[Peace-discuss] Liberals abandoning Obama on jobs

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 by The Progressive
	Reid and Obama Abandon the Jobs Front
	by Matthew Rothschild

What planet are Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats on?

Obama's own economic advisers say that unemployment is going to average 10 
percent this year and 9.2 percent next year.

And yet all that Harry Reid now is proposing to spend on a new jobs bill is $15 
billion over the next decade, which is peanuts. And most of those peanuts are 
going directly to businesses, which is the least efficient way to stimulate the 
economy.

There is no money to extend unemployment benefits.

There is no money to extend health care coverage to the unemployed.

There is no money to support state governments, which are having to make vicious 
cuts to balance their own budgets.

There is no money to create a federal jobs program.

It's as though Reid and Obama don't care that there are almost 15 million 
unemployed Americans right now and that this number is unlikely to get much 
lower any time soon.

It's as though they don't understand the magnitude of the crisis that poor 
people are facing.

"Low-income Americans are facing a higher unemployment rate today than at the 
height of the Depression," reports DemocracyNow. "The Center for Labor Market 
Studies at Boston's Northeastern University divided U.S. households into ten 
groups based on annual income. The lowest tenth, with an annual household income 
of $12,499 or less, had a fourth-quarter unemployment rate last year of 30.8 
percent. The next lowest-income group had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent."

Oh, Reid and Obama talk about the unemployed. But those words amount to just 
crocodile tears since they have the power to do something about this but choose 
not to do so.

They seem allergic to power.

They were elected with a mandate to provide jobs and fix the economy. They have 
majority control. They blew the first stimulus package by designing one that was 
half as big as what was needed.

And now they're blowing this one.

They could, by the reconciliation process, at least ram through the House bill, 
which would spend ten times as much on job creation as Reid's pathetic bill.

But no, they're content to lowball the recovery once more, to let millions of 
people grow desperate worrying about not having a job, to let families strain to 
the breaking point, to force families to cut back on bare necessities, and to 
create huge psychological scars for adults and children alike.

All because Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats refuse to exercise the 
power they hold in their hands.

This isn't just gutless. And this isn't just bad politics. It's a sin to let so 
many people in this economy suffer so needlessly.

© 2010 The Progressive
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/13-7

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