Last week’s dismal jobs report shows that the government-focused economic strategy of President Obama and his congressional allies has failed.
As over 12 million Americans come to the end of another week without a job, and as dark economic clouds form over most of Europe, the time for a realistic, bipartisan growth agenda could not be more urgent.
Crossroads GPS again calls on Congress to embrace the “Road to Recovery” outlined in our New Majority Agenda. A down payment on that agenda would be for Senate liberals – led by Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer – to end their destructive stonewall of numerous job-creating bills passed by the House of Representatives.
The main takeaway from last week’s jobs report – an increase in the unemployment rate to 8.2% — is bad enough. But a deeper dive into the jobs report should give all Americans even greater cause for alarm.
Consider:
- Job creation, which has been slow all year, screeched to a near-halt in the last two months, with an average of just 73,000 jobs created in April and May. To put this in perspective, the economy must add 4.3 million jobs to return to the pre-recession peak in employment.
- The “underemployment” rate rose to 14.8%. That means that nearly 1 in 6 American workers are unemployed or working either part-time or in positions below their qualifications.
- We have now had 40 weeks of at least 8% unemployment, the longest period since the Great Depression.
- Economists are now speculating that the job situation, coupled with anemic growth, means that we are now heading into a new recession.
As Speaker Boehner pointed out, the House has passed more than 30 jobs bills, many of them on a bipartisan basis. Most of them have been summarily ignored by the Senate, in favor of grandstanding votes on measures that would do nothing to help out-of-work Americans. Crossroads GPS has endorsed Senate passage of many of these bills through its New Majority Agenda.
Crossroads GPS urges rank-and-file Senate liberals to buck their anti-jobs leadership and vote for House-passed measures that will get America’s jobs engine going again. Right away, we should pass the pending legislation to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to proceed, and act promptly to end the economic uncertainty created by “Taxmageddon” – the largest tax increase in history that President Obama has scheduled for January 1, 2013.
America faces a Jobs Emergency. The liberal-run Senate is the logjam that is preventing progress on serious, pro-growth legislation. Breaking that logjam needs to be the top priority of every fair-minded Member of Congress and every American.
