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Recovery Bill ‘Good News for the Economy’ |
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Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an economic recovery package to create and save up to 4 million jobs and stabilize the nation’s rapidly tumbling economy. The bill passed without a single Republican vote, despite President Barack Obama’s White House and Capitol Hill meetings with Republican lawmakers in an outreach effort to set a more bipartisan tone in Washington.
The Republicans offered their vision of a recovery plan—tax cuts, mostly for Big Business.
On the House floor during debate on the bill, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, described Republican opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act this way:
I must say that I truly admire the courage of my friends on the other side of the aisle. In the middle of the worst economic downturn that any of us can remember, our parents told us about the Depression, an unprecedented and accelerating job loss all across the American economy in every sector, our friends on the other side of the aisle ask us just for one last time to do what they’ve been doing the last eight years; to just one more time give the tax cuts to the richest people in the country; to just one more time dive into the tank of fiscal irresponsibility.
Miller went on to say when the Bush administration took office and Republicans controlled Congress, they inherited a $5 trillion surplus from the Clinton administration and turned it into an $8 trillion deficit, oversaw the slowest growth of jobs since World War II and presided over an economy that left middle-income wages stagnant while the wealthy become wealthier. Then there’s the entire Wall Street, financial industry, housing and credit crises, all born under their watch.
You know, when that helicopter took off outside here in this plaza, millions of Americans gave that president a wave good-bye because in the middle of this historic downturn, millions and millions of Americans made a decision to go in another direction because what you were doing hadn’t worked for them or for their families, hadn’t worked for them or their families, because that was your policy.
Click here to read Miller’s entire floor speech in the Congressional Record.
Meanwhile, union, environmental, progressive and other groups had a much different take on the recovery package than the job-killing House Republicans. AFSCME President Gerald McEntee called the House vote “historic” and “good news for the economy”:
The House has acted boldly to protect jobs and create opportunity. With 11 million workers unemployed, with home values declining at an alarming rate and the need for vital public services growing rapidly, it is shocking that no Republicans were willing to put partisanship behind them and stand with President Obama.
Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), said the House vote is a clear signal that Obama and Democrats in Congress
will do whatever it takes to reverse the disastrous economic decline we have seen across the economy. The transportation infrastructure investments in this bill are a down-payment on a multitrillion-dollar problem stemming from decades of neglect. By investing in the country’s aging infrastructure, we not only put thousands of people to work but also address critical needs.
One of the key job creation provisions of the bill is the creation of renewable energy/green jobs. Says the Sierra Club’s Melinda Pierce:
This bill is a win-win for a strong economy and a healthier environment. By focusing on critical investments in repair and modernization of infrastructure and boosting production of renewable energy, the bill will create good jobs here in America and reduce our dependence on dirtier energy sources.
Next week, the Senate will take up its version of the recovery package and many Senate Republicans are already lining up against the bill. Brad Woodhouse, president of the coalition Americans United for Change, warns:
Amid an economic crisis that has cost millions of Americans their jobs and threatens millions more if nothing is done, Republicans in the Senate can not afford to slow down the process with the same old partisanship and stubborn insistence on failed policies of the past.
Starting today, the group is running ads in several states urging five key Republican senators to support the plan and “not the failed policies of the past.” The ads are aimed at senators Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Judd Gregg (N.H.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Charles Grassley (Iowa).
Click here to view the ads.
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A critical comment on the perils of “Buy American” from a socialist perspective.
The rising tide of economic nationalism
30 January 2009
Peter Symonds
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j30.shtml
“As the global economic crisis continues to deepen, the unmistakable stench of economic nationalism is on the rise around the world. Confronted with collapsing industries and growing anger over job losses, governments are reaching for protectionist measures despite the disastrous consequences of such beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the 1930s.”
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The new Obama administration spurred on the rising tide of protectionism with the comments last week of Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner accusing China of manipulating its currency to boost exports. Designating Beijing as a “currency manipulator” would allow the White House to invoke a broad range of punitive tariffs and other economic penalties against China under US trade legislation.”
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The Democrats in the House of Representatives went one step further by including a “Buy American” provision in Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package approved on Wednesday. The clause, which requires infrastructure projects funded by the package to use only US-made iron and steel, has provoked protests from European steelmakers. Democrat senator Byron Dorgan is proposing a broader measure to exclude most foreign-made manufactured goods when the package reaches the Senate.”
Such measures threaten to provoke escalating retaliation and a full-blown trade war. …
Those who push this reactionary poison in the working class are the trade unions and their various middle class radical allies. Far from defending jobs and conditions, economic nationalism goes hand-in-hand with the continuing impoverishment of working people. Whether in the US, Europe or any other country, the same union bureaucrats who have presided over the decimation of manufacturing industry over the past three decades now insist on the further sacrifice of wages and conditions as part of the protectionist packages to defend American or European companies.”
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The logic of economic nationalism is class collaboration in a dog-eat-dog competition that pits workers in one country against their class brothers and sisters around the world. The end result is trade war and military conflict.”
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The working class cannot defend its interests under the banner of either protectionism or “free trade”. …”
The Republicans have once again shown their true colors. We must not give them one inch and take back what little we offered them in terms of more tax breaks for the rich. All stimulus money should now be utilized for job creation, extended unemployment benefits, rebate checks for the poor, working class, middle class and seniors. We must re-double the tax on un-earned income and lower the payroll taxe and property tax on single family home occupied by senior on fixed incomes and woring families with children.