Wednesday, November 10, 2010
(graphic: UCLA cityLAB)
Forget Congress, argue attorneys Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn. President Barack Obama has all the authority and resources needed at his disposal to create millions of new jobs for unemployed Americans.
Just as others on the left have remarked during the past two years, Mirer and Cohn believe Obama needs to take a page out of the past and do what Franklin Roosevelt did during the Depression to help get the country back on its feet. In this case, the historical example is Executive Order 7034, which Roosevelt signed to appropriate $4.8 billion for the Works Progress Administration and put people back to work.
What Obama should do is use his presidential powers to redirect monies paid back to the government by companies that were rescued under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) in order to finance new employment opportunities.
“Much of the TARP money has been repaid and the administration refers to the profit on the payments,” write Mirer and Cohn. “If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, 6 million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. 12 million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Obama: Create Jobs by Executive Order (by Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn, Marjorie Cohn.com)
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