American Workers to Senate: We Need Jobs Not Politics

[IndianaGreen]

American Workers to Senate: We Need Jobs Not Politics

By Joel Wendland

2-06-09, 10:05 am

As record numbers of American workers filed for unemployment benefits in the final days of January and new government data released Feb. 6 revealed that 598,000 more jobs were lost last month, Senators have stalled the president's economic recovery package.

According to the Department of Labor, the unemployment ballooned to 7.6 percent in January. In addition, the department revised its December employment figure upward by more than 55,000 lost jobs. The data revealed the worst jobs situation in the country in 34 years.

In response, President Obama intensified pressure on Senators who have delayed passage of his economic recovery package. At a political event on the evening of Feb. 5th. "If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law," he warned, "an economy that is in crisis will be faced with catastrophe. Millions more Americans will lose their jobs. Home will be lost. Families will go without health care. Our crippling dependence on foreign oil will continue. That is the price of inaction."

Earlier that day, the Obama administration countered Republican criticisms of its economic recovery package, the Obama administration asserted that its $800 billion plan meets high standards of transparency, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

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Those estimate show that a state like Michigan, with the highest unemployment rate in the country and whose Republican House members unanimously voted against the recovery package, could see about 115,000 jobs created or saved in the two years.

At least 3 million Virginia workers would benefit from tax relief, while about 99,000 jobs would be saved or created there. Florida could see over 218,000 jobs created or saved and 485 schools modernize and renovated. More than 151,00 jobs in Pennsylvania, 141,000 jobs in Ohio, and 16,000 in Maine could be saved or created with an injection of new federal dollars under the president's stimulus plan.

Across the country, tens of millions of workers would see direct tax savings and hundreds of thousands of families would be eligible for tax credits to help cover the costs of their children's college education.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8094/

[tomreedtoon]

1. Workers ask for jobs? Sez who?

I didn't see any of that in the coverage. I saw Republicans insisting that the rich needed tax cuts, and Democrats pushing for freaking ballets and fresco painters. Workers weren't there.