Jobs

I read the email from Organizing for America (dated June 5, 2010) sent as a message from President Barack Obama to me personally. I used almost the exact same words and rewrote part of the message with a broader theme then added the last two paragraphes myself. Here is what I would tell the President.

Dear President Obama,

The Great Recession has not just damaged livelihoods. Whole communities have been degraded beyond recognition. And the fury people feel is not just about the money they have lost. They feel the wrenching recognition that this time their lives may never be the same.

The people now without jobs will work hard to meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe, the Great Recession -- one that is not their fault and beyond their control -- their lives have been thrown into turmoil. This is brutally unfair. What the President needs to tell these unemployed men and women is that he will stand with the people of America until they are working again. In May, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was 6.8 million.

These are hard times in America, and now Louisiana and the Gulf Coast are hard hit, an area that has already seen more than its fair share of troubles. The people of these United States have met the terrible catastrophe of the Great Recession with seemingly limitless strength and character in defense of their way of life. What we owe the unemployed everywhere is a commitment by our nation to match the resilience they have shown. That is our mission. And it is one we will fulfill: a job for everyone that wants one.

The Gulf Coast oil spill is a crisis that can be turned into an opportunity to put people back to work. BP pays and the government will hire companies that will hire the workers.

We need to have people back to work now, not in 2013 as forecast by economists. We need to increase tax revenues from income taxes by increasing people’s income not by increasing taxes. We need to decrease the deficit and the growth of the national debt by reducing spending on entitlements paid to people with unearned income over $100,000 per year (in 2010 dollars).