Henry Crespo, Sr.
It’s a sad commentary today when 100 percent of the Republicans have essentially voted to block nearly every part of the President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act. The truth of the matter is that the present-day recession that America now faces did not happen overnight, and it can’t be solved overnight. When former President Bush entered office, the U.S. had a $2 billion dollar-plus surplus — when he left there was an $8 trillion dollar deficit. The economy was spiraling out of control and we lost about 600,000 jobs per month in his last year in office. Now the Republican party — the party of “no” — clearly has no job plan; still they continue to shoot down the the president’s proposal jobs initiatives.
They voted no on Obama’s plan to invest $1.6 billion dollars in Florida to go towards teachers and education-related jobs. They voted “no” on a construction jobs program that would have given Florida over $2.7 billion dollars for rehabilitating and refurbishing hundreds of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses that would have supported the revitalization of local communities. They voted ‘no” to the president’s proposal of investing over $1.2 billion dollars for school infrastructure projects that would have modernized public schools — supporting new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms and renovations at schools across the state of Florida. And yes, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the fourth largest in the U.S. All the Republicans voted “no” to a highway, bridges, roads and transit modernization program that would have made an immediate investment of over $1.5 billion dollars. The Congressional Republicans are against the president’s “Pathways Back to Work Fund” that would assist over 35,000 low-income youth and 8,000 adults with opportunities to work and to achieve needed training in growth industries in Florida. The only two things that the House and Senate Republicans support is making president Obama a one-term president and in protecting the one percent of the wealthiest people in the U.S. from paying their fair share.
That said, the latest data on employment shows private sector growth of 140,000 jobs in the month of November and a reduction in the unemployment rate that edged down to 8.6 percent. As quiet as it has been kept, in the last 21 months 2.9 million jobs have been created. So let’s not be fooled by the rhetoric from the party of “no.” Let’s support our president as he is championing economic growth to get more Americans working again.
Listen to Henry Crespo on Today’s Truth of The Matter on Sundays from 3 – 4 p.m. on 880 am the Biz.
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