Twin City Times- Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Mayor's Corner #115
As the Health Care Reform initiative has been lingering because of the resistance of members of Congress and in particular one party, their mantra has been jobs, jobs, jobs!
I urge those who have been saying no to Health Care Reform to get it done and the sooner they get it done, the sooner they will get onto jobs. It will be interesting to see if those who have been saying no, no, no to Health Care Reform and calling for work on jobs instead, will they again start saying no to jobs and pointing to another subject?
While we are on the subject of jobs, we have to look at how we got into this situation in this country. Over the past few decades, large investment banks, Wall Street Financiers and Corporate CEO’s have made their profits over the backs of workers, families and local communities.
They have been protected by conservative members of Congress by weakening regulations, cutting corporate taxes and reducing funds for public services and programs. This has negatively impacted the middle class that has tried to go to work every day to sustain our economy. It has impacted the poor and now the working poor.
The result of the above that we are experiencing is the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. It might have been worse if it hadn’t been for the Recovery Act which slowed down the free fall. Some of the stimulus money is just arriving at communities that have applied for same. Here, in Lewiston, we have recently been awarded the support to hire two police officers.
Nationally, the unemployment rate stands at 10.2%. Up until last month we had experienced 22 straight months of job losses. We are continuing to experience job losses monthly, although the rate of job losses is decreasing as we are trying to grow our economy.