Rebuild America: A program for jobs, justice and peace

By Bob King

Millions of Americans are hurting right now. When we help them, we’re also helping to put the economy back on track.

Our program to rebuild Detroit and America includes these key initiatives:
 

• Investments in our cities, infrastructure, industries and people.
• Guaranteed justice for workers.
• An end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unemployment checks are being spent on necessities, providing a needed boost in consumer spending. More federal assistance to states and cities will prevent layoffs, cuts in services and tax increases that threaten to further squeeze consumer demand and push the economy back into recession. A moratorium on foreclosures will not only keep families in their homes, but also help stabilize neighborhoods and protect housing values.

Aid for the unemployed
Republicans tried to prevent extensions of unemployment benefits for hard-working Americans unemployed because of Wall Street abuses and the global economic crisis while advocating for extensions of unconscionable tax breaks for the wealthiest. In July the Senate finally acted to extend unemployment benefits to jobless workers who have exhausted their benefits. That extension runs out at the end of November.

Meantime, the COBRA subsidy that allowed many jobless workers to continue health insurance coverage for themselves and their families has been allowed to expire. So has the extra $25 per week that unemployed workers were receiving as part of the Recovery Act.

With more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, with the average duration of unemployment exceeding 34 weeks, with nearly 6.6 million Americans unemployed for more than six months and with unemployment expected to remain high into 2011, Congress needs to act promptly to ensure that benefits for the long-term unemployed continue beyond November.

The 65 percent COBRA premium subsidy and $25 increase in weekly benefits should both be restored immediately.

Aid for cities and states
Cities and states continue to reel from the economic downturn, and their plight is adding to our jobs crisis. State and local governments nationwide have eliminated more than 300,000 jobs over the last two years. The depressed economy means low revenues, leading most states to enact even deeper cuts in fiscal 2011.

When more citizens need services, services are being cut. When more jobs are desperately needed, jobs are being cut. When families are watching every penny, taxes and fees are being raised.

The federal government has the power to stop this destructive cycle by extending financial assistance to state and local governments. Recent congressional action providing $26 billion for Medicaid and education was helpful, but did not go far enough.

Direct job creation
  With hiring in the private sector weak, and with states and cities cutting their own employment roles, the federal government should directly fund the creation of public service jobs, as it has done historically in other periods of high unemployment. The Local Jobs for America Act, introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., would provide $75 billion over two years to local governments and states, targeting those communities where the need is greatest, for programs to put the unemployed to work on community service projects run by either local governments or nonprofit organizations. 

Moratorium on foreclosures
Foreclosures are devastating Detroit neighborhoods and across the country – from the families who are losing their homes to neighbors whose property values are plummeting to entire communities confronting abandonment and blight. According to RealtyTrac, there were 11,889 homes in foreclosure in the city of Detroit in July, and 100,995 across the state of Michigan. Despite $75 billion in funding for mortgage modifications to assist beleaguered homeowners, financial institutions are dragging their feet. 

Meanwhile, another 18,833 foreclosures were filed in Michigan in July, according to RealtyTrac. To give struggling families a meaningful opportunity to save their homes (and to create a push for lenders to work with them toward that end), we support legislation (S.B. 29) introduced in the Michigan State Legislature to establish a two-year moratorium on foreclosures.

Let’s put the economy back on track and rebuild America. 

Bob King is president of the UAW. This opinion piece first appeared in the Sept. 1 edition of the Detroit News.