http://www.laborradio.org/node/13136Submitted by Doug Cunningham on March 17, 2010 - 4:04pm
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By Doug Cunningham
The U.S. Senate $17. 6 billion jobs bill passed Wednesday with 11 Republican votes will give tax breaks to business that hire workers who have been jobless for 60 days or more. It will also fund highway and mass transit programs this year. It falls far short, though, of providing the stimulus to create the 11 million jobs the AFL-CIO says are actually needed. New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer says this is just the first, not the last jobs bill the Senate will put forward.
In other Senate action, the AFL-CIO says the financial reform legislation drafted by Senator Chris Dodd must be strengthened. Labor says it must include a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, has to make shadow capital markets transparent and accountable while standardizing derivative trading and require regulators to break up banks that are “too big to fail” while giving regulators the power to set strict capital and liquidity requirements as risk increases.