Courtney, Sullivan Square Off On Economy
The Day
Ted Mann
Republican congressional hopeful Sean Sullivan took to the airwaves Tuesday with an unconventional message, given a spate of bad news from the financial sector: The economy's really doing fine.
”Our economy is actually fundamentally sound,” Sullivan said in a Tuesday morning appearance on the WNPR radio program Where We Live. “We still have unemployment at historically low levels. That doesn't help people who are out of a job. ... (Unemployment is) not what it would have been a hundred years ago, when we had real depressions and unemployment over 30, 40 percent.”
Sullivan's comments, which were immediately contested by his opponent, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, echoed a similar statement made Monday by Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee. While McCain was quickly forced to backtrack from his own remarks, Sullivan was holding firm on Tuesday afternoon, saying in a phone interview that reports of economic problems were being exaggerated by Democrats like Courtney and Sen. Barack Obama, the presidential candidate.
”Why run around yelling, 'The sky is falling?' “ Sullivan said in the phone interview. “Unemployment is at 6 percent, which is not good. We'd like it to be better. But it's clearly not a Great Depression-type thing. We've had Great Depressions before, and they've really been where people are starving and out of work.”
A spokesman for Courtney criticized Sullivan's remarks after the radio program, in which he was pressed by host John Dankosky about his assertion that the economy was structurally sound, given the failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers over the weekend, amid fervent federal talks about how and whether to keep it and other huge firms afloat.
At one point, Dankosky also corrected the candidate on the percentage of Americans now estimated to be unemployed: More than 6 percent, not 5 percent, as Sullivan had said on the radio.
”Wow, Mr. Sullivan just doesn't get it,” said Courtney spokesman Brian Farber in an e-mail message. “The unemployment rate is over six percent - yet Sullivan claims it's (historically low). The more we learn about Mr. Sullivan's disturbing views, the more we see how out-of-touch Sean Sullivan is with eastern Connecticut.”
That, Sullivan counters, is an effort to exaggerate the current fiscal problems to stimulate momentum toward Democratic candidates.
In Connecticut, “4 percent (of homeowners) are behind on their mortgages, and they are suffering,” Sullivan said. “But 96 percent are not. The sky is not falling. They see that gas prices are too high. Everything else is stuff they're being fed on TV, and they're not seeing the same crisis.”
The collapse of the investment banks and shudders in major firms with questionable holdings represent the bursting of a “credit bubble” dating to the economic boom years of the 1990s, Sullivan said, adding that he still didn't foresee wider job losses.
”I don't see a lot more people losing their jobs in this economy,” he said.
Labels: 2nd CD, economy
