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Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks a decade ago, some 2.3 million military members have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more continue to deploy leaving their families at home while they serve our country overseas.

But when these brave men and women return home, many face a new enemy: unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans was 12.4 percent in July, up from 11.8 percent in July 2010. In August, the jobless rate for these veterans had dropped slightly to 9.8 percent, but it does not include veterans who are underemployed or have stopped looking for work.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that of those veterans employed since leaving the military, 25 percent earn less than $21,840 a year.  On any given day, as many as 250,000 veterans (male and female) are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. (more…)

Sorry deficit fanatics, this one has nothing to do with the cost of the stimulus or the deficits run-up during the Obama years. We’re talking real money here. We’re talking about plans to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67.

To deficit hawks everywhere this is a great way to save the government money. Life-expectancy at age 65 is roughly 20 years. Therefore raising the age of eligibility for Medicare by two years would shave roughly 10 percent off the program’s budget. (The actual saving would be somewhat less since it is cheaper to treat people when they are 65 and 66 than in their 80s or 90s.) For a program that is projected to cost more than $1 trillion a year (at 5 percent of GDP) in a decade, and even more in following decades, this would amount to real savings.

But the cost of this savings is a much higher health care bill for beneficiaries. As it is now, millions of people in their 60s struggle to hang onto jobs that provide health care insurance or do without, hoping that they can make it until 65 without a major medical problem. This proposal pushes the magic age out two more years. (more…)

President Obama spent Labor Day in Detroit speaking with working families in an event sponsored by the Detroit Central Labor Council. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other top union leaders joined Obama, who asserted his strong support for workers’ freedom to seek a voice at work through a union.

And I want everybody here to know, as long as I’m in the White House I’m going to stand up for collective bargaining….Because having a voice on the job and a chance to organize and a chance to negotiate for a fair day’s pay after a hard day’s work, that is the right of every man and woman in America–not just the CEO in the corner office, but also the janitor who cleans that office after the CEO goes home. Everybody has got the same right.

Obama blasted efforts by lawmakers to take away workers’ ability to collectively bargain for good middle-class jobs.

When I hear some of these folks trying to take collective bargaining rights away, trying to pass so-called “right to work” laws for private sector workers–that really mean the right to work for less and less and less–when I hear some of this talk I know this is not about economics. This is about politics.

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The President is sounding like a fighter these days. He even says he’ll be proposing a jobs bill in September – and if Republicans don’t go along he’ll fight for it through Election Day (or beyond).

That’s a start. But read the small print and all he’s talked about so far is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits (good, but small potatoes), ratifying the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements (not necessarily a job-creating move), and creating an infrastructure bank.

An infrastructure bank might be helpful, depending on its size.

Which is the real question hovering over the entire putative jobs bill – its size.

Some of the President’s political advisors have been pushing for small-bore initiatives that they believe might have a chance of getting through the Republican just-say-no House. They also figure policy miniatures won’t give aspiring GOP candidates more ammunition to tar Obama as a big-government liberal.

But the President is sounding as if he’s rejected their advice.

That’s good policy and good politics.

Good policy because any jobs bill has to be big enough to give the economy the boost it needs to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

Right now all the old booster rockets are gone. The original stimulus is over. The Fed’s “quantitative easing” is over.

Combine the budget cuts state and local governments continue to make with the slowdown in consumer spending, the reluctance of businesses to expand or hire, and the magnitude of unemployment and under-employment, and you need a big new booster rocket. I’d estimate the shortfall in aggregate demand to be $300 billion to $500 billion this year alone.

A bold jobs plan is also good politics. With more than 25 million Americans looking for full-time jobs, the wages of people with jobs falling, and an economy on the verge of a double dip, the President has to come out fighting on the side of average people.

Besides, Republicans won’t go along with any jobs initiative he proposes – even a tiny one. Better they reject one that could make a real difference than one that’s pitifully small and symbolic.

If Republicans reject it, Obama can build his 2012 campaign around that fight. Maybe he’ll even call Republicans on their big lie that smaller government leads to more jobs.

What would a bold jobs bill look like? Here are the ten components I’d recommend (apologies to those of you who have read some of these before):

1. Exempt first $20K of income from payroll taxes for two years. Make up shortfall by raising ceiling on income subject to payroll taxes.

2. Recreate the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps to put long-term unemployed directly to work.

3. Create an infrastructure bank authorized to borrow $300 billion a year to repair and upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, airports, school buildings, and water and sewer systems.

4. Amend bankruptcy laws to allow distressed homeowners to declare bankruptcy on their primary residence, so they can reorganize their mortgage loans.

5. Allow distressed homeowners to sell a portion of their mortgages to the FHA, which would take a proportionate share of any upside gains when the homes are sold.

6. Provide tax incentive to employers who create net new jobs ($2,500 deduction for every net new job created).

7. Make low-interest loans to cash-starved states and cities, so they don’t have to lay off teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and reduce other critical public services.

8. Provide partial unemployment benefits to people who have lost part-time jobs.

9. Enlarge and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit – a wage subsidy for low-wage work.

10. Impose a “severance fee” on any large business that lays off an American worker and outsources the job abroad.

Some of these won’t cost the federal government money. Others will be costly in the short term but lead to faster growth.

Remember: Faster growth means a more manageable debt in the long term. Which means the President could tie this (or any other jobs bill of similar magnitude) to an even more ambitious long-term debt-reduction plan than he’s already proposed.

A bold jobs bill is good politics and good policy. Let’s wait to see what the President actually proposes.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, now in bookstores.

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This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

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Some things just drive you nuts.

Take Mitt Romney. Yesterday, July 28, the GOP’s presidential wannabe toured Screen Machine, a factory in Pataskala, Ohio, just outside Columbus. The plant makes heavy construction equipment, rock crushers to be exact.

Romney and the owners, Doug and Steve Cohen, staged a typical photo-op. Mitt took the occasion to blast both Obama and ‘government’ as ‘bad for business.’

Really? What did Mitt have in mind? A wimpy stimulus package? A failure to build more infrastructure? In that case, he might have a point.

But no, the real problems are environmental regulation, labor safety codes and health care. In other words, with more pollution, less safe working conditions and no employee health care costs, business could surge ahead.

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The GOP can’t come up with an original ad concept?

By Bernie Sanders
Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont

Congress and the White House are now focused on how we deal with our huge deficit — a crisis brought about over the last 10 years by two wars, tax breaks for the rich, the Wall Street bailout and a prescription drug program — all unpaid for. The deficit also increased as a result of the declining tax revenues during a current recession, caused by the greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street.

The debate over deficit reduction comes at an unusual moment in American economic history. While the middle class is in rapid decline and poverty is increasing, the wealthiest people in our country and largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. Over the last several decades almost all new income created in this country has gone to the top 1 percent, who now earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. Further, the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major country with the top 400 individuals owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million. (more…)

By Rick Sloan
Communications Director, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

By Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect

President Obama did two things in his Wednesday address at George Washington University that he has been loath to do throughout his presidency. He spoke like a progressive partisan. And he spoke of that great unmentionable in centrist Democratic policies — the injuries of class.
Among the inspired zingers:

“They [the Republicans] want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6000 more in health costs? That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.”

And this:

“I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations. That includes, by the way, our commitment to Social Security. (more…)