Trumka: Obama Absolutely Right to Make Jobs Top Priority
By Mike Hall
January 29, 2010 - 8:31am ET
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Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.Obama called for small business tax breaks to encourage hiring and infrastructure spending. He urged passage of tax incentives for larger business to keep and create jobs in the United States, and an end to tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. He also proposed taking $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat—a proposal similar to one in our AFL-CIO jobs initiative.
As Trumka said:
We must act on a scale that will be meaningful: We need more than 10 million jobs just to get out of the hole we’re in. We want health care fixed. We want our leaders to break the stranglehold of Wall Street and the big banks and make them pay to repair the economic damage they created.
Obama praised the House for passing a jobs bill last month and urged the Senate to do the same. And as lawmakers on Capitol Hill have slowed reform of health care, Obama urged Congress not to walk away from reform.
He also rightly pointed to how the steps his administration has taken have alleviated the economic suffering of working people. Steps that included the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has ensured that 2 million Americans are working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. The act is on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year. All this was done while cutting taxes for working Americans, Obama said.
We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.Saying that America’s workers are frustrated and angry, Trumka said, “the President was right to call out Republicans for obstructing change and putting politics ahead of progress.”
Now it’s time for all of us to get busy and work together to bring the big changes that are essential—starting with enacting a jobs bill that is big enough to create jobs for the millions of people who want to work and can’t find jobs. The time for small change is long gone. We were pleased to see that the President embraced two of the job creation proposals we have made—investing in infrastructure and helping small businesses get credit through TARP funds.The AFL-CIO’s five-point plan to create jobs immediately would begin to put people back to work and ease the economic hardships on Main Street’s working families who, unlike Wall Street bankers and brokers, have borne the brunt of the economy’s meltdown. The plan, which Trumka says will soon be expanded, includes:
- Extending unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless (due to run out next month) along with expanding food stamp assistance, and health care benefits (COBRA) for unemployed workers and their families through COBRA.
- Rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
- Increasing aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services and jobs.
- Funding jobs in neglected communities.
- Using left over bank bailout funds to get credit moving to small Main Street businesses.
continue to be an independent voice for middle class Americans and fight for the change working families need—and we are ready to do more. This is the time for a broad movement of Americans demanding jobs and an economy that works for all, and we’re ready to put our energy and leadership into building that movement—taking the fight to the doorstep of the banks that are exploiting struggling homeowners, of corporations that are running away from communities and of lawmakers who choose to back them up.
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What you neglected...
Unfortunately it is missing some key elements to getting it off the ground.
First; there will be no job creating initiatives coming out of the Obama Administration nor from the Democrats because at present there is no money for a program on such a massive scale as you are suggesting because all of our public funds are financing Obama's dirty wars which will become an even bigger expense once the full-scale occupation of Iraq gets underway when Obama replaces U.S. troops with private "contractors--- mercenaries.
Second; who is going to join a struggle for jobs and end up being the last hired? You need to include support for affirmative action in your program.
Third; you need to be more explicit in just what kind of jobs you are talking about. You helped to kill single-payer universal healthcare so you lack any credibility when you say you are going to actually do something to build a movement for jobs.
We need a specific example of what people will be employed to do.
Why not advance the idea of a National Public Healthcare System... you know, socialized healthcare; a public healthcare center in every community in the country... start off with a base of 800 public healthcare centers and work the system out to the 30,000 neighborhood-based healthcare centers that will be required to tend to the healthcare needs of 300,000,000 Americans.
No-fees; no-premiums.
Comprehensive.
All-inclusive.
Pre-natal to grave.
Universal.
Public.
Publicly financed.
Publicly administered.
Publicly delivered.
Instead of 800 foreign U.S. military bases dotting the globe protecting the interests of Wall Street like Barack Obama is doing, we would build the base for a nation-wide network of public healthcare centers across this country which would create hundreds of thousand of jobs... millions of jobs that can't be exported overseas by the time we get this entire public healthcare system in place.
Working people in this country would never have learned to read and write had it not been for the public system of education... what makes you think that the "free-market" private sector will ever provide quality healthcare for American workers at an affordable price?
The "free-market" can't even deliver "affordable" transportation for the American people.
You talk about creating millions of jobs... you make me laugh. You can't even develop a program to save the existing industrial jobs in our country.
You sit by and twiddle your thumbs as the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant is about to close when the solution to saving this plant, the tax-payer financed hydro dam adjacent to the plant on the Mighty Mississippi that provided the Ford Motor Company with free power for 85 years instead of providing free heating and lighting for the public schools and public libraries--- when the solution is simple: public ownership of this plant... as many people have pointed out there are a myriad of things workers at this plant--- like the more than 3,500 idled mines, mills and factories across this country--- could be producing.
Do you want a five point program because it fits nicely into a package for a press conference; or, do you want a real jobs program based on what we need in our country?
The American people want jobs, not Obama's wars.
The American people want decent jobs paying real living wages.
People of color, women and the disabled don't want to be forced to wait at the end of the line to get jobs, only to lose their jobs first when the capitalist economy tanks.
By-the-way; what kind of resources has the AFL-CIO and your "coalition partners" allocated to help build a massive grassroots, rank-and-file movement to win jobs... enough for the next press conference?
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council