Trumka: Obama Absolutely Right to Make Jobs Top Priority

Obama’s call this week to make jobs his No. 1 priority in his State of the Union message is the right message, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. As Obama said in his speech:

Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.

Obama called for small business tax breaks to encourage hiring and infrastructure spending. He urged passage of tax incentives for larger business to keep and create jobs in the United States, and an end to tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. He also proposed taking $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat—a proposal similar to one in our AFL-CIO jobs initiative.

As Trumka said:

We must act on a scale that will be meaningful: We need more than 10 million jobs just to get out of the hole we’re in. We want health care fixed. We want our leaders to break the stranglehold of Wall Street and the big banks and make them pay to repair the economic damage they created.

Obama praised the House for passing a jobs bill last month and urged the Senate to do the same. And as lawmakers on Capitol Hill have slowed reform of health care, Obama urged Congress not to walk away from reform.

He also rightly pointed to how the steps his administration has taken have alleviated the economic suffering of working people. Steps that included the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has ensured that 2 million Americans are working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. The act is on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year. All this was done while cutting taxes for working Americans, Obama said.

We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.

Saying that America’s workers are frustrated and angry, Trumka said, “the President was right to call out Republicans for obstructing change and putting politics ahead of progress.”

Now it’s time for all of us to get busy and work together to bring the big changes that are essential—starting with enacting a jobs bill that is big enough to create jobs for the millions of people who want to work and can’t find jobs. The time for small change is long gone. We were pleased to see that the President embraced two of the job creation proposals we have made—investing in infrastructure and helping small businesses get credit through TARP funds.

The AFL-CIO’s five-point plan to create jobs immediately would begin to put people back to work and ease the economic hardships on Main Street’s working families who, unlike Wall Street bankers and brokers, have borne the brunt of the economy’s meltdown. The plan, which Trumka says will soon be expanded, includes:

• Extending unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless (due to run out next month) along with expanding food stamp assistance, and health care benefits (COBRA) for unemployed workers and their families through COBRA.
• Rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
• Increasing aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services and jobs.
• Funding jobs in neglected communities.
• Using left over bank bailout funds to get credit moving to small Main Street businesses.

Trumka also says the AFL-CIO is gearing up for a nationwide jobs campaign with allies and communities. While we “will not agree with every aspect of every proposal,” he says, we will

continue to be an independent voice for middle class Americans and fight for the change working families need—and we are ready to do more. This is the time for a broad movement of Americans demanding jobs and an economy that works for all, and we’re ready to put our energy and leadership into building that movement—taking the fight to the doorstep of the banks that are exploiting struggling homeowners, of corporations that are running away from communities and of lawmakers who choose to back them up.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future