RALEIGH -- North Carolina's second-highest elected official says we may have turned the corner to get the economy moving in the right direction. Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest says making some controversial decisions -- such as making changes in unemployment compensation -- were the right ones.

Forrest says, "What you start doing is paying people to work and have jobs rather than paying them not to work, and the length of unemployment was too long in North Carolina. We had $2.5 billion of debt, which our businesses had to pay back to the federal government."

Opponents to the changes point out that while unemployment has fallen partly because many people have given up looking for work out of frustration.