While Unemployed Americans Wait, President Obama Sends Jobs Act to Congress
“Well, here it is,” the President said this morning, holding up the text of the American Jobs Act that he introduced in a speech to a Joint Session of Congress last Thursday.
The Jobs Act contains $60 billion in investments in infrastructure, $85 billion in much needed aid to state and local governments, and $175 billion in an extension of the payroll tax cut passed last year. As millions of unemployed Americans watch and struggle, the official future of the Jobs Act is in the hands of a bitterly divided Congress, which has focused more on manufactured crises than the very real jobs crisis since the beginning of this year.
While Members of Congress now have the ball in their court, the President is taking his plan to the people. He will be talking about the bill tomorrow in Columbus, Ohio, and in Raleigh-Durham on Wednesday.
Reactions are mixed among Republicans. Several members of Congress, such as Sen. Jim Demint (R-SC) and Rep. Joe Walsh (R-SC), didn’t even attend the speech. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) told reporters he would be attending a football watch party instead. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) suggested that he wanted to peel off different sections of the bill and pass them separately.
Even before the speech, many Republicans were lining up to actually oppose the employee Payroll Tax Cut, which would lower the amount deducted from paychecks to go towards Social Security to 3.1 percent. Even though inaction would essentially lead to a tax increase on working Americans, usually fanatically anti-tax politicians are identifying it as a piece of the Jobs Act that’s unacceptable.
Unlike Members of Congress, Working America members are more concerned with taking care of their families and keeping their heads above water than political maneuvers. Curtis P., a member from Sandusky, Ohio, told us he’s been unemployed for nine months, and that he’s having trouble providing for his wife and kids. Ohio would get $4 billion under the Jobs Act, including a healthy chunk for job-creating infrastructure projects.
Curtis’s representative, Bob Latta (R-OH), said of the Jobs Act that he’s concerned it isn’t paid for, and that he believes Americans want less taxes and the “elimination” of the Affordable Care Act. We’re not sure who he’s talking to, but we’re pretty sure it isn’t Curtis.
I am in favor of much of the bill – not the continued Social Security payroll tax abatement. Although I know it will help some people, I have been unemployed for 2.75 years and there is NOTHING in the bill that would help me or get me back into a job.
The reason is that no politician has addressed the problem of the hiring process as the cause of long term unemployment. The hiring process is part of an employer-side employment law and HR design in which workers are considered as adversaries and put on the defensive. Therefore the hiring process, instead of looking for the best candidate, finds fault with applicants in any way possible. The person who is hired had nothing negative on which to be eliminated.
The first thing employers look for is recent experience. This means that unemployed people are not being considered. No matter how good you are, recruiters are sayuing that managers will not consider candidates who have been unemployed for a substantial period of time.
The tax incentive to hire the unemployed will not work because it was already passed and it didn’t work last year.
There has to be a direct hire way of getting people into the workforce without people having to wait to be a manager’s Chosen One.
This means a New Deal program in which anyone who wants to work can sign up and work without having to be chosen by anyone. And the work should support the person’s professional development and have a relationship to the person’s education and experience.
The second possibility is to state that in order for a company to be a contractor or vendor to the government, it has to have at least 5% of its workforce older than 50 through all levels except physical labor or the top senior executive roles. The discrimination against people older than 50 has got to be stopped. This would not cost the government any deficit money.
The other policy that would work is starting Medicare at age 50. It would be infused with premiums from healthy 50 year olds. Employers could pay a modest premium for their employees. Having this available rather than the higher private insurance premiums for older workers, employers would have an incentive to hire older people and the age discrimination would stop.
Right now for a person like myself the jobs bill is just more of the same. Until there is a direct way people can start working without waiting to be an employer’s Chosen One, no jobs bill is going to work.
The labor unions need to address the problem of the hiring system and how it systematically creates vicious cycles of the denial of opportunity and long term unemployment.
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There’s definitely conflicting interests here with the need to be the “Chosen One” as you put it, and yet there is talk in Washington from time to time about raising the retirement age yet again! I sometimes feel as if I’m caught in an undertow being sucked down!
I lost my part-time job this past June and have been on unemployment since then, which isn’t much since it was part-time. In 2009, I decided that enough was enough with the jobs that were going nowhere and not paying much. So I enrolled in college and in May of this year, I earned my AA (graduating Summa Cum Laude) in Health Care Administration. And I’m currently working my tail off toward a BS in the same field while job hunting.
I’m 57 years old and live in a county with a high unemployment rate. My husband is also 57 and has had glaucoma and cataracts for a number of years. It became increasingly difficult, with the deterioration of his eye sight, for him to perform the job responsibilities of his position and ultimately led to his losing his job two years ago. He also has a confirmed diagnosis of a cancer growth on his eyelid. His unemployment has since run out and with my unemployment payments as our only income, my husband and I were forced to further lower ourselves and apply for food stamps and Medicaid.
Even knowing that he has this cancer, the Department of Health and Human Services denied us Medicaid because we don’t have a child living at home…we certainly qualify financially though.
I feel helpless and hopeless and so angry when I consider the position that me, my husband and millions of other Americans are in! Meanwhile in Washington, the politicians WE, the people, are paying (w/countless benefits to boot!) to work for us, are playing juvenile games and cutting everything but their pay!!
All I can say is that right at this moment; it doesn’t feel much like I’m living in the land of opportunity!
Sincerely,
Fear of the Future
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Right to life should include whole life and not just a fetus. This means that the talents in each person should be utilized and everyone should have a place in society.
Employers’ emphasis on finding “perfect candidates” is fueling long term unemployment and the jobs bill does not address this issue.
Job descriptions are becoming so fine grain that there is no allowance for mobility from one type of job to another.
The emphasis on beauty and physical perfection is eliminating people who are too short, too fat, don’t have a perfectly shaped face or body, aren’t poised. Older workers are excluded because employers hire the most beautful and physically fit 30 year olds they can find.
The disabled are having a very difficult time. Employers are just not hiring anyone with a disability or a medical problem.
Then there are issues such as being out of work for a while or having job changes.
Psychological tests screen out anyone who doesn’t rigidly conform. If a person is rated as an artistic type and applied for a job as an accountant, that person will not be hired if a psychological test is given, even if the person does not need to be creative during 9-5 and even if the person would be an honest, good worker. Almost all jobs for people without a college degree are screened with such tests and it is creating a class of people who cannot become hired even if they are good people
Then there is the issue of bad credit, and the even worse issue of anyone who may have a previous conviction.
We have to return to the idea of making a place for everyone in society. Employers need to hire real people, not clones.
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The only way on earth to provide jobs for Americans is to pass a bill such as S. 3816
Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act S. 3816
The Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act eliminates subsidies that U.S. taxpayers provide to firms that move facilities offshore.
The bill ends Tax Break for Runaway Plants. Now of a manufacturing plant moves overseas, they are rewarded by the government with tax breaks. This is treason perpetrated by Congress and our past and present presidents who also passed NAFTA that tokk away American jobs. The Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act ends the federal tax subsidy that rewards U.S. firms that move their production overseas.
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Cynical, I’m sure politicians had a noble reason for creating the bill that offered tax subsidies to U.S. firms for moving their production overseas…like improving foreign relations and going to the aid of struggling countries. But in my opinion, that’s been a problem for decades in America. We are always ready to jump at the chance to help other nations at the expense of our own people here at home that are struggling with the same issues. That’s not to say I don’t believe in giving aid to other countries, but charity starts at home…first and foremost! We have people starving, homeless and unable to provide for their families just like those countries we are helping!
I do agree with your comments though, it is treasonous! Since it would still probably be cheaper to out-source to an overseas company, let them. But the federal tax subsidies should end.
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