Can New AFL-CIO Plan Save Two Million Jobs - and the Dems in 2010?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.truthout.org/topstories/111809ms01

Wednesday 18 November 2009

by: Art Levine, t r u t h o u t | Report

Democratic leaders yesterday sent their strongest signals yet that they were eager to pass a jobs-creation and benefits-extension package to help stop the economic and political bleeding caused by a 10 percent official unemployment rate, the worst in a generation.

They have to promote job growth, in part, to stem looming anti-incumbent rage. That anger is also being fed by the faux populism of the "tea baggers" and GOP-driven attacks, no matter how distorted, on the credibility and impact of President Obama's original $787 billion stimulus bill.


(Image: Troy Page, t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Mr. Wright, Roger Blackwell, rscottjones, tadfad)

As The New York Times captured the atmosphere on Capitol Hill:

With Congressional Democrats in near-panic amid forecasts that unemployment will remain high through next November's midterm elections, a party leader said that the House will pass a new "jobs bill" before Dec. 18.

Senate Democrats are also weighing options. And the signals from Congress follow by a day the White House's announcement that President Obama will follow his "Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth" on Dec. 3 with a "Main Street Tour" starting the next day in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and continuing to other hard-hit places in coming months.

With more than half of last winter's $787 billion package of tax cuts and stimulus spending still in the pipeline, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader from Maryland, said the new measure should not be referred to as another stimulus bill.

"I don't want it to be as broad as that," he said. "I want it to be very targeted on jobs."

And that's what a bold new recovery proposal from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka aims to accomplish. It was announced Tuesday at an Economic Policy Institute panel, where Trumka was joined by civil rights leaders and other reformers. Wade Henderson, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, declared at the panel, "Make no mistake, for us this is the civil rights issue of the moment. Unless we resolve the national job crisis, it will make it hard to address all of our other priorities."

To save or create two million jobs in a year, the pricetag for new direct spending on jobs creation could be in the $150 billion to $200 billion range over one year, one liberal economics expert privately told me.

FULL story at link.

[msongs]

1. if dems want electoral success they need to start acting like dems, not repub obstructionists nt

[dcsmart]

2. Start a Democratic Labor Party...