GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES

http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:

Friday, September 9, 2011

> Contacts:

Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, cell:

202-904-7614, [email protected] Starlene Rankin, Media

Coordinator, 916-995-3805, [email protected].

Green Party, responding to President Obama’s Sept. 8

address, calls ‘Green New Deal’ the key to job creation.
 

• Greens urge public works programs to provide millions of

jobs and help convert America to a secure green economy.
 

• Green Party Speakers Bureau: Green leaders available to

speak on economic issues:

http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-economic-sustainability.php

http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-economic-justice.php

WASHINGTON, DC — Responding to President Obama’s

speech Thursday night, the Green Party today called for a

‘Green New Deal’ to put Americans back to work while

helping the US transition to a carbon-free green economy.
 

“We need a Green New Deal that will put all of the

unemployed to work rebuilding America on the basis of an

economically and ecologically sustainable prosperity.

 

The green in the Green New Deal means we must go

beyond the old New Deal and bring an environmental focus

to our public investments, including clean manufacturing

processes, to not only address the crisis of climate change

but to build the foundation of a sustainable green

economy,” said Jill Stein, co-chair of the Green-Rainbow

Party of Massachusetts (http://www.massgreens.org) and

author of “Jobs for All with a Green New Deal” (Green

Papers, September 5, 2011:

http://www.greenpapers.net/?p=164
 

“Other countries are already making major investments to

position themselves for this future carbon-free economy.

 

America needs to catch up!

 

A Green New Deal offers the opportunity to revive and

reinvent American manufacturing, so we can have good

jobs by making the solar panels and wind towers and

transit cars right here in America,” added Dr. Stein.
 

*More on the Green New Deal:

http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2010/08/11/62-green-candidates-endorse-green-new-deal
 

Green Party leaders said that President Obama’s new jobs

proposal will fall far short of finding enough jobs for the 25

million Americans who need employment.

 

They sharply criticized the president for failing to call for

revenue measures needed to finance a robust jobs

creation program, including taxes on Wall Street

speculation, off-shore tax havens, millionaires and

multimillion dollar estates, as well as a 30% reduction in the

trillion-dollar bloated military-industrial-security complex

budget.

 

“President Obama refused to address the massive

problem of income inequality, a major cause of the

economic recession.

 

The wealthiest 1% of Americans now take home 24% of the

national income, up from 9% in 1976.

 

The last time the US had such massive income inequality

was in 1927, which pushed the country into the Great

Depression because of the loss of consumer spending,”

said Laura Wells, Green candidate for the 2010 governor’s

race in California.
 

Green leaders said that a payroll tax cut for working

Americans will at best provide a modest economic

stimulus, but agreed with President Obama’s support for

extended unemployment benefits.

Greens have long advocated the establishment of an

infrastructure bank, noting that North Dakota’s successful

public banks have granted cheaper and easier access to

credit to small businesses, nonprofits, and local

governments.
 

“The path to full employment in America lies in building a

green economy, not in caving to polluters as the Obama

administration has done recently.

 

The New York Times reports that the recent surge of the

Green Party in many European countries was due to the

recognition that building a green economy is the key to job

creation: (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/europe/02greens.html).

Politicians in the US love to campaign on a green jobs

agenda, but once elected, its back to pushing more tax

cuts and handouts for large corporations,” said Starlene

Rankin, co-chair of the Green Party’s national Lavender

Green Caucus.
 

“A Green New Deal will establish government’s

responsibility to guarantee the right to a job for every

American willing and able to work.

 

Let’s turn the unemployment office into the employment

office.

If the private sector fails to provide you a job, you go down

to the employment office to get work.

 

We need to build ecologically sustainable energy and

transportation infrastructure and production systems –

clean renewable energy generation, retrofitting buildings

and homes and other projects for energy efficiency,

intra-city mass transit and inter-city railroads, ‘complete

streets’ that encourage bikes and pedestrians, regional

food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture,

and clean manufacturing of the goods needed to support a

sustainable economy,” said Howie Hawkins, co-chair of the

Green Party of New York State and Green candidate for

Common Councilor in Syracuse, New York.
 

Green leaders noted that the White House launched

several successful public works programs since the 1930s.

 

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s

and Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA)

in the 1970s employed millions to provide necessary public

infrastructure and public services like education, health,

child care, elder care, youth programs, and arts and

cultural projects.
 

The net cost of a WPA-style jobs program to create 25

million new jobs would be $666 billion, only about 50%

more than the $447 billion President Obama proposes and

less than the $825 billion in the 2009 stimulus — and

miniscule compared to the trillions in Wall Street bailouts in

2008 and 2009.

 

(See “Learning from the New Deal” (draft) by Philip Harvey,

Professor of Law and Economics at Rutgers School of

Law, http://www.njfac.org/HarveyLearningND.pdf).

 

Assuming that a public jobs program would stimulate

about one private job for every two public jobs created, we

would need about 17.5 million public jobs the first year.

 

With pay between $14 to $17 per hour, plus benefits, the

net cost per job would be only $28,600, compared to

$228,055 per job cost of Obama’s initial 2009 stimulus,

which mainly consisted of tax incentives.
 

Greens warned that Obama’s proposals also fail to provide

enough relief from housing foreclosures.

 

A July 2010 report from the International Monetary Fund

shows that the foreclosure crisis account for more than

10% of the unemployment rate:

(http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2010/cr10248.pdf).

 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run

mortgage companies, must aggressively reduce the

principal balances on underwater loans and make

refinancing easier for underwater borrowers.
 

The cost of a Green New Deal jobs program would be

covered through a combination of carbon taxes to help

reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increased taxes on the

wealthy and Wall Street, and major cuts in the military

budget.

 

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top four

contributors to the federal deficit are (in order of

importance) the Bush tax cuts, reduced revenues in the

wake of the 2008 economic meltdown, bank bailouts, and

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Defending America doesn’t require a globally deployed

military, with bases in over 100 countries and full-scale

occupations and wars on several fronts.

 

The military budget has doubled over the last decade.

 

The US spends over $1 trillion a year on the military-

industrial complex.

 

If we cut military spending by two-thirds to fully fund an

Employment Assurance program in the depths of the

current Great Recession, we would still spend three times

more than China, the world’s next biggest military spender,

China,” said Mark Dunlea, New York Green and chair of the

Green Educational Legal Fund, Inc.

> MORE INFORMATION:

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191.

• Green candidate database and campaign information:

http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml

• News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml

• Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers

• Ballot Access Page http://www.gp.org/ballotstatus

• Livestream Channel http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus

• Video Page http://www.gp.org/video/index.php

“Critics Still Wrong on What’s Driving Deficits in Coming

Years: Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and

Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers” By Kathy Ruffing

and James R. Horney, Center on Budget and Policy

Priorities, June 28, 2010: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3036

Press conferences, forums, and other events at the Green

Party’s 2011 Annual National Meeting in Alfred, NY,

broadcast and archived on the Green Party’s Livestream

Channel: http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus

• 2011 Annual National Meeting http://nygreenfest.org

Green Pages: The official publication of record of the

Green Party of the United States (Summer 2011 issue now

online) http://gp.org/greenpages-blog

~ END ~

 

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Green Party Calls For “Green New Deal” Jobs Creation Act

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