Wake Up Washington
Jesse Jackson

 

You don't need a meteorologist to know this economy is befogged. We need jobs. Big companies are sitting on cash and not hiring. Small businesses have a hard time sustaining credit lines, much less getting more credit. Foreclosures are still coming. States and localities are starting to cut services and layoff employees. And Washington is virtually gridlocked because of partisan division.

We're not out of the ditch that the Bush years left us in. In July, the private sector generated all of 71,000 jobs, while government lost 202,000 -- mostly the part-time census jobs that came to an end. How did unemployment stay at the same rate if we lost jobs? Because 181,000 people simply dropped out of the labor force in July.

A staggering 3.9 million workers dropped out of the labor force since the recession began. That is on top of the 14.6 million officially unemployed and the 8.5 million forced to work part-time. That's 27 million workers.

Think of it in terms of what we need to get back out of the ditch. Economist Charles McMillion estimates that we now have 7,775,000 fewer private sector jobs than we did in July 2007. Just to get back to where we were -- ignoring population growth of 150,000 or so a month -- would require generating 324,000 new private sector jobs a month for two years, or 162,000 jobs a month for four years. That comes after a decade in which we lost millions of jobs including nearly one-third (32 percent) of all manufacturing jobs, over 5 million manufacturing jobs lost.

This agony is not spread evenly. Centers of the housing crash -- Nevada, areas in California and Florida -- have been particularly hard it. And urban residents -- particularly people of color -- have been hit the hardest. In addition, $4.6 billion in settlements with black farmers and Native Americans stalled last week in the Senate, again amid partisan bickering.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives returned to Washington to pass a $26 billion bill to provide aid to the states, helping to avoid layoffs of some 140,000 teachers. But the states face deficits over well over $100 billion -- so the layoffs and cutbacks in services will keep coming. And in the Senate, Republicans once more blocked progress, stopping passage of a modest bill that would increase lending to small businesses.

Republicans, rising in the polls, are now even more committed to obstruction. Democrats are divided, with a small minority of largely Southern Blue Dogs blocking jobs programs in the name of deficit reduction.

They are about to go on recess, which could do them some good. Perhaps they could reflect on a simple reality: The best way to reduce the deficit is to put people to work and get the economy moving. In fact, if we keep losing jobs, increasing demands for food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid and more while losing the taxes that unemployed workers and their employers once paid, the deficit is likely to get larger rather than smaller.

While Washington is paralyzed, other countries are moving. China is about to announce a $700 billion, 10-year investment program in renewable energy. Germany's exports are on the rise, raising their economic growth. In Washington, new energy legislation has been blocked by the drill, baby, drill crowd. And our imports are rising far faster than our exports. If the trade deficit had been the same in the second quarter as the first, growth would have been 5.2 percent instead of 2.4 percent, and far fewer jobs would have been lost.

Clearly Americans are frustrated, worried about jobs and deficits, angry at the bank bailout, and wary about the future. Washington has gone into election mode, with many incumbents headed to their bunkers. But we can't afford to wait until the new Congress convenes next January.

We need action now.

Available at Amazon.com:

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

 

 

Wake Up Washington

 

(c) 2010 Jesse Jackson