That's a great idea. Now go out and make me do it.
paraphrase ---------- F.D.Roosevelt
November 17, 2009
N.A.A.C.P. Prods Obama on Job Losses
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, the N.A.A.C.P.
will join several other groups on Tuesday to call on President Obama
to do more to create jobs.
The organizations — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the National
Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group— will make clear that
they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not
gone far enough to fight unemployment.
They will call for increased spending for schools and roads, billions
of dollars in fiscal relief to state and local governments to
forestall more layoffs and a direct government jobs program,
“especially in distressed communities facing severe unemployment.”
In speaking out on jobs, N.A.A.C.P. leaders say they are not trying to
pick a fight with the first African-American president. Rather, they
say, they are pressing Mr. Obama in an area where they believe he
wants to be pressured.
“It’s time for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O.
Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s senior vice president for advocacy and
policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he
doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have
agreement on.”
African-American leaders say it makes sense to pressure the president
on jobs because the unemployment rate for blacks has jumped to 15.7
percent, from 8.9 percent when the recession started 23 months ago.
That compares with 13.1 percent for Hispanics and 9.5 percent for
whites.
The black unemployment rate has climbed above 20 percent in several
states, reaching 23.9 percent in Michigan and 20.4 percent in South
Carolina.
In recent months, the N.A.A.C.P. has lobbied Mr. Obama on numerous
issues, including the hate crimes bill and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair
Pay Act, which makes it easier for employees to sue over pay
discrimination. But this is the first time in Mr. Obama’s presidency
that the organization is throwing its full weight into the economic
debate.
It is being joined by another group that fought for civil rights
during the 1950s and 1960s, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
“Make no mistake, for us this is the civil rights issue of the
moment,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference.
“Unless we resolve the national job crisis, it will make it hard to
address all of our other priorities.”
Mr. Obama has invited groups nationwide to voice their views and
recommendations on jobs in preparation for his job summit next month.
“Obama keeps saying, ‘Push me to do the right thing,’ said Steven
Pitts, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “I
don’t see this as any break with Obama. The current political
alignment of forces doesn’t support a new economic stimulus package.
They’re trying to create an alignment of political forces to
counteract that.”
Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American
Enterprise Institute, a conservative group, said it was laudable that
the N.A.A.C.P. and other liberal groups were pressuring Mr. Obama,
although he said their call for additional stimulus was wrong.
“Everybody should pressure him,” Mr. Hassett said. “And it might be
the conservative groups aren’t pressuring him enough, because they
think maybe he won’t listen. I would hope the people pressuring the
president would push away from the divisive type of recommendations
that we need more of the same, that we need more stimulus.”
Mr. Hassett called for cutting taxes to create jobs and for reducing
many workers to three-fifths or four-fifths time in work-sharing
programs to avoid layoffs.
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, coordinated
the jobs statement being released Tuesday, which will also be joined
by the Center for Community Change.
“Despite an effective and bold recovery package, we are still facing a
prolonged period of high unemployment,” the groups say. “Two years
from now, absent further action, we are likely to have unemployment at
8 percent or more, a higher rate than attained even at the worst point
of the last two downturns.”
The groups call for spurring private-sector job growth through tax
credits and loans to small and medium businesses. They note that 17.5
percent of the labor force — more than 27 million Americans — are
underemployed, including one in four minority workers. They say they
expect one-third of the work force — and 40 percent of minority
workers —to be unemployed or underemployed at some point over the next
year.
“Americans are confronting the worst jobs situation in more than half
a century,” the groups say. “This is not a situation we must continue
to tough out. A robust plan to create jobs in transparent, effective,
and equitable ways can put America back to work.”
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