Labor & Employment Law

Republican Senators Kill Jobs Program

By Mike Hall

Senate Republicans turned their backs on workers one more time before they left town for the Nov. 2 elections when they refused to allow a vote to keep alive a jobs program that has created nearly a quarter of million jobs. Many of those jobs were in some of the communities hardest hit by the nation?s unemployment crisis.

The program was a small part of the economic recovery package known as the TANF Emergency Fund and it  directly subsidized jobs in government, nonprofit organizations and small businesses for unemployed workers.

On Tuesday, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.)?with the backing of Republican leaders?used Senate rules to block an extension of the TANF fund. The program expired today and the layoffs are beginning.

According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the program subsidized jobs in 37 states for nearly

250,000 otherwise unemployed parents and youth?helping families, businesses, and communities across America weather the recession?. The fund has been a ?win-win-win,? helping unemployed families find work, businesses expand capacity in a difficult economic environment, and local economies cope with the recession.

The New York Times reported that the jobs program created some 400 new public- and private-sector jobs in Perry County, Tenn.

But in a county of 7,600 people, those jobs had a big impact: They reduced Perry County?s unemployment rate to less than 14 percent this August, from the Depression-like levels of more than 25 percent that it hit last year after its biggest employer, an auto parts factory, moved to Mexico.

Brian Davis, a 36-year-old father of four, who got a stimulus-subsidized job with the City of Lobelville after he lost his job of 17 years at an auto parts plant, told the Times:

This was a huge help, the way the economy?s been and the way people are struggling, you?re worried about putting food on the table for your children and keeping the electricity on.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) sought to include the TANF extension in the temporary spending bill the Senate and House passed yesterday to keep the government operating though December. Before Enzi blocked the bill, Kerry said:

It?s inconceivable to pull the rug out from under the same families who have been devastated by this recession. It makes no sense to shred a program that?s been creating jobs and helping low-income parents make ends meet for the last two years.

In a guest column for Politico, Christine Owens executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), writes that allowing the TANF jobs program to expire

means killing jobs when we should be saving them, throwing hundreds of thousands back into joblessness at the very moment we need to put America back to work

While some states plan to use their own funds to continue the program most are not.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 30, 2010 (boomark / email).