Photo h/t wsws.org
This August, President Obama signed into law a bill that would save more than 300,000 jobs in
teaching and public service. Amidst this Great Recession, that seems
like a no-brainer, but it turned out to be one of the more controversial
bills of the summer. Republican demands that the bill be
deficit-neutral led to the shifting of $26 billion (half the House's
intended allocation) away from food stamp and green jobs programs to fund the initiative.
This resulted in an outpouring of negative media coverage: public employees called “fat cats” and federal aid to states labeled “another sloth-encouraging bailout." One headline even likened this effort to preserve teaching jobs to theft: “Robbing Renewable Energy to Pay Teachers.”
All this haggling was over $26 billion. $26 BILLION! That's, by any standard, a sizable amount. But, compared to the nearly $137 billion Congress has allocated to the largely unpopular Iraq and Afghan wars in this fiscal year, or the $680 billion it could cost to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of households over the next decade, it's peanuts. Read more >>
August 12, 2010
UFE's mission is to support social movements that work to change the "rules" and mechanisms behind economic injustice and gross wealth inequality in the U.S. To achieve this, we provide analysis, information, and educational resources around critical domestic economic justice issues. 