September 26, 2010

Stimulus Expiration To Erase New Jobs

Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in a $787 billion stimulus act.

So says Michael Cooper, a writer for the New York Times, quoting reliable sources.

The $1 billion -- New Deal style programs  -- directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in government, non-profit organizations and at many small businesses.

In rural Perry County, Tenn., the program helped pay for roughly 400 new jobs in the public and private sectors.  But in a county of 7,600 people, those jobs had a big impact.

They reduced Perry County’s unemployment rate to less than 14 percent this August – from the Depression-like levels of more than 25 percent last year after its biggest employer (an auto parts factory) moved to Mexico.

VERY SCARY

If the stimulus program ends on schedule next week, Perry County officials said an estimated 300 people there would lose their jobs -- the equivalent of another factory closing.

“It’s very scary, because there’s just no work,” said Brian Davis, a 36-year old father of four.  He got a stimulus-subsidized job with the City of Lobelville after he lost his job of 17 years at an auto parts plant that shed hundreds of jobs.  Now he faces the prospect of unemployment again.

“This was a huge help,” Mr. Davis said. “The way the economy’s been – and the way people are struggling -- you’re worried about putting food on the table for your children and keeping the electricity on.”

The money that pays Mr. Davis’s salary -- and the salaries of tens of thousands of other people around the country -- will dry up after next Thursday.  Then, the welfare program in the stimulus act -- that pays the bills for those jobs -- is set to expire.

If the program has encountered hostility from Republicans on Capitol Hill, it has been embraced by some Republican governors who have used it to create jobs in their states.

The glass that is neither half-full, nor half-empty, is twice as large as it needs to be.

The trouble with Washington, DC., is that it’s too small for a state, and too large for an asylum for the mentally deranged.

-- Anne M. Burford

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.

When you argue with a fool, make sure he isn’t doing the same thing.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist