Community-Labor Groups Urge Super-Committee Members to Create Jobs, Make Wall Street Pay

Beginning this week, community, faith and labor groups around the country will be making in-person visits to ten of the twelve the Super-committee members while they are home on recess. Groups will be delivering a petition signed with thousands of signatures asking the super-committee to address the deficit by addressing the revenue crisis and calling on Wall Street, corporations, and the wealthy to pay their fair share.

Jobs with Justice coalitions in South Carolina, Arizona, North Texas, and Philadelphia will be visiting committee members to demand that the committee focus on the need for good jobs and hold Wall Street accountable. They say the American Jobs Act proposed by President Obama is a critical first step towards putting the country back to work.

These visits are part of a greater fight to return power over our workplaces and our communities to working people as corporations spend billions of dollars to influence our representatives in Washington.

A new report from Public Campaign and National People's Action entitled "Wall Street and the Super-committee: The $41 Million Question" reveals that members of the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction have received $41 million from the financial sector during their time in Congress. At least 27 current or former aides for the "Super-committee" members have lobbied on behalf of financial firms. Since 2000, the financial sector has spent over $4 billion lobbying elected officials.

"At the root of what Congress debates is not the debt ceiling or the national deficit," said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice. "The root of this debate is whether the role of our government is to serve and protect working people, or if the role of government is to make it easier for large corporations and Wall Street to make swelling profits on the backs of our communities."

Tax reforms such as closing the "Hedge Fund Loophole" and instituting a Financial Speculation Tax can generate over a trillion dollars that can be used for housing, jobs, and repairing our nations' frayed social safety net, according to National People's Action.