Labor & Employment Law

One Year Later, the Recovery Act Is Working

By James Parks

If there’s one thing Americans agree on, it’s that we need more jobs now. That reality is often twisted by conservatives, who say the one-year-old economic recovery plan has failed. But they are just wrong. 

The AFL-CIO is pushing for much greater investment to create the millions more jobs we need to get us out of our current hole. Check out the federation’s five-point plan to put America back to work here.

The fact is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is still working, generating more than 2 million jobs and laying the foundation for future economic growth.

In a report issued today, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), tracks monthly job losses before and after the Recovery Act. He writes: 

With unemployment at 9.7 percent today, it’s hard to appreciate how much more damage the stimulus investments prevented. Without the more than 2 million jobs generated by the Recovery Act, the unemployment rate would now exceed 11 percent.

Click here to read the report.

One sign the recovery package is working: Our economy grew 5.7 percent last quarter?the largest gain in six years. Many economists say the growth is largely due to the Recovery Act?and those who say the first economic Recovery Act didn’t work are just plain wrong.

EPI President Lawrence Mishel says:

The fact is that [the Recovery Act] did work?precisely as it was designed to work?and it has helped to produce roughly 2 million jobs that wouldn’t exist if the Recovery Act had not become law.

Congressional Democrats recently have criticized Republicans who voted against the measure but then went home to praise Recovery Act grants for projects in their districts. Although the Recovery Act passed with no Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers supported stimulus funding requests submitted for their districts, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

AFT President Randi Weingarten said the Recovery Act has been a “life preserver” that helped reduce the harmful impact of the recession on children.

Kids don’t get a second chance to get a good education. The Recovery Act was the help they needed, ensuring that schools continued to receive resources so that teachers could teach and students learn.

National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis Van Roekel agreed, saying Congress must pass a jobs bill that will maintain and create jobs to keep school doors open after the Recovery Act expires.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 17, 2010 (boomark / email).