Solis: ‘Nobody is happy’ with extent of recovery yet

“Nobody is happy” with the way the economy has progressed, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Wednesday.

“It is bad right now,” Solis told the Fox Business Network of the state of the economy. “Nobody is happy, and the president and I feel very strongly that we have to do everything we can to create jobs.”

Still, Solis refused to predict when the economy might recover from its doldrums.

“It’s hard for me to predict,” she said. “I think it’s going to take a while, and I think the president and the vice president have been very clear that this is something that we just didn’t enter into two months ago, or four months ago — this has been going on for more than two years.”

And while the Labor secretary wouldn’t say a second stimulus was necessary, she defended the $787 billion package signed into law earlier this year — which Republicans have derided lately as having failed — as having staved off more economic hardship.

“We could have seen much worse happen if we didn’t have a stimulus program. I can tell you that,” Solis argued.

Watch a video excerpt of the interview below: