Twenty-five million unemployed, underemployed and discourage workers need to see more than White House huddles with CEOs. An urgent political fight has to also be waged for policies that will bring immediate relief to those who have spent months, if not years, on the unemployment lines. That's the fight that, in the current deficit mania clouding both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, too few people seem interested in waging.
If the White House and congressional Democrats won't wage that battle, progressives operating independently must.
That's why a day-long "Summit on Jobs and America's Future" the Campaign for America's Future is organizing in Washington on March 10 is important. The jobs summit is intended to be a place where progressive activists can meet with organization leaders and lawmakers to forge the elements of a political movement for sustainable economic growth and dynamic job creation that will push the limits of the jobs debate.
While President Obama today was meeting with CEOs from technology companies, there was some discouraging news from Gallup. Its "Job Creation Index," based on daily surveys of business hiring and layoffs, was flat for the fourth consecutive month—another reminder that for the unemployed, the economy isn't doing more than treading water.
Obama, meanwhile, has this week been highlighting his "winning the future" agenda, the economic centerpiece of his State of the Union address, with such events as the announcement of a "Startup America" initiative. It is a stark contrast towhat the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has been focusing on as their top priorities so far: repealing the health care law, gutting domestic spending programs and redefining rape to make it harder for sexually abused women to obtain an abortion.
Stark contrast, sure, but 25 million unemployed, underemployed and discourage workers need to see more than White House huddles with CEOs. Of course, the president and his allies in Congress are right to push for long-term strategies for rebuilding an economy that can once again sustain a broad, vibrant middle class. But an urgent political fight has to also be waged for policies that will bring immediate relief to those who have spent months, if not years, on the unemployment lines. That's the fight that, in the current deficit mania clouding both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, too few people seem interested in waging.
If the White House and congressional Democrats won't wage that battle, progressives operating independently must.
That's why the Campaign for America's Future is organizing a day-long "Summit on Jobs and America's Future" in Washington on March 10. The jobs summit is intended to be a place where progressive activists can meet with organization leaders and lawmakers to forge the elements of a political movement for sustainable economic growth and dynamic job creation.
The prevailing inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom has imposed some untenable and dangerous limits on what is even permissible to discuss, much less put to a vote on the House and Senate floor. For the most part, the only policy choices allowed on the table are the conservative fallacy of "cut and grow" and and a "conservative lite" that is willing to offer an aspirin to dull the pain but accepts the basic premise that working-class Americans have to accept an era of austerity that includes unemployment above 8 percent for years into the future (while increasing shares of wealth continue to flow to the top).
What we really need are options that demonstrate that somehow shrinking our way to prosperity is the wrong way to go, and that in fact it is only through robust economic growth in which its fruits are widely shared can we hope to get the federal deficit down to sustainable levels.
One way progressives must counter this is with an economic program that spends federal dollars today to put people to work today on the jobs that must be done today. We know this is the right thing to do, and we also know that a smartly designed proposal will have grassroots support. Voters want their members of Congress to fight for jobs, not fight to kill jobs through budget cuts.
And yet, Democrats keep missing opportunities to do just that. Last year, a group of progressive House Democrats supported the Local Jobs for America Act, which would have spent $100 billion to employ 1 million people in both public- and private-sector jobs. In spite of the clear case for the bill (including the fact that the positive impact the bill would have on local economies would offset a significant share of the cost), its provisions largely languished on Capitol Hill. Attempts to move similar bills through Congress this year are being ruled out of order by even many leading Democrats because it is presumed they won't pass today's hyperpartisan Congress. If that is the case, the mission for progressive leadership is not to dumb down expectations but to change the Congress—either the minds of its members or, failing that, the members themselves.
It makes no sense that while we have close to 15 million people unemployed—6.4 million out of work for more than six months—we're not funding jobs that would support the needs of thousands of communities. That would be especially true in the eight states—California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina—where unemployment last month exceeded 10 percent.
Progressives must also frame a long-term jobs agenda that adds meaningful substance to President Obama's vision of "winning the future" through investment in education, research and infrastructure. The president's past speeches have made the case that we cannot afford to drift into a re-creation of the old economy, with its cycles of bubbles and bursts, its stagnant middle-class income growth and its decaying public assets. And yet, yielding to the austerity crowd threatens to lead us down that very road. The result will be a nonexistent recovery for a broad swath of American workers and no progress on addressing the federal deficit. We can, and must, make the case that public investment in the essentials of economic growth now is the only way we can make progress toward bringing our budget deficit down to a sustainable level.
Getting this message into the center of the political discussion will require taking a page from the Tea Party playbook. On the right, a group of renegades embraced a platform based on a narrative that blamed the nation's economic woes on the size of government—and mobilized voters in ways that shook the Republican political apparatus. If the Tea Party can do that with a fundamentally flawed analysis of our economic ills and the role of government, imagine what progressives can do with a sound analysis of where America is, where America must be and policies that can get us there that will revive hope and confidence in the future.
The Summit on Jobs and America's Future is open to anyone interested in supporting a comprehensive jobs agenda that will break the stranglehold that conservative ideology and political timidity is having on today's economic policy debate. To register for the day-long conference, which is free, click here.