Why putting America back to work should be our priority

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If you’ve ever doubted that elections have consequences, or that there is a difference between progressives and conservatives — and that those differences matter to everyday life — I hope you’re now paying attention.

For the first time in history we stood on the verge of defaulting on paying our bills. The United States’ economy directly affects 300 million people and indirectly affects the entire planet, yet it was being driven over a cliff by a handful of plutocrats. These individuals, conservatives, were willing to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States because of their views of who government should benefit and how an economy should function.

Republicans believe our country must “control spending” to fix the deficit. Ironically, their way to control spending is to cut the same programs and services that helped create the American middle class. And, it’s the middle class that fueled the strongest economic engine in the world is the cornerstone of that phenomenon “The American Dream.”

WATCH REP. KEITH ELLISON ADDRESS THE JOB CRISIS ON MSNBC HERE
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The American Dream: the idea that individuals can get decent jobs to feed their families, have health benefits, and send their children to college if they choose to attend. This Dream fueled decades of economic growth and it was progressive economic policies that ensured this widely shared prosperity.

However, the American middle class is being devastated by policies that only benefit a tiny minority. Since the 1970s, the economic realities for America’s middle class reveal a consistently downward slide. In 1978, when Congress passed the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, supporters called the 6.3 percent unemployment rate an outrage. Now, unemployment hovers just above 9 percent only recently have alarm bells gone off. The 16 percent unemployment rate in the African-American community should make us get serious about creating jobs. This distressing picture should not become the “new normal.”

The last 10 years have been the most ridiculous to watch. Republicans blew budget surpluses created by the Clinton administration and gave money to special interests, while the middle class footed the bill. They passed the biggest tax cut ever for millionaires and billionaires and put it on the credit card — the debt limit that they now don’t want to raise so we can pay these bills. They approved a giveaway to the pharmaceutical lobbyists that will cost $1 trillion over 10 years. And it was George W. Bush, not President Obama, who ran jumped into two wars without thinking of how to pay them. The total: over 4,000 U.S. troops and $4 trillion, more than 20 percent of the deficit.

Our neighborhoods show the human misery high unemployment causes. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), which I co-chair with Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, is in the midst of a “Speak Out for Good Jobs Now” nationwide tour. We’ve repeatedly heard people’s despair as they search for months, or even a year, but cannot find a job. Long-term unemployment stresses families, fractures communities, and depresses local economies.

Reducing unemployment should be everyone’s top priority, but, unfortunately, it isn’t. Conservatives have fundamentally different values based on the belief that the wealthy few benefit the economy more than the middle class does. You would think that 20 years of the demonstrated failure of this “supply-side” theory would change their minds but they choose to stick with it.

They believe eventually the wealthy “job creators” will decide they’ve gorged themselves on low tax rates long enough and soon it will be time for economic benefits to “trickle down” to the middle class. How likely is this? Obviously, not likely and recent studies showing a widening gap between the rich and the rest of us only prove you can’t have a policy that benefits the few first and then hope the prosperity oozes between their fingers and drips onto the masses.

Democrats have proposed legislation that would fix problems Republicans have ignored for decades and also create millions of good jobs. This would help solve our fiscal problems since, after all, employed people taxes.

First, long before Republicans took our economy hostage, the CPC introduced The People’s Budget, which use progressive polices to actually eliminate the deficit in 10 years. It’s the only budget introduced this year that actually erases the deficit and economists have called it courageous and responsible.

Legislation is also pending that would create a National Infrastructure Development Bank, which make it easier to implement transportation projects that create jobs. There are also public works bills such as The Put America to Work Act of 2011, which I introduced, that could create as many as 3 million jobs for unemployed and underemployed individuals.

Republicans have not introduced a single jobs bill since they took over the House in 2010. Elections have consequences, remember?

America has an historic opportunity to solve this problem while doing right by our workers, seniors, and children. The right policies will pave the way for a strong American economy that benefits the majority — not just the wealthy few.

We are at a crucial moment and it’s time we returned to benefiting those who’ve benefited us. We wouldn’t be America if it weren’t for the middle class.

Congressman Keith Ellison represents Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Ellison is also the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.