Pelosi Statement on Today's Economic Forum

WASHINGTON, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House
Democratic leaders held a news conference today with economic experts
following an economic forum this forum. At the forum, five national economic
experts endorsed Democrats' call for a second stimulus package to further
jumpstart the economy. Below are the Speaker's opening remarks and selected
excerpts from Q and A:

"Good morning. This morning, we had the fourth in a series of economic forums
about the state of our economy and a need for perhaps another stimulus
package. We were joined by a number of our House leadership. This is in
addition to some of the meetings that we've had to specifically address
energy, infrastructure, and health care and their relationship to our economy.
We're very blessed to have the intellectual resources of so many leaders in
our country, to help us make the proper public policy to meet the needs of all
of America's families. That is the New Direction of this Congress.

"Today, we had the participation of the former Secretary of the Treasury, Dr.
Larry Summers; Dr. Alan Sinai from Decision Economics, Inc.; Alan Blinder of
Princeton University; Douglas Elmendorf of the Brookings Institution; and
Rebecca Blank of the Brookings Institution.

"Our focus was on the state of the economy, the need for another stimulus
package, and what that would contain, the impact of the price of oil on our
economic growth, and issues that relate to mortgage foreclosure crisis in our
country, among others.

"I want you to hear from our special guests and to say that we will be
proceeding with another stimulus package and we hope that we will once again
be able to work in a strong bipartisan way with our colleagues here in the
Congress and with the President of the United States, because even though we
believe that the initial recovery rebates had a positive impact, it certainly
is not enough to offset the rising prices in gasoline, in food, in fuel, in
health care, in education, and other rising costs while the purchasing power
of Americans' income is going down."

Selected excerpts from Q&A

On Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac:

"I want the record to show that under Chairman Barney Frank's leadership, as
chairman of the Financial Services Committee, in April 2007, a GSE reform bill
was passed by the House of Representatives. Part of it was in the stimulus
package earlier this year; it was passed again in May. So he has been way
ahead on this issue. He saw, down the road, the need for this reform. Earlier
than others. That's called leadership. The President of the United States
today in his press conference is calling upon Congress at long last to pass
this legislation. With all due respect to all of the wishes of all of the
Members, the priority for us is for the message to be clear: Congress will
act, we will act expeditiously, we will get this job done, and we will not
leave for the August break until this is signed into law, which is just a
matter of about 10 legislative days."

On Second Stimulus Package:

"As you heard, our distinguished experts here say, again, something targeted,
temporary, and timely, as were our criteria before, is very important. So I
would hope the President wanted that before, I would hope that they [tax
rebates for the middle class] would part of any package. But we can't have
them exclusively dominate the package. We have to have assistance, direct
assistance, in terms of the other issues that were named: food stamps, LIHEAP,
and the issues that relate to infrastructure, Medicaid, aid to the states. But
again, this is the menu from which we will choose and we will have to work in
a bipartisan way because this legislation must be signed into law."

"We have to move the Barney Frank/Chris Dodd bill; that will be part of, I
think, stimulating the economy. That will be our biggest initiative. We will
have legislation relating to energy that will be coming to the floor in the
next couple of days. All of these things to grow the economy. We have to work
with the President on a timetable.

"The President said in February, when the first bill was passed, and we did it
in record time, we worked together in a bipartisan way, that he didn't want to
do any of these other things: unemployment insurance, food stamps, LIHEAP,
aids to states in arrest, because he wanted to just do the rebates, he wanted
to see how they worked. Well, I think they had a positive effect except they
have been offset, as has been said by our experts, by the rising costs in
other necessities for the American people. So while they may have saved the
second quarter from a technical definition of a recession, the fact is that we
are into a third quarter and we need to have another stimulus package. Last
time, it took the testimony of Chairman Bernanke to convince him of that;
hopefully he will hear from his financial advisors, although Bernanke is
independent of the President, I hasten to add."

In addition to the Democratic Members of Congress, the following experts
attended the forum:

-- Rebecca Blank- Brookings Institute; former dean of Gerald R. Ford School of
Public Policy, University of Michigan

-- Alan Blinder - Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics, Center
for Economic Policy Studies, Department of Economics, Princeton University

-- Douglas Elmendorf- Brookings Institute; former principal analyst,
Congressional Budget Office

-- Allen Sinai - Founder, Chief Global Economist and President, Decision
Economics Inc.

-- Larry Summers- Professor and Past President, Harvard University; former
Treasury Secretary

SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House

Brendan Daly or Nadeam Elshami of the Office of the Speaker of the House,
+1-202-226-7616