via AlterNet:
Let's Get Rolling on Unemployment -- We Need a Direct Govt. Jobs Program
By Isaiah J. Poole,
Blog for Our Future. Posted December 2, 2009.
At a time when unemployment is expected to exceed 10 percent for the next several months, we should be talking about direct job funding by the government.A federal program of direct job funding, even at a time when unemployment is expected to exceed 10 percent for the next several months, is the third rail of any discussion about reducing unemployment. But to say that the government should not, to borrow a phrase from green-energy activist Van Jones, put people to work doing the work that needs to be done, is not only inhumane, it makes no economic sense. It's worth making the effort to get such a program into the political mainstream.
One element in the five-point jobs program unveiled Monday by the Economic Policy Institute is a public service jobs program. "If the private sector can’t put people back to work, then the public sector must," the report said.
EPI proposes a program that will spend $40 billion a year over three years to employ one million people. The money would be distributed through the Community Development Block Grant program. From the report:
The CDBG formula targets communities based on levels of short-term and long-term economic distress, as reflected in measures such as poverty, population decline, and age of housing stock. The formula could be improved with measures of unemployment and long-term unemployment, but to speed startup the first year could use the existing formula.
The proposal parallels one of the major planks in the AFL-CIO's own five-part jobs program released last month, in which the union called for putting people to work "restoring our environment, providing child care and tutoring, cleaning up abandoned houses and more." These jobs, both the AFL-CIO and EPI stress, would not replace existing public-sector jobs, which both groups propose to save through a separate program of aid to state and local governments designed to prevent budget cuts to vital services. Both organizations also agree that the jobs should pay prevailing wages. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144302/let%27s_get_rolling_on_unemployment_--_we_need_a_direct_govt._jobs_program