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Ed Luce of the Financial Times made an astute observation today, regarding the mostly Republican group of senators that filibustered the most recent legislation to invest $60 billion in creating infrastructure jobs:

Until now, America has never faced an ideological divide on infrastructure: both parties accepted the need to upgrade roads, dams, bridges, energy and water systems … We need go back only to 2005 when a Republican-controlled Capitol Hill pushed through the infamous $280bn Highways Act, which was the largest transport bill in US history. Dubbed the “Bridge to Nowhere” because it was stuffed with boondoggles, including the notorious $223m Alaskan bridge to an island of 50 people already served by ferry, the bill won near-unanimous support. A few years later, those seem like the good old days.

That’s right, just six years ago, Congress passed a massive infrastructure bill with near unanimous support: 412-8 in the House, 91-4 in the Senate.

So committed to cause of infrastructure was that Republican-controlled Congress in 2005, that they weren’t concerned that some of the 6,361 earmarked projects may not have constituted the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

But today? At a time when the need for jobs is painfully greater than six years ago?

A Democratic president proposes an infrastructure bill to create jobs. And every Senate Republican filibusters it.

A Democratic president proposal an infrastructure bill that does not increase the deficit. And every Senate Republican filibusters it.

A Democratic president proposes an infrastructure bill with no earmarks at all. And every Senate Republican filibusters it.

A Democratic president incorporates a bipartisan proposal for an independent infrastructure bank precisely so decisions about funding projects can be made based on the merits instead of on crude earmark politics. And every Senate Republican filibusters it.

Many senators from 2005 are no longer in Congress, as some voters were not impressed with their results in 2006 and 2008.

Yet, there are 25 senators who are still around — including current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — who decided in 2005 that the “Bridge to Nowhere” was good enough for your taxpayer dollars, but President Obama’s infrastructure bill was not. (more…)

To paraphrase that classic Wendy’s hamburger ad, when it comes to the Republicans’ so-called jobs plan, “Where’s the Jobs?

Senate Republicans successfully filibustered President Obama’s American Jobs Act and blocked a vote on a break-out provision that would enable some 400,000 teachers, firefighters and other first responders to get or keep a job. Republicans vow to do the same on an upcoming infrastructure jobs bill and other pieces of American Jobs Act when they come up for votes. Meanwhile, House Republicans have even refused to put the bill to a vote.

Why are they fighting so hard against creating jobs? Because they claim they have a better jobs plan. Oh yeah? Since when is a plan that’s heart and soul is tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, the rollback of essential federal regulations—including Wall Street reform—and the repeal of health care reform a jobs bill?

Take a look at some of these comparisons of the American Jobs Act and the Republican jobs bill. (more…)

There are reams of reports, tons of studies and rivers of statistics that prove investments in infrastructure pay off in jobs and economic boosts to the communities. When more people have good paychecks in the pockets, they pump money into their local economies.

But it’s the up close and personal examples that can be the most convincing to anyone who doubts the economic wisdom of spending money to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges and schools.

Before Senators cast their votes on the Rebuild America Jobs Act—we’re talking primarily to you, Republican lawmakers—they should read this article from the Seattle Times on how a massive bridge building project in Aberdeen, Wash., “is pumping new life into a once-thriving timber town that fell on hard times and stayed that way for years.”

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Who will rebuild America? Despite the indisputable decay of our roads, bridges, ports, airports and schools, no one has come forward to patch them up, much less build their more efficient and attractive successors.

“Prior to 1975,” says Bernard Schwartz, the former CEO of defense and aerospace manufacturer Loral Corp., who has taken the rebuilding of our infrastructure as a personal crusade, “we spent 3 percent of our GDP on infrastructure. Since then, we’ve spent 2 percent. If you add up that difference over the years, it comes to about $2 trillion, which is the amount that the American Society of Civil Engineers says would be required to bring our infrastructure up to par.”

What happened in 1975? It’s roughly the midpoint between the federal government’s enactment of Medicare and the indexing of Social Security, which greatly diminished poverty among U.S. seniors, and the Howard Jarvis/Ronald Reagan tax revolt, which greatly diminished government revenues. That left fewer funds for public construction projects, but at the time, our infrastructure was still pretty spiffy — the interstate highway system had only recently been completed, and the jet-age airports in major U.S. cities were still relatively new.

Today they’re sagging, and dragging the country down with them. But government, hamstrung by austerity-obsessed centrists and the anti-government radical right, is not stepping up to rebuild them. A bill to establish a federal infrastructure bank has been introduced in the Senate by Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry and Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, but it’s hard to imagine the do-nothing House Republicans supporting such a measure.

Which leaves — whom? U.S. banks and corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars, but there’s scant indication they want to invest it in America. A recent column in the Wall Street Journal called on U.S. billionaires to put their money into public projects in return for tax benefits and naming rights. (The Rupert Murdoch Sewage Treatment Plant? Has a ring to it.) I’m not aware of any takers who’ve come forth, however, to answer this plea.

But there are other pots of money in the United States — most prominently, our pension funds. And one group of pension funds has already begun to pony up the bucks to rebuild the nation: those controlled (at least in part) by America’s unions.

The retirement set-asides for unionized public employees and construction workers go into funds that their unions and their employers jointly control. In June, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced that his organization’s unions’ funds would invest $10 billion over the next five years in infrastructure projects. Since then, the federation’s construction-worker division has put $200 million of pension money into to retrofitting buildings, while the retirement funds of California teachers and other public employees have committed between $1.1 billion and $1.4 billion to infrastructure projects in the state. (Bound by their fiduciary responsibility to the retirees, the funds’ trustees must be confident that the projects will generate revenues, through tolls, fees, and the economic growth that such projects engender.) (more…)

America and the world owe a great debt to Occupy Wall Street for making the problem of economic inequality impossible to ignore. The tiny spark that began in Zuccotti Park just six weeks ago has triggered a major shift in the national dialogue on inequality, our economy and our democracy.

Now it’s time to begin a conversation about solutions — solutions big enough to fit the scale of the problems that Occupy Wall Street has highlighted. Fortunately, the American Dream Movement spent this last summer taking on this very challenge. We are a vast, growing network of progressive organizations and individuals. We are fighting to renew the American Dream and return our country to the principle of liberty and justice, for ALL (not for some).

We launched in June 2011, with the support of more than 70 national organizations, including MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, Center for Community Change, Campaign for America’s Future, SEIU and AFL-CIO. Since then, more than half a million people have joined our ranks and become members on www.RebuildtheDream.com. We now have membership in every congressional district of the country.

In July, the American Dream Movement created an inclusive process to forge a jobs agenda that would put the country back to work without hurting essential programs like Medicare and Medicaid. More than 131,000 people got involved, both online and in person (NOTE: That is nearly three times the number of people who helped craft the Tea Party’s famous”Contract from America.”) Participants generated more than 20,000 ideas, then rated and ranked them to identify the best ones.

The outcome was our 10-point program: the Contract for the American Dream.

The common sense remedies in the Contract are based on the fundamental idea that a functioning U.S. economy requires opportunity for all and responsibility from all. Here are the ten items:

I. Invest in America’s Infrastructure – Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. Invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America.

II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs – Invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.

III. Invest in Public Education – Provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. This is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now. (more…)

Seems like only yesterday conservative nabobs of negativity predicted America’s ballooning budget deficit would generate soaring inflation and crippling costs of additional federal borrowing.

Remember Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States? Recall the intense worry about investors’ confidence in government bonds — America’s IOUs?

Hmmm.

Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Treasuries closed at 1.83 percent. (more…)

President Obama’s jobs speech was the right narrative and the right tone. It suggested a president who was a capable leader in a crisis, who gets America’s pain. He also boxes in the Republicans—and by offering a plan that includes elements that many Republicans support, he makes it much harder for them to oppose it.

Progressive critics who were waiting for President Obama to sound a more urgent note on jobs were happy to treat the speech with generosity. The Times’ Paul Krugman called it “significantly bolder and better than I expected.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/opinion/setting-their-hair-on-fire.html

Demos President Miles Rapaport called the speech “the narrative we’ve been waiting for,” adding the caveat:

The overarching question I asked myself after the President’s speech concluded was ‘Can he, will he, hold this theme?’ Can he keep his focus clearly on investing in the future, and not sink back into the deficit and austerity culture where the opponents of government want to drag both him and us?

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I opened up my Yahoo account when I got off work and was greeted by an article from the New York Times about how the State of California is outsourcing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project to China.

Outsourcing has become an everyday occurrence. Big Businesses and governments like this tell our American citizens and workers exactly what they think about them every time a project like this is sent overseas. According to the article, the California government saved around 400 million dollars by sending our jobs overseas.

This type of action should be considered criminal.

The state of California contracted a Chinese company that pays their workers less than a dollar an hour, and works them for more than 100 hours per week to steal 3000 jobs from qualified and competent American Workers. Their safety concerns were so great that they had to ship 250 consultants, government employees, and contractors to Shanghai. (more…)

The AFL-CIO today is announcing a major “commitment to action” to bring public and private partners together to encourage both workers’ capital and skilled labor to promote large-scale investments in America’s infrastructure.

This pioneering commitment, which will be announced at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago, will seek to create good jobs and address our public infrastructure deficit and the threats posed to the environment and our economy by the way in which we use energy.

As part of the commitment, the AFL-CIO will work with business and government to promote infrastructure investment with a goal of at least $10 billion in new funding over the next five years. (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

The nation “must dig in and redouble our efforts to ‘Make It In America‘,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., at a Senate hearing Wednesday on reviving the nation’s manufacturing base.

Testifying on behalf of the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard told the Commerce, Science and Transportation committee:

American manufacturing is in dire circumstances and its future is in jeopardy.  Our economic and national security is at risk. Despite the small uptick in manufacturing employment and production, it occurs against a backdrop of long-term decline and devastation.

He outlined several steps that must be taken to rebuild manufacturing and create jobs including: (more…)