The same polls that document overwhelming popular hostility to the bailout of Wall Street and the Obama administration's kid-glove treatment of BP show that the vast majority believe that jobless benefits should be extended and that emergency measures should be taken to provide jobs for the unemployed.
While the White House and Congress wrangle over the smallest of subsistence measures for the jobless, neither party nor the corporate elite as a whole propose to do anything to provide jobs for the unemployed. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that American corporations have increased their cash reserves to $1.84 trillion, the highest figure in history.
In other words, big business and the banks, after an unprecedented bailout by the public treasury, are hoarding the funds that could put millions back to work. The cash reserves of major corporations have jumped 26 percent in one year, the largest percentage increase in nearly 60 years. The cash reserves of working people, and particularly the unemployed, have not been so fortunate.
While the treatment of the unemployed is the most glaring expression of the callousness and indifference of the wealthy, the opposition to the Medicaid assistance to the states is not far behind. Medicaid, which pays for medical care for the poor, is the largest single budgetary item in most states, with 80 percent of the cost borne by the federal government and 20 percent by the states.
Most US states must balance their books for a fiscal year that ends June 30, and many have already included the promised Medicaid assistance as part of their financial planning. After the House stripped the Medicaid spending from its version of the bill, Obama sent a letter to House and Senate leaders on June 13, urging them to restore the aid to the states and warning that without it there would be "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters."
According to the National Governors Association, total state government spending has dropped for two years in a row, the first time such a decline has been recorded. State governments eliminated $300 billion in cumulative deficits over this two-year period, through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, usually in regressive sales and excise taxes.
A report issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Planning, a liberal Washington study group, warned that without federal aid, as many as 34 states could impose drastic and unprecedented budget cuts beginning July 1, cutting as many as 900,000 jobs in education and other public services.
Already, 28 states have ordered across-the-board budget cuts, 22 states have imposed payless furloughs on employees, and 25 states and Puerto Rico have laid off state workers.
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