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Jobs Bill: Action Needed Now
As the U.S. Senate considers a much-needed jobs bill with no certain date for a vote, the AFL-CIO union movement continues to push lawmakers to put the needs of workers and the economy before concerns over the nation’s budget deficit. Of the nation’s 15 million jobless workers, 6.8 million have been out of work for more than 26 weeks. If Congress fails to act on the jobs bill and allows federal unemployment insurance (UI) to expire, 8.2 million workers will exhaust their benefits by the end of 2010.
Over the weekend, President Obama called on the Senate to pass the jobs bill, saying the nation needs to “jump-start private-sector job creation, avoid massive layoffs in state and local government and help the unemployed. We cannot afford to slide backwards just as our recovery is taking hold. We must take these emergency measures.”
In a letter to the Senate last week, Bill Samuel, AFL-CIO Government Affairs director, urged senators to move quickly on the bill. He told senators the AFL-CIO supports an amendment offered by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), which provides relief for cash-strapped states, financing for local infrastructure projects and extension of federal unemployment benefits.
We also are backing a proposed amendment by Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to the appropriations bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that would extend the COBRA subsidy for laid-off workers.
Just before Memorial Day, the U.S. House passed the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, a jobs bill that includes a six-month extension of the UI program but not COBRA, which provides subsidies to help jobless workers maintain their health care coverage. COBRA and financial aid to states that could save 900,000 private- and public-sector jobs were dropped from the original jobs bill because many members claimed it would increase the federal deficit. The Senate left town without acting on the bill.
The economic recovery is very weak, Samuel writes, and we face a real risk of another recession if Congress does not prime the fiscal stimulus pumps again.
Complacency in the face of the enormous human suffering caused by this jobs crisis is incomprehensible….Economists agree that unemployment benefits increase economic output more than almost any other stimulus measure.
The Baucus amendment would extend federal Medicaid assistance to states that must cut vital services just as more unemployed workers are applying for aid. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed the House eventually will adopt both the Medicaid funding and extra health assistance for the unemployed.
The legislation also includes funding relief for defined-benefit pension plans. Baucus proposes to pay for these provisions by closing the loophole that allows Wall Street hedge fund managers to pay lower taxes on their income than ordinary tax payers pay.
Says Samuel:
It is perfectly appropriate to ask these extremely wealthy individuals to give up their undeserved preferential tax treatment so that other Americans might go back to work.
Saying the impact on the budget will be “insignificant,” Samuel adds “Congress must act now to pass this vital legislation.”
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10 Comments
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Start taxing outsourced labor to fund unemployment benefits !!!
The healthcare overhaul was reluctantly passed. But the Congress plays with the financial assistance and medical needs of skilled and other unemployed workers scratching and clawing for employment.
This needs to change, if we are going to give billions by 2020 to third-world countries for climate change initatives ($23 billion), we can take care of the people struggling to find work, but business from IBM to a Sonic franchise are hoardsing htie cash, preventing new jobs, bercuae of feared tax cuts.
You all starte this outsourcing fiasco, that has helped foreign nations and THEIR workers, end it. And quit holding the needy hostage with your fillibusters and vacations. This should have been complete before the Memorial Day vavcation. ALL OF YOU ARE PUBLIC SERVANTS. You choose this because of your greed and what’sin iot for you.
Any politician had $90K of the &100K taken in bribes found in his freezer lately?
Larry Luper
16706 E. 41st Ter S
Independence, MO 64055
FinRegReform=Sold out=Wall Street wins Big!
HealthCareReform=Sold Out=Drug Companies and Health Ins.Companies,win big!
Jobs Bill=Sold Out!=More tax subsidies for corporations,more tax protections fot the Wealthy and The JOBLESS are FUCKED AGAIN!!!
“Complacency in the face of the enormous human suffering caused by this jobs crisis is incomprehensible….”
Actually, this is what we already decided to do, starting with welfare “reform”, which primarily hit Americans in the bottom-wage jobs upon which we’ve grown so dependent. We are not a full-employment society, and never were. A growing segment of the population is cycled through this portion of the workforce, repeatedly “laid off” just prior to qualifying for an automatic wage increase/workers’ benefits in what has largely become a temp help workforce. The situation is such for these people that many don’t meet the requirements for unemployment benefits. In the past, they could at least fall back on welfare between jobs. 80% of AFDC recipients used welfare for well under 5 years, voluntarily quitting when they could secure child care and work. There’s nothing to fall back on today except TANF, a short-term non-entitlement for which few qualify.
We’re OK with that. We’ve also been OK with all the factors contributing to our current job situation (outsourcing, ending unions, etc.). We’ve stressed that people need to accept personal responsibility, and that it’s not government’s role to get involved with these things. We agreed that providing help only makes people dependent. Extending unemployment benefits would only “drain people of the incentive to get up every morning and go to work.” Right?
Maybe you’ve accepted that but I never did. In fact after the so-called “Welfare Reform” in 96 I cornered David Wu in a luncheonette and asked that if was alright for a “soccer mom” to stay home and be a mommy why did he want to force single parents out into the workforce without childcare coverage, to have to abandon their children to make some kind of penance for being in need of help. Compared to other industrial democracies this country really sucks. The only seeming worth that we as individuals offer in this country is to be the provider of corporate profits no matter our misery.
Why does Archer Daniels Midland get a tax credit of 100 million a year for gasahol production when they use a corn fructose byproduct that they would have to dispose of, at their expense, to produce the gasahol? It’s because politicians just can’t help themselves when they have a chance to bend us over to service their rich buddies!
The only purpose of American Citizenship is to provide profits to our Rich Corporate Nobility and our politicians work for them.
The superrich, the ruling class, use their total media control, which they call ‘free press’, to convince us that ‘America is the greatest country in the world.’ We are not the greatest in health care, or longevity, or infant mortality, or literacy, or education, or environmental preservation, so what are they talking about? What they mean is that America has the richest rich people in the world, and that ruling class has amassed the greatest military machine the world has ever seen in order to keep the poor of the world getting poorer while they get richer. They rig things whatever way they have to to pretend their built in depressions and wars are really the ‘magic of the marketplace’. No one in Congress is standing up and consistently telling the truth because none of them were the candidate of a Labor party based on the trade unions, running so that working peole can have a voice.
Now we have the myth of the ‘independent’. Money rules, and only a workers party can be independent of it. The others are fakers, like Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter. They pretend to be independent because people are hungry for a change. Many voters register independent, but then go to the polls and vote again and again for Democrats and Republicans because that is all that we are allowed to here from during our ridiculous ‘free’ elections. Until we can force a new leadership in our unions capable of facing up to our historic task of forming a Labor Party for working people and all of the oppressed, we will continue our free fall toward depression, dictatorship and war.
JOB CREATION INFRASTRUCTURE:
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has a comprehensive strategy for Job Creation, continuous Full Employment, and continuous New Business Creation. Please contact her office for a copy of the power point presentation. It only takes a couple of minutes to read and the ideas presented are consistent with Obama’s call for CHANGE.
Big corps. have always used their money & power to tilt legislation their way. Always have & always will. It was this very situation that spawned the union movement. People understood that there is power in numbers & pooling your money can buy you a politician or two. Too bad we didn’t teach our children more about how sticking together can stick it to “The Man”. “Workers Unite” is not just a tired old socialist slogan its the very essence of securing a better way of life for ALL Americans.
Good comments all.. With plenty of workable solutions included.
As a person who is feeling more and more like an animal backed
into a corner, I’m really begining to wonder why I should not
respond like one. I wonder if the other 15 million of us are
wondering the same thing. This is not charity, and anyone is
eligible for this kind of difficulty, it’s to bad the powers that
be have not the slightest notion of our desperation. Maybe we should make them aware, and change the framework of the
discussion, sort of a deal with me now or deal with me later
type of thing. Because 15 million people leave a pretty big lump
when they’re swept under the rug.