Moderate Dems: Too soon for more stimulus

WASHINGTON, March 8 (UPI) -- Two moderate Democratic U.S. senators said Sunday it is premature to talk about a second economic stimulus package, despite mounting U.S. job losses.

In an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Evan Bayh of Indiana said President Barack Obama's recently enacted stimulus plan needs time to take effect.

"I think it's too early for that," McCaskill said, when asked whether Congress should begin work on a second stimulus plan. "Even when we were debating the stimulus, we kept saying over and over again there was going to continue to be significant job loss."

Bayh said it was "too soon" to know whether Obama's stimulus will be able to save the millions of jobs he thought he would be able to preserve.

"We may need to have to recalibrate what we do as we go along as the facts change. He did inherit one heck of a mess, and it's gotten worse over the last couple of months," Bayh said.

On the same program, Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking member of the Banking Committee, said the government should let struggling U.S. banks fail.

"I don't want to nationalize them. I think we need to close them," Shelby said. "Close them down, get them out of business. If they're dead, they ought to be buried. We bury the small banks; we've got to bury some big ones and send a strong message to the market."