bought their first time home. we have seen in my state some of the effects of it. the cash for clunkers program -- our state of minnesota was fourth in the country of the number of people who used to that program over that weekend.

it was over california and michigan. i think you can see people are starting to believe that the economy is reflecting the numbers we have seen. that is not enough. we're still not where we should be. i have talked with some many people in their states, letters we have received, people who say they have put their kids to bed and then set at the kitchen table with their head in their hands and wondering how they going to make ends meet. we heard from somebody the other day, a woman who is unemployed and using her savings to pay $250 per month to pay for health care with a two hundred dollars for deductible. suddenly, the rug was pulled out from under them.

this was not the traditional set of unemployed. these were younger workers who had moved up there and bought houses. the unemployment extension is very meaningful to those people. but there are parts of minnesota that are seeing a 20% unemployment rate. that is unacceptable. i am very much looking forward to see commissioner paul and other witnesses and their view about the hopeful figures that we have seen for stability and what that means as we go forward. thank you very much. >> thank you, senator. now i would like to introduce commissioner hall. dr. keith hall is the commissioner of labor statistics for the united states department of labour. it is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, and

analyzes the essential data and is -- and disseminates it to the american public, the u.s. congress, and other agencies. he also served as chief economist for the white house counsel of the senate -- of economic advisers for two years under president george w. bush. before that, he was the top economist for the department of commerce. he spent two years at the u.s. international trade commission. dr. hall received his b.a. degree from the university of virginia, his m.s. in at the lot -- in economics from purdue university. welcome. >> thank you, madam chair and members of the committee. the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4%. payroll job losses over the past three months have averaged three have 31,000 compared to an average of 645,000 over the past

six months. employment has fallen by six but 7 million since the start of the recession in december 2007. -- by 6.7 million since the start of the recession in december 2007. over the past three months, job losses [unintelligible] factory employment has fallen by two million since the start of the recession. because layoffs in on manufacturing has already been large, fewer workers were laid off for seasonal shutdowns in july. the seasonally adjusted gain

does not necessarily indicate improvement in the industry. employment in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing has been in a long time decline. it is half of what it was an early 2000. in july, the losses continued in trade, transportation, and warehouse activities. job losses have lessened substantially in services. health-care employment grew abouthus far. average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers is at $18.56. for the fact -- from june 2008

to june 2009, the consumer price index for urban wage earners continue to decline by 1.7%. the unemployment rate was little changed. it was a four. cents -- it was 4% when the recession began. the number of long-term unemployed continues to rise. in july, 5 million people had been unemployed for more than six months. the hemp plant population ratio is 59.4% in july. it has fallen by 3.3 percentage points since the recession began. after air rises last fall, the number of such workers is little changed in four consecutive months. in summary, non-farm payroll

fell in july and the unemployment was little changed at 9.4%. my colleagues would be happy to enter your questions. >> thank you very much, commissioner paul. i usually ask you if there are any bright spots in the report. are there any green shoots are glimmers of hope? today, i can ask you what are the bright spots and women's of hope. -- and glimmers of hope. >> there is moderation in the job loss. the moderation has been pretty broad, which i think is a good sign. i would say that we are not in a recovery yet, but this is the path that we have to go through to get to recovery. we have this -- we have to see moderation first. a couple of things that i will mention that are indicators of

future conditions in the job market are these. . >> do you believe we have seen the worst or is there more ahead? it is quite a bit moderated quite a bit. it is hard to estimate or project what is going to happen. on the whole, this is a good sign. >> that is great. are there any sectors seen more

job creations then job losses? housing sales are up and there are other areas. >> across the board, the job loss is moderated which is positive. a few sectors like health-care have continued to increase and one and all along. a few sectors like be financial securities, is getting fairly close to actually getting some job gains. a few of these issues are not significant. it is around 0. >> are there any indicators of overall job losses will continue to slow in coming months? >> i do not want to speculate too much.

to under 47,000 jobs is a lot of jobs and that is a big loss, but given the context of what we have been having,. this is a good trend for the moment. >> when recovery comes, the job loss moderates. there has been a significant. -- a significant lag. for example, in the last recession, consistent job loss ended and there was no consistent job creation for almost two years. this is what people talk about the labor market being a lagging indicator. the 1919 recession had a lag of about one year.

-- of the 1990 recession had a lot about -- a lag of about one year. >> thank you. any other comments? >> mr. cummings for five minutes? >> thank you very much madame chair. i was just looking at page 2 of this report and i was looking at the african-american figures, mr. hall. from what i see here, in july, it was 14.5%? >> in july 2009? >> yes, 14.5% sidon. >> that compares to when we go back to may and it was 14.9% and then in june it was 14.7%.

as usual, that is substantially higher than the average rate for the country. is that right? >> yes. >> while there is an improvement there, does that improvement -- does that surprise you or is that how you expected to be? >> it is kind of how i expected to be. the un and plummet rate for african-americans runs higher than the average employment rate and those of more during a recession, but the actual changes do match the overall unemployment rate. we have had a pretty flat unemployment rate and it has been fairly flat for african- americans. >> moving on to another subject, you mentioned that we are going through moderation. what does moderation mean? he said that moderation has been brought. could you give me an example of the broadness of to talk about? >> -- broadness that you talk

about? >> it has been brought over many industries. it does not always happen that way. it has been very deep and we are backing out the same way. we are not seeing just particular sectors of the economy that are starting to improve. we're starting to see brought improvement. >> is that a good thing? >> yes. >> and why is that a good thing? >> hopefully because it is a matter of consumer confidence coming back. that is at the heart of a recession. when consumers do not spend, things do not go well for the economy. >> on another subject, the committee released a report that discussed comprehensive health insurance and its impact on

women. in the report showed that there are specific health risks for women. for example, women are more likely to rely on their spouse's employer to provide them with health insurance. this is more often due to the fact that women are more likely to work part-time and thus be eligible for in collier health benefits. what is the unemployment rate for women? >> the unemployment rate for women is a 0.1%? >> what is the unemployment rate -- the hundred one that rate for women? we do not break out the broader underutilization numbers by gender. >> our report yesterday reported that young women are facing high

unemployment. 50.7%, and they are less likely to have employer based health insurance. by what industry is the segment of the population that is employed? >> i don't really know. >> you would not know the current unemployment rate. the average length of unemployment is increasing as unemployed workers are having trouble. how is this impacting women? which you have that permission? >> yes. i think -- do we have it broken down by gender? >> i do not think we have the long term broken down by demographic and permission. 01 and i have fully

participated in the job loss during this recession and so i would say they are probably well represented in the long-term unemployed. >> i see that my time is running out. i want you to answer some questions in another round. >> senator? >> thank you very much, madame sherr. thank you commissioner paul. here we are again. -- a thank you very much, madame chair. you mentioned construction manufacturing and sectors that seem to be getting better more quickly. i know you have always managed -- spoke of health care doing fine. what is the -- what do you see as the hardest hit sectors and what are sectors to see

improvement in? >> i think that through this recession, some of the hardest- hit sectors are construction and manufacturing and services have hit harder -- been hit harder than normal. services are not to believe that hard. >> is that slow? is there any improvement? >> there has been improvement in construction and manufacturing. there is clear moderation in job loss. the manufacturing picture is little less clear. there may be some moderation. it is there, it is coming later than the other sectors. >> how about the areas of improvement? >> the areas of improvement are things like the financial activities that have been hit much harder than almost any past recession.

>> didn't you tell me that temporary help services is a sign that there could be some improvement? >> it is a leading indicator. they start shedding jobs before any other and it typically starts to moderate or even gained jobs before the recession gets better. >>that is the advantage of temporary help. they are there for the flexibility. sometimes they are the first ones to be let go and the first ones to be brought back. >> all right, i was going to ask you about geographic areas. what were the hardest hit states? what are the states that are doing better? i remember when we were at the worst of this that one of these hearings, you were saying how you could not even really point out a geographical area because

it was bad all across the country. has that changed at all? have there been dramatic improvements are dramatic declines? >> i am not seeing any big change in the pattern among states. the unemployment rate has moderated. it has not grown much. it has had roughly the same pattern throughout the states. there may be individual states that are still having trouble. >> what are the states that are hardest hit? >> the largest losses are states like michigan, arizona, nevada, florida. it turns out that california is the hardest hit but that is a very large state. >> which ones are doing the best? >> you can come back on the

second round and tell me. >> i have those numbers, i just have to dig for them. >> i wanted to ask some questions that we got from some citizens. this is a woman from lakeshore, minnesota. she says that she is watching the president's news conference and realized that her husband and heard enough in to any of the categories of families unemployed that he is speaking about. her husband owns a small construction company and does not have the option of filing for unemployment because they are self-employed. her comment is that all the figures and stats that are out there are not even counting those that cannot file unemployment and are on the verge of losing their home because no one else's building.

-- no one else is building. this is from a woman in lakeshore, minnesota. she would means people who do not qualify to get unemployment but have lost their businesses or their incomes. >> we collect information on people who are self-employed. in particular, the household survey. the and one the rate includes basically everybody because that is a phone survey to households. >> what do you see from the small business owners that have been hit by this? >> sure, the self-employed have struggled the same way that the others, the non self-employed, have been carried a this is what has been unique about this recession. it has been a very broad.

>> when we look at this and we look at these numbers and we looked at the 9.4% unemployment, that does not include -- we have already talked about these discouraged workers in the past and it does not include people whose hours have been produced but it does not cover these business owners have lost their businesses. >> it does include this. bucs it does include this? so, doesn't include people who just lost hours? >> exactly. these are people that are part- time for economic reasons. we collect that but it is not part of the unemployment rate. >> so, the answer to this woman is that while she cannot collect unemployment, you look at including her kinds of numbers into your statistics. >> yes, we do. >> thank you very much. >> commissioner, we hear a great deal from the media that this is

the greatest recession since the great depression. i am interested as to how this recession compares to past slumps. how does it compared to past downturns in terms of its impact on the labour market? >> this recession has been a long recession. it has been the longest recession since we have been collecting data on the labour market spirit we have lost 4.8% of our payroll jobs. that is the biggest loss since the 1948 recession. we are talking about 50 years. particularly hard hit at this time has been the service providing sector. manufacturing has been the

hardest hit since 1945. we have lost about 40% of manufacturing jobs -- 14% of manufacturing jobs. >> so, this is the lowest jobless. the united states has ever had? >> since we have been collecting data, yes. since 1940. >> in the last four recessions, how long did it take employment to return to the pre recession peak? >> the last recession took a long time. it took 39 months for it to return to the peak period prior to that, it was 23 months. it has been getting longer and longer over each of the past four recessions. the last two recessions were particularly long.

>> one of the green shoots that has been reported is that new home sales rose last month. there are still almost nine months supplies of new houses on the market. you have any sense of what level of inventory will lead to an increase in construction employment? >> first of all, i would have to say that the supply of houses is not a very good predictor of employment. in large part because right now we have nine months supply where sales are very low end nine months during low sales is not very many houses. what is a good predictor is the number of sales. when sales pickup, the climate does pick up fairly quickly.

i can tell you a little bit about housing starts. once housing starts bottom out, and right now, it has been level for several months, it could take anywhere from a year to a year-and-a-half for construction to pick up after houses have hit bottom. >> how much of the economy is real estate and housing construction and are you tracking how many of these new housing sales are tied to a program for a subsidy of new housing purchases? >> we do not collect that data. census does that. in our data on construction employment and on real estate employment, that may give some indication as to how those industries are doing. there is no way for us to connect that. not the way that we measured data to connected to any policy in particular. >> thank you very much.

mr. cummings? >> what is the trend for hours worked and what does that mean for families that rely on overtime in addition to base salary? >> one of the things that happens when labor markets weakened, the employment rate goes down. it is another burden on families. it is the same thing as people for moving from full-time to temporary or people just having their hours and decline. lately, it has been fairly flat and now it is going up. that is a good sign. if we start to see some substantial movement upward, that could signal an actual improvement in the labour market. >> yesterday, i had the occasion to visit to ottawa dealers in my district in both of them had a

lot of people trying to take the advantage of this cash for clunkers and i want to think the senate for acting on that. but they said that it was really making a difference. do you expect to see the impact of a program like that would pump $3 billion into a program? the u.s. expect to see anything in the future in regard to that? >> i do not want to forecast the policy. >> i know that. and i am not trying to get to to do that. >> i can say something. i am always careful about what i asked you. >> i appreciate that. >> what has happened right now

is the employment. if it is going to have been a fact, it will have an affect going forward because it means factories will come back online. hopefully, they will come back on line quicker. that is if it has a big impact. >> as you probably know, the obama administration, with regard to the stimulus, is going to have a lot of money going into the economy in the next six months. do you expect to see anything resulting from that? >> a lot of that is going into infrastructure and so i guess,

why, if any areas will be affected by that? >> that is a difficult question when the labor market is declining. when we do our surveys, we are asking them to tell us how many people you have on board. we're not asking them to speculate on what the impact has been on any sort of policy. but, i do not know where the stimulus money is for to be spent -- is calling to be sen -s going to be spent that may give us some insight. >> you talk briefly -- you talked briefly about how significant that this. from all that you are seeing, what you can glean from your report, i take it that you get a

hint that people are feeling a little better about. is that a reasonable statement? >> yes, i think that it is. >> so, if that were to continue, the thing that you would see this broad moderation that you talked about continue? would you see it in certain areas like manufacturing or auto sales? the fall they? >> yes. that is a little tough -- to do you follow me? >> -- do you follow me? >> yes. that is a little tough. >> when you got this report today, how did you feel? it is hard to get anything out

of you sometimes, so i am just curious. >> 250,000 jobs is really hard on people, but given the content of things, this is good news. >> big you very much -- think you very much. >> i was just looking back at this chart and thinking about how it was quite a bit worse in january of 2009. seeing these changes, i am thinking about when people get frustrated as i do about our economic situation, remembering the whole the we had to dig ourselves out of and realizing that that is not want to work itself out overnight is tha. is that your thinking? >> es. >> one of the things that i have found most distressing is that those who have gone over to

serve our country, especially in iraq and afghanistan and since 9/11, their unemployment rate is usually significantly higher because they left jobs behind. in minnesota, the left jobs behind and then they come back and those jobs are no longer there. what is the unemployment rate right now for the gulf where it -- of gulf war era veterans who served in the armed services in september 2001? >> right now is 9.8%. that seems closer than it was. " was it last month? >> in may, it was 11.4%. >> in may, it was 11.4%. that is a significant change.

is there any idea what happened? >> i do not know. i will concede if we see a pattern. >> maybe it is because of my questions about this every month. i just find it very disturbing that people have done that and and they serve and then they come back and they do not have a job. we will continue pushing on that issue, but we have seen some improvement. it is still above the national unemployment rate in that it is at 9.8%, but the gap has been decreased. >> that could be very high. it could go up and down for no reason.

thank you. we have discussed the impact on unemployment. what is the unemployment rate for college graduates and high- school graduates and those that do not -- have not completed high school. >> for college graduates, the unemployment rate is 4.7% for people with high school degree but no college, the unemployment rate is 9.4%. >> they are exactly at the national average. >> the unemployment rate is double that of those with college degrees. >> what is the unemployment rate for people who have not finished high school. >> 15.9%. >> you can see one of president has made a prayer order to make sure that people finish high school. it is 15.4% for people who did

not finish high school. what are the trends in this area? >> the recent trend has been pretty much like the overall rate. they have been fairly flat over the last month or two. but the growth since the start of the recession, for example, those without a high-school degree, they have gone from 7.9 to 15.4. >> that is from what time? >> from the beginning of the recession. >> so they have taken a bigger hit. >> . they have not seen despite an unemployment. >> just to conclude with my round, some of my colleagues were asking about the stimulus package.

we know that 25% of that stimulus package is out there. you will see more effects of that as we move forward. the other piece that people do not think about is that the recovery act was one-third of these investments, but the other one-third was shoring up state budgets and unemployment and the other third were the tax cuts. many tax cuts were going to the middle class. what i think is interesting is that you can see the effects of that more immediately in the home buying rates. again, i am basing this on our minister -- on our minnesota statistics. do you see those things more immediately rippling through the unemployment rates from van calls -- agglomerates bank of

-- and unemployment rates? >> the payout is important. thank you very much commissioner hall. >> commissioner paul, how have been unfair in this economic downturn and how have women lost the most jobs during the recession? >> women have lost about 25% of the jobs during this recession. that means that men are losing jobs three-one compared to women. prior to the last recession, women would not lose jobs of all during recessions. while men are experiencing job

loss. women have lost 1.7 million jobs so far. >> certainly the equality in job loss is not something i have been working for. are women moving towards equality in job loss? could you elaborate a little more? >> my guess is that the women's participation rates in a number of industries has gone up. for example, in construction and manufacturing, they are underrepresented. women do not participate so much in the job loss. representation in other industries could be very high. they contribute to the job loss >> could you comment on the trend for minorities and

african-americans and lab -- latinos? has that leveled off? why is happening there, and in what industry are latinos and african-americans losing the most jobs? >> lately, the unemployment rate rise has flattened out like the national numbers. for the most part, the changes in the unemployment rate, while they mirror the overall and won it rate, they never did it to a bigger degree. when the overall unemployment rate goes up, it goes up more for minorities. the trend is pretty much the same. >> could you comment on the difference between men and women? african-american women and africa frafrican-american men ad

likewise for latinos? >> the women's unemployment rate is 8.1%. >> for what? >> just total women. four men, it is 10.5%. for african-americans, the unemployment rate is 14.5%, and four female head of household, african-american women is at 17. %. -- is at 17.8%. >> so it is more? >> yes. that is fairly much in line with

the overall unemployment rate of 12.3%. >> latino women are 12.8% and men are -- then i >> men are probably around 12%. >> do you see this level in of or rising? >> -- it d.c. this led off or rising? >> -- a do you see this level iing off or rising? >> what industries are latinos and african-americans losing the most jobs? do you have a sense of where that job loss is? >> the one pattern that jumps out is the hispanic

representation in construction is fairly high. construction has been hard hit by this recession. hispanic and one rates have gone up quite a bit. there is a less simple pattern -- hispanic unemployment rates have gone up quite a bit. >> what are the numbers telling us that women in the african- american and hispanic communities are more likely to lose their jobs than men? >> i do not know. that is a big question. it is a research sort of question. i would save bad industry representation has an impact, and that will probably explain some of it but i do not know what else explains that. >> thank you very much. mr. cummings for five minutes. but i want to go back to the

question about the military and this whole issue of how much education a person has. i had a town hall meeting the other night. this is a commercial, by the way. i was meeting with some veterans and they did not know about the new gi bill which will allow them to get their tuition paid and in some instances their housing and fees at colleges. i just wanted to know, to let folks know, it appears by what you have said that the more education one has, the better their chances of being unemployed, even during these times. >> yes.

i am just letting the veterans know that may be watching this that they should find out about this new gi bill because it is something that when into effect on august 1 -- went into effect on august 1. it is one thing to have these opportunities and it is another thing to know about them and another thing to take advantage of them. >let's talk about health care for the moment. health care does not seem to go down very much or suffer as much. is that right? >> what do you think pat iyes. >> do you know why that is? >> there is some evidence that there are shortages in certain occupations in health care.

people are willing to move over into health care. beyond that, i do not know. >> on another note, during our press conference yesterday, i think miss maloney may have spoken about it earlier. we learned something that was very interesting. you have a -- the men were older than the women that they married. what is happening, now, is that when they go into medicare with their wives being younger and if the wife was dependent upon the husband for their insurance, she has no insurance. i was wondering, do you know the

unemployment rate for older women? i did not say old, i said older. you may even have a definition for older. i want to be very careful. >> i will pick out our oldest group which is 55 and over. the unemployment rate for women is 7.1%. >> have we seen any kind of trend with regard to that? just like we have seen different trends going up or down, has stayed the same? >> it has gone up. that one does not seem to have leveled off over the last few

months. one thing that is tricky when you get somebody in the 55-over ranges whether they are overage or not. someone can lose a job and stop looking if they're 55 and over and go ahead and take retirement. it may underestimate the issue. >> there is no way that you would have that breakdown? in other words, someone would just say that they retire. you would not have that kind of information? >> no, we do not collect that. >> there is one other thing that i am concerned about. the states that are running out of money. do we see any impact on those unemployment rates? >> almost every state is going through a lot of problems right now. why do we see there? -- what do we see there?

>> we're starting to lose jobs. for a while, they were hovering around no job growth and no job loss. they have averaged 6000 jobs a month. it seems like the employment at the state government will has worsened a bit. >> i see that my time has run out. thank you. >> centre clover shot? -- centre clover shashaw? there was a surprise drop in the unemployment rate and a smaller number of job cuts than expected. the dow jones industrial average gained 75 points.

the nasdaq composite added 14%. 14 points. what do you see in the long haul as we go forward? >> first off, let me say that i have been a very bad predictor of the spot -- the stock market. >> now that might affect these numbers. >> i am a bad predictor of how the stock market is one to react to our data. it is hard for me to see that because so much of it winds up asking why people were expecting and that is hard to know. >> can you compare this to other recessions? you and i have talked about how these -- this is longer than some that we have seen before.

>> we're still having significant job loss but we are not having a job loss as significant levels. we were having a job loss of one. at historic levels. so, we have settled into what is maybe a day more normal recession level. we still have improvement to go. the trend is encouraging. >> i want to follow-up on the chairman's questions about health care and women and unemployment. they -- she has done some ground breaking work here. i was getting back to these inform rates because the first lady of california says that

more women will be unemployed. it is not unemployment numbers. >> actually, i do have that data. right now, men have been losing jobs three-one as opposed to women. women's share of payroll jobs has been growing pretty steadily. it is now up to 49.8%. >> is that while one of my letters that i will not read to you were furthrefers to a man s.

>> yes. >> we're still seeing growing and won the rights of women and you see more men losing their jobs out of this. is that what you're saying? >> yes. >> what is that, do you think? >> it has probably got to start with representation in particular industries that are hardest hit. construction and manufacturing are particularly hard hit in this recession and men are over represented there. >> so, that is were we have a lot of the stimulus money going, which only one quarter of this money has hit, yet. is that right? >> presumably. >> the last thing i was going to ask about our people who want

to work full time but can only find part-time work or people that want to find work but have not been looking lee lee for whatever reason. is this just people who have given up looking for a form? >> we have something called marginally attached. these are people who want to work and have looked for the past year but have not looked lately. >> how are their numbers going? >> that has gone up. these people are not counted in the unemployment rate. >> have their numbers gone up each month? what was their percentage increase from the month before? >> that is tough for us because this number is not seasonally adjusted. there are seasonal thing is that

change it. >> i wonder if any of these people have become marginally attached. it is kind of a cold description of them, but they have tried to work and they have fallen out of your unemployment numbers. >> we have a very broad utilization that includes them. >> very good. i want to thank you. i am going to have to head out to do some other things, but i want to remind people of the -- of what -- of the good news that we keep getting. one man says that his wife lost his job -- lost her job. she was the major breadwinner in their house and was not able to find a job cents. she cannot find anyone to hire her. they got a state -- they got a

letter saying that their house thought you had dropped. they're scared about what will happen. i continue to be reminded that while we have seen some stabilization and there are clearly glimmers of hope in this, we still have a lot of people in our country that are hurting. thank you very much, commissioner paul. >> some of my colleagues have talked about the report released yesterday showing that 1.4 million women have lost their health insurance during this economic downturn due to losing their jobs or their spouse losing their job. we know that employers are looking at ways to cut costs and many of them are eliminating

health-insurance coverage. i would like to know, do you have any idea of a loss of employer based health coverage due to budget cutting during the recession? >> we do not collect direct data on that very often. there is an annual benefits their release once a year that does talk about that. right now, the most recent data is for 2007. we will not hit 2008 until this fall. >> would you have this? >> it is a report that the census puts out. i think it is september or october. they talk about health care coverage. we do have data on benefit availability by industry, but it does not really tell you how many people have lost their health insurance.

>> can it tell you if certain types of employees are more born rubble than others because they are employed in certain businesses that are losing jobs such as part-time workers and low-wage workers that are at higher risk due to the cost of cost-cutting measures that their employers pay the making? >> yes. and are detailed benefit data will come out fairly shortly for march, but in general, i can tell you that 85% of full-time employees have access to health care and only 24% have access. one thing you obviously see is a shift from full-time to part- time work. you have health care issues there. full-time employment has fallen by nearly 9 million people. this is pretty significant. people go to no coverage or part-time and work which only

has 24% coverage. >> many employers have told us that the rising cost of health insurance is simply unsustainable. do you believe that the higher health insurance costs are contributing to the slack labour market? >> i would imagine that they are. it to me, the most obvious impact is on wage growth. >> to you have any data on how that might impact? >> there are some studies that have looked at the data. it shows that when health care costs go up, which growth slows. we do collect a lot of data on benefits. but we do not do that much on what is causing benefits to decline. >> could you give to the

committee reports that have come out on that particular area so that we can study the impact on wage growth? >> sure. >> i would like to get back to one of the questions from my colleague. is there a positive feedback in effect in labor markets? is that increased consumer confidence and therefore lead to more sales and inspire businesses to hire more workers? what is the positive? it is what you always see. when the economy turns bad, consumers start to stop spending and people lose jobs.

what we're talking about now is the reverse. it would increase confidence in you have this feedback. >> i want to thank you. for example, young college graduates that could not find work. would you have that data? >> right now, the share of high school graduates the golan to

college in the fall are 67%. that is partly the trend. it has been rising as more and more people have been going to college, partly because of a reaction that we were talking about about how much successful people that go to college art in terms of higher earnings and lower unemployment. also, it is probably the case with the job market [unintelligible] they're not really doing anything. the participation in college, it is at record highs right now. >> and that is all the more reason why the gi bill that i talked about earlier is so important because it is another

thing that people do not seem to realize. we have colleges that sit on the board and we have found that there are a lot of students, because of the economic situation, they do not have the money to go to school. those schools can appeal and of course, that keeps your -- in maryland, which found that we had all of our schools cutting back with regard to employment

of our professors because of the fact that the money is beginning to simply dry up. then, with the endowment problems and the recession, that does not have -- help matters. you look like you to say something. >> i am just agree with you. -- i am just agreeing with you. >> good. i see a glimmer of hope coming here. i think that what we are seeing are a lot of things slowly but surely work together and this is a trend that we have not seen since 20008. is that right? this downward trend?

>> it is flattening, but we have not seen a flat unemployment rate since early 2008. >> it has been a while. it has been so easy for us to look at the glass half empty as opposed to half full. i think that when it comes to these kinds of issues, we have to be careful that we are not overly optimistic. at the same time, when we're talking about consumer confidence and giving people hope and we are praying that we will go up there -- go out there and spend because it keeps the economy going. we should look at these things

and say that we are going in the right direction. we are definitely not falling backwards, we are going forward. although we may be going forward very slowly, it reminds me of an insect that i saw in my house the other day. it is a little tiny insect. at one time it was on one wall and then at another time it was on the other wall. my point is, we may take small steps, but as they say, the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. i think that we in leadership, if we are not careful, we can help people not feel the optimism that perhaps they might want to begin thinking about. i want to thank you. i wanted both of you gentlemen.

and your department, we've rarely think the people that back you all up. thank you also. have a good month. >> thank you very much mr. cummings for your participation to their and your insightful comments. commissioner paul, in my home state of new york, the unemployment rate was 8.7% in june, a jump of 3.4% of itpoint. are these changes similar to the changes in the national of employment rate? >> yes. >> on the national level, we have seen a deceleration in the pace of job losses in recent months. how does that compare to the payrolls of new york state?

. . >>, freda don't -- i should have that, but i don't. >> how has york state fair compared to the nation as a whole? >> has been fairly close to the national numbers. the last couple of recessions have been sort of jobless recoveries where the delay in the labour market created a

problem created -- created a problem. >> the recessions typically last longer at the state level? are they launder at the state level? >> it depends upon the straight -- it depends upon the state. in fact, i would say that during much of the 2000's there was a state or two that has been in recession for quite awhile. new york is not. they have followed pretty closely with the national numbers. >> could you give us some insight on trade jobs? there is tremendous concern about the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and other reports that say trade jobs in our country -- are you tracking the connection between trade and

the job loss or job gain in certain industries? do you have any reports on that? >> we don't. it is a rather difficult thing to do. at the factory level, when something is produced, quite often, that establishment does not know where it goes. with respect to imports as well, when a new product hits the u.s. shores, we lose track of where it goes. we did not know how it impacts -- and how it is used inside the united states. there are studies that will do that. and of the department of commerce has done a couple of studies. -- i know the department of commerce has done a couple of studies. >> we want you and your staff to look into how we can track that and how we can see whether jobs grow or lost.

i am told one of my financial industries but just built a financial services item in another country, and they were saying it is creating over 500 jobs in the u.s. due to the support services and the data collection. the world is flat, and we are in a world of global economy, i believe we have to move to the twenty first century and start tracking how those trade jobs are going or being lost. specifically, you can track that if a plant closes, you lose those jobs. i would think with a changing economy, you would look in this new direction. you think you'd be able to do that? >> i will take a look and see what we can do. i do think that the statistical system doesn't do enough to collect data related to trade.

i will take a look and see what we have got. it would be difficult. >> temporary health -- temporary help is often a leading indicator. do you see any indications that job loss in the temporary help industry is slowing? when was the last time they saw this level of job losses? >> this recession so far, they have lost 844,000 jobs. pretty significant. there has been substantial improvement in the job loss. just this month, 10,000 jobs. we have never seen job loss like this before, but the temporary help industry has changed quite a bit.

is now something in the order of 2.5 million people on temporary help now. in 2000, it was at the peak. we have dropped from that. in 1990, it was a 1 million person industry. it has grown quite a lot and changed quite a lot. we have never seen a drop like this before, but it has never been as big. >> with financial indicators indicating where in the right direction, you think we have seen the worst in this recession, depression, or compression? i call it the great compression. >> the trend is encouraging. i do not want to predict, because like anything else, things can change going forward. the trend right now is encouraging. >> some positive news.

the trend is encouraging. thank you for your hard work. at this meeting is adjourned. calle[captions copyright nationl cable satellite corp. 2009] >> and now president obama on the july unemployment numbers will show a deer -- which surely decrease for the first time since april of last year.

this is about five minutes. >> good afternoon, everybody. i would like to see it -- say a few words about the state of our economy and we're doing to put americans back to work and build a new foundation for growth. last week, we received a report on america's gross domestic product. the measure of our economy pose a health, and it showed a marked improvement over the last few months. -- our economy's health, and the worst may be behind us. we lost nearly 200,000 fewer jobs lost than in june. and far fewer than the nearly 700,000 jobs the month that we were losing at the beginning of the year. today, we're pointed in the right direction. we're losing jobs at less than

half the rate than we were when i took office. we pulled the financial system back from the brink, and we are restoring value to those for a one case that are the foundation of retirement. -- 401k's that are the foundation of retirement. we helped revive the credit markets and opened up loans for families and small businesses. we have rescued our return -- our economy from catastrophe, but we have also created a new foundation for growth. we greeted the investment act without any of the pork-barrel spending that is so common in washington. there is a lot of misinformation about the recovery act. let me repeat what it is and what it is not. the plan is divided into three parts. one-third of the money is for

tax relief that is going directly to families and small businesses. for americans struggling to pay rising bills, we have kept a campaign promise to put a middle-class tax cut in the pocket of 95% of working families. a tax cut that began showing up about four months ago. we also cut taxes for small businesses. another third of the money is for emergency relief and is helping folks who have borne the brunt of this recession. for americans who were laid off, we expanded unemployment benefits, a measure that has already made a difference in the lives of 12 million americans, or making health insurance 65% cheaper for families that rely on cobra while they're looking for work. we have saved the jobs of tens

of thousands of teachers, police officers, and other public service workers. these 2/3 of the recovery act has helped through the worst phase while stabilizing jobs and stabilizing the economy. the last third is dedicated to the vital investments that are putting people back to work today to create a stronger economy tomorrow. part of that is the largest new investment of infrastructure in america since eisenhower build the interstate highway system back in the 1950's. upgrading roads and bridges, renovating schools and hospitals. as we begin to put an end to this recession, we have to consider what comes next. because we can't afford to return to an economy based on inflated profits and backed out credit cards. -- maxed out credit cards.

an economy where we are burdening soaring health-care costs. this will not create sustainable growth, shrink our deficit, or create jobs. that is why we put an end to the status quo that got us into this crisis. we cannot turn back of the failed policies of the past, nor can we stand still. now's the time to build a new foundation for a stronger, more productive economy. this foundation has to be supported by several pillars to our economy. we need a historic commitment to education so that america is the most highly educated, well- trained work force in the world. we need reform that brings down costs and provides security for folks who have insurance and affordable options for those who don't. we need to create new, clean energy sources for our industries. that is where the jobs of the future are. that is the competition that will shape the twenty first

century, and that is a race that america must win. we have a lot further to go. as far as i'm concerned, will not have a true recovery. -- we will not have a true recovery until we make these changes. it will not be easy. change is hard especially in washington. i have faith in the american people and their capacity for hard work and innovation, their commitment to one another, and their courage to face adversity. we have seen already that strength of character over the course of this recession. across the country, people have persevered even have bills have piled up and work has been hard to come by. everywhere i go, i mean americans who have kept their confidence in their country and in their future.

that is how we have pulled the economy back from the brink, it is how we have turned this economy around, i am convinced that we have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but we will have to move forward with conviction to reach the promise of a new day. thank you very much. >> all this month, revisit the fairs and festivals we have covered this year on "book tv." >> this week on c-span's "newsmakers."

lamar alexander on health care, the economy and his ideas about -- >> democrats are fueling the fire by saying punch -- by saying if a punch, punch back. i think everybody needs to settle down. good manners are a good thing. first amendment rights are important, but if you shout someone down, you're destroying that person's first amendment opportunity, too. town halls are a very important part of the american fabric. we should not be calling these protesters names just because they do not like the idea of a government program. they saw congress tried to ram through a bill they knew they did not like. they want to find more out about that.

i think good manners are important. other than that, we have the right to say how we feel. most of us in public life have vigorous exchanges back and forth. >> this sunday at 10:00 a.m. at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> sunday, frank rich reflects on 15 years of political columns for the "new york times." including his look at the future of the internet, the whitewater hearings, and his column following 9/11. >> how is c-span funded? >> donations. >> federal funds. >> private contributions. >> honestly, i don't know. >> advertisement. >> 30 years ago, america's cable

companies created c-span as a public service, a private business initiatives. no government mandate, no government money. >> we are live at george washington university to hear from author and columnist ann coulter. she is speaking at the annual conservative student conference that is expected to begin shortly. the conference's heard from newt gingrich and others. you can see portions of those speakers on our web site. now, live coverage here on c- span. [applause] >> first off, i want to welcome our viewers. my name is lauren, i am an intern with young america's foundation. it is a premier organization that educates students of the principles of limited government, individual liberty, a strong national defense, and traditional values.

for more information, call 1800- usa-1776, or visit our web site at www.yaf.org. what do barack obama and ann coulter have in common? nothing, thank god. ann coulter is now the author of seven new york times best selling books. i am sure there'll be more to come. she is a connecticut native and graduated with honors from cornell university. and no, mr. olbermann, not the same school you attended. she went on to practice law in new york city and worked for the senate judiciary committee. we are intelligent to have at an articulate, intelligent, and

extremely good-looking woman to fight alongside of us. she is also a woman who needs no introduction. that being said, i will turn the microphone over to the person you have all been waiting for, miss ann coulter. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, your very kind. thank you. thank you. i want to thank you for bringing me here and sending me to many of your colleges. college speeches are a lot of fun. i would also like to thank the pharmaceutical industry for putting together a fake audience for me of such

attractive people. very well-dressed only seven -- very well-dressed. in only seven months, obama has driven the unemployment numbers up to the highest they have been in a quarter-century. because of the way they keep the unemployment numbers, by some measures, unemployment is has it's been since the great depression. or as economists are now calling it, the first great depression. president obama not only wants to be the first black president, he wants to be the only black president. on the bright side, obama has proved that regardless of race, color, national origin, any dollar it can grow up to the white house chief of staff. -- any ballerina can grow up to the white house chief of staff.

he has already reduced to gridlock and red tape the diet -- by not requiring members of congress to read legislation before voting on it. that has release moved things through. obama misspoke when he said there be no lobbyists in his administration. i am fairly certain that he meant to say that there would only be lobbyists in his administration. he cemented his reputation as the first to the president by making its cutting edge joke about the special olympics. you think he would be more sensitive to that with joe biden as his vice president. [applause] he also showed us what he meant by the first post-racial president by racially profiling an irish cop as stupid. you cannot ask for more perfect illustration in my last book.

the black president of the united states attacking a powerless white cop for arresting a black harvard professor in a city with a black mayor, located in a state with a black governor. everybody wants to be a victim. by which i mean perpetrator. liberals have perfected the art of playing victim in order to impress others. because of entomology is all liberal fake out, you can never figure out what the victim is, at what the offense is, unless you know who did what to whom and whose side the most powerful people in america will take. lifetime, tv for women, a movie about the incident. take the middle name. of no particular interest to me.

when republicans nominated a vice-presidential candidate with the middle candidatedanforth in 1988, they were accused of being deliberately provocative and obtuse. there was a snippy column at the time saying, bush should have asked him what his middle name is. by nominating a vice presidential candidate named j. danforth quayle, republicans were blind -- as much as it sounded like a pompous rich banker, is he a black sharecropper? as i recall, he is a yale man. only liberals can walk around in their yales letters with names like kelvin marshall and claimed to be offended by the name

danforth. bill clinton, whose middle name was jefferson, should have had a mistress who was black. we know how wrong that was, she was jewish. speaking of middle names, that reinforced negative stereotypes -- when the democrats nominated a candidate with a middle name hussein reiterate house of they are on terror? i think it would. when republicans run a name that that is funny to democrats, it shows the obtuseness and defensiveness of republicans. when democrats run a middle name that is funny to republicans, is a hate crime to mention it. they spout out j. danforth quayle as if it was the unspeakable horrors -- like the

time he hit a double bogey. at least when republicans said hussein, we were laughing. democrats are the victims, republicans are the oppressors. they are either victims of the middle name danforth, are there offended because we find the middle name hussein hilarious. he was offended first wins. liberals are always offended. the marines official model is first to fight. the liberals unofficial model is first to be offended. the media has gone from being offended at bush for breathing to being offended that the tiniest criticism of their darling obama. it is good to see them be transitioning into their aggressive watchdog role cents obama has become president.

overnight, they went from being the people's watchdogs to being the government's guard dog. except keith olbermann who is government's lapdog. time magazine compared obama to jesus christ. they do know who jesuses. -- who jesus is. [applause] of course, as leader of the 12 apostles, even jesus had more executive experience than obama did. [applause] under obama, they would be the 12 redemption czars. they really did compared obama to jesus christ, which marks the first time the mainstream media was not worried about offending muslims. it is not carpenters, it is

plumber's they hate. the jesus analogy first ran na "time at" magazine cover story by nancy gives. -- first ran in a "time" magazine cover story. if you are born out of scraps of history and hope. -- few are born out of scraps of history and hope. translation, democrats finally won an election. to be fair, democrats or winning an election, like the virgin birth, was something of a miracle. having pulled off their mediocre 53% to 46% victory, they cannot stop boasting about their new baby boy. on thursday, obama took his first step. and on friday, he nominated rahm emanuel, isn't he adorable?

this morning during that time, i could have sworn he used his first word, entitlement. we got it on video. rahm emanuel proves right there that he is not jesus. with jesus have a plate with damian? the mainstream media also proclaims that he is the incarnate spirit of abraham lincoln. that was the end of obama's honeymoon with the press, he is no wonder jesus, he is lankan. how many times did lincoln vote present? obama voted present more than 100 times. the only time he wasn't present was when the jeremiah was giving a hate filled sermon. diddling can do blow mostly in high school, or did he wait until college -- did lincoln do blow mostly in high school, or

did he wait until college? [applause] they ought to start treating and the way they treated george bush. that is how the media treated like gen. -- lincoln. his critics compared him to an aide, called him an illiterate baboon, if only al sharpton were around, we would have known he was a victim of racism. our fiercely independent media has produced dozens of news stories on obama's amazing likeness to abraham lincoln. they're both from illinois, geniuses, great dancers, make their own clothes. back in illinois, they're still talking about the fist balled mary todd and lincoln shared the night he wrapped up the nomination -- fist bump mary todd and lincoln share of the night he wrapped up the

nomination. lincoln put rivals on his cabinet. i'm not sure reaching out and buying their entire cabinet at fire sale prices constitutes reaching out to rivals. i guess it has a nicer ring to it then reaching out to backscatter -- backstabbers. obama is the person most likely to have poison put in his coffee by hillary, but only because bill stopped eating and drinking around hillary along time ago. liberal victim ology toward the nation's enemy has gotten tricky now that obama is the commander in chief. since national security became his problem, obama is not in such a rush to shut down guantanamo and pull the troops out of iraq.

wasn't guantanamo going to be shut down and troops on the day after the inauguration, or my thinking of a different black president? democrat's hysteria over guantanamo was a phony fraud just like their hysteria over his middle name. only drama queens on college campuses and msn b.c., the official network of trauma queens are all bent out of shape about guantanamo. you remember that, the all- inclusive tropical resort we built for the terrorists so they have a nice place to live until a democratic president comes in. when newsweek ran a completely false story about a quran being flushed down the toilet by an interrogator, practitioners of their religion of peace, reacted by engaging in murderous violence in afghanistan and elsewhere. by contrast, my first reaction was, do they flush toilets at

guantanamo? what happened to to latrines'? let's hope there are at least those heinous low flow toilets that can't flush anything. because of the false story, we also found out that far from desecrating it, our interrogators are required to wear plastic -- plastic gloves when handling it so as not to upset the little darlings by putting their infidel pause on that -- paws on it. if only barnes and noble had treated my last book with that sort of care. [applause] the savages at guantanamo are entitled to a hours of sleep, sweet -- three square meals a day, and two hours of recreation. the can't be woken 4 interrogations', they can't have their mail opened. i have been treated worse at a

holiday inn express. can we at least bang on the door at 6:00 a.m. and shout out, made service. this is our brutal pow camp? it is like a school that keith olbermann went to. [applause] in other words, ruthless terrorists that would slit your throat are treated better than your if you are flying to kansas to seek granma. back away from the moisturizer. you with the bottled water, hands up were i can see them. they don't even feed us on planes anymore. to get a good meal, you have to go to guantanamo. throughout the bush

administration, the media showed us that most of the detainees were harmless little lambs on the basis of zero actual information. the new york times said, and an editorial, many of them, perhaps the majority committed minor offenses if any. if memory serves, the following week editorial saying minipigs, perhaps a majority, have the ability to fly. this is the same new york times that assuring us that stockholders have nothing to worry about. since obama became president, a flurry of articles about how a lot of the detainees at guantanamo are really dangerous. an article shows that obama advisers are looking for congress to pass legislation so that some of the detainees can be held indefinitely, which presents the problem of where to house them. i know, how about guantanamo?

for seven long years, democrats have been hysterical about guantanamo. they huff and puff about the poor little darlings without consequence. but now it's obama's problem, and he is keeping them there. the only bone he is throwing to his crazy based is to claiming that dunking a terrorist had in water constitutes torture. putting a caterpillar it in a terrorist cell constitute torture. i first had about the caterpillar torture. i assumed they had these big trucks that were chasing the terrorists. but no, they were talking about a little furry worm children play with. i guess they have gone so fat, they can't even now running at caterpillar -- outruna caterpillar. according to msnbc, water

boarding was not a war crime for which the japanese were prosecuted after world war one or two as you hear all the time , they were apparently reading "little women" and not war books. water boarding would have been a good day and a japanese pow camp. one was to fill the prisoner's stomach with water. the stomach was extended, they would take a huge stake, and pound on the stomach until the prisoner threw up. or they would stick a stake in the prisoner's knows, break the nose, pour water into his mouth until he drowned, or to water board the prisoners with salt water, causing the prisoner to die. it was water boarding + killing

the prisoner. that was a war crime, not water boarding. [applause] meanwhile, the alleged torture at guantanamo committed by the bush administration consists of things like failing to put on plastic gloves before handling the quran, for getting top honor a serbian national holiday. obama has not made any changes, or as yet iraq, but he does denounce the same policies, making his policies -- is foreign policy is about the same as his position on gay marriage. denounced bush for having the same policy. even was supposed to be wonderfully knew about obama, his message of hope and change are just the same old political cliches. what most people said is, is it

for -- is fresh, its new, but is it substantive? i have been hearing speeches since i was 9 years old. as he runs for president on hope and change, bringing people together, has anybody ever run a presidential campaign on despair, the status quo, driving people apart? i mean, other than ralph nader. [applause] the big mantra of the obama campaign was change. there were a few campaign quotes. i think the hundred change is so great that people want something new. people are going to vote for change. i think we will win this election if we talk about bringing real change to america. the primary issue in this campaign is the economy and the desire for change. those are all campaign quotes, but not from the obama campaign.

those are from the clinton campaign in 1992. his signature line was, i still believe that a place called hope. i think we all know where clinton goes a place called hope is -- clinton's place called hope is. [applause] any place where hillary isn't. they finally won a presidential election after 12 years after clinton's last election. they are proclaiming the end of the republican party. i would not be hanging out the mission accomplished sign just yet. besides obama having lower public approval ratings that even president carter at this stage in his administration, look at how obama 1. -- obama won. he had the european union and abroad on his side. in a poll in germany, 80% of germans said they supported obama.

we all know how infallible the germans are at picking great leaders. [applause] meanwhile, obama was running against john mccain. it is amazing mccain lost by only seven points and not 75 points. beating john mccain is the equivalent of george foreman, in his prime, beating helen thomas in a twelfth round technical knockout. come to think of it, i would pay good money to see that. i just hope republicans are to this insufferable every time we win an election. i do not think we are, and i think we will be able to test that theory and about 16 months. [applause] the last time the democrats were

so cocksure of their eternal dominance was in 1964 when lyndon johnson beat barry goldwater in a massive landslide. you think 28 states is impressive. lbj 144 states. you remember the success lbj was. let's review his accomplishments. he started the war on poverty 40 years ago, and we're still waiting for an exit strategy on that quagmire. liberals, how exactly would you define victory and war on poverty? i only ask because that was your big showstopper of a question with iraq. president johnson escalated the war in vietnam to prove that democrats could fight. thousands of american men died to prove democrats could be trusted with national security. no wonder the term johnson-esque

never caught on except in the adult film industry. it is interesting that obama's admirers keep comparing him to abraham lincoln and ronald reagan. they apparently can't find a democrat president worthy of being compared to. [applause] the 1964 landslide for johnson was not only the last high water mark of the democrats, it was virtually the last mark they left on history. if you don't count stains. between lbj's alexian and obama's victory this last november, the democrats have been able to trick the american people into giving them a majority of their votes only one other time. in 1976, following watergate

when carter beat nixon. think of that. it was after watergate, after nixon does it -- resigned in disgrace. icarter could only win by 51% of the votes. that is almost as pathetic getting 53% of the vote running against john mccain. jimmy carter has become the template for all americans of what a rotten president is. carter's presidency is like a fairy tale, even people who were alive know the horror and tragedy of the carter years. republican presidents always look better in the, if history, and democratic presidents always look worse. to summarize, the last time democrats to get a majority of americans to vote for them was

when a green leisure suits ran -- were in. i do not think you should add nancy pelosi and harry reid's faces on mount rushmore. liberals may see obama's presidency as the second coming, but given his policies, i would not count on a second term coming. [applause] thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. your very well dressed. now the fun starts. we have questions. you are already lined up. >> my name is courtney, and i am

from the community college outside of box build tennessee. what is your next book, and as a going to be as good as your last book? >> they're all my children. i think they are also good. the next book is top-secret for now. i have to observe democrats a little bit longer. >> thank you. >> i go to college in arizona. in light of the recent battle tail light at the white house, if americans dismiss this, you think the current administration has the potential to overthrow our democracy? i am not seeing much difference between our government asking its citizens to report fission material -- fishy material and the nazi party asking people to turn into those who oppose them. >> i would not worry about that with obama's public approval

ratings. i thought it would take a year for the president -- for americans to turn against the president. a lot of people did not pay attention to politics. in reagan's first year, unemployment was high, but he would put policies in place to lead a the economy coming back. americans are naturally optimistic people. i thought it would be one year. the big gm takeover, the bailout, the favors to government insiders and relatives of nancy pelosi and john murtha, these town hall meetings and the tea bag parties, the public approval ratings, it is really great. i am proud and impressed by the wisdom of the american people, that they have figured out this so quickly. i also thought it would be harder to explain to americans the free market in an area where

they haven't experienced it up for i upt before, -- it before, i.e. health care. you have the government controlling -- or rather, creating incentives so that people get health care from their employers. there is no free market either and health insurance or in health care. explaining what to be done to health care to americans, i feel like i'm trying to explain to an old soviet woman right after the fall how she is going to get credit the government doesn't provide it. americans are smarter than elected republicans are. they understand what should be done. and certainly smarter than elected democrats. [applause] >> i am from the university of north carolina. i was wondering how you felt about sarah palin's resignation

and where you see her career going? >> her resignation made perfect sense. she explained it. she can either respond to her admirers norbert detractors, her hand is tied behind her back as a governor. she has these endless ethics complaints being filed against her which is a specialty of the left. every right winger you know is defending themselves against frivolous ethics charges, compliance with government agencies. they can do it endlessly with sarah palin, and she could not go out and write a book to make money so she could at least pay the lawyers to deal with it. she had $500,000 in debt. the lieutenant governor was a total right winger. she left them in good hands. not literally ge tores, but speak and write.

she has an innate political talent that i have not seen since reagan. she obviously needs to do some work. who knows, we will see what happens. i love her. it i wrote it right up for her in "time" magazine as one of the most influential people. i suspect that despite our most ardent desire is, she may not want to run. she may want to take a break for a bit. she is running -- she is young enough, she can run in 20 years. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you so much for being here. i cannot imagine a much better way to wrap up a week like this. >> thank you. >> you have your enemies and those who try to disrupt your appearances and cut down your message whenever you speak. how'd you put that aside and continue to do what you do?

>> is a lot of fun. don't make me out to be a martyr. there is not much more fun than 80 liberals on college campuses -- idiot liberals on college campuses. the first part of the book, i describe the college speeches which is something that is contrary to my expectations. at the very good schools, you know, the ivy league's and the equivalent, and the southern schools, even if the audience was against me, they would politely listen to the speech and challenge me during question and answer. the bush leagues schools, and the more bush league they are, the more violent they are. they can formulate a question. they're bright kids, but you're dealing with a lot of people who probably should not be in

college at all. [applause] but by professors who probably shouldn't be in college at all. [applause] as silly as henry louis gates is, he has a lot smarter than churchill. you have the idiots led by the idiots, and when a conservative comes on campus, they can spend weeks thinking of a question, and all they can think of is, you are a fascist. i spoke at columbia a few months ago, and liberals were fantastic. they thanked me for speaking and tried to come up with clever arguments. they're bright kids. that is always lots and lots of fun. will campbell, things are not going to well in afghanistan for

our troops. i was wondering if you could touch on that, what you think the current administration should do in afghanistan. >> i am glad you asked that, because it allows me to make an important point. the problem with obama is not just that he's liberal, is that he has a politically correct president. why are we increasing troops in afghanistan rather than iraq, we are spending -- and not even increasing troops, but keeping the war focus in iraq. iraq is good for us. it is a good terrain for us. the crazies running across the border, but turning iraq into the may actions that is good for america. afghanistan is not such a good battlefield for us. why was it his pledge to pull out of iraq and move into afghanistan? it does not make any sense from a military standpoint, but it does make sense if -- i have to please these crazies in my base your insisting we pull out of iraq and that kind of forgot about afghanistan.

i know we have to fight the war someplace. i do not think it is the best strategy to move from a country that is good for us militarily to a country that is not. god bless the troops, they will do a great job i'm sure. why not give them the better battlefield. it is political correctness dictating. like johnson going to war in vietnam because he didn't want democrats to be seen as weak on national security, that is not a good reason to fight a war. [applause] >> i am from the university of central florida in orlando. i was waiting for my plane and reading your book, the woman next to me says, you know if you're conservative and you are young, you have no heart. i said, as a conservative, i've never promoted chemist -- genocide among all unborn

children or promote population control. >> are you sure she wasn't a liberal and wasn't just being sarcastic? >> she had a greenpeace sweater. >> huh. i fly a lot. airports are like book signings for me. he did not get the private planes, bloomberg, all the liberals. i did not run into them, and i did not run into the homeless brigades being brought in by acorn, they are not flying any place. you run into people with jobs and families. >> my question was, as a young conservative, what can we do to maybe become a writer like you

that really provokes thought? some of your books are really made me want to be more involved in a conservative movement. and what is your opinion on law school? >> do not go to law school. encourage the liberals to go to law school. it is a total waste. [applause] unless you're going to be a scumbag trial lawyer like john edwards, you're not going to make that much money because it is all tied to billable hours. the causeway to much trouble. unless you really want to practice wantthey cause -- they cause way too much trouble. unless you really want to practice law. i don't know what else to do -- there are a lot of jobs out there. i asked my successful friends and their '30's and 40's, did you know this is what you're going to be doing?

they all said, i did not know this job existed. just because you're afraid and don't know what to do when you graduate from college, don't make the mistake of going to law school. what was the first one? >> how do i become a writer like you? >> i went to law school. [laughter] we had a failure in the oval office, so little worked out. -- it all worked out. i would encourage you to run for office and make money somehow. get kicked around, find out you're good at, make money. [applause] i was just talking about this with the editors of human events last night. the peculiar thing about the conservatives or conservative movement's in america right now -- we have the talkers, the tv writers, the movement -- a the

best conservative organizations. we are a little shy on our topnotch politicians. i think we could bulk of that area little more. i would not want to run for office, but if any of you think you have the slightest desire to run for office, i wish you would. >> thank you. [applause] >> hello, eva. >> i wanted to know your thoughts on obamacare, and astroturfing these town hall meetings. >> it does fulfill my aphorism that you know what liberals are up to buy what they accuse you of. oh gosh, we have a lot of evidence on that.

there is one guy, sean traglia, who was written up in "the wall street journal" who slipped after the campaign finance law was signed by bush and after it was upheld by the supreme court -- treglia, he worked for pew, and he said this is a left-wing foundations. but with john, we take him out. he is on tape saying it. people are calling for campaign finance reform. and yet, politicians were fooled into believing it. i was just talking earlier at the bush league schools, and by the way, the worst ones that i do not think i was -- some schools are especially bad at turning out little monsters. in this particular case, they

weren't even students, because they were standing in the back screaming their heads off with the most vulgar things i have ever heard. i can't even repeat them to my friends. there were a lot of cops there. there were struggles, and you get the cops out of the room. the cop arrested some of them and later told my bodyguard, which i need on college campuses because they are such little peaceful darlings, he told the cop he wasn't a student because somebody paid him to disrupt an ann coulter speech. i wanted to sue just to find out. who is paying and to disrupt my speech? that is fact no. 2. we know that acorn, and a lot of the crazy things they're pushing are not supported by the public.

we will give them a box lunch and say, stand outside and protests. i believe astroturf, and a favorable way, was a phrase invented by david axelrod. this was a specialty of the left. you can clearly see from the videos that are presented on liberal media sites -- you can see they are obviously -- for one thing, there are a lot of old people. they're concerned with what obama is going to do with health care, and they ought to be concerned with what obama will do with health care. that will be cost savings. and health care, leading us straight in the health care. all we need is a free market. for health insurance, and for doctors. .

capitalism has produced the most amazing goods and services. you do not remember, but it was not that long ago. you were kids. a self on was the size of this podium, and it was like having a limousine, just a totally exotic thing. you have a boyfriend with a cell phone.

we are given a little free market magic, and every welfare recipient has a cell phone at a flat screen tv. do that with health care, so that we choose with our own dollars to buy doctors, to pay for their services, the way we pay for that genius bar at the apple store, the web be paid for on here to get done. people will spend $200 on a haircut, and they go to see a doctor with eight years of training and schooling, and they are indignant if they have more than a $20 copiague. you have to brush that aside, by doctors the way you by everyone else, but most importantly by health insurance on a free market. you cannot buy health insurance the way you buy insurance for anything else. if you get health insurance on a car, that is so in case you get in an accident. it is not so you share the cost of gasoline with everybody.

a health insurance companies cannot sell you insurance if it is just going to ensure you against things like heart disease and cancer. as to ensure you against possibly having a recovered memory that your father raped you when you were an infant, or marriage counseling. if you are pretty sure your father did not rape you, you can skip those health care plans. you can skip the health care plans with acupuncture and aromatherapy. it is almost like having insurance for your house. you have insurance in case of a flood or fire. this is a perfect example where the federal government does have a right under the constitution, under the interstate commerce clause, the states are not allowing insurance companies to sell the insurance that people want, or would want if they pay for it themselves.

to have a free market in health insurance and medical care, and you will see costs come down and more cures being invented. it will be a wonderful thing, and you will not wait so long. [applause] >> there was a summarize asia george bush's foreign policy, to which i agree with every word. what is the correct thing to do with iraq? you have any opinions on the british conservative party? >> i did not think that was a southern accent. [laughter] i know absolutely nothing about your country except that i like tony blair. it's not really like the current die. -- the current die. all i know is that he supported the war in iraq. need to know more about him? as an american, that is all i

really cared about, and he was rock-solid on the war in iraq. i must say, until 9/11, and the invention of the airplane, i tended to agree much more -- with the ron paul, pat buchanan isolationist view. i do not want to be the world's police. i do not think we should be busting up every ball -- every bar room fight. in bosnia, i do not know how else to deal with the threat of international terrorism without giving democracy a foothold in the middle east. these arab countries, a lot of these countries in the middle east, the muslim countries are ruled by dictators and they tell people the reason your living in dirt is because of israel and

the great satan. it is hard to say that already right now when you have -- thomas friedman admitted a few weeks ago, he said all the lebanese kept coming up to him and said this never would have happened without iraq. it was american liberals nowhere near 11 on. the same thing for enthusiasm with freedom and iran. -- nowhere near lebanon. in addition to the fact that i do not understand the position that when we are attacked, just strike back at the people who hit us. the people who hit us are sleeping under a camel at night. they are being funded by state sponsors who are hiding their involvement. it is not like japan flying in with planes with the japanese

flag on it. taking out the occasional terrorist camp, where as george bush said, i am not just going to issue of a missile to hit the rear end of a camel. you really do have to remake the middle east in some ways. that does not mean we have to go into country after country, but wow, iraq was a good start. [applause] very aggressive right wingers there, but they are well dressed. it is a well-dressed, of britain's. -- a well-dressed mob of britons. >> i am wondering if you would shed some light on the issue. >> the perfect illustration of

my book, where the powerful people are attacking the white working class, and acting like he is oppressing them somehow. what disturbs me about it, even now, the beer summit, and the media completely forgets about it. they would not have forgotten about it if they had been able to find one black mark against sergeant rally. -- sergeant crowley. he was like the cop chosen by god. how many cops in america have given mouth to mouth resuscitation to a famous black athlete? how many cups have never been accused, falsely or otherwise, of some act of racial profiling or racism? if they had found that in his background, if he had at one blemish, he would be mark fuhrman. the same thing was done to him. just buy a roll of the dice in this case, the race mongers,

desperate to create their imanuel holstein of the month and claim this happens all the time, i am sorry you did not get it in this case, and now we are all supposed to shut up about it. as long as they brought it up, it is worth mentioning that as far as i can remember, almost everyone of these cases of police racism or racial profiling is the act of overt racism in america, they are almost always hoaxes. is it an epidemic? i go on for pages of all the of fake incidents of alleged racism. often they are white liberals who are so desperate to be victims. there was that woman in claremont college who totally, coincidentally taught courses on

tolerance. she was not black or jewish or herself. i think she was converting, in hopes of becoming a victim of anti-semitism some day. she was going to teach a class on the pervasiveness of racism and anti-semitism. she came out in her car had been vandalized. for the next couple of weeks, the campus was an uproar. may daschle news, and you see her in these photos -- it made national news. five minutes of investigation, and the cops find witnesses saying she did it herself. they wondered why this woman was paying this on her car. she admitted. but you get cases like that of lot, so maybe instead of looking at the epidemic of racial profiling, we should be looking

at the epidemic of people making false accusations of racism. like i say, i did not bring up the crowley case, they brought it up. >> i am from hillsdale college. in 2001, you wrote an article warning republicans to be careful not to try to govern an act -- in act conservative principles and policies according to democratic and progressive methods. i believe that is the general import of it. next i am not sure i remember that column. that does not sound like me. that sells like the opposite of me. you remind me why this is the opposite of me. one additional point on the astroturf thing is, i kind of wish they were astroturfers out

there, and i wish republicans would hire homeless people to come in in protest healthcare, because the one thing i keep saying is, liberals will never learn by example. not until -- take for example, sexual harassment. how many ceo's have had to pay millions of dollars because they call their secretary honey. then we have a president who is not only a sexual harasser, apparently a racist, engaging in indecent exposure, and we think suddenly may be the set -- sexual harassment laws have gone too far. you have to do the same thing to them that they do to us. >> i do not mean we should not use facebook and the marketing methods and political techniques. >> no, i mean the same dirty tricks.

i will give you another one. i think the supreme court, just for a gag, for like a month, we need to get five justices to start engaging in judicial activism on the right. the new york times keep trying to confuse this issue. judicial activism is when the supreme court overrules congress or state legislature. that is not judicial activism. if congress passes a law saying we just banned free speech, then of course the supreme court reads the constitution and says oh, there's a provision on free- speech. judicial activism is a hallucinating when you read the constitution. i am thinking we get five supreme court justices to start engaging in some real conservative activism, and that is, they will look at the

numbers and the emanations and discover the right to a flat tax. they will discover the real right to bear arms, and i mean nuclear arms. and just for laughs, i think the right to free champagne for blondes. the liberals was suddenly acknowledge what judicial activism is and they will stop doing it. you got me totally wrong. >> i do not mean political techniques, but progresses and conservatives -- i made a mistake by mentioning democrats. perhaps in the last several years, we have this tendency to save the world according to our own kind of republican ideas, instead of handing out entitlement plans and welfare to write all these past wrongs, we

took the laudable, free-market theory and such and fell into the trap of pushing them with the federal government. we ended up with the fed guaranteeing fannie mae and freddie mac a bailout in october, which bush and administration supported. it has gotten worse since then, and as far as social conservatives go, we move away from the referendum. we got the harriet miers nomination. >> the crowd is getting restless. >> maybe we need to investigate whether we have not kind of lost our allegiance to republicans. >> i got the question. this is why i am pleading with you all to run for office.

make money now so you can run for office when you are old enough, young man. you are very attractive. i think you would make a fine candidate. we are not very happy with republicans. i will be another a prism. there are a lot of bad republicans. there are no good democrats. i do not think we have to worry very much about the obama administration. i have been my usual pollyanna self since the night of obama's election. every time a republican has lost, even with bob dole or whomever, i was always really depressed election night, even when you can see it coming from 100 miles. the night became lost, i did not

feel a thing. i just thought, i am sick of apologizing for these republicans. what has happened historically, it is historically a republican country. 38% will call themselves conservatives. only the 18% will call themselves liberal. the more the republican party is identified as conservative, the more support we will have. what happens is, you will have eight or 12 year dominance by republicans, and then jimmy carter for four years. the americans realized that is why we were voting republicans. the needed 12 years of reagan, reagan, and bush. then you get clinton, and two years later you have the first

republican congress in 40 years. clinton could only operate for his first two years. i think we are seeing the same thing with obama now. if there's a huge republican revolution next year, it could be the best thing that happened to obama. he did the republican congress, and he is completely constrained from covering the way he and his advisor and like him to, he could end up like bill clinton. he could call himself a democrat, but it would basically be republican governors, and then we will have peace and prosperity. [applause] >> we want to thank you for your column this week. i know you are probably not surprised that bill clinton came back from north korea with two women, but i was hoping you

could talk about the clintons' involvement in the obama administration. >> who knows what these democrats? i tend to think that not only do clinton and gore still hate each other's guts, but the clintons paid obama scuds. they are much better at working those things out. mccain could not even though a few short months of the campaign without attacking his own vast presidential candidate, and then immediately after the campaign. if all you want is power, he is here to put personal hatred aside. >> i am really excited to go back to my campus this august, because we are winning. we are winning on cap and trade and on health care. there is one thing i am a little bit concerned about what i've been up -- talking to everyone here at the conference this

week, which has been great. it is the obama birthers, and he nailed with that comment you had. i was hoping that since you are here and you have everyone's attention, if you could just tackle it for us, because there still some people i hear it were still a little bit concerned about the issue. >> for one thing, a lot of the birther business was started by leftwingers like this guy larry johnson. a lot of this, they have more crazy people than we do, so they were the ones behind a lot of where was he born, where was he born? "american spectator" specifically looked into it during the campaign.

sweetness and light, which is like the right wing snopes looked into it and found out this is typical of a live bird was from hawaii. during those announcements and local newspaper -- live a birth was from a white. now they are changing the argument. -- was from hawaii. they are changing the argument, anticipating that will finally get the famed long form of birth certificate. they are saying they believe he was born here, but we think he is hiding something because he will not release the birth certificate. the reasons -- a lot of normal, people are asking why he does not release it. hospitals do not want to release the long for birth certificate, for the same reason we watch a movie on tv, the phone number is

always 555. the reason all law and order addresses are those that would be in the middle of the east river. you do not release private information. that is why you do not get along formed russian ticket. that is the way fanatics are. maybe he was born in hawaii but he has a different father. that is something to brag about. my father left me and went back to kenya. maybe he will release it at some point. if the long for his release, that will not end it. -- if the long form is released. why is this fun for liberals?

because they are the ones who are always behind conspiracy theories. this finally gives them a chance to say right-wingers are conspiracy theorist, too. as i point out, we are not. no conservatives whose name you have heard of is promoting this. if you have not read my column, among the points was, after michael more puts out his conspiracy theory which claims that the bush family, that they secretly spirited bin laden out of the country after 9/11, this is all in his movie. it was a glittering premiere here in washington. there were half a dozen

democratic senators attending, the head of the democratic national committee at the time not only attended, but he came out and set i agree, after seeing that movie. we went to war over oil in afghanistan. that had nothing to do with 9/11. we do not have the crazies that have on their side, which is why i think so many of those people who are hysterical that are not even conservatives to begin with. [applause] >> put those dvd's away if you have them here at the conference. >> one thing that came out of the 2008 campaign is that we know you can make prophesies that no one will listen to, doom and gloom if we nominate the wrong candidate.

is there anyone you want to warn us away from nominating at this point? >> pretty much anyone i can think of. that kind of leaves me stuck for who we will run. we have a lot of good congressman, and i hope they will run for governor, because you cannot run a congressman. we have a lot of good ones, but they cannot run from the house. i found that out, to my disappointment, with duncan hunter. the need to be governors or senators, though generally, senators have a tough time of it. the executive experience is considered advantageous. do not run mccain again. i am not really wild about any of them. we will see. we have time.

will any of you be 35 in a few years? >> i go to drake university. my question is, and know you said you would never consider running for office, but i think he would be an awesome candidate. are there any particular women that you foresee stepping up in the next four, a, 12, years and may be running for president and being a good contender? >> like a certain next governor of alaska? why, i hope so. i just told all of you to run for office even though i do not want to run for office, but that is why you need to. i did not really follow politicians that closely. i know that sounds odd, since i write about politics, but i really do not.

i love michelle bachman and sarah palin. who else? kelly in conway, you think of the ones you see on tv. that is why we need more of our best people running for office. it is not that bad. >> i am from the university of kentucky. thank you for being here with us. you are critical of john mccain. we do not rather see him in office now than barack obama? >> uh-uh, i am having a lot of fun.

i will concede your point of socialist health care goes through and cap and trade goes through, but with those pharmaceutical companies funding of the grass-roots groups, i think we can stop them both. i think real grass-roots feeling is going to stop both cap and trade, but i do not see a lot going through on healthcare. i am impressed and proud of how smart the american people are being on that. >> i attend the university of connecticut. i wanted to get your quick opinion on with such a large federal deficit growing, how congress and the president and the next years will attack medicare and medicaid and more poorly, so security pickett's another big talking point on health care these days is how stupid these republicans are saying they do not want government run health care, but they like medicare.

bernard madoff's investors like that to for a while. that is what medicare is. they have little ious posin. that is why it is silly for someone who is going to spend the way obama is to say don't worry, i will not touch the income of anyone making less than 200 bp thousand dollars a year. you cannot possibly fund the government' from the income of people making more than 200 pp thousand dollars a year. -- 250,000 dollars. that is just a secret way of taxing us without us writing a check to the government. if your money buys half as much as it did yesterday or a year

ago, you have taken half of our money. like i say, you have to grandfather people in, slowly cut it back, raised the age for medicare, but what it means is to go to just the welfare system. three things i think we should do with health care, allowed competition in health care insurance, competition in choosing doctors and pay for doctors the way you pay for a haircut and your computer care, and set up basically it welfare clinics by most hospitals in america, so you do not have illegal immigrants and welfare recipients clogging of our emergency rooms.

>> i would just like to thank everyone here for giving us such a wonderful week. in less than a year's time, we will have a conservative government in the united kingdom. that means will have a government in the united kingdom that is diametrically opposed to the u.s. president. >> it also means we will have a place to flee to, so thank you. [applause] >> i think we should oppose barack obama, and the view that is met in the conservative party is mainly that we do not want to ignore the president of the united states, which makes me think i am in the wrong building. but just wondered if you thought we could maintain this special relationship by becoming closer

to america but moving further away from the u.s. presidency. >> i think that will endear year in the hearts of most americans. seriously, his public approval rating is falling so fast in six months, and they are not slowing down. by the way, he does not acknowledge the special relationship, so those of us who do acknowledge it -- he has totally dissed you guys, which has not been reported in american newspapers. since most of you are americans and reading american news, after 9/11, tony blair was very good on the war on terrorism,

and he presented as a gift to george bush a bust of winston churchill. when obama comes in, he said oh, you can have it back now. and your guy said no, you can keep it, it was a gift. and obama said no thanks. that may be news in england. it was not reported at all here. they are worse also these totally embarrassing gifts they brought for board brown before gordon brown. gordon brown's wife brought lovely gifts for the obama girls. they gave him dvd's of his own speeches. maybe we should try that with kim jong il. here are my greatest hits. he does not acknowledge a special relationship, why should you? it looks like that is it. thank you, young republicans,

you are very well dressed. >> thank you so much for coming. and culture is one of our most popular speakers in our campus lecture program. -- ann coulter. would you please take your seats? we have a few closing words. [applause] >> tomorrow on "washington journal," look at the latest unemployment numbers. then a discussion about secretary of state hillary clinton's tour of africa with

the former assistant secretary of state for african affairs. also look at legislation that would give the federal government control over stallone's. later, a discussion about the resignation of center bell martinez. "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> yesterday, the full senate confirm judge sonia sotomayor you as the next supreme court justice. watch highlights from the senate floor debate, at 7:00 p.m. eastern on "america and the courts." coming this fall, into the home to america's highest court, the supreme court. all this month, revisit the bears and festivals we cover this year on c-span to's book tv. this weekend, panels from the

key west literary seminar and the annapolis boat festival. >> of next, a look at the latest unemployment figures. keith hall is that commissioner of the bureau of labor statistics. he reports on the month of july. this hearing is one hour 20 minutes.

improvement this morning's employment report reminds us of the high toll that the recession has had on millions of working americans. this recession, which began in december 2007 is now the longest and deepest in the post world war ii period. although the economy is predicted to expand later this year, the duration of this recession has led to long spells of unemployment for some workers. with six unemployed workers, where each job opening, those out of work find it increasingly difficult to find a job. more than one-third of the unemployed, a staggering 5 million americans, have been without a job for at least six months. it is the highest on record. in both percent and the shear number, over 2.3 million workers have been unemployed for a year

or longer. the national employment law project estimates that by the end of september, more than 500,000 workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own will exhaust their federally-funded unemployment benefits before finding a job. by the end of this year, the number could grow to 1.5 million. for many, those weekly benefit checks are the ever so thin cushion that allows them to keep up with their utility bills, stay current on their credit card bills, and meet basic needs. congress and the president worked swiftly to expand and extend the unemployment insurance program for the thousands of workers losing their jobs each month. we funded up to 20 additional weeks of benefits at the state level through the extended benefits program. the emergency unemployment compensation program also provided up to additional 20 weeks of federally-funded benefits for workers in all

states and an additional 15 weeks for laid off workers in states with exceptionally high rates of unemployment. many jobless americans are receiving an additional $100 each month due to provisions in the recovery act, but for many of these unemployment workers, it is not just the income that they have lost, for millions of jobless americans and their families, health insurance benefits have evaporated or may stop. the joint economic committee released a report yesterday, estimating that 1.4 million women and 2.7 million men have lost their employment-based health insurance because of job losses during this recession. today's job report makes it clear we are making progress, but it will be a long road to recovery. by extending unemployment benefits, we will give out of work americans across the country some peace of mind, as they continue to search for

work. by passing health care reform, millions of uninsured americans will have access to affordable health care insurance, regardless of their employment status. i look forward to working with my colleagues in the house, and the senate, to act swiftly on behalf of the millions of unemployed americans across this country. i now call on my colleague, mr. cummings, for five minutes. >> thank you very much, madam chair. as we continue to emerge from the worst recession since the great depression, it is sobering when the loss of 247,000 jobs qualifies as good news. treasury secretary geithner and former federal reserve chairman alan greenspan did suggest on sunday that the united states economy may have turned a corner. both men point to forecasts that portend possible economic growth in the second half of 2009. further, the "new york times"

yesterday reported comments by economist christina rohmer and alan sinai, adding two percentage points to the economic activity. however, as we know, unemployment is a lagging indicator and as white house adviser dr. larry summers, noted, it will be some time before economic growth produces consistent job growth. so i'll resist any impulse to put on rose-colored glasses. one of the reasons why i wanted to be here this morning is because i've consistently heard that, before this administration did the things that it did, people were constantly saying that it would do no good, and i expected to hear, as i heard from former senator fred thompson of tennessee this morning that some folks giving no credit to this administration for their efforts, and i wanted to make sure that we, that the record is clear, that while we

may not see the very end to this long tunnel, the fact is, is that the things we are doing are making a difference. after the loss of 6.7 million jobs since the recession began, the effect on families and communities are now being felt more severely than ever, more and more americans remain unemployed longer, and longer stretches. today's data tells us that the number of long-term unemployed continues to climb. 5 million americans have been unemployed for over six months and of those, 2.3 million for over 12 months. so these individuals and families struggle to put food on the table and pay rent each month. the stateses coffers continue to be empty. long-term unemployed residential state impact local government in the form of reduced tax revenue.

now, not only are hard-working americans unable to find employment, but the unemployment safety net has stretched dangerously thin in some states. and torn all together in others. this congress has previously taken dramatic action in this recession to reduce the burden of unemployment on families. the stimulus bill included funds to extend and increase state unemployment benefits. this relief was and continues to be so essential for those who are struggling. now, we find that the weight of the cumulative job losses forced 18 states to borrow $12.1 billion from the federal unemployment trust fund, just to keep benefits available to unemployed residents. i was proud to join so many of my colleagues last week in supporting emergency funding for the federal unemployment trust fund.

this 11th hour action will ensure that 4.6 million workers will have vital unemployment benefits in august and september. however i also hope that upon our return from recess we are able to move another extension of unemployment benefits through the house. while the recession has provided its share of bad actors, the unemployed, our constituents remain our responsibility. i'm proud of what we have accomplished as a congress, but i know we can and will do more and that we will do better. i look forward to the system of the commissioner, and with that, madam chair, i yield back. >> senator klobuchar for five minutes. >> thank you very much, madam chair, and thank you for being here today. it does seem like we have just a little stability going here, and i'm looking forward to asking questions of all of you to see what this means, as i heard

this is not going to turn around overnight. we still have incredible challenges for the people of this country, but the fact is, i will say being in minnesota for the last few weeks, there are some signs i have seen. we have a 20% increase in home sales in our state from june of last year to june of this year. i met with the realtors of minnesota and they attribute a lot of that to the $8,000 first- time home buyers tax credit. nearly half of these home sales were first-time home buyers. then there is the and it notes. when i was going to get some coffee, at the guy was standing behind the line and said he moves people's things out of apartment buildings because they are buying their first homes. t least in our state some of the effects of this. the cash for clunkers program,

our state, state of minnesota was fourth in the country for the number of people that used that program over that weekend. up there with california and michigan. so i think you see people starting to believe that there is hope in this economy, with the numbers for consumer confidence and other things that we've seen, but that isn't quite enough, because i can tell you that we're still not where we should be. i have talked to so many people in our state, letters that i've received of people that say that they put their kids to bed and then they go sit at the kitchen table with their heads in their hands, wondering how they're going to make ends meet, while they're telling their kids everything is okay. we just heard from someone the other day, a woman who is unemployed and uses her savings to pay $250 a month for health care that requires a $10,000 deductible. the iron ore miners up in the northern part of my state, which was really actually a part of our state that, until the recession hit, was really going better than it had been for

decades, and then suddenly the rug was pulled out from under them, when the worldwide demand for steel and other minerals declined, and suddenly, they were unemployed and this wasn't the traditional set of unemployed. in the past it tended to be older workers who were laid off. these were younger workers who had had hoped and moved up there and bought houses. as representative cummings has pointed out, the unemployment extension is very meaningful to those people but there are parts of the iron range in minnesota that are seeing a 20% unemployment rate, and that is obviously unacceptable. i'm very much looking forward to see commissioner hall and our other witnesses, just your view of these somewhat hopeful figures that we've seen stability for one month, and what that means as we go forward. thank you very much. >> thank you, senator. now i'd like to introduce commissioner hall. dr. keith hall is the commissioner of labor statistics for the united states department

of labor. the bls is an independent, national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes essential data and disseminates it to the american public, the u.s. congress, and other federal agencies. dr. hall also served as chief economist for the white house council of economic advisers. for two years under president george w. bush, prior to that, he was chief economist for the u.s. department of commerce. dr. hall also spent ten years at the u.s. international trade commission. dr. hall received his ba degree from the university of virginia, his ms and ph degree in economics from perdue university. welcome. >> thank you madam chair, members of the committee. payroll and unemployment decreased by 147,000 in july and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4%.

payroll job losses over the past three months haveow averaged 331,000, compared with an average of 645,000 over the prior six months. employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the start of the recession in december, 2007. in july, employment declines continue in many of the major industry sectors. construction employment fell by 76,000 over the month, with losses throughout component industries. over the past three months, job losses have averaged 73,000, compared with 117,000 over the prior seven -- six months. employment construction has fallen by 1.4 million since december of 2007. manufacturing unemployment continued to decline with the loss of 52,000 in july. tractor employment fallen by 2 million since the start of the recession. the seasonally adjusted employment estimate for motor vehicles and parts rose over the month by 28,000. because layoffs in auto manufacturing already had been

so large, fewer workers than usual were laid off for seasonal shutdowns in july, thus the seasonally adjusted gain does not necessarily indicate improvement in the industry. employment and motor vehicles and parts manufacturing has been on a long-term decline. the number of jobs in the industry, 661,000, is now half of what it was in early 2000. in july, job losses continued in wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing and financial activities. however, these industries have lost fewer jobs on average since may than during the prior six months. similarly, job losses have less than substantially in temporary health services. employment and leisure hospitality has been little changed over the past three months, and health care employment grew about in line with the trend thus far in 2009. average hourly earning for production and nonsupervisor workers were up in july to

$18.56, the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.5%. from june, 2008, to june 2009 the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers continued to decline by 1.7%. turning now to measures from our household survey the unemployment rate in july was 9.4%, little change for the second consecutive month. the rate it had been 4.9% when the recession began. there are now 14.5 million unemployed persons in the country. the number of long-term unemployed continue to rise. in july, 5 million people had been unemployed for more than six months accounting for one in three unemployed persons. the employment-to-population ratio was 459.4% in july. among the employed, there are 8.8 million persons working part-time in july who would have preferred full time work. after rising sharply last fall and winter, the number of such

workers has been little changed for four consecutive months. in summary, nonforeign payroll employment fell by 247,000 in july and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4%. my colleagues and i would now be happy to answer your questions. >> well, thank you very much, commissioner hall. i usually ask you, are there any bright spots in the labor report. are there any green chutes or glimmers of hope? but today i can ask you, what are the bright spots and the glimmers of hope? >> this report, there's still substantial job loss, but the last three months, there's been clear moderation in the job loss. and the moderation has been, has been pretty broad, which i think is a good sign. while i would say that we're not in recovery yet, this is the path that we have to go to get to recovery. we expect to see moderation first, before we start actually

getting improvement in the labor market. a couple things i'll mention, which are indicators of maybe future conditions in the job market. temporary help services, the job loss there has slowed substantially and that oftentimes is a leading indicator of a recovery. and we had a tick up in hours worked. while one month, i wouldn't read too much into this, but sometimes it took up an hour's work, as an indication of a labor market that is strengthening and may sometimes lead to job gains down the line. >> do you believe we've seen the worst or is there more pain ahead? . >> we're still getting substantial job loss. but it moderated going forward. it's hard to say. it's hard to estimate or project what's going to happen.

i think on a whole this is a good sign. >> are there any sectors experiencing more job creation thanksgiving job losses currently or any signs in a any sector will start expanding in the near future? housing sales are up. and there are other areas. >> across the board, the jobs moderate. a few sectors like health care has continued -- they continued to increase employment all along. a few sectors like the financial activities, the job loss there moderated quite a bit and getting fairly -- if that trend were to continue, it is getting close to getting job gains in some of its service areas. and a few of the industries -- the job loss is not significant. in other words, it is around zero. >> all right. are there any indicators that overall job losses will continue to slow in coming months?

>> i don't want to speculate too much. 227,000 jobs, that's a lot of jobs. and that's a big loss. but given context of the sort of job loss that we've been having, again, this is a good trend at the moment. >> and what is the typical amount of time after a contraction ends before labor markets start showing signs of recovery? >> in one sense, the signs come right away. in the past two recessions, there's been significant period between consistent job loss and consistent job gain. there's been a bit of a lag. in the last recession, consistent job loss ended and we were in the middle ground where there wasn't consistent job creation for almost two years. this is one of the reasons why people talk about the labor market being lagging indicator. the 1990 recession, the lag was

about a year. but prior to that, the lag was not so much. it was only a month or two before job increases started. so i say it's hard to say. recent recessions have been slow to see -- we've been slow to see job growth. >> thank you. any other comments? >> thank you very much, madam chair. i was just looking at page two of this report. i was looking at the african-american figures, mr. hall. and from what i can see here, in july, the unemployment rate for african-americans, 14.5%. is that correct? july 2009? >> 14.5, thank you. >> and that compares to when we go back to may it was 14.9 and

then in june, it was 14.7 then coming down to 14.5. that, as usual, is substantially higher than the average rate for the country, is that right? >> that's correct. >> and while there is an improvement there, does that improvement, does that surprise you? is that pretty much the way you expected it to be? >> it's actually kind of the way i expect it to be. the unemployment rate for minorities such as african-americans, it runs higher than the average unemployment rates. and it goes up more during recession. but the actual change, the pattern of changes do sort of match the overall unemployment rate. so we've had a pretty flat unemployment rate the last couple months. and it's bn fairly flat for african-americans. >> moving on to another subject. you mentioned that we're going through, with regard to the job situation, moderation. what does moderation mean?

and has that -- you said moderate has been broad. can you give me the significance of the broadness that you talked about? >> sure. i think this recession in particular that the job loss is being very broad in a lot of different industries. that doesn't always happen that way. and it's been very deep. and we're backing out the same way so far. the job loss has moderated in a very broad sense. so we're not seeing just particular sectors of the economy that are starting to improve a little bit. we're seeing sort of broad improvement in term of job loss moderation. >> so i take it, is that a good thing? >> yes. >> and why is that a good thing? >> hopefully because it's a matter of, at least in my mind, a sign of consumer confidence and spending coming back. more than anything else, that's at the heart of a recession. consumers don't spend, things don't go well for the economy. >> on another subject, yesterday

the committee released a report to the chair that discusses comprehensive health insurance and impact on women. the report showed us that there are specific economic and health risks for women regarding tir ability to obtain key health insurance. for example, women are more likely to rely on their spouses' employers to provide them with health insurance. more often, this is due to the fact that women are more likely than men to work part time. and, thus, being eligible for employer health benefits. what is the unemployment rate for women? >> unemployment rate for women is 8.1%. >> how much? >> 8.1. >> and what is the underemployment rate for women? >> we don't break out the broader un

>> we do not break out those numbers by gender. >> are -- young women are facing higher unemployment, and thus are less likely to have employer based health insurance. by what industry is a segment of the population typically employed, that is the younger, female worker? >> to be honest, i did not really know. >> you would not know the current unemployment rate. he would not have that information. the average length of unemployment is increasing as unemployed workers have a problem finding employment during a time when the economy is sitting jobs. how is that affecting women? you have that information? >> yes, i do not think we have it the long-term unemployed

broken out by demographic information. . . know, women have slowly participated generally in the job loss during this recession. so obviously they're probably well represented in the long term unemployed. >> i see my time is running out. i want to ask you something about this cash for clunkers. i hope we'll have another round. >> thank you very much, madam chair. thank you very much commissioner hall. i want to focus first on broad figures and just go back to what you were talking about at the beginning about the hardest hit sectors. i know you mentioned construction, manufacturing and then on the other hand sectors that seem to be getting better more quickly, health care. i know you've always mentioned health care as doing fine. since my state is a health care mecca, maybe that's the reason we're beneath national

unemployment rate. but what do you see as the hardest hit sectors and what are the ones that are the ones you're seeing improvement? ? >> i think through this recession, some of the hardest hit sectors are construction and manufacturing. >> uh-huh. >> and i think broadly, services have been hit harder than normal. but services typically are not hit as hard during recession. >> and would construction manufacturing, has there been any -- is that slowed the unpolice departmeu unemployment rate there? >> there is improvement in construction and manufacturing. >> but you mean improvement, a slowing of the -- >> moderation of job losses, construction. manufacturing picture is a little less clear. there may be moderation. but it's coming -- if it's there, it's coming later than the other sectors. >> okay. and how about the areas of improvement? >> big areas of improvement are things like the financial

activities that's been hit much harder this recession than almost any past recession. that's coming back. temporary health services, i think is one of the more -- >> didn't you once tell me that temporary health services is always a sign there is some improvement or not? >> it is a leading indicator. health services started shedding jobs before the recession started and it typically starts to moderate and gain jobs. >> and people can start to take one step at a time and they think, wow, business is doing a little better. so we'll get temporary services first? >> i think that's exactly right. to a large degree that, is the advantage of temporary health. that they're there for the flexibility. they're there -- sometimes the first ones to be let go and the first ones to bring back. >> okay. all right. then i was going to ask you about geographic areas. one of the hardest hit states and what are the states that are doing better. and i remember when we were

asked the worst of this at one of these hearings, you were saying how really couldn't really even point out a geographic area because it was bad all across the country. i wonder if that's changed at all f there is dramatic improvement or dramatic decline? >> yeah, i'm not seeing any real big change in the pattern among states. the unemployment rate, the unemployment rate has moderated. it hasn't grown much. i think that's been roughly the same pattern, i think, throughout the states. i'm not seeing a big change. there might have been individual states still having troubles. >> what are the states hardest hit? >> largest losses -- >> or just the largest enemployment rate. >> these losses are states like michigan, arizona, nevada, florida. turns out overall numbers in california is the hardest hit. but that is also a large state. not quite so bad. >> and which ones are doing the

best? you could come back on the second round and tell me. >> i do have the numbers. i just need to find them. >> i thought i just ask one or two questions that actually got asked from our citizens recently. this is from a woman in lake shore, minnesota. and she says, "dear amy, i'm sitting here watching the president's news conference and realizing that my husband and i do not fit into any of the categories." this is a question for you, commissioner hall. "do not fit into any of the categories of families unemployed that he is speaking about. my husband and i own a small construction company. we don't have the option of filing for unemployment because we're self-employed. some of our friends are in the same position. my comment is that all of the figures and stats that are out there regarding housing and unemployment rraren't counting those of us that conditioned file unemployment and are on the verge of losing our home because no one else is building. i just need to get that off my

chest." that's her talking. "there are people unemployed that at least can get unemployment. yet, there are a lot of us that don't have any income at all. are there statistics" -- this is from a woman in lake shore, minnesota -- "on how many are not getting unemployment and are unemployed." she means that people that don't qualify to get unemployment but have lost their businesses or lost their income. >> we actually do collect information on people who are self-employed. in particular, the health club survey, the unemployment rate includes everybody. that's a phone survey to households. so -- >> and what do you see from the small business owners that are self-employed? >> sure. the self-employed have certainly struggled the same way that the others -- the nonself-employed have. that's been one of the remarkable things about this

recession. it has been very, very broad. i think it's been broad with respect to the type of employment and small businesses. >> all right. so when we look at this, when we look at these numbers, when we look at the 9.4% unemployment, that does not include -- we've already talked about the discouraged workers in the past. and people's hours have been reduced. it also doesn't include some of the small business owners who may be self-employed that have lost their businesses or -- >> actually, it does include this. >> so this doesn't include the people that lost hours? >> exactly. the class of people, for example, they're part time for economic reasons. we collect those. that data is not part of the unemployment rate. and then we have a whole category of discouraged workers. people who stopped looking for work who want to work. >> so the answer to this is while she can't collect unemployment, they do -- you do look at including her kind of numbers in your statistics?

>> thank you very much. >> we hear this is the greatest recession since the great depression. how does it compare to past down turns in terms of the impact on the labor market? >> right. with this recession, it has been a long recession. it's been the longest recession since we've been collecting data on the labor markets, 19 months. we've now lost 4.8% of our payroll jobs which is a lot. that's the biggest loss since the 1948 recession.

>> manufacturing has been the hardest hit since 1945. we've lost about 15, 14% of manufacturing jobs. and financial activities and professional business services, those are hit harder than any other recession. >> so this is the longest jobless period we've ever had? >> yes, since around 1940. >> in the last four recessions, how long did it take for employment to recover to the prerecession plan or peak? >> yes, see, the last recession it took a really long time. it took 39 months. the prior recession to that was 23 months. it's been getting longer and longer, actually, each of the last four recessions.

the average has been about 17 -- about a year and a half. the average has been going up. the last two recessions, it was particularly long time period for the recovery. >> one of the green shoots that's been reported is that new home sales rose last month. but there are still almost nine months supply of new houses in the market. and do you have any sense of what level and inven tore yif new home will lead to an increase in construction employment? >> sure. first of all, i got to say that the month supply of houses is not -- doesn't turn out it's not a very good predictor of construction employment. in large part because not right now we have nine months supplies and sales are very low. nine months of supplies is not very many houses compared to nine months, say, when sales are much, much higher. the good predictor is the number

of sales. construction employment does pick up fairly much at the same time. i can tell you a little bit about housing starts. once housing starts bottom out and right now housing starts have been level now for several months, it can take anywhere from a year to a year and a half for construction employment to pick up after houses hit bottom. so it could be a little while. >> how much of the economy is real estate and housing construction? and you are tracking how many of these new housing sales are tied to the program of a subsidy for new housing purchases? >> you know, we actually don't collect the housing sales data since the studies. in our data on construction employment and maybe on real estate employment might give some indication of how these industries are doing. there's really no way for us to sort of connect that, at least not the way we measure data,

connected to any sort of policy in particular. >> thank you very much. mr. cummings? >> thank you very much. what is the trend for hours worked and what does that mean for families that rely on overtime in addition to, say, base salary? >> sure. one of the things that happens with labor markets is the hours worked go down as well as employment rate goes down. and it's -- we have yet another burden on families, to be honest. that is a cost. and lately, it's been fairly flat and now it's kind of going up. and that's a good sign. and if it -- we start to see some substantial movement upwards, that can sometimes show an excellent improvement in the labor market. >> yesterday, i had the occasion

to visit two auto dealers in my district. both of them had a lot of people trying to take advantage of this cash for clunkers. i want to thank the senate for acting on that. they said watz realit was realla difference. do you expect to see the impact of a program like that, when we put $3 billion into a program and you had some comments with regard to the auto industry. but do you expect to see anything, say, in the future with regard to that? >> i can say something. >> oh, wonderful! i'm always careful about what i ask you. >> i appreciate that. let me put it this way, if

automobile sales are stimulated, i think probably what's happened right now is a lot of the sales come out of inventory. because they're coming out of inventory, that is not going to show up in employment in the factories, et cetera. but if that's going to have an effect, it's going to have an effect going forward because it means factories are going to come back online with the new models. hopefully they'll come back online quicker and we'll see employment impacting automobile manufacturing later on down the line. if it has -- as it has a big impact. >> as you probably know, the obama administration with regard to this stimulus is going to be a lot of money, a huge percentage of the stimulus money will be going into the economy in the next six months. and do you expect to see anything resulting from that? and a lot of it is going to @@å

but if -- i don't know where the stimulus money is going to be spent, what industries. but if -- i would expect going forward if you look at those particular industries and look at how the industries are performing going forward, that might give you insight on the effect of the stimulus. >> you know, you talk a little earlier and you talked briefly about it, about consumer confidence. and how significant that is.

from all that you have seen, what can you glean from your report, are you -- i take it you get a hint, at least, that people are feeling a little bit better about things? is that a reasonable statement? i don't want to put words in your mouth. >> yes, i think it is. >> okay. if that were to continue, do you think that you would see this broad moderation that you talked about continue or do you think that it would -- you would see, say, in certain areas like manufacturing or auto sales or whatever? do you follow me? >> yes. that's a little bit tough. because of losses are very broad, i think probably the impact will be broad. so i would hope to see that the moderation continues until we get actual job growth.

>> and so will you -- when you got this report today, how did you feel? i'm just curious? you always try to get anything out of you sometime. i'm just curious. >> well, it's -- right now it's a strange feeling. because 250,000 jobs, that's really hard on people. but given the context of things, this is good news. >> thank you very much. >> all right. thank you. i was looking at the chart and thinking about how it was quite a bit worse in january of '09. that's right, commissioner hall? >> yes. >> i'm thinking about people getting frustrated with their economic situation, remembering the hole that we had to dig ourselves out of and understanding that it's not going to happen overnight. is that your history with the labor markets that they can't turn around quickly? >> that's correct. yes. >> okay. the past hearings i've asked you, i told you to keep me owe

prized of what is happening with our men and women in uniform. one of the things i found most distressing is that those who have gone over to serve our country, especially in iraq and afghanistan and have really gone over since the 9/11, we call them the gulf war era veterans that their unemployment rate is usually significantly higher because they left jobs behind. i think in minnesota our guard and reserve they left jobs behind and then they come back and those jobs are no longer there. what is the unemployment rate now for gulf war era veterans, those veterans that served in the arms services since september 2001? >> right now, it's 9.8%. >> 9.8%. so that seems closer than it was in the past. what was the last month? >> actually, i don't have that one -- i do. it was 9.3% last month. but in may it was 11.4%.

>> that's when i last talked you to about this. in may, it was 11.4%. so that's a significant change. >> yes. >> to go from 11.4% to either to 9.8%. do you have any reason to know why that happened? >> i don't. i don't. we might be able to look at it a little bit and see if we can see a pattern there. >> yeah, if you could -- maybe it's because my question about this every month. and all the c-span viewers see that and then hiring gulf war veterans and people who are serving. i mean i just find so it disturbing that people have done that and then they serve and then they come back and they don't have a job. so we're going to continue pushing on that issue. but we have seen some improvement. so it is still above the national unemployment rate of 9.4%. and that is 9.8%. but that gap can decrease, is that right? >> yes. >> it's a fairly small sample of veterans.

so the variability in that number can be fairly high. >> all right. >> kit go up and down for no real reason other than statistical. >> thank you. we've also discussed the importance of education and its impact on unemployment. what is the unemployment rate, commissioner hall, for college graduates and the high school graduates and those that do not -- have not completed high school? >> for college graduates, the unemployment rate is 4.7%. for people with high school degrees but no college, the unemployment rate is 9.4%. >> so they're at the national average then? >> yes. >> they're double -- the unemployment rate is that of those with college degrees. >> so what is the unemployment rate for people who haven't finished high school? >> 15.4%. >> you can see why the president made it a priority to try to get people to not just finish high school but to finish some, at least a year of college. so we go from 4.7% for college

degrees to 9.4% for high school graduates to 15.4% for those who haven't finished high school. how has that changed the trends? what are the trends in this area? >> well, the recent trend -- the recent trend is like the overall rate. they've been fairly slack all these unemployment rates have been fairly flat over the last month or two. but the growth since the start of the recession, for example, those without a high school degree, the unemployment rate has gone from 7.9 to 15.4. they had a fairly dramatic increase. >> and that's from what time? >> start of the recession. >> so they've seen a bigger hit percentagewise for people that didn't finish high school even though the other group started lower. they haven't seen as big a spike in unemployment. >> yes.

>> okay. just to conclude with my round here, my colleagues were asking about the stimulus package and the effects of this. we know 5% of the stimulus package money is out of investment piece of it. and so obviously you'll see more effects of that as we go forward. i think the other piece that people don't always think about is that the stimulus -- the recovery act was one-third of the investments. but the other one-third is showing state budgets and unemployment. but the other third is the tax cuts. a third of the stimulus package is actually tax cuts. many of them going to the middle class and tax credits. so what i think is interesting is that you can see the effect of that immediately in the home buying rates i talked about in minnesota and again i'm basing this on our minnesota stats. but also what the realtors have told me in term of what they're seeing. and the tax credits with the cash for clunkers program. do you see them ripple through

the unemployment rates than do you with the spending just because it takes longer to get that money out there? >> well, that's -- yeah. that would be my anticipation. my notion is that payout rate is an important thing on these things. >> okay. >> when they occur and so forth. >> all right. thank you very much, commissioner hall. >> thank you. commissioner hall, how have women fared in this economic down turn and what industries have women lost the most jobs during this recession? >> women have lost about 25% of the jobs during this recession. that means men are losing jobs 3 to 1 compared with women. but that's not -- in a sense that's normal. the last recession women lost a lot of jobs. but prior to the last recession, women often wouldn't lose jobs at all during the recession. so one thing that happened is

while men are bearing the bigger brunt of the job loss, women are participating more in the job loss than in the past. so women have lost, at this point, women have lost about 1.7 million jobs so far. >> certainly the equality in job loss is not something that we're working for. but are women moving towards equality in job loss? gaining in job loss during the recession? you could elaborate a little more? >> my guess is that the women's participation rates in a number of industries has gone up. you know, for example, on construction and manufacturing, they're underrepresente edunder. so when they're hit by the recession, women don't participate so much in the job loss. women representation in other industries can be fairly high. so they participate in the job

loss. >> you could comment on the trends of unemployment for minorities? specifically african-americans and latinos? have they leveled off or is it still rising at a fast clip? what is happening there? and in what industry are latinos and african-americans losing the most jobs? >> lately, the unemployment rate rise has flattened out the last couple months, pretty much like the national numbers for minorities. and i think for the most part, the changes to the unemployment rate, while they mirrored the overall unemployment rate, they just mirrored it to a bigger degree. so the overall unemployment rate goes up, it goes up by more for minorities. so the trend is much the same. >> you could comment on the difference between men and women, african-american women and african-american men and

latino women and latino men and differences between african-americans and latinos in terms of unemployment? >> right. the women's unemployment rate is 8.1%. >> for what? women -- >> just total women. 8.1%. men, 10.5%. put that in perspective. for african-americans, unemployment rate is 14.5%. for female head of households, african-american women, 17.8% unemployment rate. >> so there are more unemployed? >> yes. >> what about latino women?

>> female head of household hispanic, 12.8%. and that's actually fairly much in line with the overall unemployment rate latino unemployment rate of 12.3%. >> so latino women are 12.8% and men are -- >> 12.5% so men are probably around 12%. >> okay. and do you sthee leveling offeef or rising or what is the trend with minority unemployment? >> the recession trend lately is leveling off. and i think typically what happens is when things rise, they rise by more for the minorities and things decrease by more for minorities. >> and a gain of what industries are latinos and african-americans losing most jobs, you know, the sense wrf

that job loss is? is it construction? >> the one pattern that jumps out is hispanic representation in construction is fairly high. the -- there is overrepresentation there. construction has been hard hit by this recession. so hispanic unemployment rate has been -- has gone up quite a bit. there's a less simple pattern for african-americans in terms of industry representation. >> and why do you -- why are the numbers telling us that the women minorities are more likely to lose their jobs of the unemployed than men? >> i don't know. i mean that's kind of a big question. it's kind of a research sort of question. obviously certainly industry representation has an impact. but that will explain some of it. i don't know what else explains it.

>> thank you very much. mr. cummings for five minutes. >> thank you very much, madam chair. i want to go back to the question when asking about the military and this whole issue of how much education a person has and i had a town hall meeting the other night, mr. hall. this is a commercial, by the way, and i was meeting with some vetera veterans. and they did not know about the new gi bill which will allow them to get their tuition paid in some instances their housing and fees at colleges. so i just want to let folks know that it appears from what you said on the stats that the more education one has, the better

their chances of being unemployed even during these times s that right? >> yes. >> so veterans should find out about this new gi bill. it is something that went into effect august 1st. i want to thank you for bringing i want to thank you for bringing upt@@

and willing to move over to health care. beyond that, i don't know. >> you know, on another note, yesterday during our press conference with regard to women and health care and i think we may have spoken about it earlier, we learned something that is very interesting. that you is have a situation where a lot of women during the babyboomer age were older than -- i mean the men were older than women they marry. and what happened, what is happening now is that as they go into medicare with their wives being younger and if the wife is dependent upon the husband for

their insurance, when he goes into medicare, she doesn't have any insurance. and so i was just wondering, do you know the unemployment rate for older women? let's say -- i didn't say old, i said older. you may even have a definition for older. i don't know. i want to be very careful. >> i'll take our our oldest group. 55 and older, 7.1% unemployment. >> okay. and is that -- have we seen any kind of trend with regard to that? i mean is this -- just like we've seen different trends going up, down, staying the same over the last few years or what? i mean, what do you see? i'm talking several months. >> it actually, that's grown a bit lately.

last month, 6.4%. prior to that, 5.8%. so that one doesn't seem to have -- doesn't seem to have leveled off the last few months. one of the things that is tricky though when you get anybody in the 55 and over range is whether they're in the labor force or not. it's because they can -- someone can lose a job and just stop looking if they're 55 and over. it may underestimate the issue. >> so there is no way you'd have that breakdown? in other words, a person had a says, you know what, i retire? you wouldn't have that kind of information in these stats? >> no, we don't. >> so there's one other thing that i'm concerned about. and that is the states -- these states running out leah olsen do we see any impact with regard to those unemployment rates because almost every state is going through a lot of problems

right now. and i'm just wondering, what do we see there? >> the recent trend is they're starting to lose jobs. for a while, state governments were hovering around no job growth, no job loss. so the last three months, we've averaged -- government averaged declining 6,000 jobs a month. so it seems like the employment at the state government level has worsened a witt. >> i see my time has run out. thank you. >> thank you chairman. and commissioner, i was just reading the report here. we have the stock gain -- this is as of two minutes ago. stocks gained early friday after the government, that's you, commissioner hall, reported a surprise drop in the unemployment rate and a smaller number of job cuts than expected raising hopes that the economy is stabilizing.

the dow jones industrial average gained now 75 points. the s&p 500 rose now 7.3 and the nasdaq composite added 14 points. so my question of you is, is this a little bit too exuberant over this news? what do you see in the long haul as we go forward? >> well, first of all, let me say -- i've been -- i've been a very bad predictor of the stock market. >> now that may affect these numbers that you said that. mr. hall! >> and i'm even a bad predictor of how the stock market is going to react to our data. it is very hard for me to see that. so much of it i think winds up being what were people expecting. and that's hard to know. as to whether -- you know, i have -- i don't know. >> can you compare this to other recessions that you and i have talked before about this?

it is so much longer than the temperatuorary recessions we've before. and what you think of these signs of recovery compared to other historical recessions? >> yeah. i mean we're still having significant job loss. but we're not having job loss at sort of historic levels. for a few months we were having job loss at nearly historic levels. over half a million jobs lost per month. so, you know, we sort of settled into what maybe -- i don't want to say more normal. every recession is different. maybe a more normal recession level of job loss. so we still got improvement to go. but the trend sen courais encou >> all right. i want to follow up on the questions about health care and women and unemployment and clearly they've done some ground breaking work with health care with women and children and how it has a lack of health care has been an impact on them.

but i'm getting back to the employment rates. because the first lady of california was out here a week or so ago talking about at some point here more women are going to be employed by men in the workforce. maybe you don't have the numbers at your finger tips because it's not unemployment numbers. it's employment numbers. is that -- maybe it was just in certain areas. >> yeah. actually, i do have that data. >> okay. >> right now men are losing jobs 3 to 1 versus women. and there's been a large job loss. so that means that women's share of payroll jobs is growing pretty steadily. and it's now up to 49.8% of jobs are now held by women. >> right. >> which means that 435,000 more men are currently employed than women. >> is that why one of my letters that i won't read you to referred to this as a

manseccion? so you have -- while women have taken an inordinant amount, there tends to be more women with kids and lack of health care suffer more because of it. we still have seeing growing employment rates of women. and you see more men losing their jobs out of this? is that what you're saying? >> yes. yes. >> okay. >> all right. and why is that, do you think? >> you know, it's probably got to start with representation in particular industries that are hardest hit. you know, construction and manufacturing are particularly hard hit this recession and men are over represented there. >> and so that's where we have a lot of the stimulus money going of which only a quarter of that money has hit yet. so presumably that could help with that particular sector? is that right? >> potentially. >> i could have it come from a question from one of my constituents.

it will be easier. the last thing i'm going to ask about is the importance of discouraged workers. you talk about that in your opening a little bit. these are people who want to work full time but can only find part time work or people who want to work but haven't been looking lately for whatever reason, are those both of those categories in the discouraged worker groups? or it is just people that haven't been hit -- have given up looking for unemployment? >> yeah. well, we have -- something called marginally attached which are people who -- who want to work and that looked within the past year but haven't looked lately. >> and how are their numbers going? >> that number has gone up quite a bit. there are now something like 2.3 million people who are discouraged workers. so they're not counted in the unemployment rate. >> right. and have their numbers gone up each month? what was the number last month? what what was the percentage increase from the month before?

>> yeah, that's tough. those numbers are not seasonally adjusted. there are seasonal things that change it. >> i'm wondering if maybe a number of these people have become marginally attached. they have tried to work but they have tried to look for employment. they've given up and they're out of unemployment numbers s that right? >> that's right. although we do catch them. we have a very broad measure of labor utilization which includes that. >> okay. very good. well, i want to thank you. i'm going to have to head out to do some other things. but, again, just wanted to remind people of the -- what people are still despite this some good news here this month still continue to suffer. i just want to end with a letter we just got this week from a guy in minnesota. he says, my wife lost her job last august as her company shut her building down and moved all the jobs to boston. she was the major breadwinner in our house and has not been able

to find a job since. she's applied numerous places but can't find anyone to hire her. we got a statement in the mail saying our house value dropped from 194,000 to $174,000 yet we still owe over $190,000 on the house. we have a 14--month-old daughter and soon unemployment will end and we're really scared about what's going to happen. i continue to be reminded that while we have seen some stabilization and there is clearly glimmers of hope in this and people have been incredibly determined in my state to start businesses and keep going, we still have a lot of people in our country that are hurting. thank you very much, commissioner hall. >> thank you, senator. some of my colleagues have talks about the report that joint economic committee released yesterday showing that 1.4 million women have lost their health insurance during this economic down turn due to losing their jobs or their spouse losing his job.

and we know that employers are looking at ways to cut costs and many of them are eliminating health insurance coverage. and i'd like to know, commissioner, do you have any idea on the loss of employer based health coverage during this resnegs. >> we don't collect direct data on very often. there is an annual benefit to the release once a year that does talk about that. right now the most recent data is i think for 2007. we won't get 2008 until this fall. and th is -- >> when will you have this? >> it is a report that the census puts out in the fall. i think it is september or october. when they talk about health care coverage. we have data by industry.

that doesn't really tell you how many people have lost their health insurance, et cetera. >> but can it tell you if certain types of employees are more vulnerable than others because they are employed in certain business that's are losing jobs or, for example, are part time workers and lower wage workers at higher risk due to the cost saving measures? >> yes. our details are going to come out fairly shortly for march. but in general, i can tell you that right now 85% of full time employees have access to health care. so i think you see the shift from part time to full time work. we have health care issues there. and full time employment, so far this recession is falling by nearly 9 million people. so this is pretty significant.

>> mr. employers told us the rising cost of health insurance is unsustainable. do you think they're contributing to the flat labor market? >> i would imagine they are. the most obvious impact is on wage growth. and -- >> do you have any data on how that might impact on wage growth. >> it's pretty consistent in showing that when health care costs go up, wage growth slows. so it takes away from wage growth. we have lots of data on benefits. >> uh-huh. >> but we don't do that much on

what's causing benefits to -- benefit decline. >> could you give to the committee the reports that have come out on that particular area so we could study the impact on wage growth and the high cost of employer based insurance? and i'd like to get back to one of the questions from mr. cummings. is there a positive feedback in labor markets? is there a positive feedback in labor market because of the moderation and decline in unemployment? and does that increase consumer confidence and, therefore, lead to more sales and spur businesses to hire more workers? what is the positive feedback? >> it is sort of what i would -- what you always see. you know, when the economy turns bad, consumers start to lose

confidence, stop spending. and then the lack of spending means people lose jobs and people lose jobs and they stop spending. so what we're talking about now, hopefully, is the reverse. is spending starts to increase, job losses decline, job loss declines will increase confidence and we'll have this speed back. >> my time has expired. >> thank you, mr. hall, thank you for your testimony and just one question and then a comment. we know during a recession people will turn to higher education. to get graduate degrees and what have you. does this show up in any of your data in any way? for example, young college graduates who couldn't find work so they decide to stay in school and to -- would you have that data? any kind of data like that?

>> the trend is rising as more and more people are going to college partly because of a reaction about how much more successful people who go to college are in terms of higher earnings, lower unemployment. but also it is probably the case when the job market is this bad there are people who otherwise might have worked who go on to college or some other type of formal training because they're not really doing anything. so the participation in colleges

is at record highs now. >> that's all the more reason why the gi bill that i talked about a little bit earlier is so important because that's another thing that -- another thing that people don't seem to realize. we have a lot of colleges that sit on the board of morgue an state university in baltimore. and what we found is that there are a lot of students because of the economic situation that don't have the money to go to school. so when you have a gi bill which is going to pay tuition fees and boards and those schools, they can appeal to those gis to come back to schools. those are people that come and walk in the door with the tuition check and board-check right in their hand. so -- and, of course, that keeps your -- what we've found is we

have -- just about all of our schools now have had to cut back with regard to employment of our professors and workers because of the fact that the money is beginning to simply dry up. because of the problems and because of the recession, that does not help matters. did you have a comment, mr. hall? you looked like you needed to say something. >> i'm disagreeing with you. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> i think what we're seeing is a lot of things are beginning to slowly but surely work together.

we haven't seen this since 2008. is that right? would this -- would this downward trend, mr. hall, with regard to the unemployment? >> right. is that right? >> yeah. although, i would say it's a flat -- we haven't seen a flat unemployment rate since early 2008. >> early 2008. >> so it's been a while? >> you know. i guess what i'm trying to say is it's so easy for us to look at the glass half empty as opposed to half full. we have to say we're not overly optimistic. but at the same time when we're talking about consumer confidence, when we're talking about giving people hope and we're praying that they'll go out there and, you know, spend,

if they can. we want them to save but also spend. that keeps the economy going. i think it's very important that we look at these things and say, you know what? we are going in the right direction. we're not -- we're definitely not seem like we're falling backwards, we're going forward. an although we may be going forward very slowly, we may be inching along. it reminds me of an insect i saw in my house the other day. it is a little tiny insect. i look at one time on one wall and the next time it was over there on the other wall. it somehow got all the way around to the other wall. my point is that we may take small steps but as they say a journey of 1,000 miles. we begin with the first step. i want to make sure that, you know, we just don't poo-poo what we have been able to accomplish thus far. because i think we in leadership, if we're not careful and help people not feel the

optimism that perhaps they might want to at least begin thinking about it. and so with that, mr. hall, i want to thank you. i want to thank both of you gentlemen for your -- and your department. we rarely thank all the people that back you all up. but we thank you also. have a good month. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. cummings for your participation today and your insightful comments. commissioner hall, in my home state of new york, the unemployment rate was 8.7% in june. a jump of 3.4% from last june. and in new york city, unemployment rate jumped from 9.5% in june. and are these changes similar to the changes in the national unemployment rate? >> yes. they are. >> and on the national level, we've seen a deceleration in the pace of job losses in recent

months. and how does that compare to the pay rolls of new york state and the pay rolls of new york city? >> i think, especially the state, for a number of years now, it's followed very closely with the national numbers. i think new york state has a very diverse economy, like the u.s. economy. so the patterns are very similar. >> and what have been the largest declines in new york state? >> in terms of what industries? state? >> in terms of? >> job loss. >> i'm afraid should i have that, but i don't have that in front of me. >> you'll get it to me later? >> yeah. >> and how has new york state fared compared to the nation as a whole during recessions? >> again, lately it's been fairly close to the national numbers. last couple of recessions have

been sort of jobless recoveries where the delay in the labor market took -- created a problem when they wanted to recover. it's been pretty much the same for new york. >> and do recessions typically last longer at the state level? you can use the example of new york or any state. are recessions longer? >> it depends on the state. some states especially smaller states can look rather different than rational numbers over time. >> in fact, i would say during much of the 2000 there is a state or two that has probably been in recession for quite a while. >> what about new york? >> new york is not. new york is followed closely with the national numbers. >> could you give us insight on trade jobs? there's tremendous concern about the outsourcing of jobs to other countries and other reports that say trade builds jobs in our

country. are you tracking the connection between trade and the job loss or job gain in certain industries? do you have any reports on that? >> we don't and it turns out that's a rather difficult thing to do because at the factory level when something's produced, quite often that establishment doesn't know where it goes and in respect to imports, for example, as well, when a product hits the u.s. shores and customs we actually lose track of where it goes so we don't know how it impacts or how it's used inside the united states. it's very difficult to connect job growth and loss with trade specifically. there are studies that will do that. i know the department of commerce has done a couple of studies on that. >> we would like to see those study, and i would like for you and your staff to look into how we can track that and how we can

see whether jobs grow or loss. >> i am told that one of my financial industries just built a financial services item in another country and yet they were saying it is creating over 500 jobs in the u.s. due to the support services and the data collection. the fact that we are -- the world is flat and we are in a world of global economy, i believe we have to move to the 21st century and start tracking how those trade jobs are growing, are being lost and specifically you can track if a plant closes you lose those jobs. that's very clear, and i would think that with the changing economy you would look in this new direction. do you think you'll be able to do that? >> i'll take a look and see what

we can do. i think it doesn't do enough to collect data related to trade to get the issues like offshoring and that sort of thing. i'll take and look and see what we've got. it's going to be -- it would be difficult. >> often temporary help is often a leading indicator of abemployer's willingness to hire and how many jobs have been lost in the temporary health industry since the recession began and do you see any indications that job losses in temporary help industry are slowing and when was the last time that the temporary help industry saw this level of job losses? >> so this recession so far temporary health services has lost 844,000 jobs. so it's pretty significant. there has been substantial improvement in the job this last month and temporary services lost 10,000 jobs compared to 844,000 since the recession

began. we've never seen job loss like this before, but the temporary help industry's changed quite a bit. it is now something on the order of nearly 2.5 million people are in temporary help now and in 2000 it was at the peak. we dropped from that, but as little as say 1990 it was a 1 million person industry. it's changed a lot. that's a long way to say we've never seen a drop likehis before and temporary help has never been as big. >> with the financial indicators indicating we're heading in the right direction, do you think we have seen the worst in this -- whatever you want to call it, recession, depression or compression. i think i'd call it the great compression with the job losses and shrinking of leverage. >> certainly the trend is encouraging. i don't want to sort of predict because it's like anything else,

things can change going forward, but the trend right now is encouraging. >> listen with positive news. the trend is encouraging. thank you for your testimony and your hard work. this meeting is adjourned. for "the cleveland plain dealer," a business reporter there. explain to us what these current situation is in in ohio. guest: ohio's unemployment figures will not come out for another couple of weeks, but the figures for june, ohio cost of unemployment rate was 11%. so is going to be interesting to see if t w