At the Summit on Jobs and America’s Future: Summit Launches Movement to Demand Jobs

For Release: March 10, 2011 9 a.m.

At the Summit on Jobs and America’s Future: Summit Launches Movement to Demand Jobs
A Call for American Economic Renewal

Washington, DC – Today the Campaign for America’s Future is holding a Summit on Jobs and America’s Future. Economists and organizers, labor and business leaders and civic reformers are working together to build a movement to hold leaders accountable for creating jobs.

Campaign for America’s Future’s co-director Roger Hickey said, “25 million Americans need full time work, and Washington is focused on a draconian conservative plan for spending cuts, which even Goldman Sachs reported would cost the economy close to a million jobs – and cut America’s growth rate in half.”

At the summit, the Campaign for America’s Future is releasing an article called Jobs Now: A Call for American Economic Renewal by co-director Robert Borosage. In it Borosage writes, “Washington is afflicted with an odd form of atten¬tion deficit disorder. Elected by promising do some¬thing about jobs, the new majority in the House is now fixated on cutting spending…Austerity Democrats in Washington are equally be¬fuddled. Establishment clamor about debt and deficits drowns out the public plea for action on jobs. But for both conservative Republicans and austerity Demo¬crats, austerity is an inconstant devotion. When the banks need to be bailed out, concerns about deficits are swept aside. When the wealthy demand their tax cuts be extended, the deficit is ignored. When special interests like Big Oil and Big Pharma demand their subsidies, tribute is paid.”

Some of the solutions being discussed at the Summit include:

• Rebuild national infrastructure. Set up an infrastructure bank and expand public transit
• Change the financial system to reward job creation not gambling.
• Create green energy jobs.
• Change policies to encourage companies to Make it in America – and institute currency reform.
• Support for the Miller and Ellison Local Jobs for America Act to create jobs in communities.
• Invest in education and research and development, and expand broadband access

While some of this agenda would aim at long term, sustainable job creation, Summit speakers, describing a “jobs emergency” also called for action to quickly spur job creation in the public and private sector, among them:

1. Stop the destructive budget cuts – and the attacks on public employees.

2. Aid to states to prevent layoffs of teachers and police and other critical workers – as is happening in Wisconsin – to remove one big drag on economic recovery.

3. An emergency infrastructure investment program – to put people to work building things we need, like roads, bridges, energy systems.

4. A new focus on Making things in America – and currency reform so that countries like China will buy what we make.

Among the Jobs Summit speakers:
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka
Economist Robert Pollin (U Mass Amherst)
Angela Glover Blackwell (CEO of PolicyLink)
Business leader Leo Hindery
Green jobs advocate Van Jones
Rep. George Miller (D-CA)
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Link to Jobs Now: A Call for American Economic Renewal http://www.ourfuture.org/files/documents/jobs-summit-jobs-now-manifesto.pdf [1]

For more information about the Summit on Jobs and America’s Future visit www.ourfuture.org/jobssummit [2]