Financial crisis leaves millions jobless

The Education and Labor Committee hearing on “Building an Economic Recovery Package: Creating and Preserving Jobs in America” began with a statement by Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) that characterized the recession as “long, deep, and global”. Two panels addressed the committee. The hearing started with an unemployed worker from New Jersey, Dana Stevens, who pleaded for relief as a hard-working and frustrated American. Next was Ron Blackwell, the chief economist for the AFL-CIO, who called for “appropriate urgency” to end the economic crisis with an aggressive package that would “target the underlying fundamental economic imbalances to avoid repeating them in the future.”

Additional panelists included Dr. Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute who recommended a “one-year recovery package in the neighborhood of 1-2% GDP, about $150-300 billion, targeted at infrastructure, state fiscal relief, unemployment insurance, and food stamps.” Chris Hansen, President and CEO of AeA, elaborated on the expansion of infrastructure to include a “greater deployment of high-speed broadband networks” for the United States. Hansen also encouraged continued investment by the government in the area of research in the physical sciences.

Professor Robert Pollin from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst extended the idea of green investments to the economic recovery package as one of the “most efficient ways of creating jobs”. The last speaker was William Beach, Director of the Center for Data Analysis for the Heritage Foundation. He advocated tax and energy policy changes by making the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003 permanent, lowering the corporate profits tax, and increasing the domestic production of petroleum.

The second panel included only Charles Millard, Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), who spoke about the effects the negative turn of the economy has had on American pensions. He said, “The steps PBGC has taken to protect pensions could be adversely affected by corporate transactions or bankruptcy.”

The committee was informed about various statistics including the fact that the unemployment rate has increased 1.2 percentage points since January and now stands at 6.1 percent. Nearly ten million workers are now unemployed and seeking work, over two million of whom have been unemployed for over 27 weeks.