As House Democrats mull legislative options to try to turn around the unemployment rate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) doesn’t intend to produce a big, new stimulus measure. Instead, she is taking a multiple-bill approach. Additional appropriations are among the possibilities, but whether infrastructure spending will be in the mix still is not clear. Officials in the construction industry, whose unemployment rate is much worse than the overall national figure, are hoping for action soon.
Pelosi convened a nearly four-hour meeting on Oct. 21 at which key Democrats heard job-creation ideas from economists, including Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics Inc., New York City, and Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic Progress, Washington, D.C.