Our economy may not be in trouble for the top 3% in the country, but no one in the 97% is getting million dollar bonuses. What they have gotten are layoffs or shortened hours.

We need jobs, jobs, jobs. And we needed them yesterday.

All indications are the stimulus package passed last January has helped, but it has not helped enough. To get the necessary votes, too much was targeted for tax cuts (almost half) and it’s taking too long to get the money dispersed to create the needed jobs.  2/3 is still not spent.

To pick ourselves up by our boot straps, we need businesses to start hiring again – (not everyone can start their own business to self-employ). While the job loss trends are encouraging, recovery is much too slow; we cannot wait 1 year or 10 years for jobs to come back. If people can’t find work, there will be more foreclosures and states will continue to suffer from the lost revenue. Everything these revenues support – police, fire, teachers, schools, ambulances, roads, health care, etc. will lose some amount of funding. And more children will be added to the already one million estimated to now be homeless and the one in five children in America who do not have enough food to eat. Wall Street may be recovering, but Main Street, the side streets, and the suburbs are not and will not without jobs. We need to put everything we can toward creating jobs, including redirecting funding that is being wasted on projects that are not working.

Tax cuts will not create jobs. Giving small businesses tax cuts when they have few customers is not going to entice a small business owner into hiring more people or expanding business. No business is going to do this until the customers start coming through the door. That tired old offering has been proven not to be true. $1.7 trillion in tax cuts made by the last administration did not create jobs.  Small businesses are facing rents that have not been reduced even though the value of these properties has fallen.  They can not get loans because the banks are not lending.  And they're getting behind on their state revenue taxes and are now facing a 20% penalty plus interest.  These small businesses are a job providers and they need help just as much as their employees. 

One of the most successful programs of the 1930’s was the Tennessee Valley Authority that transformed an entire section of the country providing it electricity, flood control, river navigation, reforestation, soil erosion, and malaria control. This program is a testament not only to government’s ability to work, but to the thousands of workers employed building these projects, and the jobs brought to this area of the country because of these projects. Private industry would not have accomplished so much and much of it would simply not have been done by them.

Once again history has repeated itself and although we have avoided another Great Depression, we have a Great Recession. And while the measures that need to be taken may not need to be as drastic as those taken in the 1930’s, there are many benefits our country could gain from the massive buying power of government that would not only put people back to work in partnership with private industry, but would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

Our energy needs are also key to our growth.  For many reasons, we must move to renewable energy sources...jobs, pollution, security, and increasing costs when supplies dwindle.

In addition to our energy needs, much of our country’s infrastructure has deteriorated from neglect. Many bridges and dams have been deemed unsafe. These are critical areas of concern that can no longer be neglected. We can no longer haphazardly fund these projects. H.R. 2512 was introduced this year by Representative Rosa L. DeLauro to establish a National Infrastructure Bank that would provide funding by way of grants, loans, and loan guarantees to finance large infrastructure projects proposed by states, municipalities, and other public agencies, as well as public-private partnerships and firms. This is an intelligent bill that should cut across agencies to get these projects funded quickly and at a lower cost than is currently being done.

Everything we do has an effect on our economy. There are many theories about what’s best to do for the economy coming from all sides. But we need to remember they are just that...theories. And if we look back over the last several decades, it is clear many of these theories have failed. Now we have to choose from the theories that work to rebuild our country and reclaim the prosperity that has been pulled out from under us.

The deregulation theories of the last several years claimed markets were efficient and government is not. By all appearances, the recent collapse indicates markets are not very efficient either. Apparently, the "invisible hand" abdicated.

Government, on the other hand, may not be efficient, but then politicians do little to make government work efficiently. And as long as they keep government inefficient, there will be a talking point to complaint about. Government agencies can be made to work efficiently when the decision is made to do so.

We need teachers and health care workers, too. Nationwide it is estimated we will need 2.2 million teachers in the next 10 years. We must invest in them to meet the educational needs of our students.

There are others that claim that government cannot create jobs. I am not sure 2.7 million government employees would agree with that. Government can create jobs either by direct employment, by paying private industry to do work for the government, or by providing incentives that will induce private businesses to create jobs. Anyone who claims otherwise isn't being honest.

With regard to the banking industry we must:

● Regulate markets and banks, reinstating Glass Steagall and enacting laws that will prevent Wall Street from nearly break the economy again. Too big to fail is too big to exist. Period.

● Derivatives and any other device they can think of in the future like them (or not) must be regulated. The markets and the banks have proven they are not worthy of our trust. There must be transparency and regulation.

● A Consumer Financial Protection Agency must be implemented. Banks should not be allowed to choose their regulators.

● Credit rating agencies (Moody's/Standard & Poors) should be investigated to determine their role in creating the economic mess dealt us. If they are found to be culpable, then they should be prosecuted. And if they hold themselves out to be “experts” in the field, then they deserve the responsibility and consequences that all other experts share.

● National legislation must be enacted to regulate the independent mortgage brokers who were the source of much of the subprime lending.

● No more over leveraging risk at 30-40 to 1.

● A national usury law must be enacted. Unlimited interest rates are destroying our middle class.

● Bankruptcy laws must be changed to allow judges to reduce the mortgage principal for homeowners who own just one home, not two or more. If the law is good enough for multiple homeowners, it should be good enough for a single homeowner. The current foreclosure program is not getting the job done.