US / Hearing on long-term unemployment: Who cares?

When the Joint Economic Committee’s hearing on fixing the nation’s

problem kicked off on Wednesday, April 24, only one lawmaker was in attendance: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Committee’s vice chair who was holding the hearing. (Niraj Chokshi)

It stands to reason that lawmakers who often decry the high jobless rate would want to be seen publicly trying to tackle the problem, right? Well, apparently not.

When a hearing to explore how to get the long-term unemployed back to work kicked off on Wednesday morning, only one lawmaker was in attendance. That was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who was holding the hearing in her role as the vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee. The Joint Economic Commitee is one of a handful of committees whose members come from both parties and both houses of Congress. Klobuchar was eventually joined by three colleagues (in order of their appearance): Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. All four are Democrats.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via The Poorly Attended Hearing on One of the Economy’s Toughest Problems – NationalJournal.com.