Art Levine: As Congress Leaves Jobless in Lurch, Will Grassroots Push for Strong Jobs Bills?

[Omaha Steve]

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/03/31/as-congress-leaves-jobless-in-lurch-will-grassroots-push-for-strong-jobs-bills/

Posted by Art Levine at 4:41 pm
March 31, 2010

Even as Senators skipped town last Friday before a two-week break without extending unemployment insurance and COBRA health subsidies, hopes are rising among congressional liberals and unions that stronger job creation measures could win the backing of emboldened Democratic leaders and President Obama. (Some state-based officials also expect state agencies to tide over workers at risk of losing their benefits before the Senate takes action in mid-April, while advocates for the unemployed are far more alarmed.)

But will progressives be willing to mount the strong campaign needed to overcome conservative and centrist resistance to major jobs spending? That’s the political challenge, especially after the first stimulus bill last year was effectively smeared as a waste of money although it saved or created nearly two million jobs. As George Packer notes in his devastating New Yorker article, “Obama’s Lost Year,” 94 percent of Americans don’t think it created jobs in their areas. The AFL-CIO has launched a “Make Wall Street Pay” campaign asking for taxing financial transactions and returned TARP money to spend on jobs programs, but it seems that Congress has not really felt the heat from the public to push for dramatic jobs programs.

Yet despite relatively weak efforts so far by Congress to create anywhere near the 11 million jobs needed to return to pre-recession employment levels, a targeted $75 billion bill co-sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) to save or create nearly a million local jobs is gaining traction on the Hill. “As long as the jobs picture looks like this , pressure continues to build,” the AFL-CIO’s legislative director, Bill Samuel, recent told In These Times.

George Miller’s bill—developed with mayors, county officials and others—will provide $75 billion over two years to local communities to hold off planned cuts or to hire back workers for local services who have been laid-off because of tight budgets. Funding would go directly to eligible local communities and nonprofit community organizations to decide how best to use the funds, as outlined by Rep. Miller. Yet even that legislation isn’t anywhere near the scope of the $400 billion or so labor unions and its allies have proposed spending to create millions of jobs. That’s the sort of legislation New York Times columnist Bob Herbert had in mind when he observed in his last op-ed:

You can’t get back to a robust economy without putting Americans back to work. The economy needs to be rebuilt on a solid foundation of good jobs at good pay, and many of those jobs will have to come from thriving new industries. This is a long-term project that demands big-time government involvement. It will require the kind of commitment — over an even longer period of time — that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress gave to their health care initiative.

Franklin Roosevelt had it right in his first Inaugural Address when he declared, “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” He underscored the urgency of the task when he said it should be treated “as we would treat the emergency of a war.”

FULL story at link.