President Obama’s American Jobs Act Just A Start

Egberto Willies is the author of the book, As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom and founder of the Coffee Party 2.0 program Americans for Racial Equality & Economic Justice.  He will be speaking at Enough is Enough: Citizens Intervention Oct. 29th and hopes to see you there!

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When bankers walked America and the rest of the world to the brink of a precipice, our government provided a taxpayer bailout in excess of $700 billion dollars. Through other Federal Reserve shenanigans banks were afforded near zero loans. All in all the Federal Reserve has loaned American and foreign banks in excess of $16 trillion. While a few complain, there is no outcry for the failed job execution, the corruption, or the pilfering effected by our banking sector.

Yet, as our President rolls out a jobs program, at an original cost that is but a fraction of the banking sector bail outs and that is effectively paid for overtime, it is met with much dissension from the Right Wing and Blue Dogs. Objection to the President’s bill is not only obscene but immoral giving the state of our working middle class for no fault of their own. In fact the demise of the earning power and jobs of the middle class must be blamed directly on the failure of those that ran our economy into the ground and have yet to pay a price for said failure.

Irrespective of the fallacies of the Right Wing, Mainstream Media, and Fox News the stimulus, in 2009 created up to 3 million jobs and prevented a depression. Unfortunately it was much too small given the economic destruction created by an irresponsible financial sector. President Obama’s new jobs bill, the American Jobs Act, is a good bill that if passed will increase economic activity by design though not nearly as much as if it were not crafted for best chance of passage by an irresponsible and recalcitrant Congress.

Most provisions in the bill are provisions that at any given time were supported by all sides. The bill’s fact sheet reads like a targeted hodgepodge of tax cuts and spending. The five tenets of the bill follow. (1)Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow manifested as payroll tax cuts by the employer as well as incentives to hire by rebating payroll taxes. (2)Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America manifested as the reconstruction of schools, Internet, roads, bridges, railways as well as tax credits for those hiring returning veterans. (3)Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs manifested as a more flexible and innovative unemployment insurance system and other targeted policies that address the long term unemployed and youth. (4)More Money in the Pockets of Every American Worker and Family manifested as a reduction in employee payroll taxes to increase ones spending power. (5)The bill is fully paid for as Part of the President’s Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan manifested partially by a normalization of taxes on the wealthy known as Buffet Rule as well as corporate loophole closures and limits in itemized deduction for the wealthy.

The working middle class was not complicit in the financial machinations that caused our economic crisis. In fact the failure of said financial machinations were by the same cast of characters who now refuse to want a marginal tax increase to assist those they indirectly caused economic strife on.

President Obama’s job bill is just a very small start that should be approved in its entirety. The country however needs a systemic but orderly reversal of the legal thievery that occurred over the last 30 years. Massive injection of capital to get our roads, bridges, schools, public transports, and airports back to first class standards must be made. Higher education must be afforded to all who earn the grades to warrant higher education at affordable rates. Massive injection of capital must be made in research for alternative energy sources, medicines, materials, and other technologies.

The private sector corporations have not kept its pact with “we the people”. Instead they have used up the resources “we the people” invested in. “We the people” created and paid for great universities that educated the professionals mined by corporations. “We the people” created and paid for the canals, the highways, the airports, the bridges that enabled corporations to move their goods. “We the people” created the military that keep the sea lanes open and free for corporations to import and export their goods. Ultimately “we the people” are the largest consumers of corporations’ goods even as they employ “we the people” at lower wages and even as they export more and more of “we the peoples’” jobs to slave labor and environmentally challenged countries abroad.

So how do we pay for this? Through an aberration in our economic system and without justification 1% of Americans own 49.7% of all investment assets and 43% of all financial wealth. 10% of Americans own almost 90% of all investment assets and 83% of all financial wealth. The wealth and income disparity in America is the worst of all industrialized nations sans Switzerland. America’s meritless wealth must be progressively taxed. The economic activity generated by them paying back what is owed “we the people” will benefit them and society at large. It is time that we demand from those that have mined “we the peoples’” resources, blood, sweat, tears, and scars, the obligation to repair the damage they have caused.