Today, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings (WA-04) released the following statement regarding the Department of Labor’s report that the U.S. economy lost nearly 263,000 jobs in September, raising the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent:

“Unemployment in parts of the U.S. energy sector, including in the mining, oil and gas industries, has soared to double digits.¹  And despite the Obama Administration’s $1 trillion ‘stimulus’ bill, hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to lose their jobs each month.  Unfortunately, the Administration and Democrats in Congress remain fixated on passing a job-killing National Energy Tax bill that is only going to put more people in the unemployment line.

“We can watch more Americans continue to lose their jobs each month or President Obama and Democrats in Congress can finally make job creation their top priority.  Republicans continue to encourage Democrats to join us in supporting the American Energy Act, an all-of-the-above plan that will create green jobs, oil jobs, mining jobs, manufacturing jobs and nuclear jobs.”

1. See attached PDF.

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