Remember the New Deal? You know, that 75-year-old collection of programs without which the Great Recession would have been an even worse disaster than it is? The AFL-CIO remembers. And it's pushing a New Deal-style jobs proposal focused on infrastructure and funded at least partly by a tax on securities transactions. Great idea. Something in line with the many good ideas raised nearly three months ago at the White House job summit and since ignored by Congress in favor of watery legislation that utterly fails to deal with the reality of 8.4 million jobs lost in the past 26 months.
The proposal, promoted under the populist rubric of "Jobs Now Make Wall Street Pay," is slated to be announced sometime in the next couple of days during the AFL-CIO's executive council meeting in Orlando, Fla. A handful of notables such as Warren Buffett and John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown support the concept of a transaction tax.
The men believe such a tax could curb short-term speculation in the market, which they believe would be a stabilizing force. However, Messrs. Buffett and Bogle haven't expressed support for the AFL-CIO plan to spend revenue on a jobs program.
A notable opponent of the tax, which the AFL-CIO says could generate more than $100 billion a year and also help pay down the deficit, is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also opposes labor's plan, saying levying more taxes isn't conducive to job creation.
In an interview in November, Mr. Geithner said, "A day-by-day financial transaction tax is not something we're prepared to support." A White House spokesman declined to comment beyond Mr. Geithner's remarks. ...
"It's the people in the states and communities that can create support for a jobs program," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. He declined to say how much the federation would spend on the campaign, because union officials weren't slated to vote on it until later this week.
The labor leaders gathered in Orlando know that it's a long shot. More than a few have publicly expressed disappointment that their prodigious and expensive efforts in 2008 to get more Democrats into Congress and Barack Obama into the White House haven't paid off the way they expected.
“We’re demoralized,” said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “We’re not happy about anything.” ...
A year ago, Bill Samuels, the AFL-CIO’s chief lobbyist, said labor was confident that [Sen. Blanche] Lincoln of Arkansas would side with unions rather than the biggest business in her state, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., on labor priorities.
Instead, after voting for the [Employee Free Choice Act] in 2007, she now opposes it. Lincoln, who faces a re-election contest this year, also was one of two Democratic senators who joined Republicans in opposing Craig Becker, the stalled nominee for the NLRB. The other was Ben Nelson of Nebraska. ...
But Lincoln, Nelson and other conservative congressional Democrats are not the only target of many labor leaders' disappointment. The Obama administration has been catching its share of complaints, too, although these are usually cautiously stated. Jobs are at the root of these complaints.
Not only are millions of unemployed Americans hurting from the Great Recession, but unions are also hurting, having lost 770,000 members in 2009 alone. That puts overall union membership in the United States at 12.3%. Thirty years ago, it was 20%. This membership loss obviously weakens the political clout needed to mount an effective push for a funded jobs program like the one the AFL-CIO would like to see and the country desperately needs. A vicious circle that does Americans without jobs no damn good.
