NEW YORK, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- It is stimulus not austerity that puts a city or a state back on their feet in such a difficult time as this year, said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday.
"We should not be doing austerity measures, which is what the Citizens' Budget Commission is calling for. We should not be putting people out of work. We should not be decimating city services. We should be fighting for the best possible stimulus and keeping those services and that employment level high for the good of the city," said the mayor while appearing live on the Brian Lehrer Show on NYC's public radio station WNYC.
A stimulus will pay off many times over in terms of the economic activity and the revenue it will generate, he emphasized.
By "putting one of the biggest states in the country and the nation's largest city back on their feet, we can lead a national economic recovery," the mayor added.
Meanwhile, de Blasio reminded the nation to calibrate its spending priority by paying less for military purposes, noting the country spends hundreds of billions of dollars on wars.
"Let's recognize there's an opportunity here to really rethink our spending priorities. Pull away from so much military spending right there," he said.
The Democrats-controlled House of Representatives last month passed a 2.2-trillion-U.S.-dollar relief bill, the thing that de Blasio called as "stimulus," while some Senate Republicans insisted on a relief package below 1 trillion dollars.
It is not clear whether Republican and Democratic lawmakers could bridge their differences on the relief package in the upcoming "lame duck" session of Congress that is expected to extend into December.
Economists as well as Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly argued that more fiscal relief is needed to sustain U.S. economic recovery, warning of dire consequences if further fiscal support is not provided in time. Enditem
