Labor Confidence First

I have listened and read with great interest the debate on the Economic Recovery Act. It seems to me that we have missed the point once again. The Act started as a job stimulus plan and then morphed into lots of other things and now it has so much in it that no one feels good about supporting it. Seems that pragmatism gets lost in bill writing doesn't it? If we would stop for a moment and recognize that consumer confidence actually lags Labor Confidence (the confidence that I will have a secure job over the next 12 months with a wage that meets my expectations) then we would be spending our time and money on creating Labor Confidence first and consumer confidence second. Creating jobs is like motherhood and apple pie. It can't be argued against. We all would support, without a blink of an eye, a plan that for every dollar spent a dollar of wages was created. We might even support that for every three dollars spent a dollar of wage was created. What we have done is lost the line of sight to the issues at hand and then nothing gets done. I am more convinced than ever that we have to solve the labor and jobs issue first and the rest can follow. We can still get infrastructure built, etc. but only through the filter of jobs created. BTW, 4MM jobs created isn't enough. That only brings us up to parity with what we have lost. Our economy demands that we create an additional 1MM plus jobs a year on top of what we had before. We need a serious refocus on the issues. Let TARP monies clean up the bad assets and bad debt. Let's pass a true Job program that creates real jobs. There was a reason that FDR called it the "Works Progress Administration". It started with work that created works. That is how we create Labor confidence....giving us Consumer Confidence as the outcome.