Update, 5:20 p.m.: Harry Gural, a spokesman for Rep. Waters, told The Daily Caller in an email that the congresswoman “obviously misspoke – she meant 170 thousand, not 170 million, jobs.”
Read the original report and watch the video below:
In a Thursday press conference, California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters warned of job losses totaling 170 million if the sequester goes through. Waters’ warning comes at a time when there are estimated to be between 135 and 143 million jobs in the United States.
The sequester refers to the $85 billion in cuts to the federal government’s discretionary spending set to go into effect on March 1, unless Congress passes some sort of legislation preventing it.
“[Y]esterday we did have Mr. Bernanke in our committee and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing, and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs — and he said that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback,” Waters said. “We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these job losses — over 170 million jobs that could be lost — and so he made it very clear he’s not opposed to cuts but cuts must be done over a long period of time and in a very planned way rather than this blunt cutting that will be done by sequestration.”
Watch:
Waters went on to give a list of social programs that would be taking a hit, with an emphasis on ones that would affect women and children.
“As you know in this committee, we have all of HUD [Housing and Urban Development] and HUD is responsible for so many programs that determine the quality of life for women and families,” she continued. “CDBG [Community Development and Block Grant Program], a form of grant programs will be cut by $153 million dollars. These are grants to cities that help with women and children and low-income programs. We also will cut the Home Program by $52 million if sequestration takes place. Native American housing grants by $34 million, house and choice grants $113 million, public housing — mostly single women in public housing — another $304 million. And homelessness, everybody claims to be concerned about homelessness and the growing number of women and children who are out their homeless but look they will take a $99 million hit and on and on and on. And so we are here today, one more time, talking about women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and families and have a decent quality of life — sequestration will set us back. All of the gains that we have made will be lost with sequestration.”