White House Growing ‘Loyal Opposition,’ Not Jobs
March 30, 2010
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An op-ed featured in The Huffington Post provides a candid analysis of the Obama administration’s handling of the current jobs crisis amongst some labor leaders and members of Congress.
“Normally when one refers to the ‘loyal opposition,’ it’s the Party out of power questioning specific policies and positions of the Party in power,” writes Leo Hindery, Jr., Chairman of the Economic Growth/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation. “Of more interest to me now and into the long term – as it should be for the administration – is the ‘loyal opposition’ to the administration that is developing within the Democratic Party itself.”
Hindery describes a conversation he recently had with a group of labor leaders and members of Congress who campaigned for Obama in 2008. He says Obama supporters are becoming “disenchanted” with the administration’s economic recovery efforts, citing the IAM’s recent Magma report in which the president drew only a 28% approval rating. “Unless the administration wants to see its most loyal friends become a real loyal opposition,” he writes, “it must take immediate and robust actions to help American workers by: giving the nation an industrial policy; making our trade deals fairer and then more strictly enforcing them; enacting strong and enforceable “Buy American” legislation; and adopting a ‘Roosevelt-Kennedy’ style jobs programs in order to get Americans who want to work back to work immediately.”
To read more of the op-ed, click here.
