DEC-Holiday-2009 :Holiday Issue
12/15/09
9:47 AM
Page 3
AFL-CIO shares its job
stimulus plan with Obama
With unemployment officially top-
ping 10 percent, and 15 million Amer-
icans out of work, Congress and the
White House are feeling pressure to do
more to stimulate jobs.
President Barack Obama put on a
White House “Jobs Summit” Dec. 3,
and invited labor and business leaders
to share their ideas for how to create
jobs. Labor had plenty.
AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka
outlined a five-point jobs creation plan
that calls on the government to:
• Extend the lifeline for jobless
workers through one-year extension of
unemployment benefits, food stamps
and COBRA health insurance subsi-
dies.
• Rebuild America’s schools, roads
and energy systems in a second stimu-
lus bill focused just on jobs;
• Increase aid to state and local gov-
ernments to maintain services and pre-
vent layoffs that might occur when
money from the first stimulus bill runs
out in the middle of next year;
• Fund job creation through a 10 to
15 percent targeted jobs tax credit for
the next two years; and
• Put Wall Street bailout funds to
work for Main Street.
To pay for the effort, Trumka advo-
cated taxing Wall Street transactions, a
call echoed by Anna Burger, chair of
the Change to Win labor federation.
Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-
Ore.) has introduced a bill to do that.
The “Let Wall Street Pay for the
Restoration of Main Street Act” levies
a 0.25 percent tax on stock transac-
tions, and 0.02 percent on futures con-
tracts, stock swaps, and credit default
swaps. To exempt the middle class, the
tax would be refunded for the first
$100,000 of transactions, and would
not be levied on transactions under-
taken by retirement and other tax-de-
ferred savings accounts. The bill’s aim
is to raise money — and discourage
high-volume short-term speculative
trading. The tax could raise $150 bil-
lion a year, of which the bill dedicates
half to create jobs in infrastructure, and
lion drop in demand in this economic
downturn,” Wu told the Northwest La-
bor Press. “The stimulus package was
$787 billion, which is a lot, but it was
less than one-third of the shortfall. I
think the evidence is that the stimulus
package was too small for the prob-
lem.”
If that’s the case, what are the
chances a Round Two one-tenth that
size will meet the need? The AFL-CIO
estimates its “stimulus two” proposal
would cost $400 billion to $500 bil-
lion.
Meanwhile, Congressman Phil
Hare, (D-Illinois) is pushing legislation
more closely modeled on FDR’s New
(Turn to Page 14)
half to paying down the federal debt.
The United Kingdom currently has
such a tax, and the United States had
one from 1914 to 1966. The U.S. tax
on sales or transfers of stock started out
at 0.2 percent, and was more than dou-
bled in 1932 to help with job creation
during the Great Depression.
DeFazio’s bill, HR 4191, had 27 co-
sponsors in the House as of press time,
though no others from Oregon or
Washington.
Perhaps more likely to pass is a pro-
posal from the Democratic House
leadership for a jobs-focused “second
stimulus” bill that would use unallo-
cated or returned bank bailout funds,
as Trumka advocated.
Congressman David Wu (D-Ore.)
held a roundtable discussion on jobs
Dec. 4 in Portland, and told participants
that $70 billion is on the table from the
bank bailout. At the urging of President
George W. Bush, Democrats in Con-
gress voted in October 2008 to author-
ize up to $700 billion for the Troubled
Asset Relief Program (TARP). The
program used public money to recapi-
talize banks. But not all the funds were
used, and some banks have repaid the
funds to get out of restrictions that were
attached. Wu said there’s no appetite in
Congress to borrow more money for
stimulus efforts, but there is support for
spending unused TARP funds.
“Estimates are we’ve had a $2.5 tril-
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