Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-8) issued the following statement today following the resignations of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and President Bush's top economic advisor, Larry Lindsey:

 "The resignations of President Bush's top economic advisors underscores how terribly out of touch and off-course this Administration's economic policy has been from day one.  This Administration has blindly ignored real kitchen-table economic concerns of the many to advance a narrow economic agenda for a chosen few.

Their outdated, politically motivated policies have failed, and today the day of reckoning came.

If one looks at the record, everything that is going up should be going down and everything going down should be going up.  Unemployment is up, poverty rates are up, foreclosures are up, those lacking health coverage is up, deficits are back, and tax breaks for the wealthiest are up, while Social Security surpluses are down, the stock market has plummeted, job growth is down, middle class buying power is down, and tax relief for those who need it is non-existent.

This economic team was visionless, blindly wedded to ideology, and out of step with the real day to day concerns of average families in America.  Their answer is always that it is someone else's fault.  Well, it was this White House that presided over - and facilitated -- the worst reversal of our nation's economy in decades.  This is the weakest economic growth period of any Administration in fifty years.

It is ironic that on the day we learned that our nation's unemployment rate jumped to its highest point in nearly a decade, the Bush administration fires its economic team and tries to absolve itself of blame.  This Administration just doesn't get it."

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