Labor Endorses Sen. Merkley Plan for Jobs Focus in Super Congress

by Joan McCarter, Daily Kos

Sen. Jeff Merkley is steadily gaining support for his proposal that the Super Congress agree to having their proposals evaluated by the CBO for their job-creating or job-killing impact. Today, he got the endorsement of top labor leaders.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and AFSCME chief Gerald McEntee are now joining the call for the supercommittee, and members of Congress in general, to embrace Merkley’s plan. It would require that the supercommittee submit its individual proposals to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office for an evaluation of the impact they would have on unemployment and the labor market.

The idea is to get supercommittee members to at least think about how its proposals would impact jobs, and require them to submit their conclusions along those lines to an independent analysis.[...]

AFL-CIO sends over this statement from Trumka:

"Senator Merkley's plan is the kind of common sense initiative that is too rare in Congress. We are in the middle of a jobs crisis and the last thing we should be doing is passing legislation that kills jobs. Senator Merkley's amendment would help the Super Committee avoid proposals that kill jobs. We strongly urge all elected representatives of both parties to support this effort."

And AFSCME sends over this statement from McEntee:

"As the Super Committee embraces their charge to reduce the deficit by more than a trillion dollars, we urge them to embrace Senator Merkley's proposal to report the jobs impact of their decisions. The Super Committee should focus on doing what's right and get our country back to work. No more political gamesmanship that leaves struggling families out in the cold yet again. Investing in job creation is the surest path to an economic recovery that works for everyone, not just CEOs and huge corporations. Congress must put aside political differences and begin the real work of the nation."

Given the Republican strategy on jobs, as illustrated here,

Thousands of jobs created per month in 2011 (data source)

Republican support for the plan seems unlikely. Never mind that it's a smart but small and absolutely common sense idea. Here's another simple and critical way, though, in which Democrats can differentiate themselves from Republicans. If every Democrat from President Obama on down endorsed the idea in the fact of Republican opposition, it would just prove again that Republicans don't really want to create jobs.