Nearly every day now, we hear about yet another public opinion poll that shows the majority of those surveyed want Congress and the White House to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs.
Constituents across the nation currently are meeting with their congressional lawmakers who are back home and these citizens are conveying one message: jobs, jobs, jobs.
Economists like Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Reserach (CEPR) and many others say the nation should first focus on one thing: jobs, jobs, jobs.
Yet most in Washington don’t get it. As Shierholz says:
Lawmakers have crafted a debt ceiling deal that will slow growth further and make joblessness worse.
Those who aspire to the U.S. presidency don’t get it, either. At last night’s Republican debate in Iowa, would-be presidents ”claimed faithfulness to the Aesop’s Fables version of tax policy,” as a writer on the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal community blog put it.
They insist, without any evidence, that lowering taxes on the rich will create jobs, stimulate the economy. And yet, the evidence of the last 11 years disproves such a faith-based notion. Taxes at the federal level have never been so low…and yet unemployment is rivaling that of the 30’s.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson’s ”Clueless in Washington” column today accurately describes congressional Republicans’ “solution” to the nation’s jobs crisis. House and Senate Republicans have sought to ”eliminate jobs rather than create them.”
Last month, the economy added 117,000 jobs — a performance so weak that unemployment changed little. The private sector actually added 154,000 jobs, but the public sector lost 37,000 jobs as Republicans continue to impose an austerity program at an inopportune moment.
The GOP seems to believe that a federal, state or local job somehow isn’t a “real” job. I’ll bet most Americans know otherwise.
This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data showing there were 4.5 workers for every one job in June, a slight decline from May’s ratio of 4.6-to-1 but “still far too high,” says Shierholtz, who notes the job seeker’s ratio has been above 4-to-1 for two-and–a-half years.
In other words, the jobs crisis has lasted for years, and most of those in Washington still don’t get it.
