Even the IMF says austerity doesn't work

Television talking heads and Republican legislators have been screaming about the federal deficit since Obama took office in 2009. They keep telling us that the way out of the recession is to reduce taxes and cut spending also known as austerity.

Until this week we’d been operating for a decade under the lowest taxes in over half a century and that didn’t seem to generate jobs before or after the crash of the financial system. A couple of days ago the International Monetary Fund released a report that shows austerity doesn’t work either; in fact austerity actually makes things worse. That hasn’t stopped the conservative media from continuing to tout austerity in the U.S. as the solution to our problems.

What this nation really needs is not austerity or lower taxes it’s a full employment policy. We need to emphasize putting every able person to work in meaningful jobs so that they’re able to meet their responsibilities to feed and clothe their families and our society gets the benefit of the services and products they provide.

"Mom's" letter to the President on job creation

Dear Mr. President,

Having lived through the “Great Depression”, I’ll be 82 later this month, I can speak from experience that many of your esteemed advisers cannot. I am a child of an unemployed laborer who died prematurely of a heart attack and a disabled homemaker. I went to school often having eaten no breakfast and bringing nothing for lunch. I must tell you that while the current “Great Recession” is certainly not as bad as when I was growing up that is cold comfort for workers and their families who through no fault of their own have been without jobs for several years.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been my hero since I was old enough to say his name and I know from terrible experience that his policies are what saved my life and that of my sister and three brothers. The Herbert Hoover clones in Congress would have America cut spending and therefore cut more jobs, how can that possibly be the remedy for the lack of jobs we already suffer? Even Richard Nixon knew such actions were foolhardy for he said “We’re all Keynesians now.”

FDR recognized that the American people he loved were suffering under Hoover’s policies. I know that you too feel for the millions of Americans who are suffering today. I urge you to put aside the attempts at bi-partisanship which the party of Hoover apparently sees as weakness and proudly follow Roosevelt’s lead by putting Americans back to work building for our future.