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By Staff Editorial
Hope for Americans (WhiteHouse.Gov)
By Staff Editorial
President Barack Obama has recently announced the news of his latest strategy to tackle the rising unemployment rates the country is currently experiencing, as well as stimulating the economy.
The president’s plan, aptly entitled the “American Jobs Act,” proposes to invest $447 billion in order to help get people back to work; while it will simultaneously promote job creation within the country by closing tax loopholes and ending tax cuts benefiting Americans earning over $200,000 a year.
On a state-wide level, this plan means that tax cuts will be given to small business within the private sector to help them hire and grow. Nationally, the “American Jobs Act” is expected to call for increased spending that will be used to rebuild roads, bridges, freeways and other infrastructure throughout the country.
Opponents are concerned it would only mean that higher taxes will be passed on to Americans, despite the president’s claims that the $447 billion plan is already paid for. Republicans, for example, argue that this is yet another form of wasteful spending and have so far rejected this idea.
“We remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn’t appear to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit,” said Michael Steele, Chief Spokesman for House Speaker John Boener.
In order to win political support for this new job creation plan, President Obama must prove to Congress that this is more than just an attempt to temporarily remedy the downward trend in job growth.
Just recently, it was reported that the government experienced a net gain of zero new jobs for the month of August, leaving the jobless rate at 9.1 percent. Private sector businesses suffered weak growth in employment this last month whereas state and local governments were forced to lay off approximately 671,000 employees as a means of balancing their budgets.
California’s Economic Development Department reported that for August, the unemployment rate in Riverside County hit 15.1 percent and 14.8 percent in San Bernardino County. California’s total unemployment rate reached 12.4 percent, which reflects an increase compared to the rates reported for the month of July. These numbers greatly exceed the national rate of 9.1 percent.
These figures prove to be among the worse in the nation. If there’s ever a time for Obama’s plan to be successful, that time is now.
In the Riverside-San Bernardino area, a reported 87 percent of job loss was contributed by massive lay-offs in the local government sector. Approximately 10,600 jobs were cut in that field alone, compared to only a meager 1,500 jobs within the state government. Educational and health services decreased by 1,300 jobs, with the loss focused primarily on educational services.
According to statistics released by the EDD, the only fields that experienced any sort of job growth included construction, specialty trade contractors, manufacturing, information, and mining and logging. Even then, the changes in these numbers were very minor compared to the losses already incurred since the beginning of the recession.
Professional and business services, however, recorded no change in both growth or loss.
Summarily, private and the majority of public sectors continue to show a decrease in growth, worrying economists that another recession is to soon hit California and possibly the rest of the nation. With that premonition in the works, how will American fare if they were hit with financial difficulties a second time?
The weak job market has raised fears regarding the US economy. The possibility of the country sliding back into yet another recession has prompted the president to act immediately.
As citizens in Riverside and San Bernardino County grapple with the question of rising unemployment of state and local levels, it still remains to be seen how much of the president’s new job creation plan will get through an already divided Congress.
With the president’s approval numbers continually dipping lower and lower each month, a notable increase of distrust is spreading among unemployed Americans. The key questions to consider are how Obama’s plan will affect the country’s job market in long run and whether or not Americans will have enough hope left for another economic failure.
