Jobs & The Economy

"We can put America back to work. We can rebuild America. We have the resources to do it, we just have to have the will to do it” -Dennis

What is happening in our economy points to something fundamentally wrong in our country. Economic democracy is a precondition of political democracy. The top one percent of Americans owns half of the country’s stocks, bonds and mutual funds. They control almost 40% of the nation’s wealth. They are taking in more of the nation’s income than at any time since the 1920s. There is truth to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ warning that “We can have democracy in the country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

The people in charge either can’t or won’t face the reality that the system is fundamentally broken and Americans want to see real change. For true job growth and economic justice, our government must transform into one that is responsive to the practical aspirations of people for jobs, health care, education, retirement security and peace.

If there were a logical or reasonable defense of the current financial system, somebody would have offered it. Congress should be debating every day the best way to create jobs and how to provide better basic services, better education, better infrastructure. We should be holding hearings on “too big to fail” banks, and looking for ways to better police Wall Street. Everyone knows the system is bankrupt – financially, morally and intellectually.

Job creation and fixing our broken system isn’t about one party or one policy. It's about standing up to a financial system that's completely backwards. Wall Street banks get billions in bailouts and emerge with massive profits. Most Americans see a program of austerity in a painful economic climate -- benefit cuts, high unemployment, declining wages, and crumbling infrastructure. Congress moved swiftly to "save" banks (something Dennis strongly opposed), and now Congress is paralyzed, unable to create jobs and to save our middle class.

In Cleveland, Dennis has been a tireless community advocate who has who has worked to save a municipal electric system, a steel mill, an aircraft parts factory, libraries, parks, fire stations, and other facilities. He worked closely with the SEIU in saving a Cleveland community hospital and hundreds of jobs.

We have a critical opportunity to create jobs and restore our crumbling infrastructure in the creation of a new WPA - rebuilding America's roads, bridges, water systems, sewer systems, mass transit systems, hospitals, universities, libraries and more with an eco-sustainable focus. In the WGA, Works Green Administration, government will become an engine for sustainability and environmental restoration. We can create millions of new jobs incentivizing the designing, engineering, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of millions of wind and solar micro-technologies and insulation in tens of millions of American homes, businesses and industries, reducing our utility bills, our environmental impact and our reliance on carbon and nuclear-based energy.

This will also help restore our nation with new manufacturing policy, where the maintenance of our industrial base is understood to be vital to our national economic welfare. We can fuel domestic steel production and consumption by rebuilding our nation's infrastructure with American made steel, utilizing the productive capacity of our mills.