There is a consensus amongst all of the economists that I've seen -- from Republican economists to Democratic economists to those who are more down the middle -- that recovery is afoot, that we had growth in the last quarter, that we've stemmed the tide in terms of massive job losses. There is an expectation that, in this year, we will see job growth return to our economy. We've had home sales moving upward, and we've had 10 of the 12 regional Federal banks indicate very positive outlooks last week in terms of this quarter going forward.
We have the strengthening of the dollar today. You have a lot going on. The problem, of course, is that with politics we tend to focus on the planes that are crashing rather than the ones that are landing.
So even, though there is a lot of good news, there is plenty of work to do on mortgage foreclosure, on unemployment.
And most importantly, in terms of the basic pillars of our economy -- education, health care, and energy, as the President laid out -- we need to do the work now so that we don't have this kind of recessionary activity out in the future based on fundamental weaknesses in our economy.
Kathleen Wells: Where is Congress at now, procedurally, with the health care bill?
Congressman Fattah: Decisions are going to have to get made, and part of it is going to be informed by CBO. There were agreements worked out with the White House last week that CBO is now scoring to make sure that they meet the fiscal tests that the President laid out.
Assuming that those agreements hold, the White House is going to reach out and see whether or not there is an ability to bring [in] Olympia Snowe, who voted for the bill coming out of Finance, or Susan Collins or any of the other Republicans to see if there is any possibility of getting that 60th vote in the Senate.
If there is not, we will have to move in ways that will get this job done absent a 60th vote, which will either mean fighting through an actual filibuster--not just a threat of a filibuster -- in the Senate or finding a way around the process of going back to the Senate, which probably means pass the Senate bill and then work on a correction or changes, i.e., as was done in the Civil Rights legislation.
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Kathleen Wells, J.D., is a political correspondent for Race-Talk. Kathleen is a native of Los Angeles and has degrees in political science and law, from UCLA and UC Berkeley, respectively. She writes/blogs on law and politics.
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