Something Happened Yesterday... Will It Last?

Yesterday President Obama was in Milwaukee for Labor Day, and as we mentioned in our Bill Hedrick post, he announced, at long last, the kind of massive infrastructure enterprise that Americans are calling out for-- Americans, but not John Boehner and his obstructionist partisan cronies. Just minutes before I read about the President's intention to go for the infrastructure projects, Paul Krugman's column appeared in the NYTimes warning that Obama would be making a big mistake if he didn't. His thesis all year has been that "the president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed."

President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment-- and now it’s fading out.

And just as some of us feared, the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it-- and the nation-- in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.

Obama's most effective and most progressive cabinet member traveled with him to Milwaukee's Labor Day celebration, Secretay of Labor Hilda Solis. Before they got there she had written an OpEd for the Houston Chronicle in which she discussed what her department is attempting to accomplish:

I know that as we mark Labor Day this year, many workers in Houston, the state of Texas and the nation as a whole are feeling more anxious than festive. Like other places in America, Houston has felt the harshness of the recession. But this administration is committed to the city's workers and to ensuring they all have the skills and opportunities they need to work again.

From the day I walked into the Department of Labor more than a year and a half ago, my vision has been to achieve "good jobs for everyone." My goal is for all people, regardless of ethnicity, gender or age, to have access to a good job. And I know I have much work ahead of me.

But it's really up to the President. And, like I said, he's coming through. Since Boehner was on TV right away whining about how Obama was being mean to Republicans-- who, after all, tanked the economy with their class warfare politics of greed and selfishness-- I have a suspicion he's on the right path.

[T]he problems facing working families are nothing new. But they are more serious than ever. And that makes our cause more urgent than ever. For generations, it was the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again.
 
It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the twentieth century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today-- the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label. 
 
And it was that greatest of generations that built America into the greatest force for prosperity, opportunity and freedom the world has ever known. Americans like my grandfather, who went off to war just boys, returned home men, and traded one uniform and set of responsibilities for another.  Americans like my grandmother, who rolled up their sleeves and worked in factories on the home front. When the war was over, they studied under the GI Bill; bought homes under the FHA; raised families buttressed by good jobs that paid good wages with good benefits.
 
It was through my grandparents’ experience that I was brought up to believe that anything is possible in America. But they also knew the feeling when that opportunity is pulled out from under you. They would tell me about seeing their fathers or uncles losing jobs during the depression; how it wasn’t just the loss of a paycheck that stung. It was the blow to their dignity; their sense of self-worth. I’ll bet a lot of us have seen people changed after a long bout of unemployment; how it can wear down even the strongest spirits.
 
So my grandparents taught me early on that a job is about more than a paycheck, as important as that is. A job is about waking up every day with a sense of purpose, and going to bed each night fulfilled. A job is about meeting your responsibilities to yourself, to your family, to your community. I carried that lesson with me all those years ago when I got my start fighting for men and women on the South Side of Chicago after their local steel plant shut down. I carried that lesson with me through my time as a state senator and a U.S. Senator. I carry that lesson with me today.
 
And I know that there are folks right here in Milwaukee and all across America who are going through these kinds of struggles.  Eight million Americans lost their jobs in this recession. And while we’ve had eight straight months of private sector job growth, the new jobs haven’t been coming fast enough. Now, the plain truth is, there’s no silver bullet or quick fix to the problem. Even when I was running for this office, we knew it would take time to reverse the damage of a decade’s worth of policies that saw a few folks prosper while the middle class kept falling behind-- and it will take more time than any of us wants to dig out of the hole created by this economic crisis.
 
But on this Labor Day, there are two things I want you to know, Milwaukee. Number one: I’m going to keep fighting, every single day, to turn this economy around; to put our people back to work; to renew the American Dream for your families and for future generations.
 
Number two-- and this I believe with every fiber of my being: America cannot have a strong, growing economy without a strong, growing middle class, and the chance for everybody, no matter how humble their beginnings, to join that middle class. A middle class built on the idea that if you work hard and live up to your responsibilities, you can get ahead – and enjoy some basic guarantees in life. A good job that pays a good wage.  Health care that’ll be there when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. An education that’ll give our kids a better life than we had.  These are simple ideas. American ideas.

I was thinking about this last week. On the day I announced the end to our combat mission in Iraq, I spent some time, as I often do, with our soldiers and veterans. This new generation of troops coming home from Iraq has earned its place alongside that greatest generation. Like them, they have the skills and training and drive to move America’s economy forward once more. And from the time I took office, we’ve been investing in new care, new opportunity, and a new commitment to their service that’s worthy of their sacrifice. But they’re coming home to an economy hit by recession deeper than any we’ve seen. And the question is, how do we create the same kind of middle class opportunity my grandparents’ generation came home to? How do we build our economy on the same kind of strong, stable foundation for growth?
 
Well, anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it’ll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up-- they just haven’t studied our history. We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting special interests run wild. We didn’t do it by just gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We did it by producing goods we could sell; we did it with sweat and effort and innovation. We did it by investing in the people who built this country from the ground up-- workers, and middle-class families, and small business owners. We did it by out-working, out-educating, and out-competing everyone else.
 
Milwaukee, that’s what we’re going to do again. That’s what’s been at the heart of all our efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn’t just survive this crisis-- but thrives once we emerge. And over the last two years, that’s meant taking on some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long.
 
That’s why we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street; reform that will stop credit card companies from gouging you with hidden fees and unfair rate hikes; reform that ends the era of taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street once and for all.
 
That’s why we eliminated tens of billions of dollars in wasteful taxpayer subsidies to big banks that provide student loans. We’re using those savings to put a college education within reach for working families.
 
That’s why we passed health insurance reform that will make coverage affordable; reform that ends the indignity of insurance companies jacking up your premiums at will or denying you coverage just because you get sick; reform that shifts control from them to you.
 
That’s why we’re making it easier for workers to save for retirement, with new ways of saving your tax refunds, a simpler system for enrolling in plans like 401(k)s, and fighting to strengthen Social Security for the future. And to those who may still run for office planning to privatize Social Security, let me be clear: as long as I’m President, I’ll fight every effort to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street. Not on my watch.
 
That’s why we’ve given tax cuts to small business owners. Tax cuts to clean energy companies. A tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans, just like I promised you on the campaign. And instead of giving tax breaks to corporations to create jobs overseas, we’re cutting taxes for companies that put our people to work here at home. 
 
That’s why we’re investing in growth industries like clean energy and manufacturing. And you’ve got leaders here like Tom Barrett and Jim Doyle who have been fighting to bring those jobs to Milwaukee and to Wisconsin. Because we want to see the solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars of tomorrow manufactured here. We don’t just want to buy stuff made elsewhere; we want to grow our exports so the world buys products that say “Made in America.”
 
Because there are no better workers than American workers, and I’ll place my bet on you any day of the week. When the naysayers said we should just let the American auto industry vanish and take hundreds of thousands of jobs down with it, we said we’d stand by them if they made the tough choices necessary to compete once again-- and today, that industry is on the way back.
 
Now, another thing we’ve done is make sound and long-overdue investments in upgrading our outdated and inefficient national infrastructure. We’re not just talking new roads, bridges, dams and levees; but also a smart electric grid and the broadband internet and high-speed rail lines required to compete in the 21st century economy. We’re talking investments in tomorrow that are creating hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs today.
 
It was because of these investments, and the tens of thousands of projects they spurred all over the country, that the battered construction sector actually grew last month for the first time in a long time. Still, nearly one in five construction workers are unemployed. And it doesn’t do anybody any good when so many American workers have been idled for months, even years, at a time when there is so much of America to rebuild.
 
That’s why, today, I am announcing a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads, rails and runways for the long-term.
 
Over the next six years, we are going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads-- enough to circle the world six times. We’re going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways-- enough to stretch coast-to-coast. We’re going to restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next generation air-traffic control system to reduce travel time and delays for American travelers-- something I think folks across the political spectrum could agree on.
 
This is a plan that will be fully paid for and will not add to the deficit over time-- we’re going to work with Congress to see to that. It sets up an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on the smartest investments. It will continue our strategy to build a national high-speed rail network that reduces congestion, travel times, and harmful emissions. It will cut waste and bureaucracy by consolidating and collapsing more than 100 different, often duplicative programs. And it will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars; reforming the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck.
 
All of this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul.  It’s a plan that history tells us can and should attract bipartisan support. It’s a plan that says even in the still-smoldering aftermath of the worst recession in our lifetimes, America can act to shape our own destiny, to move this country forward, to leave our children something better-- something lasting.
 
So these are the things we’ve been working for. These are some of the victories that you helped us achieve. And we’re not done. We’ve got a lot more progress to make. And I believe we will.
 
But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it’s better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean, come on!  Remember when our campaign slogan was “Yes We Can?” These guys are running on “No, We Can’t,” and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh?
 
To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that they find so offensive?
 
When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said “no” to that, too. In fact, the Republican who’s already planning to take over as Speaker of the House dismissed them as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving. Not worth saving?  These are the people who teach our kids.  Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on the line for our own.  I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.
 
We made sure that bill wouldn’t add to the deficit, either. We paid for it by finally closing a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments-- even when they don’t pay taxes here. How do you like that-- middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America’s biggest corporations agreed the loophole should be closed, that it wasn’t fair-- but the man with the plan to be Speaker is already aiming to open it up again.
 
Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn’t find a job, or afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company-- you’re on your own.
 
Well, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for working folks. It didn’t work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
 
I’m not bringing this up to re-litigate the past; I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer; if they said, you know, we’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ll do things differently this time. But that’s not what they’re doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.
 
So basically, they’re betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just believe that they’ve changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they’re asking you for the keys back.
 
Do you want to give them the keys back? Me neither. And do you know why? Because they don’t know how to drive! At a time when we’re just getting out of the ditch, they’d pop it in reverse, let the special interests ride shotgun, and hit the gas, careening right back into that ditch.
 
Well, I refuse to go backwards, Milwaukee. And that’s the choice America faces this fall. Do we go back to the policies of the past? Or do we move forward? I say we move forward. America always moves forward. And we are going to keep moving forward today.

Yesterday I also got a note from Alan Grayson reminding me about another Democratic hero, one who was murdered before he was able to reach the presidency, Robert F. Kennedy. From the first time I ever met Grayson he's been talking with me about how to make the lives of ordinary Americans better-- not what one usually hears from many politicians. Yesterday's letter was classic Grayson:

Today is Labor Day. All across America, millions of people are discovering that the best way to celebrate Labor Day is by not working.

Do you live to work, or do you work to live?

If you are married, look at your wedding album; are there any pictures in there of you at work?

And on your tombstone, do you want it to say, "I wish that I could have spent more time at work"?

Here is what Robert Kennedy had to say about this, 42 years ago:

"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that-- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

When Robert Kennedy said these words, the unemployment rate in America was 3.7%. Today, it is almost three times as high. Too many of our working brothers and sisters are out of work, thanks to over a decade of economic mismanagement. 10% of us are unemployed, and the other 90% work like dogs to try to avoid joining them. Which is just what the bosses want.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I look forward to a Labor Day where every worker has a job, every worker has a pension, every worker has paid vacations, and every worker has the health care to enjoy life.

My opponents call that France. I call it America, an America that is Number One.

Not #1 in wasted military expenditures.

Not #1 in number of foreign countries occupied.

Number One in jobs. Number One in health. Number One in education. Number One in happiness.

As Robert Kennedy famously said, "I dream of things that never were, and ask 'why not?'" Why not? Let's make it happen.

And then all of us who are Americans, including the ones today who are jobless, homeless, sick and suffering, we all can then say, "I am proud to be an American."

Are you with me?

At Blue America we sure are, and we want so, so much to be with Obama too. So, so much, the way we were yesterday.