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One Year Later, the Recovery Act Is Working
If there’s one thing Americans agree on, it’s that we need more jobs now. That reality is often twisted by conservatives, who say the one-year-old economic recovery plan has failed. But they are just wrong.
The AFL-CIO is pushing for much greater investment to create the millions more jobs we need to get us out of our current hole. Check out the federation’s five-point plan to put America back to work here.
The fact is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is still working, generating more than 2 million jobs and laying the foundation for future economic growth.
In a report issued today, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), tracks monthly job losses before and after the Recovery Act. He writes:
With unemployment at 9.7 percent today, it’s hard to appreciate how much more damage the stimulus investments prevented. Without the more than 2 million jobs generated by the Recovery Act, the unemployment rate would now exceed 11 percent.
Click here to read the report.
One sign the recovery package is working: Our economy grew 5.7 percent last quarter—the largest gain in six years. Many economists say the growth is largely due to the Recovery Act—and those who say the first economic Recovery Act didn’t work are just plain wrong.
EPI President Lawrence Mishel says:
The fact is that [the Recovery Act] did work—precisely as it was designed to work—and it has helped to produce roughly 2 million jobs that wouldn’t exist if the Recovery Act had not become law.
Congressional Democrats recently have criticized Republicans who voted against the measure but then went home to praise Recovery Act grants for projects in their districts. Although the Recovery Act passed with no Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers supported stimulus funding requests submitted for their districts, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said the Recovery Act has been a “life preserver” that helped reduce the harmful impact of the recession on children.
Kids don’t get a second chance to get a good education. The Recovery Act was the help they needed, ensuring that schools continued to receive resources so that teachers could teach and students learn.
National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis Van Roekel agreed, saying Congress must pass a jobs bill that will maintain and create jobs to keep school doors open after the Recovery Act expires.
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Here are links to two articles with a socialist perspective.
After 4 million jobs lost, White House declares stimulus a success
By Jerry White
18 February 2010
Confronting growing discontent over his administration’s failure to provide serious relief to some 15 million jobless workers in the US, President Obama on Wednesday proclaimed the success of the stimulus package, enacted a year ago, and declared, “The American people are rebuilding a better future.”
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The stimulus package was never aimed at seriously addressing mass unemployment that can only be alleviated through massive government hiring, a measure that the administration has rejected out of hand. Instead, the administration, acting on behalf of the most powerful corporate and financial interests, has welcomed unemployment as a hammer to drive down the wages and benefits of workers—as it did to auto workers at GM and Chrysler—and sharply increase the rate of exploitation of the working class.
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Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/stim-f18.shtml
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Behind Obama’s overtures to Republican right
“Bipartisan” campaign targets US working class
By Patrick Martin
18 February 2010
The Obama administration is announcing Thursday a new initiative for joint action by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party against American working people, when the leaders of a new bipartisan commission to slash the federal deficit are introduced at the White House.
Obama has selected Democrat Erskine Bowles, a banker and former White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, and Republican Alan Simpson, a retired senator from Wyoming, to head the new commission. It will have a mandate to propose major cuts in entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, as well as regressive taxes such as a national sales tax or value-added tax, targeting working class consumers rather than the wealthy.
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Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/bipa-f18.shtml
Like I said before on the petition with other friends I invited to support you, why don’t we quit trade to Red China and Mexico? That’s where more jobs are being lost than the stimulus has gotten back or whatever. At Wal-Mart, I see practically everything made in Red China. Where did all the American jobs go to produce those things? How many children and families were left to suffer because the man of the house or whomever had no job? We can still trade with Africa, the rest of Asia, South America, and Europe. The more we trade with Red China, the more she builds up her trade surplus with us. And the more she ships drugs to the Mexican drug cartels for more dinero to buy more weapons from Russia, her close ally–believe it or not, and whoever else will give her weapons. A Red Chinese colonel said recently, “We will destroy you (referring to the U. S.)!” Also, a top ranking Red Chinese official said he doesn’t care if he lost a billion of his people in a nuclear exchange with the U. S. He said he would still have more millions than us left! Moreover, the Muslims, their close allies–the Red Chinese are pouring in technicians and material into Iran to help develop its nuclear arsenal, are willing to blow themselves up anywhere and anytime against “infidels”(anyone who doesn’t believe as they do)! Let’s all wake up and keep American jobs in America! Kick Pelosi, Obama, Reid, Dodd, and all the liberals in Congress who don’t want to give Americans back their jobs BIG TIME!!! Not through some juggled figures of a huge trillion dollar stimulus package that is a drop in the bucket as far as jobs are concerned. You mean to tell me close to 10% unemployment is satisfactory for you? If someone works for $50 per month or less, like in Red China or Mexico, where do you think big business will send jobs and factories to? I say stop all that!!!! Put into law immediately that no one, but no one can send jobs or factories to those countries and anyone who does so, big or small, will risk confiscation of plants, supplies, and all funds in all banks. We gotta get tough for a tough problem! Let’s have some backbone here!
Offshoring jobs is still killing us. Look behind the curtain.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9158278/Obama_says_stimulus_helps_keep_IT_jobs_onshore
With the scarcity of jobs in the non-union economy and an overall depression for the Union job market;why is there no outcry from our Union Reps for an extension of jobless benefits?How come we never use our voting block as leverage to get the much needed help or our candidates put in place on the NLRB?
I am almost at the point where the money I use to pay my dues will be the money I need to buy my food.What do I and members like myself do then?
Its worse than that. Union PACs aren’t even putting their money where their mouths are. Here in Michigan, local PACs have donated $66k to Thad McCotter, who is a tiny-government, tiny-tax, free-trade, Wal-Mart Republican. $37k of that money came from AFL-CIO member PACs. Now McCotter is touting the stimulus funding as good for MI, even though he voted against it twice. We need to watch where our dues are going.
Thank you for posting the articles from the WSWS. As long as Labor aligns with the corporate duopoly and the military industrial complex with its untouchable pentagon budget, there will continue to be layoffs, downsizing of social programs and no funding for human needs.
recovery act is working, bs. trumka is mentally unstable to think so. trumka is not listening to his members
I don’t know what to say. I am flabbergassed.
The PROMISE was that the Stimulus bill would cause the unemployment rate to be below 8%.
I would only call the Stimulus bill a success if there is an average of 200,000 new jobs are created each month. Otherwise, let us not deceive ourselves. The Stimulus bill is a failure, and we have think of another strategy.
No matter how much the government spends on projects or gives to states unemployment will stay high until banks start to lend money. Basically, the banking industry is boycotting the Obama administration, just like the Republican Party is doing in Congress.
If anyone thinks that voting for Republicans will change things for the better, they’re nuts. They got us into this mess by letting banks do anything they wanted and they’ve always been anti-labor.
On the other hand, we don’t need to blindly support the Democrats. Instead, we should do the things will create solidarity among working people – regardless of race, nationality, union-membership, or whether we have jobs or not – and demonstrate in a concrete way that we do have power. I don’t mean electoral power, I mean the power that built this country and produces its wealth.
The bigshots only have power because we give it to them. Take the power back and put it to use to get what we need.
Now we put republicans in the NLRB and still nothing on the Employee Free choice Act. Whats a union man need to expect next?
I’m all for ‘job creation’ in the PRIVATE sector. Creating government jobs/more bureaucracies (for ex. the healthcare bill which ‘creates’ about 100 new bureaucracies to ‘oversee’ the damn thing) does nothing for the economy. Why? Because those jobs are paid for through taxation! The bigger the government, the higher our taxes. And creating jobs in the private sector won’t help much either unless E-Verify is mandated for EVERY employer in the country! Thank God many states are taking it upon themselves to pass their own E-Verify legislation. It would appear that state officials understand why they were elected. Unlike our ‘career’ politicians on the federal level!
Createing Jobs & Keeping Jobs here in America. 1.Open up offshore Drilling for Oil & Gas on the East Coast and Alaska. Resiults: More Jobs here in America = new business in Hotels/grocery stores,increase in housing sale/increase in Aoto sales==more money paid in taxes to Federal & Local govts.==more money for roads/ more money for schools & education etc. etc.=====Keep our space program going, same results listed above/ plus we don’t need to be 2nd to any nation in the space program for secerity purposes if nothing else. For security purposes, we do not need to depend on any country for any of our needs or survival. Joe Goddard
WHERE CAN YOU GET THE LIST OF 2 MILLION PEOPLE HAT HAVE GOT JOBS WITH THE SIMULUS , THERE HAS BEEN NO TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY AND HONESTY IN THE OBAMAS ADMINISTRATION , HAS THE AFL-CIO HAD A BREAK THROUGH RECENTYL ? PLEASE TELL WHERE TO FIND THIS INFORMATION ?
CAN YOU TELL US IF THEY WERE ACORN GROUPS , 1200 CHAPTERS IN USA WITH 390 ASSO GROURPS , ACORN IS DOING THE CENSUS AND IS GETTING A BILLION FOR 1 YEAR AND I MILLION ACORNS WILL BE GETTING JOBS AND OVER 6 YEARS OR SO WILL BE GETTING 8.7 BILLION , NOT BAD , HOW MANY OUR FOREIGN BORN WORKERS WITH WORK PERMITS , ILLEGALS AND OTHERS WHO DONT HAVE PAPERS .
THE UNION NEEDS TO STAND UP TYO THE PLATE AND ASK FOR HONESTY IN GOVERNMENT , TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY … WE HAVE GONE FROM DOUBLE DIGITS TO LOW SINGLE DIGITS IN MEMBERSHIP , THE LAST 3 YEARS UNDER CONTROL OF DEMS HAS BEEN VERY BAD ECONOMY !
The “recovery act” acccounting is fraught with errors and downright lies. It reported jobs saved and created in districts that do not exist. If it were doing any good at all, the unemployment woul dnot have gone from 8% to 11%. Please report the truth, not the party line.
Reading the comments I’m reminded of a couple of old sayings: “Divinde and conquer,” and “Treat them like mushrooms: keep them in the dark and feed them #%*”
Sounds like most commentators are fed up with their unions, but are any of you active in your unions? And what’s this stuff about ACORN doing the census? It’s a bunch of hooey. Anyone can be a Census worker; all you have to do is pass a simple test to prove you can do simple math, find addresses, and fill out Census paperwork.
Let’s stop the back-biting and get to work on something that will bring us together.
Let’s march on Washington – and stay there until our needs are met.