Smirk This: Oil Giants Profit, Working Families Struggle to Pay the Bills

by Tula Connell, Jan 29, 2008

The Campaign for America’s Future website captured the essence of last night’s State of the Union (SOTU) address when the progressive organization titled its package of SOTU articles: Smirk of the Union. Indeed, while working families face the loss of their homes, lack of health care on their jobs, skyrocketing debt and low-wage jobs, President Bush figuratively—and literally—smirks.  

When Bush recognized individual audience members in the Capitol during his speech last night, he somehow missed the 9/11 workers who sacrificed their health in the minutes and weeks after the terrorist attacks, and yet who can’t get health care coverage for the often debilitating conditions that ensued. The 9/11 workers, attending the State of the Union address as guests of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, held a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday to ask: “Is the state of our union strong enough to provide for the health needs of 9/11 workers?” 

Bush didn’t acknowledge the 9/11 workers and didn’t mention their plight. He also left out a lot of other issues that are breaking the economic foundations of America’s middle class and working class. So, in the spirit of SOTU, smirk this: 

• A recession this year would likely raise the unemployment rate between 2.1 and 3.8 percentage points, increasing the number of unemployed Americans by between 3.2 million and 5.8 million, according to a report released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The report predicts the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed would continue to increase through 2010 or 2011 and would range between 6.7 percent and 8.4 percent. Black unemployment would increase to between 11.3 percent and 15.5 percent.

• The median price of homes in the United States last month dropped 10 percent from December 2006, the biggest 12-month decline in 37 years. Home sales decreased 4.7 percent to an annual pace of 604,000, the fewest since February 1995, from a 634,000 rate the prior month, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.

• Credit card debt increasingly is replacing home mortgage loans as the essential financial cushion for working families. As journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has pointed out, working families rely on credit cards because they can’t afford health care, education and other basics on the low-wage salaries that increasingly are becoming the American norm. The U.S. public now holds $915 billion in consumer debt, with the average borrower owing more than $9,000, according to Cardtrak.com, a financial information website. A new article in In These Times documents how the credit card industry has devised a Byzantine network of legal landmines that most of us could not begin to understand—and yet which trap us into an ever downward spiral of debt.

And finally, news that will make that presidential smirk into a broad grin: Texas-based ExxonMobil, the world’s largest privately owned oil company, is expected to improve on its previous record on Friday by reporting earnings of $39.6 billion, the biggest annual profits that the U.S. has ever seen. 

{[There is something we all can do now. Click here to tell your Senator to extend unemployment benefits in the economic stimulus package the House passed. Working families need a real economic stimulus.)

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