By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said today he was disappointed by news that the national unemployment rate has risen to 9.2 percent, the highest rate this year, but he said it is unfair for Republicans to place all the blame on the Obama administration.
“President Obama has proposed many things that have been blocked in the Senate by the Republicans that he feels like would have created a lot of jobs,” Pryor told reporters before speaking in Little Rock at a luncheon of the Arkansas Association of Insurance Companies.
“The Republicans aren’t letting him get his way on job creation, and then they turn around and blame him for not creating any new jobs. I just think that’s not fair,” he said.
Obama-backed bills that so far have been blocked by Republicans include measures to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Small Business Innovation Research program.
Pryor said he believes the FAA bill in particular would create a significant number of new jobs — the proposal supported by Democrats would invest $8.1 billion in capital improvement projects at airports across the country — as would a federal highway bill.
He said he was not trying to put all the blame on Republicans.
“Right now I think the problem is that the debt is overshadowing everything else,” he said. “And the Congress is pretty much in neutral right now. They don’t really know what to do because we don’t have our debt and our budget situation figured out. I’m hoping once we get this figured out in the next couple of weeks you’ll actually see some legislation that will help create jobs.”
UPDATE: Reps. Rick Crawford, R-Jonesboro, and Steve Womack, R-Rogers, issued separate statements Friday blasting the Obama administration for the disappointing unemployment numbers.
“It is impossible to expect anything other than a climbing unemployment rate when the president and the United States Senate refuse to take tangible steps to get Americans back to work,” Crawford said.
Womack said 29 months of unemployment topping 8 percent should serve as a “reality check” for Obama and Democrats in Congress.
“Our $14.3 trillion national debt, along with the over burdensome and, quite frankly, irrational regulations being placed on small businesses are stifling job creation,” he said.
In an address from the Rose Garden today, Obama called on House Democrats and Republicans to end their standoff over raising the federal debt ceiling and pass a number of measures he supports. The U.S. faces an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the ceiling or default on its debts.
“The sooner we get this done, the sooner that the markets know that the debt limit ceiling will have been raised and that we have a serious plan to deal with our debt and deficit, the sooner that we give our businesses the certainty they will need in order to make additional investments to grow and hire,” Obama said.
The economy generated just 18,000 new jobs last month, the fewest in nine months, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement Friday that the unemployment report was “more evidence that the misguided ‘stimulus’ spending binge, excessive regulations, and an overwhelming national debt continue to hold back private-sector job creation in our country.”
Pryor acknowledged that the $787 billion stimulus package passed in 2009 did not lower the national debt, but he noted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begun by former President George W. Bush have added $1.3 trillion to the debt.
“Some of the tax cuts that both parties have supported — people talk about the Bush tax cuts, but the truth is there are a lot of Democratic tax cuts in there too — if you look at all those, they’ve all added to the debt,” he said. “Everything has added to the debt. We need to be realistic about where we are right now.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and many House Democrats oppose proposals to cut benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Pryor said he opposes a Republican proposal to phase out Medicare and replace it with government subsidies for private health insurance, but he said every program needs to be on the table for cuts.
“What I tell folks in Arkansas that come up and see me is, I say, ‘Look, with a $14 trillion debt, everybody is going to get a cut,’” he said.
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Reporter Peter Urban in Washington contributed to this report.
