Jesse Jackson: Congress ignores nation's job crisis

[Ed Barrow]

Some 300,000 teachers face layoffs this coming year. Congress hasn't even had a vote on legislation that would keep them employed. Teenage employment was at record lows last year -- when the stimulus bill funded some summer jobs. It is June, the school year is ending, and a $1.4 billion bill to provide 500,000 jobs for the summer hasn't gotten a vote. More than 24 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and the economy barely produced any private-sector jobs last month. And yet, the bill by California Democrat George Miller to put people to work can't get a vote in the House.

What is Washington thinking? Losing a job is a human calamity. Families buckle under the pressure. Divorce, spousal abuse, child neglect soar. Homelessness increases along with malnutrition. Crime, drug addiction, depression, rising rates of suicide follow. Skilled workers lose their skills. Our society becomes more unequal, and far more brittle, as middle-class families descend into destitution. Our 10 percent unemployment is a national emergency, not an acceptable condition.

The situation is dire. Youth unemployment is at its highest levels since the Labor Department started tracking figures in 1948. One in six blue-collar workers has lost his or her job in the downturn. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. And 120,000 are filing for bankruptcy every month.

Yet Congress doesn't act. Republicans, with virtual unanimity, oppose jobs programs as part of an ''out-of-control spending spree.'' But they also oppose paying for jobs by ending the tax break for hedge-fund millionaires that has them paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. They oppose allowing Medicare to save hundreds of billions by negotiating bulk discounts on prescription drugs.

It is time to put people to work. States and localities are cutting teachers and police and firefighters in the face of $360 billion in projected deficits in 2010 and 2011. Sending money to the states to forestall those layoffs will sustain good jobs and vital services. Spending money on summer jobs for teenagers is a no-brainer. Creating urban and rural corps -- or green corps to clean our cities or to clean the oil off the Gulf Coast -- simply makes sense.


http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/2365208,CST-EDT-jesse08.article

[bvar22]

1. More Gloom and Doom.

Can't you just Be Happy for the Wall Street Bankers and Health Insurance Execs.
They have been reassured by Our Leadership that they will never know a day of discomfort.
Be Happy for THEM.

That is what I hate about the Working Class.
Everything is just Whine...whine...whine.
Do SOMETHING for YOURSELF!!!
You should just pull yourself up by your boot straps,
sit by the pool with a boat drink,
and let your Capital Gains stack up.
After all, THATS the "Uniquely American Solution".


Any day now the Giant Invisible Hand of the Free Market will reach down, and everything will be OK.

:patriot:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Or could this be a case of Congress ignores Jesse Jackson

[Skittles]

4. or they ignore both the jobs issue and Mr. Jackson

[zalinda]

3. This is the man I wish was in the White House n/t