NEWSSTIMULUS PACKAGE

So far, Ted Williams – a homeless man with a velvet voice and multiple job offers after a moment in the YouTube spotlight – is shaping up to be the feel-good economic story of the year.

Oprah, MTV and ESPN think there is a place for Williams at their networks. A pair of Washington Post bloggers think President Obama should give Williams a shot at the soon-to-be vacant White House Press Secretary job.

Kraft Foods, Inc. has already put Williams and the free publicity he attracts to work. The once-homeless Williams is the not-at-all-ironic voice behind Kraft's homestyle mac and cheese.

Still, there’s an aspect of Williams’ nearly-everywhere tale that isn’t getting enough attention.

For the rest of America’s 14.5 million unemployed individuals, a YouTube-enabled 15-minutes of fame and cynical job recommendations probably aren't what's needed. American companies that have emerged from the Great Recession, begun posting record-setting profit increases or simply have the financial wherewithal to throw rapid and real opportunities at Williams, have also got to start hiring ordinary people for ordinary jobs.

That’s why it’s time for 112th Congress to expand and renew the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act.

While I somewhat flippantly but brilliantly illustrated the EDD epidemic last week, I missed a big story — the slashing of TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), aka “welfare,” that has been unfolding, albeit rather quietly. It took one email from a beleaguered Tina to jar me back into furious futile frustration.

This mother of a newborn, with five other little boys, had her TANF cut from a pathetic $423 a month to $277. What?

How could one person, much less seven, survive on $277 a month? More to the point, how do we allow this to happen? New Mexico and other states have begun reducing TANF pittances to outrageous levels. Do not panic. Right.

November 28th. Tina's due date. I lost track of her, this mother of five young boys with one on the way, teetering on the edge of homelessness again.

Earlier this year I helped get her and her boys out of the dinky camper they slept in, with and without electricity/water and barely space to breathe. Extreme hot and cold temperatures merely represented discomfort. More significant were the fear and frustration that continued to eat at her.

Thanks to the stimulus funds (Homeless Prevention and Rehousing Program - HPRP), they moved into a single-wide trailer, about 1,000 times bigger than their 13' tin can. Tina was temporarily relieved, but  scared, rightfully so, because her HPRP housing reprieve was as limited as her resources. Her entire pregnancy and postpartum was spent in traumatic stress. Not good.

All good things come to an end when it’s government money helping people in need. Despite the hype, HPRP is just a temporary housing subsidy. “Preventing or ending homelessness for over 750,000 Americans is a major milestone for the Recovery Act and for the Obama Administration’s Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness,” HUD Secretary Donovan recently boasted.

For Tina and her boys, housing ends in January. Theoretically, Tina should have been making arrangements to clear up the $5,250 owed the out-of-state housing authority where the family lived before fleeing her violent husband. But her life has been anything but theoretical. Family help? Her mother is a half-step from homelessness herself. Times are tough. Wonder what Donovan would say to Tina and countless single parents in the same boat? Even the safety net — frayed as it is in most places — won't help because Las Cruces, NM has no real shelter for families.

Just hours after winning office, Republican governors-elect have managed to do the unthinkable. John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin have already begun the process of terminating thousands of potential jobs slated to be created by federally-subsidized passenger train projects.

"Passenger rail is not in Ohio's future,'' Kasich said at his first news conference after defeating Gov. Ted Strickland last week. "That train is dead."

Kasich was referring to the $400 million project to restore passenger rail between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, along the 3C  corridor. If completed, the project would help restore Ohio's crumbling infrastructure while also providing a rail service that would serve an estimated 480,000 travelers in its first year of operation.

In Wisconsin, Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi has said that his state will suspend work on an $810 million Milwaukee-Madison rail line after Governor-elect Walker similarly vowed to derail the project. Walker pledged throughout his campaign to "kill the train," saying it would cost the state too much money without helping enough people.

Kasich had previously called the 3C corridor train the "dumbest idea" he had ever heard. Like Walker in Wisconsin, he said he believed the money could be better used elsewhere. Tell him that money can't be spent any better than putting Ohioans back to work!

Allan Jones had a tremendous investment opportunity dropped into his lap 20 years ago. "How could he help feeling anything but ecstatic making 20 percent on his money?," writes Gary Rivlin in his new book, Broke USA, a scathing review of Jones (and many others) and their largely unreported, certainly unregulated, and blatantly unscrupulous poverty industry in America — payday loans (and various subsidiaries).

Here's hoping new poverty sheriff Elizabeth Warren will set her sights on the likes of Jones and others who thrive on making life worse for those already suffering from many forms of poverty. People like 58-year-old "Linda," who took out a $300 juice loan so she could avoid being tossed to the streets, having received five-days notice from her motel manager. Her $700 disability check doesn't stretch to the end of the month, despite a drug/alcohol free life. So she turned to the only place she could find to give her help: "Tricks & Traps," aka the payday lender.

This former county employee who lives on Chicago's fringes spins around trying to keep this meager 8' x 10' roof over her head. "I don't want to die in the streets," she explained to me over the phone. I was driving past ritzy horse farms in Kentucky listening to her litany of woes, including her frustration that she can't help the homeless family dearest to her — her daughter and her five kids. The contrast, ugh.

Linda's disability check doesn't hit her bank before it's grabbed by a Jones-clone. Her only money is gone, and the hole keeps getting deeper with very little chance for her to get out. It's all legal, but IMHO, immoral, though that doesn't stop them.

Much has been written, including Read More »

This Labor Day, there was bound to be a lot of attention paid to just how many people are out of work. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent, meaning that 14.9 million people were looking for work but unable to find it in August.

But this week, there's also good reason to think about the people who are working, the kind of work they do and the pay they earn. Frankly, the answers really challenge the image of the upwardly mobile, sophisticated American worker. Along with the recession, they also help to explain why one in six Americans needs the help of some sort of government program.

It turns out, a lot of workers are poor, or something very close to it, whether they understand that or not.

In late July the Bureau put out a little-noticed periodic report detailing which private industries employ the most workers and what those workers earn. In the America of our dreams — the one where most workers live comfortably while striving for better jobs — most people labor in the sciences, do something related to computer technology or medicine or are simply paid to generate ideas.

Here's the reality: it's called retail sales and it pays an $11.84-per-hour average wage.

"Without my job me and my kids would be on the street homeless."

"This program has given people a chance to prove they do want to work."

"It gives us a chance to take responsibility, to raise our families and learn new skills that we can carry on to other job opportunities."

"This program has helped so many of us stand on our feet again."

These are a few of the responses to questions Internet Archive asked the employees it had hired through San Francisco's Jobs Now! program. They're all formerly unemployed low-income  parents whose jobs are subsidized by the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund.

All told, the program has placed 4,000 residents in public and private-sector jobs. It will reimburse employers for their wages through September 30 — unless Congress extends the Emergency Contingency Fund. Otherwise, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, all but a few hundred of the subsidized jobs will end. Tell Congress to extend the emergency fund and save jobs now!

This is a window into an impending human crisis with broad implications for our struggling economy.

Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have tapped the Emergency Contingency Fund for subsidized summer and year-round jobs. By now, they'll probably have placed more than 240,000 low-income parents and teens.

CBPP says the number would grow substantially if the Emergency Contingency Fund is extended. If Congress lets it die, 14 states will immediately terminate their year-round programs. Three states will continue operations, but only until their current funding allocation runs out. Seven other states will scale back their programs significantly.

So many thousands of now-employed people will be back on the unemployment rolls — and in many cases, again dependent on TANF cash benefits. But states will have less money for them because all but four states with approved Emergency Contingency Fund claims for subsidized employment also have approvals for basic assistance. No extension means no opportunity for further federal help with rising caseloads.

All experts expect the overall unemployment rate to remain extraordinarily h

It's a horrible time to be a teacher. Many are being laid-off or battling for fair salaries. A number are fighting for their colleagues — janitors, cafeteria workers, counselors, bus drivers, and other school personnel who are also being laid off in record numbers. Some teachers are even resorting to asking their students to pitch in for classroom supplies.

But the New York Times reports that even when school districts are given funds to rehire laid-off teachers, they aren't necessarily doing it. Terrified that things could still get worse, they're hoarding the money for anticipated future budget shortfalls instead of re-employing the teachers now, whenstudents need them and when they need the jobs.

The trouble, of course, is that this is perfectly within the prescribed limits of the original bill signed by President Obama. The stimulus package stipulates that states must allocate their portion of the $10 billion federal money to school districts this year, but that the individual districts have until September 2012 to spend the money. This allows them to sit on their reserves in case of even greater emergency. The question is, are they hurting more people in the process?

Remember the promise that stimulus money would be funneled to the places that needed it most?

That's not exactly what's happened.

An analysis by ProPublica and the Patchwork Nation project show that the places hardest hit by the recession have gotten the least amount of stimulus dollars per person.

To figure this out, they relied on Patchwork Nation's map of all of America's counties, divided into 12 different categories based on who lives there, how they vote and what the economy is like. Of those 12 different categories, there are five types that have fared the worst in the recession: wealthy suburban counties,  predominately black counties, big cities, conservative religious communities and small town service worker counties. All these kinds of counties had unemployment rates topping 10 percent.

So if those are the types of places that have fared the worst, you might expect that if you made a list where the most money went, those kinds of counties would rise to the top. But no. The list is almost turned upside down, in fact. Big cities did a little better, placing in the top six.

Where, instead, is stimulus money going?

My report on the Senate's failure to pass the latest version of the jobs/tax bill has generated more comments than I've seen in a long while. They concern one piece of the package — the extension of unemployment insurance benefits.

I hear a lot of justifiable anger and anxiety. Also an urgent need to do something to get the folks in power to do what they ought to do. But what?

Let me try to answer some of the big questions that have been asked.

Could the President end-run Congress by issuing an executive order extending UI benefits?

Unfortunately, no. As Open Congress blogger Donny Shaw explains, executive orders are invalid under the Constitution if they go beyond the scope of laws that Congress has passed. Since Congress has thus far refused to pass a law extending UI benefits, the President's hands are legally tied.

There's a second, related reason the President couldn't take care of the problem with an executive order. Extending UI benefits will involve an expenditure of federal funds. The Executive Branch can only spend funds that Congress has appropriated — and only for the purposes Congress designated.

Shouldn't the Democrats cave in and offset the costs of extending UI benefits by reducing other spending?

The issues here are complex. And, as a lobbyist friend of mine says, what you see depends on where you stand.

Most, though not all, Democrats in Congress contend that the UI benefits extension should be treated as emergency legislation, i.e., not subject to the regular PAYGO (short for pay-as-you-go) rules. As history shows, Congress has repeatedly passed emergency legislation extending UI benefits during economic downturns. So there's nothing unusual about what the Democratic majority wants to do.

The Republicans say they've got no problem with extending UI benefits, but the benefits have to be paid for because otherwise they'll increase the deficit. It's hard to know how sincere this concern is. My own view is, in most cases, not very.

After all, the Republicans objected to parts of the jobs/tax bill that would