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What About Getting America Back To Work?
by James Glaser March 5, 2010 How fast things fade in Washington. It was just a couple of weeks ago that President Obama was saying that it was all about jobs now. I remember something about a Jobs Commission that would figure out how to put American workers back to work. The President even touted his stimulus package, and said how it ended the recession. Of course, that would be a hard sell to the 20 plus thousand individuals who lost their jobs last month. Have you noticed how Washington is already preparing us for the new job figures? They must be looking at bad numbers, because the excuses are coming out ahead of time. This time it is the snow storms in the Northeast that are the culprits. Of course late last fall when we had a blip on the horizon and jobs went up for a month, nobody in Washington came out to explain those jobs were temp jobs for the Christmas sales season, and sure enough, job numbers started down again after the holiday season. So, Washington wants to be honest with us and explain the job numbers are not their fault when the are heading south, but they want to take credit when things start looking good, even if it is for only one month. Have you ever listened to the President talk about how we were losing jobs by a half million a month when he took office, but since then those jobs loss numbers have been falling? That is true, but think about this, after we lose 8 to 10 million jobs, companies are down to the bare bones of a work force, and if they continued to cut jobs at the rate they did at the beginning of the recession, they would have to shut their doors. Even at a bare bones level of employment, companies are still looking for those few jobs they can cut to save a little more money. That is why the job losses continue. It really doesn't matter if job losses get down to one job lost a month, because we know we will need hundreds of thousands of jobs created every month for years and years, just to get us back to where we were a couple of years ago. And, that does not include the millions of young people who are coming into the job market every year. Are you as amazed at this sad reality as I am? Here is how the Economic Policy Institute explains it:
So, we can see that every month President Obama and Congress decide to work on Health Care or Cap and Trade, instead of jobs, we are farther and farther away from getting our country back on track. Every month the White House and Congress waits to work on job creation, means more foreclosures, more bankruptcies, and a longer wait for recovery. It is hard to tell the true number of unemployed American, because Washington plays with the numbers, but a conservative estimate is more than 15 million. If and when we get back to re-employing 400 thousand a month, it will take over three years to get all those people back to work, but then there will be another two million plus new people looking for work. I put these numbers out again, just to show what a huge task lays before our country. Can President Obama and Congress create these jobs? No, all they can do is hire more government workers, which they have been doing at a record pace, but that just puts us in the hole farther. You agree with that don't you? Government jobs cost us money. Those jobs are taxpayer funded—which means more deficit spending and that is what helped us get in the mess we are in today. The only jobs that really help our country, are private sector jobs. Rather than put a whole new set of rules on employers with a new Health Care Bill and Cap and Trade, Obama and Congress should be making things easier for employers to hire people and get them back to work. Jobs should be job number one for all of Washington. |
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