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Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

The sky is falling.

For the average Working Joe or Jane in America, it is anyway. Unemployment is at 7.6 percent and rising. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that there are 4.1 job seekers now for every opening. The mortgage delinquency rate set another record last quarter, and foreclosures are predicted to top 1 million this year. Because of reckless speculation by Wall Street financiers, the stock market is plummeting, taking with it a third of the value of the retirement accounts of hard-working Americans.

If the average Jane and Joe have not lost their jobs, they’ve seen a big chunk of their retirement savings slip away. Or their kid can’t find work. Or a neighbor’s been foreclosed on.

Still, Republicans in Congress couldn’t find it in their hearts to vote for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly called the stimulus bill. They just can’t vote to support the American people – they’re “Republicants.”

An official description of the act the Republicants rejected says it:  “Makes supplemental appropriations for FY2009: (1) for job preservation and creation; (2) to promote economic recovery; (3) to assist those most impacted by the recession; (4) to provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science and health; (5) to invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits; and (6) to stabilize state and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases.”

In the House, not a single Republicant voted for this bill to create jobs and restore economic growth. In the Senate, three brave members of the GOP stood up to the Republicants gang to pass the Recovery Act and aid suffering Americans – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

The GOP made it malevolently clear during their majority years in the Bush administration that they opposed anything that would strengthen America’s middle class, but its votes this week were based on deep, and frankly justified, fear of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

New York Times Columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman explained it earlier this week at the Thinking Big Thinking Forward conference conducted in Washington D. C. by EPI, Institute for America’s Future, The American Prospect and Demos.

Republicans are terrified of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act because if it works, if it creates jobs and helps stimulate the economy, then Americans will think good thoughts about government action and spending.

And that could lead to new public support for government payments for important social safety net programs like health care.

Republicans have invested decades, untold millions of dollars and countless hours on Sunday morning blathering-head shows persuading Americans that government is too big. They’ve contended that taxes should be cut to force curtailment of government. Bush supporter Grover Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform and a director of the American Conservative Union, expressed it best for the group: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

They did cut taxes – for the rich. And they cut services – crucial ones, like inspection of toys so that millions of toxic trinkets imported from China got into the hands – and mouths — of American toddlers. And inspection of food and the factories producing it, so it’s possible that salmonella-tainted peanut butter has sickened 500 and killed eight.

And they placed bunglers in charge of important government agencies. This, of course, was deliberate, to make government look incompetent — an entity deserving of drowning in a bathtub. One of them was the infamous “Brownie,” Michael P. Brown, who headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which, in fact, drowned when called to respond to Hurricane Katrina. Brownie’s qualification to head FEMA was his service as commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. By contrast, he replaced James Lee Witt, former President Bill Clinton’s FEMA director. Witt won acclaim for good performance in office. His qualification to head FEMA was his tenure as director of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services.

In addition to cutting service, conservatives eliminated government regulation. The result for America was the subprime mortgage crisis and credit default swaps, an unregulated risky transaction that helped push the nation’s financial institutions to the brink.

Americans put up $700 billion to bail out those bankers last fall. But the Republicants don’t talk about that when they say, as Republicant Congressman Jerry Lewis of California did on Friday, that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009  is a recipe for bloated government programs that will saddle taxpayers with debt “well, well into the future.”

“Facts are stubborn things,” Mr. Lewis said.

Fact is, Mr. Lewis voted to indebt Americans for $700 billion to bail out banks.

So, clearly, spending American taxpayers’ money is not a problem for him.

Spending it on taxpayers is.

The Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains about $50 billion for shovel-ready road, airport, bridge and other infrastructure projects nationwide that will create construction and manufacturing jobs. The nation’s electricity grid is to be upgraded with $11 billion, creating similar jobs. States will get $54 billion, which will help out Mr. Lewis’ California, now $42 billion in debt. That money can go for highway and school building as well as to prevent layoffs of teachers, firefighters and other state workers.

Altogether, the $790 billion Recovery and Reinvestment bill is designed to create or preserve between 3.5 and 4 million jobs.

When the sky is falling, that’s some shelter for America’s little guys. If President Obama is right and this act succeeds in creating jobs and stimulating the economy, he will have performed a great service for struggling and suffering workers.

He will also have revived what Norquist and Brownie, Carl Rove and Bush tried so hard to waterboard: the concept that government can do good.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard

International President

Within hours of Barack Obama’s election, naysayers chastened caution. Don’t go too far, they inveighed. Build trust slowly with restrained, moderate, and gradual actions, they admonished.

In other words: Start with piddling plans.

Basically, they want to abort hope — kill it before it has a chance.

That is all wrong after an election in which it’s believed that a higher percentage of Americans voted than at any time in the past 40 years; a win that brought tears to the eyes of even hardened reporters; a result that drew joyful citizens into streets across the country to celebrate, a balloting that swept even larger majorities of Democrats into the U.S. House and Senate.

This moment during which the nation is suffering great economic peril pleads for political valor. This moment screams for boldness.

Troubled times demand greatness. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that. He’s the reason U.S. presidents are judged by the sum of their accomplishments in their first 100 days in office.

When FDR was inaugurated in 1933, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. He didn’t waste time tinkering. After 100 days, he’d given the country the Emergency Banking Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Act and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Obama may not inherit a Great Depression, but he’ll take the oath during an intense recession. Look at the news that arrived the same week as his election: unemployment rose to 6.5 percent after 10 straight months of jobs losses totaling more than 1.2 million; the stock market dropped 1,000 points in 48 hours after the worst October showing in two decades; auto makers travelled to Capitol Hill begging like hobos for handouts to stave off bankruptcy, two dozen major retailers revealed sales declines, most double digit, and the New York Times reported hospitals strained as they register fewer paying patients and increasing charity cases.

These problems won’t be solved with timidity. In his first press conference after the election, Obama said resolving the economic crisis is his top priority. He said, in fact, “I will confront the economic crisis head on.” No weak-heartedness suggested there.

He said a new president can restore confidence and advance an agenda for the middle class. That is exactly what FDR did with the combination of legislation and fireside chats.

During this brief press conference, Obama got it right, emphasizing aid to the middle class. He said it is essential to pass a rescue plan that would create jobs and extend unemployment benefits. He wants aid to state and local governments so they don’t increase taxes or furlough workers.

The federal government should help both small businesses and the huge auto industry, which provides jobs directly and indirectly through its suppliers.

The $700 billion bailout must be reviewed, he said, to ensure that it is stabilizing markets, that it’s not unduly rewarding the Wall Street risk-takers who caused the crisis, and that it’s helping families avoid foreclosure.

In addition, he said it’s essential to implement policies to grow the middle class such as investing in clean energy technology, resolving the nation’s health insurance dilemma, and providing tax relief for working families.

These are the correct priorities. And his plans are audacious. Which means he needs our help.

He called for bi-partisan cooperation in accomplishing these goals. But he’ll need more than that. He will need the kind of support he got in those weeks just before Election Day.

All of those who voted for him, all of those who want to keep hope alive, and all of those who want real change must demand both houses of Congress and both political parties work with Obama to accomplish it. Those who believe in real change must make it clear that they won’t stand by and allow courageous action to be reduced to faint-hearted baby steps.

On election night, Obama told the crowd in Chicago that the victory was theirs: “I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me.”

Then he warned of what is ahead:

“You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”

With more than 10,000 volunteers across the country, the United Steelworkers campaigned hard to help get Obama on that Chicago stage to make that speech. We will back him as he works to fulfill his promises of what is a New Deal for the new century. And we urge every American who wants real change to join us to ensure his success, the nation’s success.