OpEdNews - Article: Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

ADP Employer Services has just completed their jobs survey for December of 2008. They are predicting that when the Federal Jobs Report comes out in a couple of days that it will show a loss of 693,000 in the month of December alone.

Add that number to the 533,000 jobs lost in November and that adds up to 1,226,000 jobs lost since election day 2008 and 11,026,000 jobs lost in all of 2008. Let that enormous number sink in for a minute. Job losses were large and widespread across every major industry sector in 2008. (Chart 1 - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The US unemployment rate, last reported at 6.7 percent, is forecast by many economists to rise above 8 percent, or even higher, by the end of 2009. IHS Global Insight, a Waltham, MA forecasting firm, projects the jobless rate will hit 9.4 percent by the end of 2009, a level not seen since 1982, when unemployment hit a post-World War II high of nearly 11 percent.

President elect Obama is calling for "swift and bold" bipartisan action on his "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" to stop the hemorrhaging of the economy. Politico.com reports he is looking for as many as 80 votes in the Senate, requiring that more than twenty Republicans support his recovery program. He's not only invited congressional Republicans to offer their ideas, he is including tax breaks into his plan so that Republicans will find it easier to support.

But waiting for Republicans to support the recovery program insures only one thing -- delay. We now know that Republican members of the 111th Congress are planning to place ideology above action for the American people. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner have already dismissed the need for "swift and bold" action, with both McConnell and Boehner calling for drawn-out "hearings in the appropriate committees." This is unacceptable!

How many more millions of American workers will lose their jobs before the Democratic majorities in both houses of congress overcome Republican foot-dragging and McConnell's threat to filibuster the Senate?

This is not the time for the Congress to be conducting business as usual. If you have never called or written your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate, now is the time to start. Write, call or email both U.S. Senators for your state and your Representative in U.S. House and tell them this is a very real crisis for the American people and they must support President Obama's "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan."