"It's an employer's world," said Rebecca Penny, a 55-year-old widow who was laid off over a year ago from her job at a Chevrolet plant in Tennessee. "I lost my benefits the night I was laid off. Now I can't afford medicine. And I can only find minimum wage jobs that don't pay enough to keep up my house payments... My unemployment insurance runs out at the end of the year, and if I can't find something by then, I may lose my house... I don't understand this debate in Washington," she said. "Everyone's talking about deficits, but to me they are doing it backwards... Bring back the middle class first, that will take care of the deficits. Without the middle class, the economy isn't going to go anywhere."
There was more urgency and common sense in her words than anything in either the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire or the president's meeting with CEOs in North Carolina to discuss ways to generate jobs. Republicans scoured the president while offering more of the same policies -- top-end and corporate tax cuts, corporate trade deals, privatization and deregulation -- that got us into the mess we are in. The president spoke eloquently about the need for jobs, and convened his "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" that offered up pablum -- more worker training, less red-tape, easing visas to promote tourism, and the like. Later the president added his support for extending the payroll tax cut when it is slated to expire at the end of the year, which at least is something.
Last month's lousy jobs numbers have politicians in both parties talking about jobs again -- but they are mostly mouthing the words. The big dogs are focused on deficits, specifically the negotiations about how much and what to cut as the price for lifting the debt limit. The decisions coming out of Washington over the next months are more likely to cost jobs than generate them.
Yet, outside the beltway, 25 million Americans remain in need of full time work. Wages aren't keeping up with prices -- particularly the prices of basics like food, gas, health care. Veterans are coming back from risking their lives abroad to the worst jobs market since the Great Depression. Young people are graduating from high school and sitting on their hands. Home values are down a staggering 33% and falling. Millions of foreclosures are yet to come. Companies are sitting on cash, and using tax breaks to accelerate the movement of good jobs abroad. For the first time, polls show most Americans fear their children will not fare as well as they have. The middle class is dying; the American Dream is in danger of becoming a lost fantasy.
Washington seems impervious. So progressive legislators have decided to challenge the limits of the debate. Penny was talking at a press conference sponsored by ProgressiveCongress.org to launch a 12 city summer jobs tour by Progressive Caucus members, dubbed: "The Speakout for Good Jobs Now! Rebuild the American Dream Tour." (Full disclosure: I serve as chair of the board of ProgressiveCongress.org. For dates and times, go to www.SpeakOutTour.com)
The purpose of the tour is to listen -- something legislators aren't exactly famous for -- and to encourage working and unemployed people to speak out and make their voices heard. It will extend through July, with more events still being added. Organizers are hoping to build a tidal wave of demand for action on jobs that will crest into congressional town meetings in August.
In "The People's Budget," the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive"The People's Budget," Caucus, Reps. Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva, offered a detailed jobs agenda, one based on Penny's common sense: It starts by creating jobs, and then moves to bring the budget in balance. Since their People's Budget includes top end tax hikes, taxes financial gaming, closes corporate loopholes and takes on defense spending, they have a far more plausible plan for deficit reduction than the fraudulent figures put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan and adopted by the Republican House.
But this tour isn't about legislators laying out their agenda. It is about citizens expressing their frustrations, their fears, their anger and their hopes. The legislators want to provide a platform for the media to pay attention to what is going on in people's lives. And what's clear is that it is only if voters start getting loud and surly about the jobs situation that Washington might get the message.
After the Republican debate last night, CNN invited former Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs to provide a "rebuttal" to the incessant attacks on the president.
When asked about the Republican charge that with 9.1% unemployment, the president has no plan, Gibbs responded, correctly, that all Republicans talked about was repeating "the policies that got us into the economic mess that were trying to get out of." Pressed repeatedly about the president's plan, he noted that we've "created 2 million jobs over the last 15 months," and we can't go back to the policies that put us into the mess. Pushed again, he finally argued that the president will "continue to do what he did in December," that is the deal that extended the Bush tax cuts, cut small business taxes, cut the payroll tax and extended unemployment insurance.
Inadvertently, perhaps, Gibbs offered a pretty clear summary of the failed debate in Washington. The country is offered a choice between Republicans championing the very policies that drove the economy off the cliff and a White House vowing not to repeat those policies. A big serious strategy to put people back to work, to rebuild the middle class, to capture a lead in the new green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world is simply off the table. That can only happen with leaders prepared to take on the entrenched interests -- big oil, global corporations, Wall Street -- that stand in the way. And the only way they will gain the courage to do that is, as the SpeakOut Tour suggests, if people demand action on jobs -- and make that demand heard above the current babble.
Follow Robert L. Borosage on Twitter: www.twitter.com/borosage
Maybe we need for our US congress to repeal all of the "Free Trade" laws and the other anti-business laws that they created in the last 20 years that encouraged and ECONOMICALLY REQUIRED that US corporations (and/or individual businessmen) to relocate the manufacturing jobs to foreign nations or go bankrupt.
The Democrats and the Republican members of the US congress and the US Senate both created the "Free Trade" laws and other anti-business laws that caused US businesses to move their US factories overseas and lay off all of the US employees and take advantage of lower labor and environmental costs available in foreign countries.
It's the people that buy into the whole "America is broke, go get a job" that I have a hard time sympathizing for. America is far from broke, and from what i've seen the past few years is anyone can be a statistic, but it's the people that see people other than a statistic that truely have character...well those and the ones that don't watch FAUX news.
Amazingly I just listened to Lieberman on MSNBC and agreed with him. His statement was, Right and Left had to put their agendas aside and do what is best for the citizens of this country. Finally, someone who can stand before the cameras said something that actually means something. Not more of the same rhetoric we've been listening to for years now.
If you are serious about creating jobs and increasing wages then you need to fight against the corporatist and free trade is their weapon of choice.
Or compete successfully with your counterparts in Communist China and the NAFTA nations. Compete successfully with the folks entering the U.S. on work visas. Get rid of minimum wage laws, get rid of entitlement programs, get rid of grotesquely burdensome regulation, get rid of wage rates out of all proportion to most of the rest of the world. Creating an island where absurdly elevated wages and benefits reign will increase black-market trade and contribute to U.S. American workers becoming ever more detached from free-market forces.
Ultimately, U.S. Americans are going to have to compete with the rest of the world on the latter's terms. The protectionism you're recommending only postpones the day of reckoning and will intnsify the pain when it finally arrives --- as it must.
Yes, impose tariffs on foreign governments whose representatives subsidise particular industries. Punish those who try to manipulate the market. But don't allow your dear elected representatives to cater to U.S. workers' desire to artificially shield themselves from market forces. That might feel good in the short term, but everyone will pay (in fact, is now paying) for it eventually.
Free trade agreements have been giveaways to large corporations. There is no reason someone in America should be competing with people in China for wage prices. We need to raise their quality of life not lower our own.
Despite what you may think we can maintain a more America first economy and compete globally. Other countries have done it and so can we.
That is a policy problem in the US that must be fixed. These Free Trade agreements also need to be looked at. China has something like a 20% tariff on US products while we only impse a 2% tariff. that destorys our competitveness right there.
This legislation was not in the interest of the average working citizens of the USA, so why did congress create these laws?
Answer: Because most of the importer/distribuitor/retailer's paid lobbyists have probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on wine, food, women, song, corporate jobs for their (unemployable) children/wives/girlfriends of the congressmen (and their aids), vacations, cash, pre-paid sexual services, and campaign contributions to entice (bribe) our congressmen to pass this "Free Trade" legislation" that allowed all companies to take advantage of the lower labor and environmental costs available in foreign countries.
If progressives allow Obama and Biden to preemptively cave in to Repub blackmail and agree to unnecessarily make $4 trillion in cuts that are designed to tank the economy and discredit the Dems, then it will be the Dem party which will be punished by voters. The present Dem leadership is the worst in many decades. At least Clinton stood up to the Repubs in 1995 -- and won. The president and VP are leading the Dems into disaster and the middle class into further decimation. Austerity in a recession is good only for bankers: it will tank the economy, increase unemployment, and raise the deficit. Budget cuts = job destruction. Only well-targeted public spending can increase demand and bring robust job growth.
1) accounting for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (%u201Doverseas military contingencies%u201D) in the budget rather than through the use of supplemental appropriations;
2) assuming the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation;
3) accounting for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements; and
4) anticipating the inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief.
According to administration officials, these changes will make the debt over ten years look $2.7 trillion larger than it would otherwise appear.
At least we have real numbers--Thanks to Obama
The Democrats " Make It In America" initiative involves a series of bills that have been introduced for consideration by the 112th Congress. This initiative will create jobs here, grow the economy and reduce the trade deficit, all of which help reduce our budget deficits. Creating jobs and growing the economy reduces deficits by increasing tax revenues and decreasing spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.
The Congress won't act, the stalemate stems from the stubborn fact that the GOP refues the "increasing tax revenues" part. The cuts the Democrats propose which will hurt many is in a way the equivalent in belt-tightening that is expected from the wealthier amongst us; they need to tighten their belts, too.
GOP Plan:
.•Cut taxes for the rich
•Cut regulations that protect consumers, employees and the environment
•Cut spending on the things We, the People (government) do for each other, including spending on infrastructure and education
•Get rid of unions
•More trade agreements to increase offshoring
•Unleash oil companies to do whatever they want, including more unregulated drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
•Block citizen access to courts for redress when corporations harm them
•Unleash big insurance companies and block states from regulating them
While I agree the issue is a problem a lack of action hardly make shim a failure.
"•Block citizen access to courts for redress when corporatioÂns harm them"
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/after-28-months-stimulus-spending-19-mil
Employment statistics HISTORY
http://useconomy.about.com/od/economicindicators/a/Job-Stats.htm
Read and watch Republican policies devastate our economy and our jobs.
So very true...And I believe it was deliberate, too...a way for them to force the Democrats into spending cuts...and with the corporate media behind them, blame the horrible mess that they spawned on the Democrats. Then they can really turn the clock back to the 1920s -- with perhaps full Republican control of Congress and the Executive branch (and, of course, they already control the Supreme Court).